Johnson dumps do-or-die pledge - Extension deepens the air of farce

Anyone who occasionally wallows in the great life-soak of social media will be familiar with the formula behind bog-standard clickbait: “Only a genius can solve ... what comes next?” and there follows a mathematical progression, usually of the complexity that teachers of the forthright, pre-digital kind used to sift the possibilities from the problems in higher infants.

After all, if the challenge is toodaunting the clicks stop and site traffic fades to commercial irrelevance. Nothing dispiritingly difficult is presented,seduction and ensnarement are the objectives.