174. ✒️ A letter to Terry: reply #24-19
The genius of youth, what’s good on telly, and some impressive management gobbledegook.
In which Rebecca wonders how everyone is suddenly younger than her, and enjoys a new TV thriller in spite of a shocking review.
✒️
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,
Thank you for your latest letter. I had to lie down in a darkened room after reading your descriptions of the Listener crossword and its evil colleague, the Enigmatic Variations. Have a heart, Terry – there’s no way I’m going to tackle – let alone conquer! – a puzzle in which I have to ‘enter the letters in a jumbled-up order’, nor ‘decode or encrypt the answer’!
🤯
🧩 Cubic capacity
I was impressed by your statement that you’d always wondered if people who solved the Rubik’s Cube simply took it apart and reassembled it when nobody was looking. I’m still smarting from my own childhood gullibility in not realising that dissembling and reassembling it was not only possible, but was also exactly the trick my parents would employ in order to fix my cube for me in secret!
Turns out that a youngster in Belfast is smarter than the lot of us, and has built and programmed a robot which can solve a Rubik’s Cube by itself – and not by taking it apart. 13-year-old Ruarcc’s creation ‘uses 5,000 lines of Python code and can solve the puzzle from any pre-set variation using colour sensors’.
Awesome!
👦🏻 Some thoughts on youth
Inventors, scientists and Rubik’s Cube geniuses are getting younger all the time. As someone nearing the end of her fiftieth year it’s been apparent to me for a while that everyone is suddenly younger than me, and even sporting retirees are getting in on the act!
In an article for the New York Times in May 2024 – one with the gee-thanks title When Age Catches Up to a Tennis Player – Stuart Miller wrote the following about ‘tennis mortals’ Andy Murray,1 Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic, among others:
These players still scuffle along in reduced circumstances, far lower in the rankings than during their halcyon days. These old men of the court — all 34 to 39 years old — win a few matches here and there without much chance of regaining their former glory, yet they keep grinding.
‘Old men of the court’? Charming! 🙄
Terry, I’m astonished that the people born early in this century are already well into adulthood, perhaps with families and grown-up jobs. And it’s not only teachers, doctors and policeman who are getting younger: two of our most recent three Prime Ministers were born after I was. I’m sure that when I was growing up every single politician I saw on the news was at least 150 years old. And now? Britain’s youngest MP is 22! 🤯
✏️ Six-word reviews
I have to admit that at first I had struggled to identify the title of the last film you reviewed. Here it is:
🎬 Possibly prescient prognosis? Don’t trust Harry!
Luckily, I spotted this clue which you’d given to
in the comments:
Okay, so SF is science fiction - although I’ve only ever seen ‘science fiction’ abbreviated to sci-fi – and an abbreviated version of Harry? Hmmm. Well, Harry is itself a nickname for Henry, and the future Henry V is referred to as Prince Hal all the way through Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts I and II, so…..
Harry = Hal! And HAL is of course the name of the computer in Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Phew! 😰
And I thought we were doing film reviews in order to save a bit of the brain power we’d been using up by trying to solve each other’s cripplingly cryptic crossword clues!
Right, my turn! Jim found a film in my favourite sub-genre with which to indulge me over the weekend. Here’s my review:
🎬 Gallic panic: city triathletes’ toothy terror.
📺 So many channels, but still there’s nothing on…
I agree with your comment that it’s hard these days to find something decent to watch; in fact, I often feel hobbled by the sheer volume of what’s on offer. Scrolling through the streaming apps is rather like being presented with a restaurant menu listing all my favourite foods but with no attached intelligence to take my preferences of the moment into account.
Full English breakfast? Yes please, but not this evening.
Fillet steak with peppercorn sauce? Sure, sometime, but I’m not in the mood for it right now.
8-course tasting menu from my favourite restaurant, complete with wine flight? NO, because it’s not my birthday!
Pleeeeease just give me a ham salad!
Still, we’re enjoying the over-the-top ‘hackjacking’ thriller Nightsleeper on BBC iPlayer at the moment. It’s an unlikely (I hope it’s unlikely!) story of a train whose controls have been taken over by cyberthugs, and I’m on the edge of my seat. I read a highly entertaining Guardian write-up of it with this subtitle:
I’m not linking the review here because of plot spoilers. But Terry, do try it – it’s terrific telly!
Well, you’ve just about finished reading this specimen of my crazy correspondence, so in conclusion I shall end it with this letter written to the editor of the Daily Telegraph by a Richard Kornicki of London W5, in response to a comment on ‘management gobblegook’:
Some years ago, while working at the Home Office, I amused myself by sending colleagues the following mission statement: “We are committed to delivering world-class cross-sectoral outcomes, driven by the pursuit of excellence in developing green-field opportunities through blue-sky thinking, by empowering our staff in a meaningful partnership relationship with stakeholders and customers to achieve a 21st-century community interface.”
I was shocked that nobody realised it was a parody containing not one shred of substantive meaning.
It reminded me of this fabulous post of yours, part of your ‘Experiments in style’ series:
Terry, as always I look forward to reading some more of your own shreds of substantive meaning next week. 😉
All the very best, as ever,
Rebecca
If you’ve enjoyed reading this letter to Terry, please let me know by clicking the heart. Thank you! My next ‘Dear Reader, I’m lost’ post will be published on Saturday.
You’ll find the rest of my letters in this series by clicking the ‘Letters to Terry’ tab on the top bar of my home page. Terry and I take it in turns to write to each other on alternate Wednesdays, and I really enjoy our light-hearted correspondence! You can access both Terry’s letters and mine using the index below:
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Since Miller’s article was published, Andy Murray – at the ripe old age of 37! – has retired from the tennis circuit.
I just love these letters, Rebecca -- I have been reading over your shoulders since you began them. It is my weekly journey to the UK. Thanks so much!
Another fun read, which left me realizing how woefully inadequate I am at British puzzles!