165. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-16

Winning cheese from a slot machine, and how to cheat at Mastermind.

Aug 07, 2024

a close up of a tree with a sign on it — Photo by Julien Photo on Unsplash

In which Rebecca stumbles across some quirky sporting history and falls for Jim’s clever trick for beating her at quizzing.

✒️

This is the latest letter in my regular, informal correspondence with Substacker and fellow Brit Terry Freedman, in which we take turns every other Wednesday to delve into the things that British people talk about the most. So that you can explore these unashamed clichés for yourself we’re inviting you to read our letters over our shoulders.

My next ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ post will be published on Saturday.

Dear Terry,

Many thanks for your latest letter, in which you announced that you weren’t enjoying the heatwave that had hit us. ‘It’s unnatural’, you told me. ‘July in England is supposed to be soggy, wet, depressing: my (as in your) kind of weather.’

We were lucky enough to head to Dorset in our campervan for a few days last week. Camping is great when the weather’s good – we can make decent use of the space outside the van, not just inside it, and on a housekeeping level it’s easy to dry our towels – but being a van (a dark grey metal shell) rather than a purpose-built motorhome (bright white, with layers and layers of insulation) it does get rather toasty on board.

On the first evening Jim was getting our sleeping bags out, ready for bedtime.

‘Feel these – they’re really warm. They’re like the hot towels we get at the curry house!’

The van’s fridge/freezer was a huge advantage during what turned out to be a rather food-focused tour of the county, and we made the most of picking up chilled items from unexpected sources.

Terry, have you ever bought cheese, milk or eggs from an automatic vending machine?

Check out this video of me playing the slots: look, I won a wedge of Dorset Blue Vinny! 😎

Thank you for introducing me to William Hazlitt. I hadn’t heard of him or his work, but I’m interested to learn more. I am pleased that you’d found a second-hand copy of ‘The Fight and Other Writings’ – and that you intend to read it – because Wikipedia tells me that ‘despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print’.

As someone very comfortable in my own company, and a lover of the great outdoors, I’m rather taken with these words about Hazlitt written in an essay by Ainsley Boe:

He calls going on a journey "one of the pleasantest things in the world". Hazlitt stresses that solitude while on a journey is a must, saying "nature is company enough for me", and "I am never less alone than when alone".

Speaking of journeys, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Bryson and his old school friend Stephen Katz are hiking the Appalachian Trail (the AT), and although Bryson’s hilarious account of his adventures is absolutely top class, the thought of my ever undertaking such an expedition leaves me trembling.

This point is academic, really, because as a disorient I find any and all maps incomprehensible, but I love what Bryson writes here about the exceptionally poor maps of his route:

AT maps vary somewhat, but most are on an abysmal scale of 1:100,000, which ludicrously compresses every kilometre of real world into a mere centimetre of map. Imagine a square kilometre of physical landscape and all that it might contain – logging roads, streams, a mountaintop or two, perhaps a fire tower, a knob or grassy bald, the wandering AT and maybe a pair of important side trails – and imagine trying to convey all that information on an area the size of the nail on your little finger. That’s an AT map.

Have you been watching TV coverage of the Olympics? I’ve been gripped by the swimming, the diving and the gymnastics in particular. Track events have caught my attention, too, particularly the team relays – there’s something so very heartening about a group of people all working in sequence like that, and I’ve been cheering myself hoarse.

I read this terrific article last week about an extinct Olympic sport with the misleadingly exciting name of ‘plunge for distance’. I’m sure you’ll agree when you read it that it must be the dullest activity ever to have been included in the Games.

🥱

I’m happy to report that I’ve solved your two-part crossword challenge. You’d kindly pointed out that the solutions on the grid would intersect on the first letter, and this gave me a head start on solving the second clue.

1 Across: Vermeer somehow encapsulates love, always (8)

‘Somehow’ indicates an anagram.
‘Love’ always means the letter O – it represents a zero score (0) in tennis.
I knew that the solution would be eight letters long, and lo, O + VERMEER = 8.
Unscrambled, OVERMEER makes EVERMORE.
Evermore means ‘always’.
✔️

1 Down: Every single train failing to start (4)

The solution to 1 Across tells me that 1 Down begins with an E.
Another word for ‘train’ is ‘teach’.
‘Failing to start’ is an indicator that the first letter of the word is missing, so TEACH minus T = EACH.
Each means ‘every single’.
✔️

Phew!

Here’s my challenge to you, which I like for its simplicity. This one’s from The Telegraph:

Fail to answer Mastermind question but progress (4)

I remember once watching Mastermind on my iPad while I was cooking dinner. Jim appeared several times just as a question was being asked, and every time he could answer it immediately.

‘How do you know all this stuff?’ I asked him, baffled that again he had the answer to yet another question in the specialist subject round – subjects which were in neither of our frames of reference.

To put this into context, the specialist subjects chosen in advance by contestants in the final of the last series of the quiz were these:

The Wimbledon singles championships since 2000
The artist Francis Bacon
The ancient Greek poet Sappho
The Mercury Prize
The French revolutionary the Marquis de Lafayette
The composer and pianist Clara Schumann

🤯

He giggled. ‘I’ve got it on in the other room’, he told me. ‘By the time a question is streamed to your iPad, it’s been several seconds since I’ve heard the answer on the telly. The timing is perfect for winding you up!’

You’d given me two clues, so I feel I must reciprocate in equal fashion. Here’s my second, from The Times:

Bishop surprisingly dominant in game (9)

Terry, this will make you laugh. While I was away I spotted this label on a pair of slippers, and I feel something may have got lost in translation between the logo of the woolly sheep and the slogan:

Yup: real wood from – erm – real sheep. Cosy!

🤣

All the very best, as ever,

Rebecca

Dear Reader, I'm lost

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