25 Things I Drew This Year - 10

 This actor, in June:

Alt Text: Pencil drawing of the actor Peter Cushing, in character. I’m not sure which character, but it involves an extremely lively wig. 

24 Things I Drew This Year - 9

 This West Ham supporter:

Alt Text: Another sketch of a model from my life drawing class, with a small tattoo of the West Ham crossed hammers which you can’t see when she sits down.

24 Things I Drew This Year - 8

 This mock-up, in January:

A quick mock-up, for the benefit of the printers, of roughly how one of the cards in my puzzle The Researcher’s First Murder might appear; featuring a young woman in a red hat and a rifle, scribbled out in about two minutes in Procreate. Although, in fact, none of the cards did end up looking quite like this. Which of the eventual cards replaced this concept as Card DE, I leave as an exercise for the reader. Though the reader might feel they’ve had enough exercise already…

24 Things I Drew This Year - 7

 This woman and her dog, in July:

Alt Text: a pencil drawing of a woman eating at a pavement cafe, with her dog sitting beside her.

24 Things I Drew This Year - 6

 These students, in October.

Alt Text: Covert sketches of two students talking at the next table, in pencil. 

24 Things I Drew This Year - Thing 5

These camels, in February.

Alt Text: Three rough sketches of camels, in felt tip, helped out with correcting fluid. 

(Don’t even think about commenting that actually, two of them are dromedaries. Dromedaries are a type of camel.)

24 Things I Drew This Year - 4

 This woman, in October.

(Apologies for springing the nudity on you, if you dislike it, but it feels fairly mild.)

Alt Text: A fairly finished drawing (by my standards) in black, brown and white Conté sticks, of a nude model from my life drawing class, with a seemngly tranquil expression. But perhaps she just has resting restful face.  

Things I Drew This Year 3

 These gulls, in August

Alt Text: Thumbnail sketches in red crayon of some juvenile gulls on the beach.

Things I drew this year, 2 of ??

 This child, in December

A very rough ballpoint-on-diary-page sketch of a small boy looking excited about something. But perhaps he just has resting excited face. 

Things I Drew This Year, Thing 1 of ??

This woman, in March.

Alt text: rough ballpoint sketch of a woman in a big coat looking seemingly dejected, but who probably just has resting dejected face.

Duel

Now that I'm doing Substack properly it seems a little odd - somehow disloyal - to essentially be blogging regularly again after all this time, but not to be doing it here. So I'm going to do a bit of cross-pollination. I'm including some old blog posts from here on my Substack (though not more than one per edition), and some new stuff from Substack on here. Not sure quite why, but let's try it and see how it goes. 

Here's something suitably Hallowe'en-y from this week's: 

There’s a spider in my car. I know this, because every morning when I get into it, there is a new cobweb somewhere. Usually between the dashboard and the windscreen, but this morning, rather suggestively, between the seat and the steering wheel. Y’know… the spot where an observant and ambitious spider might perhaps have noticed I tend to put myself.

My car, yesterday.

ALT TEXT: A cobweb covered steering wheel in a rusted abandoned car. 


Well, atmospheric though of course this is in the week of Hallowe’en (a period I am not yet ready to call ‘spooky season’. I haven’t even given up on the apostrophe in Hallowe’en yet) I’d still quite like to find and evict the spider. Not for my sake, but for its sake - I don’t think there are as many flies in my car as this spider hopes. But I can’t find it. It’s never lurking at the edge or middle of the new cobweb, the way I thought spiders were supposed to do. Perhaps it has a subtler plan. Anyway, it’s been five or six days now, and I still haven’t caught the spider. But on the plus side, it still hasn’t caught me.

Very dry, cuckoos.

It would be a shame to let this ancient, creaky, spam-riddled throwback of a blog die off completely just because I'm experimenting with Substack. 

That said, I AM experimenting with Substack, and I'll be sending one out tomorrow. Subscribe here should you care to receive it:

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But in the meantime, in the above spirit of keeping the old place alive, here is a little preview, in the shape of some performance indications I enjoyed from piano scores by Eric Satie. 

