Berlin Bisected: Part 1

On behalf of Tally-Ho Corner Tours I’d like to welcome you aboard this nonagenarian Class 476.3 electric multiple unit. Today, with a little help from your imagination and my copy of Train Simulator 2021, we will be traversing the southern portion of one of Berlin’s north-south commuter arteries, the bottle green S25. Those of you that chose not to rendezvous with me and Roman earlier this morning, missed a treat. During a whistle-stop walking tour of Teltow we visited the studio of one of Germany’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Markus Lüpertz, and took in the Deutsches Schweinemuseum, a treasure trough…

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Friday Foxer #8

The “col” in fridayfoxercol.jpg is short for collaboration. Although today’s co-op puzzles (there are two) have been executed by Roman, they owe their themes and the majority of their clues to guest foxer setters. Colonel_K populated most of the hexagons in the following hive foxer, and eye-opening emails from a reader I can’t name for fear of letting the fox out of the bag, inspired the collage puzzle.

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Brinkmann’s Bridge: Turn 5

To be honest, ‘BRENS’ or ‘BAPTISM OF FIRE’ would sum up this turn equally well. Before Lehrer’s platoon arrive in the closing seconds of the sixty, effectively doubling the size of the Comment Commanders’ austerity Kampfgruppe, LMGs of Czech design hail two advancing German units on the eastern side of the canal.

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Solo Foxer #8

Unlike the formidable Friday foxers, the Monday kind are designed with lone truth sleuths in mind. Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, assures me the following brainteaser can be solved single-handedly. Crow all you like in the comments section, but please don’t spoil the puzzle for others by sharing solutions or dropping hints.

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Brinkmann’s Bridge: Turn 4

Almost everyone knows that Mars owns a spear and shield. Relatively few people are aware that the god of war also possesses a device similar to a bee smoker. He uses said gadget to temporarily calm conflicts while he nips to the kitchen to fetch more beer or potato crisps. It’s possible Brinkmann’s Bridge receives a puff or two from the divine de-escalator at the start of the fourth turn.

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Interview: Ezra Sidran

Right now General Staff’s most effective recruiting sergeant isn’t a smooth-talking influencer, a fancy trailer, or a feature list as long as a Chassepot rifle, it’s a collection of digitised academic papers tucked away in a dusty corner of an obscure website. The pdfs stacked here are the reason I don’t care two hoots* about the game’s frumpy graphics, familiar Nineteenth Century battle line-up, and lack of interest in campaigning. They promise something rarer than rocking horse manure – computer-controlled opponents that think and possibly even learn like real commanders.

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Friday Foxer #7

Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.

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Brinkmann’s Bridge: Turn 3

Colour Sergeant Potter got through Slapstick and Deadstick without a scratch. It’s during Operation Bandstand that his luck runs out. Sitting in the passenger seat of a jeep skirting Van Der Voort farm at the start of turn 3, he reacts quickly to the wayward rifle grenade that opens the German ambush, but not quite quickly enough. The vehicle’s twin Vickers K guns are pivoting towards the treeline from whence the Gewehr-Panzergranate came, when the fusilier pictured below pots Potter. (Brinkmann’s Bridge is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy in which the commenter-controlled Axis forces are out…

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