I FEAR that The Herald is trifling with my intellectual vanity. Being the kind of person who manages to unearth 15 words from the depths of my mind, when the target for the Word Wheel is possibly 30, or even 40, leaving me to be a real "average", or having taken a happy hour with pencil and rubber to get to the bottom of the Sudoku puzzle, I find in the last couple of months that I can now romp with ease through the "hard" example. Are standards slipping or has my daily mental exercise paid off and I am successfully staving off the ravages of old age?

Kirsteen Maclean,

25 Gartconnell Road, Bearsden.