The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

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The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

New solvers would like to know how our puzzles work and we would like to tell them Around January in these parts we run a test on the dictionaries’ words of the year. Our thinking is that if a word really has left online cliques and entered general use, a crossword setter will have used it, as crosswords have historically been faster at recording language than the dictionaries themselves.

Of 2025’s winning words, VIBE CODING (Collins) and PARASOCIAL (Cambridge) are nowhere to be seen in puzzles. I expect to see SLOP (Merriam-Webster) in its new AI-generated sense before long, as my sense is that it’s genuinely useful and moving toward more general comprehension.

‘You gotta tell me how to crack the code,’ she pleads before we’ve even said hello. ‘I’m an avid crossword puzzler, but I cannot beat the Guardian crossword.

The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

Airports say they were not responsible for incidents that led to passengers being out of pocket or ending trip In September we arrived at Stansted airport to find that a fire within a departure lounge had closed the terminal. We had to wait outside in the chilly small hours for nearly two hours.

It was another hour before security opened in the terminal, by which time our flight had departed empty to maintain the airline’s schedules. We were rebooked for the following day.

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The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

Scheme has not replied to complaints and Pensions Ombudsman says it needs evidence of that I retired from the civil service five months ago and I’ve still not received my pension. I’ve complained to the Civil Service Pension Scheme (MyCSP) repeatedly, but it doesn’t reply.

The Pensions Ombudsman says they need evidence that MyCSP has not responded to my complaint. How can I provide evidence of a failure to reply?

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The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

It is time to roll out the red carpet in recognition of those that worked hard to keep customers at arm’s length When the year began, I was a listening ear to Your Problems , my column for the Observer. Now I’m a Guardian consumer champion.

Reinvention is always bracing. My old life was spent wrestling airlines, insurance firms and energy providers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks.

My new life? Wrestling airlines, insurance firms and energy providers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks.

The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

It allocated my NI number to a stranger who has died, and will not process my pension top-up request as a result HM Revenue and Customs allocated my national insurance (NI) number to a stranger who has since died. It therefore now insists that I am dead and so will not process my pension top-up request.

I’ve had this number since 1991 when I moved to the UK for six years to work. Continue reading...

The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

The firm that is holding the files has gone out of business, and complaining may take months My dad died in July in harrowing circumstances. Our probate application was close to being finalised by our solicitor .

Then this month we received an email from the solicitor, Samuel Phillips Law , to say it had ceased trading. No explanation was given.

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The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

Whether it was learning mindfulness or surfing for the first time, tell us about a trip that changed your life – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break Travel can affect our lives in many positive ways – and some holidays really can be life-changing. We’d love to hear about trips that have changed you – perhaps it was a wellbeing retreat, a learning or yoga holiday, going fishing or sailing for the first time, or a long-distance hike or kayaking adventure, in the UK and Europe.

Tell us what you did and why it was so special. The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide.

The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website. Continue reading...

The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

On a running pilgrimage in the land of my forebears I was blown away by the scenery – and even more so by the warmth of the people As a long-distance runner, I had always wanted to use running as a means of travel, a way to traverse a landscape. I’d heard of people running across Africa, or the length of New Zealand, and the idea of embarking on an epic journey propelled only by my own two legs was compelling.

I had just turned 50, and some might have said I was having a mid-life crisis, but I preferred to envisage it as a sort of pilgrimage – a journey in search of meaning and connection. And the obvious place to traverse, for me, was the land of my ancestors: Ireland.

Most summers as a child, my Irish parents would take us “home” to Ireland, to visit relatives, sitting on sofas in small cottages, a plate of soda bread on the table, a pot of tea under a knitted cosy.

The Guardian — Life & Style • Jan. 12, 2026, 2:34 a.m.

This 14-mile section of the Sandstone Trail crosses an ancient landscape of hills, woods and ridges, bookended by two fine old inns Deep in the heartland of rural Cheshire, there’s a wind-scoured ridge of sandstone that hides a two-storey cave known as Mad Allen’s Hole. Here, on the flanks of Bickerton Hill, it is said that in the 18th century a heartbroken man called John Harris of Handley lived as a hermit for several decades.

As locations to weather the storm of romantic trauma go, this – I mused as I stood above it on a crisp winter’s day – certainly takes some beating. Offering a panorama of nine counties of England and Wales from its entrance, I could spy the white disc of Jodrell Bank Observatory glistening in the sunlight, while the peaks and troughs of the Clwydian range appeared like a watermark in the distance.

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