There are only two weeks left to play and vote on games in the annual French interactive fiction competition. Games are hosted on itch.io and voting is via an online form. There are ten games this year, but you can...

I had been saving this one for while, the tallest peak on Cyprus, also known as Mount Olympus. In the winter, this summit is a ski slope, which seems hard to believe now that it is the summer and temperatures...

I made life unnecessarily hard for myself on this one. When I looked at the map, I saw the summit was not too far from a named geographical feature, the Church of Prophet Ilias (warning: one many of churches of...

The drive out to this six-point peak looked very similar after last week’s activation of 5B/CY-026, which is just a bit to the east of this one. Summer days are long enough to attempt both on a single day, but...

It took me a couple years to get around to activating this four point peak because I was not sure of how to reach it. It is most of the way west on the island, but but closer to Nicosia...

This four-point peak is about equidistant to Paphos and Limmasol and the drive out is not bad at all. It would be easy to drive past the access road that leads up to the peak from route F617 because the...

5B/CY-031 was coincidentally the thirty-first SOTA peak that I have activated in Cyprus. The day was not blisteringly hot and there was a nice breeze up there, so after activating, I just laid out on large rock and sunned myself...

I followed 5B/M0BLF/P ‘s excellent account of his earlier visit to this peak and found it as described. As I approached the town, my first option was to head up a relatively steep hill. However, when I drove beyond this, I...

Three sites north of Limmasol would make a good day trip: each is about 20 to 30 minutes from the other: CY-039, CY-029, and CY-031. I got a late start and dallied on the second site, so I only manage...

I thought it would be helpful to document that this summit can probably not be activated, which is a shame since it is a short drive from the capital, Nicosia. A Greek Orthodox monastery sits atop the mountain and all...

This two-point peak does make you work for those two points. It is located a bit north of Limasol or about an hour’s drive from Nicosia. GPS will get you pretty close along route F130 to a dirt road turn...

This past weekend, I returned to Pipis, 5B/CY-046 to try some new things. It was not entirely a disaster, but mostly. Pipis is about a half-hour drive from Nicosia if there is no traffic, but since Nicosia always has some...

Mazi was a short drive from Vouni (5B/CY-033). As my GPS showed only a few minutes left to the peak along the highway, I turned a corner and saw a perfectly round, verdant hill in the distance (the sort of...

This four-point peak is a short drive from Paphos. The name “Vouni” means “mountain”, but it is more of a gentle grass-covered hill in the middle of a wine-producing region. The paved road up into the mountains is fairly steep,...

The first thing I have to say about this peak is “beware of false prophets”. Many hilltops and even many hilltop churches in Cyprus are named Profitis Ilias — he was a popular guy, so make sure you activate the...

This is one of the least scenic peaks, right up there with Xylias, since this peak is effectively in someone’s backyard and you are likely to find yourself activating on a small corner of land between power lines and a...

This four-point peak is about an hour’s drive from Nicosia. I had planned to visit peaks 32 and 40 on the same outing, but dropped the last one because conditions were so good that I spend quite a while on...

Mavrogenis is an eight-point SOTA peak not far from the Kikkos Monastery. There is a parking area to the south side of route E912 (34.9708N,32.7622E). A nature foot trail departs downward from there towards the “pitch kiln”, but the trail...

I had last Friday off and since the weather was ideal, I thought it would be fun to spend the day casually traipsing from band to band at a single site. I chose Kreatos (5B/CY-043), the closest peak to my...

I have had exactly one FT-8 mode contact on my FT-817, so I am now declaring myself an expert. I am sure there are aspects of this that I haven’t discovered yet, but what I have works and will get...

This one point peak is just above the town of Steni and overlooks Chrysochous Bay. For me, it was a trek across the island, but it would be a short drive for someone starting out from Paphos. On the way,...

The French interactive fiction competition went live over this last weekend with ten games maintaining a fairly consistent ratio of about ten to one with IFcomp over the last few years. A variety of authoring systems were employed including Moiki,...

From the blurb, and to some degree from the title, I had expected this to be a raunchy in-the-gutter joke entry, but was happy to discover it was a sincere entry in a sci-fi vein. The story takes place in...

I really admire the effort it must have taken to write an entire game in limerick meter and even more for finding a way to incorporate puzzles — also in limerick meter. Additionally, I was impressed that the game managed...

Some of the entries in this IFComp are novel size, but this one is the ideal length for a short story. In a few screenfuls of text, the author lays out the scene, gives some insight into key characters through...