Along the way we meet all manner of puzzle masters, as well as the merely possessed. There are the speedcubers, people who memorize hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of algorithms to reduce the number of turns per solve. (If you think that nothing is more boring to watch than golf, just know that speedcubing tournaments have spectators, as well as fantasy leagues where you can gamble on your favorite champions.) There is Adrian Fisher, who modestly calls himself the most prolific maze designer “in the history of humankind”: His work includes a Beatles-themed maze in Liverpool, a maze in the passenger terminal of Singapore’s Changi Airport and one on the side of a building in Dubai, “which shouldn’t be attempted unless you’re Spider-Man.” And of course there is Will Shortz himself, the NPR/New York Times editor who is to puzzles what Kim Kardashian is to buttocks: There is none finer, or more discussed among aficionados. On the walls of Shortz’s living room hangs a personal letter to him from Bill Clinton: “Even when I can’t finish them, they’re the only part of The New York Times that guarantees a good feeling.”

Jacobs’s love for puzzles is infectious, and it’s not hard to understand why. Puzzle people draw us in with their monomania. “I’m a sucker for people who are passionate about something,” Jacobs notes, “regardless of how silly that passion might seem to others.” He shows us how you can even cherish puzzles that you don’t have the patience (or skill) to solve.

The truth is, we’re all puzzlers, whether we’re trying to remember our passwords or losing sleep because we’re staying up till 12:01 a.m. to do Wordle — a simple word puzzle that ballooned from 90 daily players on Nov. 1 to 300,000 at the beginning of the year to millions now. All puzzles aren’t so innocent — think Zodiac Killer, who still has multiple websites dedicated to cracking some of his unsolved notes. But puzzles also bring us together in ways large and small. If I’m having an existential crisis at 3 a.m., there is an entire globe of people out there playing online Scrabble in real time. And I’ve actually had interesting conversations on Words With Friends with strangers. As puzzlers often say, “It’s not the puzzles you solve, it’s the people you meet.”

Read it all.

What’s a Six-Letter Word for Fanatical Devotion to Solving Things? https://t.co/enX8LSUvnA

— Paul Quibell-smith (@QuibellPaul) April 26, 2022

Lyrics:

1 Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought his Israel
into joy from sadness;
loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke
Jacob’s sons and daughters;
led them with unmoistened foot
through the Red Sea waters.

2 ‘Tis the spring of souls today;
Christ hath burst his prison,
and from three days’ sleep in death
as a sun hath risen;
all the winter of our sins,
long and dark, is flying
from his light, to whom we give
laud and praise undying.

3 Now the queen of seasons, bright
with the day of splendor,
with the royal feast of feasts,
comes its joy to render;
comes to glad Jerusalem,
who with true affection
welcomes in unwearied strains
Jesus’ resurrection.

4 Neither might the gates of death,
nor the tomb’s dark portal,
nor the watchers, nor the seal
hold thee as a mortal:
but today amidst thine own
thou didst stand, bestowing
thine own peace, which evermore
passeth human knowing.

According to Daniel French there is an increasingly “underground” aspect to conservative Christian life in the UK — believers have woken up to the fact that the culture is against them, and in many cases even traditional religious leaders too.

Another of his UK allies, Dr James Orr, believes that Rod Dreher is destined to have a significant impact on our conservatism. “His insights are proving more salient with every week that passes, not only for Christians but for all those who are beginning to feel the consequences of rejecting the West’s Christian inheritance.

“As hyper-progressivism continues to colonise the UK public square with neuralgic imports from the US culture wars, I predict that more and more people in the UK will start to take Dreher’s jeremiads seriously and pay attention to his constructive proposals.”

Whether or not James Orr is right, Dreher is interesting not just for who he is, but for what he represents. He stands at a newly emergent nexus of traditional European conservatism, English realism, and American romanticism and religiosity. With an increasingly sterile politics, caught between technocratic centrism and the hollow battles of the culture wars, there’s a desperate need for new ideas, and fresh approaches. This is a man worth listening to.

Read it all.

My first print piece for @TheCriticMag – I spoke to @roddreher and discovered a paradoxical and complex conservatism, deeply marked by the problem we all face in the modern age: the search for meaning, rootedness and community in a world that rejects them. https://t.co/7djuyI0rYP

— Sebastian Milbank 🥀🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@JSMilbank) April 27, 2022

Brought up in rural Staffordshire, Bishop Michael attended a small Church of England primary school and a rural church. Bishop Michael was ordained in 1999 and until his appointment as Director of Mission in the Diocese of Oxford in 2010, he combined his scientific work 50:50 with work in Christian ministry as a missioner and theological educator.

The Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, the Bishop of St Albans “I am delighted to receive the news that Michael Beasley is to be the new Bishop of Bath and Wells. Michael has served with distinction as Suffragan Bishop of Hertford in this diocese since mid-2015, and he will leave an impressive and long-lasting legacy here.”

Bishop Michael and Lizzie have two young children. In his spare time, he enjoys tending his garden and his bees.

His appointment follows the retirement of the Rt Revd Peter Hancock, who stood down as Bishop of Bath and Wells in May 2021 due to ill health.

Read it all.

Downing Street has announced today (10am, 28 April 2022) that the Rt Revd Michael Beasley will be the next Bishop of Bath and Wells. Read the full announcement. #NewBish https://t.co/B9lqJgsAeK pic.twitter.com/eu2V33hDoA

— Diocese of Bath & Wells (@BathWells) April 28, 2022

O Lord God, who hast revealed in holy Scripture what conquests faith has made both in doing, and in suffering: Grant us no smaller faith than that which overcometh the whole world, that Jesus thy Son is God, very God from the beginning, the First and the Last, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Fyvie Castle Lake, Aberdeenshire #Scotland @visitabdn @VisitScotland @ScotsMagazine @N_T_S #ThePhotoHour #StormHour pic.twitter.com/GEeWbQRCjS

— Gordon Robertson (@gordo_rob) April 28, 2022

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.

–John 15:12-17

Art:
Doubting Thomas, 1851
By
Johann Friedrich Overbeck
German
Classicism#ReligiousArt #DivineMercySunday #DivineMercy #Jesus🤍#Christ #JesusChrist #KalinaB pic.twitter.com/FJDKaAleGt

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 24, 2022