Assez lent, si vous le voulez bien

Rather slow, if it's alright with you.

Plein de subtilité, si vous m'en croyez

Very subtle, if you believe me.

Apparent

Show off

Sec comme un coucou

Dry as a cuckoo

Peu saignant

Slightly bloody

Les danseurs reçoivent chacun un coup de sabre qui leur fend la tête

Each of the dancers is hit with a sabre which splits his head open.

Eric Satie being dry as a cuckoo.

'Untitled Mystery' the untitled mystery update: now titled.

Do you happen to remember I said last year I was writing a murder mystery puzzle in the form of a box of postcards? Well... I've written it. I'm very proud of it. And this is what it's called:

 

Alt text: A trailer, made by the excellent people at Stage Fright Films, which eventually tells you it's called 'The Researcher's First Murder', and revealing the excellent cover illustration by Tom Gauld.

You can pre-order it here, and I won't at all mind if you do. 

But sure, as it happens number 12 would have been: Put wooden chopping boards in the dishwasher.

 

1) Order the fish in a restaurant on a Monday. It'll be three days old. 

2) Base-jumping. He just doesn't see the appeal.

3) Cheat on his wife. Sandra is his world. 

4) Open a new battlefront without adequately securing supply lines first. This one probably won't come up. But still, he'd never do it. Look at Napoleon. 

5) That. He'll do anything for love. But. 

Edit: For some reason, a lot of people seem to be complaining that none of these have anything to do with dishwashers. Why should they? Our dishwasher expert knows a lot about dishwashers, sure, but they're not his whole life. Get some perspective, people.

More Things Than None - One of Them

 Alt text: poire à la éléphant

Some Things - Two of Which are These

Alt text: a nautical bear, in complacent mood.

Alt text: the same bear, allowing the strain of command to get to her a little.

Three thousand internet points, redeemable nowhere, for anyone who recognises her costume.

Things - A Thing

 There have been monster sightings in our neighbourhood lately, and I occasionally moonlight as a sort of monster-hunter’s sketch artist, taking down descriptions from eye-witnesses, and trying to build up a picture of just what we’re dealing with. 

As Someone Quite Rightly Points Out, Actually an Entirely Uncertain Number of Things - Things Eight and Nine

Alt Text: Two dog walkers, walking two dogs. (It looks as if I've whimsically made it look like one of the dogs is interested in a butcher's signboard advertising sausages, but actually it wasn't me who did that. It was the dog.)

A Certain Number of Things - Thing Seven

Alt Text. Two elephants, conferring.

24 Or So Or Less Or Not Things - Thing Six

Alt text. A lady peering round in a car window. She seems cross, but I think she's just checking to see if there's anything coming. I mean, she might be cross as well. I don't know her.

24 Things -Thing 5

Alt text: A stegasaurus standing on its head. A commission.

24 Etc Etc - Thing Four

Alt Text: In a word: Penguins.

Far Fewer Than Twenty-Four Things - Thing Three

Alt Text. A blue man with a long neck appears sceptical about something.

Somewhere Between Two and Twenty Four Things, Somewhere Between One and Twenty Three of Which are Elephants.

Alt text: a cake, of sorts. Decorated, in a sense, to look like an elephant. Definitely.

24 Things, Many of Which Are Still Likely To Be Elephants or Bears, Especially Elephants; But Also It’s Vanishingly Unlikely There’ll Actually Be 24 of Them, or Even Close - Thing One. And Possibly Only.

Alt text: a stylish woman in a coat, who is emphatically neither an elephant nor a bear. Not everyone is.

24 Elephants or Bears - Elephant or Bear 21

 

Alt text - two friends go looking for an adventure, and a sun rises.

Brigham Young is sure Anthony Trollope is a miner.

 The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, on a tour of the United States, passed through Utah, and decided to drop in on Brigham Young. It did not go well. From Trollope's autobiography:

"I did not achieve great intimacy with the great polygamist of Salt Lake City. [...] He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I was not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. "I guess you're a miner," said he. I again assured him I was not. "Then how do you earn your bread?" I told him I did so by writing books. "I'm sure you're a miner," said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door."

