Puzzlemaster

WHERE WAS I? Oh yes, Lost on the Isle of Dogs. There's a title in search of a novel. Like Deaf in Didcot or Creepy Crawley.

A title can be far more satisfying than any elaboration of it into a finished work could possibly be. Somehow less is better. My stockpile of titles began when I spotted a carton sporting a label which - thanks to a serendipitous rip - read "Mad in Czechoslovakia". Since then I haven't looked back, not even in Ongar.

I did, however, look back in wonder when I saw by accident what I would never have set out to see by design - the Dome. On TV it seemed artificial and unconvincing. But to see it in reality looming up quite unexpectedly was one of those wild-surmise-upon-a-peak-in-Darien sort of moments. It made my heart go giddy-up. I take back what I said. I eat my hard hat. It's a wonderful building. I set aside my plans for a selfish dome of my own on the front lawn. The pounds 7m required for police to patrol my turf and look after security was always going to be a bit of a stumbling-block, anyway.

It must have been a bitter blow to Mandelson to lose this project. As chance would have it the driver ferrying me and my crate of books to the Reader's Digest that day was none other than Mandelson's old tutor. In between zooming along in a holding formation alongside taxis while I called across for directions to Westferry Circus, he waxed eloquent on his former pupil's resignation.

"The English always get it the wrong way round! They'll go to a concert where a pianist plays badly but bravely because he's just lost his extended family in a helicopter crash. But you don't go to concerts to applaud bravery; you go to hear good music.

"You expect to choose a parson for his morals. But a politician? Why must he be absolutely faultless? Which would you prefer, people of rare political ability or a Cabinet of saintly incompetents?

"To rejoice over such a downfall is to laugh as you shoot yourself in the foot. The loss of a talented minister is important not because it is a loss to the Government but because it is a loss to the electorate that put it in power.

"Delight in the discomfiture of others even at our own expense is spite. And the spite elicited in this affair was of an intensity that only the talentless reserve for the talented. `Don't kick a man when he's down' wouldn't have such currency if it weren't what people usually did."

Then, as if no sermon should be complete without a parable, my driver spake thus: "There was a college (I shan't say which) in which certain of the dons noted that their chef, who made excellent meals, would occasionally sneak home a few eggs and rashers of bacon. A vigorous campaign led to the man's dismissal. `It's the principle of the thing,' they said. `Peculation is not to be tolerated in a college servant.' They hired a scrupulously dull and honest chef and from that time forth ate badly."

We hear much of the wages of sin but not enough of the wages of self- righteousness.

Solutions to last week's puzzles

Don Manley's Cryptic Clues:

a) Double agent (= twice 007)

b) PARkinSON

Rose and cakes puzzle:

The diagram of the rose shows a possible route collecting all the cakes. There must be at least one other way (why?).

Points to ponder

1. In a magic square, each row, column and main diagonal sums to the same ("magic") number . Sum the numbers along each of the lines shown in the 3 x 3 magic square (see left, top) and form the grand total. This must equal four times the magic number.

It also must equal the total of all the numbers in the grid (which must equal three times the magic number) with the middle number added three times extra. The upshot is that in any magic square three times the middle number equals the magic number. So the number in the middle must be a third of the magic number.

Here's another one to practise on (see left, below). The sum along each column, row and main diagonal again is to equal 2001. (Why will a 2000 not work in whole numbers?)

2. Another of Don Manley's cryptic clues:

Toilet soap held with difficulty? I'm blooming alive in the water (3,8)

3. Find a word with EURO at its precise centre.

Chris Maslanka is publicly accountable at maslanka @puzzlemaster.co.uk