Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Can you ken Ken? No, wait, bear with us, it's not a quiz about the London mayoral contest (although that was Paper Monitor's first thought on seeing this very question posed on the front page of the Times on Monday).
But what kenken is the paper's new number puzzle, and the latest contender seeking to repeat the runaway success of sudoku, which swept the nation (and bolstered newspaper sales) in 2005. No surprise that it is the Times to launch it, as it was the first of the British newspapers to latch onto sudoku grids way back in 2004.
But there's its name. Kenken just does not have the air of mystery, of puzzling otherness that helped make sudoku such a phenomenon. Not that kenken is a word that lacks in Oriental associations. The number puzzle was invented by a Japanese mathematics teacher, who named it to mean "square wisdom".
But to the British, the word "ken" has so many other associations. Ken Livingstone, for one. And it means "know" or "know what I mean?" in the Scottish vernacular. Which is apt.
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph has the bit between its teeth about how web users are facing extra charges for TV downloads. Yes, the same paper that for some weeks now has been flaunting the wares of Telegraph TV (available now on its website).
But these web users do get what they pay for, having signed up to broadband packages that allow them to download a gigabyte of data a month. Go over that limit and there are extra charges.
The lesson? Read the small print.
Hmmm, what is it about the First Lady of France that means her picture makes it into every single newspaper, including the Daily Star? And can you guess which snap of her makes it into that particular organ of Her Majesty's Press?