Alt text: Anthony Trollope. Looking, as usual, exactly like a miner. 

Four expressions I didn't know until today came from rhyming slang

- Scarper; British slang for 'run away'. From Scapa Flow - Go. 

- Grass; as in informant. From Grasshopper - copper (and from there to copper's nark) 

- Dukes; slang for fists, as in 'duking it out'. From Duke of York - Fork. ('Forks' being now-forgotten slang for hands.) 

- Donkey's years; a long time. From Donkey's Ears, rhyming slang for Years... but then the Y crept back in. 

Alt Text: Donkey's ears. And between them, a donkey. Well, I suppose there's always a donkey between a donkey's ears. I mean: another one, framed in the photo between the ears of the first donkey. Glad we've got that clear. It doesn't matter in the least. 

"Untitled Mystery", the untitled mystery.

I briefly interrupt this parade of elephants and bears (not usually a wise thing to do) to bring you news of a new project of mine. 

It's a murder mystery. But really, it's a set of very difficult, interconnected puzzles. But really... it's a box of one hundred picture postcards. I mean, if that's all you need to hear, by all means go straight here to buy it. But for a little more explanation, read on.

In 2020, I spent some of my lockdown trying to solve the newly republished murder mystery / puzzle Cain's Jawbone, written by the famous cryptic crossword setter Torquemada in 1934. The puzzle consisted of a box of one hundred pages of a novel, in a random order. The solver had to work out the correct order of the pages, and then interpret the strange and allusive narrative so as to deduce the killers and victims in the six murders in the story. It turned out to be ridiculously difficult, as it was meant to be; but if the spring of 2020 was good for anything, it was for spending far too long on almost impossible puzzles. Eventually, I submitted a solution, which to my enormous surprise turned out not only to be right, but also the only correct one submitted.  I won a thousand pounds, bought a piano, and thought that was that.  

But then, two things happened. The first was, thanks in part to TikTok, Cain's Jawbone took off in a surprisingly big way. And the second was, I found I missed it. I really wanted to try solving another puzzle in that style. But Torquemada never wrote another one, and nor did anyone else. So it seemed the only thing to do was to try to create one myself.

So this year Unbound, the publishers of Cain's Jawbone, are publishing a new mystery puzzle box by me, the title of which is still secret for now. This time, solvers will receive a box of one hundred picture postcards. As with Cain's Jawbone, they will need to arrange the text sides in the correct order, and understand the story told there, in order to identify the killer and victim in a series of ten murders; as well as a certain crucial address. But in order to do this, they will also need to solve the various puzzles presented by the picture sides.

The picture side puzzles allow me to do two things: firstly, compensate for the arrival of the internet since 1934. You may now be able to google an obscure Walt Whitman quotation, but you can't google 'How on earth is this picture of a tree a puzzle?' Secondly, if Cain's Jawbone had a flaw (which I don't admit) it's that it's a little off-putting and seemingly impenetrable until you make a certain breakthrough. I think a lot of people had a brief look through the cards, thought 'Well, that's impossible' and gave up. I certainly did, before lockdown came along and invited me to have another go. So the picture puzzles - which are also, to be clear, ridiculously difficult - give the solver something they can immediately get their teeth into, while they're grappling with the madness on the other side.

Lastly, they're there because they have to be. There is, within the story, a reason why these cards exist, why they have puzzles embedded in them... and why one of the murderers now keeps them safely locked in a drawer. I hope you enjoy trying to work out what it is. 

For more information, to pre-order a copy, and to gaze in wonder at some exhilaratingly expensive pencils... step this way.  

Oh, and the postcards shown here are not solvable with the information given, so don't torture yourself. Yet. 

 

24 Elephants or Bears - Elephant or Bear 20

 ALT TEXT: Daddy Bear and Baby Bear in bath. Baby Bear did big jump, and splashing, splashing. Such, at least, was the commission.