Six Things, Volume 49

Quiz | Dickens | Pudding | Spelling | Cracker | Birds

Thing 1 – Quiz

OK, we’ll keep it brief this week, not least because you’ll want to devote as much time as possible to this year’s GCHQ quiz. If I’m going to suffer, then you must too.

If it’s any consolation, I’ve been staring at it for the last twenty minutes and am none the wiser about anything.

If you’re struggling (of course you are), they’ve very kindly provided some additional resources to help us figure it out.

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Thing 2 – Dickens

Matt Brown at Londonist read everything Dickens ever wrote, and mapped all the London places mentioned therein. Because why not?

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Thing 3 – Pudding Cup

The Pudding Cup rewards “the best visual and data-driven stories of 2023”.

The winner, Since When Does Vogue Hate Text?, pulls off a neat trick, taking a subject in which I have basically zero interest (Vogue magazine covers through the ages) and making me go ‘ooh this is great’ almost immediately.

My favourite, though, is one of the Honourable Mentions, Decoding Everything Everywhere All At Once, a mind-boggling examination, in mind-boggling detail, of a mind-boggling film.

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Thing 4 – Spelling

Trawling through the Pudding archive, I find this examination of just how bad we are at spelling the names of celebrities, for example Maggie Gylenhall, Gyllenhall, Gylllenhaaaaalll, Gyllenhaal.

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Thing 5 – Cracker

I always look forward to Chris Coates’ annual round-up.

In Chris’s words:

“Every year, historian and travel writer John Julius Norwich published A Christmas Cracker — a collection of anecdotes, trivia and witticisms collected from history and literature during the year. I have stolen the idea and made it stupider. Basically, if you’ve ever wondered what a review of the year would be like if it was written by a fool, here’s your answer.”

This year I’m honoured to get a small mention in it for my three-word description of penguins, but there are many riches within.

Chris is also responsible for the excellent ‘Odd This Day’, a daily celebration of strange anniversaries. He posts them on Medium and Bluesky.

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Thing 6 – Birds

If bird photographs are your thing, this will absolutely tickle your fancy. The SINWP (Society of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers) holds an annual photography competition. Here are all the entries.

And here are the winners, runners-up and so forth.

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Thing 6 (supplementary) – Albatrosses

Thanks to Helen Arney for following up last week’s albatross thing with this story of diomedidaic devotion, of which I was unaware.

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Happy Christmas, one and all. There’ll be one more volume of Six Things this year, then I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off – but not before I’ve shared details of plans for extra Things in 2024. Thanks again for your support – without you I’d just be an idiot shouting into the void.

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