For several years in the early nineties the late Michael Downes presented

a series of TeX macro programming challenges he called Around the Bend. These were archived on CTAN in info/aro-bend, but are now in info/challenges/aro-bend, as 36 files called exercise.* and answer.*, but in general Around the Bend is not well known even though it illuminates some of the essential, but possibly more arcane, aspects of TeX.

I have been presumptuous and taken the liberty of putting them all into

a single document, AroundTheBend.pdf, which might be more accessible than the individual postings that form the original archive. I have also included three challenges, namely 19, 20, and 21, that have not made it into the CTAN archive.

If Michael was still with us I imagine that he would have put no

restrictions on his work. With this in mind, the files comprising AroundTheBend.tex, which is the basis for AroundTheBend.pdf, are under the LPPL.

Peter Wilson 25 July 2008