The Parlour · The rulings
Fifteen rulings graded against the register: the invitation holds and has failed twice, the stake works sometimes, and the most obeyed law of the lot was invented in 1922 by a print the courts ordered burned.
By Casimir Vane
The Parlour
A hundred and thirty-seven filings from the cinema, the shelf, the stage and the schedules, sorted by when the events claim to have happened rather than by when somebody got round to printing them — an arrangement in which you can watch the rules get invented, which is the only genuinely gripping thing about my own paperwork.
By Casimir Vane
Domestic Affairs
The corner that pops off at 3 a.m. is not a tucking failure. It is a sizing standard that quietly stopped matching the mattress it is sold to cover.
By Hollis Carver
The Parlour
Eight rulings graded against the register: the curse was fiction in 1869 and press in 1923, the shuffle was invented for a supporting player in 1940, and one of these claims is the only rule in this archive anybody has ever tested against a control group.
By Casimir Vane
Domestic Affairs
It is not a hygiene failure. It is a five-to-ten-year putty replacement that shipped with the sink and was never written down.
By Vera Stipple
Domestic Affairs
The dent behind the door is not an accident of use. It is the predictable output of hanging a swinging slab beside a fixed obstacle and shipping it without a stop.
By Hollis Carver
Domestic Affairs
The scald when someone flushes is not a quirk of old pipes. It is an unregulated pressure split, and it has a standard part number.
By M. Plumb
Diversions · Puzzle of the Day
Fill every row, column, and box with the digits 1 through 9. A single unique solution exists.
Attempt it →
The Sections
What the household owns, cleans, stocks, repairs, and shares its premises with.
Food, cooking, and provisioning meals that continue tomorrow.
What the household reads and watches, listed rather than reviewed, and kept here all year: the registers, the tens and the family files.
The puzzles page, and the strip. Sincerely presented. Quietly impossible.
Notes on the edition, and notices from the paper.
