The informal dress code for Barbie (C8) is causing confusion. Our former Herald colleague David Dale of Woollahra noticed this scene at the weekend at the Verona cinema: “Without looking at their tickets, the check-in chap tells three teenage girls dressed in pink that Barbie is on Screen 3. They scream: ‘Oh no, we’re going to Oppenheimer.’ He apologises and directs them to Screen 2. I say to them: ‘You should wear black if you’re seeing Oppenheimer.’ The girls reply: ‘We wore black to Barbie yesterday.’” David promises to stay in touch.
“I really love you C8 except for sometimes,” declares Ellen Kassel of Collaroy. “Comfortable morning joy of cryptic (C8), now confounded by how long it took and the distracting reverence for Sue Dowd! Boo, hiss.”
Not everyone’s convinced: “I cannot accept Sue Dowd’s claim of three minutes, 17 seconds to complete a crossword (C8),” says Murray Hutton of Mount Colah. “The time needed just to read the clues and write the letters in the correct spaces would exceed that. I say: ‘1 down – bovine excrement (8)’.”
“Perhaps, Christo Curtis (C8), the town planners were using a set square to design their triangular spaces,” offers David Oliver of Orange. With this in mind, Dave Horsfall of North Gosford would like to point out “that the City Circle isn’t”.
Terry McGee of Malua Bay reports an unexpected and terrifying side effect of climate change – “the urge to spring-clean coming earlier each year”. Gratefully he’s unaffected, so far.
“I stopped swearing after I overheard my three-year-old repeating one of my epithets in conversation,” says Paul Keir of Strathfield. “I was rewarded years later when he barked his shin and, while clutching his leg in temporary agony, exclaimed, ‘Oh dear, oh dear’.”
Wordle (C8) words of warning for Bill Webster, courtesy of Elizabeth de Rooy of Mangerton: “Looking for a new starting word daily is counterintuitive. My opener is ORATE, and if no letters match, UNIFY. All vowels and Y covered in the first two attempts.”
While Joy Cooksey of Harrington reckons the confusing information on Kiama Amaki (C8) “suggests AI was already secretly at work 70 years ago”, Jim Horton of Wahroonga says: “Locketts of Kiama made and sold their tomato sauce as Amaki. It went well with the hot pies we sold in my mother’s little shop at Albion Park in the late ’20s, early ’30s.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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