Posted by nmsindy on 30th June 2009
An incredible puzzle – absolutely brilliant. In line with 14 across EVERY across solution had the name of a tree within the word as an internal part. The clues are, as always from Virgilius a real joy. Solving time, 12 mins. In across clues, trees shown in bold. Many thanks, Virgilius!
Posted in Independent | 7 Comments »
Posted by Gaufrid on 30th June 2009
I don’t recognise the setter’s pseudonym so it is either a new contributor or a rebranding of an existing one for the purpose of this tennis related puzzle.
Posted in FT | 2 Comments »
Posted by Uncle Yap on 30th June 2009
dd = double definition
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram
Posted in Guardian | 34 Comments »
Posted by NealH on 29th June 2009
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Independent | 3 Comments »
Posted by Eileen on 29th June 2009
A surprise not to have Rufus this morning but I remember that, a while ago, Andrew came up with the lovely description of Rover as ‘Rufus-lite’. Some very easy anagrams and several cryptic definitions, some more so than others. I’m completely flummoxed by 14ac and I’ve run out of time but I’m sure someone will soon enlighten me.
Posted in Guardian | 26 Comments »
Posted by Andrew on 28th June 2009
The luck of the draw is giving me all the Azed specials to blog these days. Right and Left is another one that comes up fairly regularly: I think the format was devised by Azed’s predecessor Ximenes (there’s an example by X on Derek Harrison’s site. As always there’s one answer that links the two halves of the grid. It’s notable how seamlessly the two-clues-in-one are joined together, with no superfluous words and often apparently in the middle of a phrase: to illustrate this I’ve indicated below where the splits lie. There seems to be a high proportion of unusual words in the puzzle – maybe this is an unavoidable consquence of the restricted space in the two halves of the grid. I’ve shown the answers in the order they appear in the grid: I hope it’s clear from the explanations which half of the clue each relates to.
Posted in Azed | 2 Comments »
Posted by The Trafites on 28th June 2009
Our first blog (as the The Trafites), and we look forward to doing this.
Posted in Everyman | 4 Comments »
Posted by Simon Harris on 27th June 2009
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
Posted in Beelzebub | 3 Comments »
Posted by rightback on 27th June 2009
Solving time: 13:44
This seemed about average difficulty for Paul, though I think I made heavy weather of it. As always there are some extremely inventive clues, and the lack of hyperlinks in the blog suggests that there were few obscurities.
Posted in Guardian | 19 Comments »
Posted by John on 26th June 2009
Before I solved 11ac it was hard to cope with all those clues that referred to it, but fairly soon that was all right, and there were no terribly obscure 11s. Although most of this nice crossword was easy enough, 1dn seems odd, I had never heard of the answer to 21dn, and 26dn still defeats me (although I’ll have looked it up by the time I’ve written the blog. _A_E is I suspect the skeleton of this type with most possibilities). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Independent | 6 Comments »
Posted by shuchi on 26th June 2009
Fairly easy, pleasant puzzle today. I was briefly held up in the NE corner, I thought COLOGNE and BETEL were cleverly clued and it didn’t help to not know the two Lancs towns (which I got in the end, through guessing + Google).
Posted in FT | 1 Comment »
Posted by Simon Harris on 26th June 2009
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
Posted in Independent | 6 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 26th June 2009
As ever, a very enjoyable puzzle from Pasquale. There were quite a few here where I had to guess that a word existed and then look it up (CERE, MANA, PICKABACK), but the wordplay in each case was quite clear with a few crossing letters.
Posted in Guardian | 25 Comments »
Posted by Colin Blackburn on 26th June 2009
Oddly, my previous blog, and my final blog for the Inquisitor series, IQ 128, was an Obtrox puzzle. More oddly, it used exactly the same device: two extra letters from the wordplay in each clue of one set making up a quotation, the other set being normal. The only difference was that the two sets were the opposite way around.
Posted in Enigmatic Variations | 1 Comment »
Posted by Hihoba on 26th June 2009
Wow! Tremendous stuff from Loda! A puzzle with 20 across and 20 down clues where all the answers were 6 letter words corresponding to the balls in an over, using vowels as scoring shots and W’s as wickets. Quite amazing.
Posted in Inquisitor | 8 Comments »
Posted by smiffy on 25th June 2009
This felt like a tougher than average puzzle from Flimsy, although that impression may be influenced by the longest/quadrant-linking entries being particularly slow to come to me. Commiserations to the setter on having the idea at 15D undermined by a spot of printer’s devilry.
Posted in FT | 1 Comment »
Posted by nmsindy on 25th June 2009
Unusual puzzle. Got almost nothing on first run through. Then with three crossing letters saw what 8 was likely to be. After that made quite good progress, until getting badly stuck on 9. Finally cracked it tho, solving time, 38 mins, of which about 15 mins was looking for that last one.
Posted in Independent | 9 Comments »
Posted by Ciaran McNulty on 25th June 2009
A really enjoyable grid today, with a couple of royal references. There are some very clever clues in here, with distinctively misleading surfaces – I nearly stood up to applaud 20dn, it was so clever.
Posted in Guardian | 32 Comments »
Posted by nmsindy on 25th June 2009
Solving time, 22 mins
* = anagram
1 PAWN BROKE R & lit My last answer and my favourite clue
Posted in Independent | No Comments »
Posted by Uncle Yap on 25th June 2009
Monday Prize Crossword on 15 June 2009
dd = double definition
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram
Posted in FT | 6 Comments »
Posted by Pete Maclean on 25th June 2009
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of June 13
I found this Mudd a bit of a challenge, especially the top-right corner. I particularly like 16A and 14D.
Posted in FT | No Comments »
Posted by Simon Harris on 24th June 2009
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
Posted in Independent | 6 Comments »
Posted by Gaufrid on 24th June 2009
Being Wimbledon fortnight I suppose we might have had strawberries sometime but instead we got a single straw[berry] plus a lot of other berries. Pity there was no cream to go with them!
Posted in FT | 2 Comments »
Posted by Andrew on 24th June 2009
I got off to a good start with this one by getting 1/8ac straight away, but struggled later on. There are quite a few clues that I can’t fully explain: as I’ve run out of time I’ll leave it to the assembled wisdom of the commenters to help me out.
Posted in Guardian | 66 Comments »
Posted by Ali on 23rd June 2009
I struggled with yesterday’s puzzle, so was glad that this was easier to get into and finish. I can’t claim a 100% score though as I plumped for an incorrect guess at 23A. Pah! Nevertheless, this was enjoyable stuff from Tees, with some great anagrams. I liked 6D a lot.
Posted in Independent | 16 Comments »