COMING TO A NEWSSTAND NEAR YOU by Steve Steinbock The emails started coming in last weekend, on Saturday to be precise. My pal Neal in sunny Florida wrote: I just pulled the new Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine out of my mail box. As usual, I checked out the TOC before even closing the mail box […]

THE MOLE IN THE SNOW by Steve Steinbock I was chased by a mole yesterday. Not the kind of mole you read about in spy stories, but a real rodent-type mole. He was actually a cute little guy, so even if you’re squeamish, stick with me now. I went out to get the mail. The […]

THE SPACE BETWEEN by Steve Steinbock All these years I’ve been putting two spaces at the end of my sentences after the period (A/K/A full stop) and before the next sentence. There I was, smugly thumbing the SPACE bar twice, doing precisely as my high school typing teacher taught me. And now I learn that […]

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW by Steve Steinbock What are you doing for New Years? One of my favorite traditions is watching lots of episodes of “Twilight Zone.” The SyFy channel runs a marathon each year. Starting at 8:00 am yesterday (Thursday, December 31) and running until 6:00 am tomorrow (Saturday, January […]

Our Christmas Contest continues. Today we consider references to other places on the web we pointed to during the week aimed at helping our readers solve the puzzle. Here are your hints: On Tuesday, December 15, JLW gave a big hint by linking to a certain piece by Leigh — and provided a linguistic clue […]

Our Christmas Contest continues—check it out here. METAPHYSICS and FATHER BROWN by Steve Steinbock For the past few weeks, I’ve been knee-deep in G. K. Chesterton, which as far as things to be knee deep in, is not a bad thing. Being who I am, I’ve been steering toward the detective stories rather than his […]

SHUFFLE MODE by Steve Steinbock In my November 20 installment of Bandersnatches I decried the current usage of the word Random as a pejorative. Oddly enough, last night on the news there was a short segment that referred to Lady Gaga. The story made out like everyone knew who Lady Gaga was, but I’d apparently […]