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I’m giving a talk about crosswords at the York Festival of Ideas:

• Wednesday 18 June 2014
• 6.00pm to 7.00pm
• Berrick Saul Building, University of York
• Booking through Eventbrite

Update 20 June: Thank you to everyone at the festival and the university. The slides are here:

• Image of a Tour de France bicycle in York

My book about the crossword, Two Girls, One On Each Knee (7), has a publication date of 7 November 2013.

I’ve written a piece for the BBC about words beginning with “tw-“, and why people enjoy coining them on Twitter.

“Flick through a dictionary and you’ll notice something about the English language’s ‘tw’ words. We have a few related to ‘two’: twin, twelfth, twilight and so on. And there’s a tiny minority of what you might call fairly sensible words: tweezers, twig and of course tweed.

“The rest, though, tend to be of a type that’s more playful or, depending on taste, more grating. ‘Tw-‘ words can be about inanity or ignorance: twit, twerp, twonk or twaddle. They can suggest lightness, smallness or delicacy: tweak, twiddle or twinkle. Or they can flag up that you’re being self-consciously old-fashioned: ’twas and ’twere; ‘twixt and ‘tween. All very twee.”

Sadly there was no room for the etymology of “twonk” – coined/popularised, according to the Telegraph, by John Sullivan to give Del Boy a non-sweary swear word; nor for gay slang “twink” (“with a slender build, little or no body hair, and no facial hair”).

Also, now that we know that “twilight” relates to “two”, why not let’s enjoy some twilights I’ve seen?

• More on exciting/annoying new words in my piece on Nudge, Blink, the Magnetic Middle &c.
• Props to Michael Rosen, Sadanand Dhume and languagehat.

I’ve started a blog about the fun of doing cryptic crosswords at the Guardian. The first post is now live:

“Others suggest [that] those of us hooked on crosswords might want to justify the time passed by pointing to the large vocabulary we’ve amassed – or, perhaps, to our pleonasm, to our Brobdingnagian prolixity. Well, boo-poo to that. (I admit I enjoyed learning the word ‘pleach’ from last Tuesday’s Times, but it may be many years until I get to use it in a sentence near a hedge.)”

It’ll be a mixture of the week’s best and funniest clues, tips for n00bs and features on awesome stuff like when crosswords feature in programmes like Rubicon and The Hour.

• Topics [ongoing update]: Bletchley Park; Is cheating cheating?; The Ten Commandments of cryptic ethics; Which newspaper is most crossword-friendly?; American vs British crosswords; Where do you solve?; Times Crossword Championship; Meet Anne R Bradford; the 1920s crossword moral panic; what I’ve learned from cryptics
• Meet the Setter [ditto]: Paul; Enigmatist; Anax; Tramp; Boatman
• For beginners [ditto]: Hidden answers; double definitions; soundalikes
• What does each letter mean? [ditto]: A
• Best clues [ditto]: Meta, Morse and Arsenal; Lord Sugar, Rupert Murdoch and the flesh lance; gamesmanship, ice cream and haiku; Elton John, hidden Damons and Moses; Smiley and Nixon; Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and David Cameron; Blur v Oasis; chess and the Tube; booze clues; e-ologisms; should themes be announced?; loos in clues; the ‘scrambled eggs’ chestnut; Occupy London Stock Exchange; new words in Chambers; Romeo and Juliet and Ant and Dec; booze and Dylan Thomas; ErdÅ‘s-Bacon numbers; Yule clues; cryptic Dickens

• Photo is of Guardian 25,402 by Puck. The only answer I’ve put in is wrong. “A day in dopey stupor, endlessly like t-h-i-s? (6,3)” should give SPACED OUT, not SPREAD OUT as I thought. This bodes ill.
• In 2009, I explained to foreigners why some British families do a jumbo crossword at Christmas.