For an overview of what Chris and I have planned for this year’s Witch Week — honoring Diana Wynne Jones and fantasy writing of all sorts — check out his blog at Calmgrove. You’ll see our theme is TREASON AND PLOT, which inspired our guest bloggers’s delightful reviews, with at least one rebel.

Meanwhile, the scaffold on the left signals the start of the game of Hangman that I promised. The victim this year will be Mr. Guy Fawkes himself (currently in his cell at The Tower).

Rules are the same as ever, but with these slight differences.

1) If you think you know the full phrase (3 words, 5-2-7 letters), please just write it down on a piece of paper and set it aside. DO NOT POST IT IN THE RESPONSES. If you do, I’ll kill the Guy right away! Believe me, I’ll show no mercy. If you can’t stand the suspense, you can email your guess to me (my email address is in the right-hand sidebar).

2) Each person is allowed one guess of a single letter (vowel or consonant) per day. Just put it in a response to this post.

3) Each day, from all the responses, I’ll chose one correct letter and one incorrect letter; the chosen correct letter will be placed in its appropriate spot/s in the red blanks at the bottom, and the chosen incorrect letter will be added to the upper left corner of the drawing. If there are no incorrect guesses, I’ll choose a random incorrect letter. If there are no correct guesses, well, that’ll be a shame. (I already said I’ll show no mercy.)

And now for something musical: A performance of Schubert’s “Erlkönig” (The Erlking, or Elf-King), from the 2014 Oxford Lieder Festival (OLF’s 2021 festival ended just a week ago), with gorgeous animation by Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood. Go to this link for the lyrics in German and English.