The aim of this blog is to provide daily commentary and analysis of the Independent, Guardian, Financial Times and Private Eye cryptic crosswords. It was inspired by this and is maintained by a team of solvers, all addicted in various degrees to the black art of the cryptic crossword. We want to appeal to all types of solvers - new or experienced, fast or slow - and we welcome your comments and feedback.

What to Expect

Each day we’ll aim to post an analysis of that day’s crosswords. The weekend posts will be of the previous week’s crossword as they are competition puzzles with prizes so we don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

We won’t give away all the answers to a puzzle but we will give away most of them so it’s best to visit the blog either after you’ve solved the puzzle or if you’re stuck and want a couple of answers to get you going again.

Current Coverage

Guardian/Observer - daily cryptic (including Saturdays),  Azed, Genius (exclusive to subscribers of the Guardian Crossword website).  As from Sept 2007 we won’t be blogging the Everyman puzzle but we will help solvers who are stuck with particular clues.

Independent/IoS- daily puzzle (including Saturdays) and Inquisitor (Saturday Weekend magazine puzzle). As from Sept 2007 the Quixote puzzles will be blogged in a shorter format and we’ll also help solvers who are stuck.

FT - 3 or 4 puzzles a week including the Saturday prize puzzle.

Private Eye - Cyclops

Contributing

If you’re interested in getting involved as a blogger, please send a mail to blogging {at} fifteensquared {dot} net. You don’t need to be a fast solver but you should be able to complete a cryptic crossword more often than not.

Notation

You may see the following notation used to explain elements of some clues:

• * (asterisk) to indicate an anagram. E.g (orchestra)*
• “quote marks” to indicate a homophone. E.g PEALER = “peeler”.
• < to indicate that an element is to be reversed E.g PAN< is NAP.
• CAPITALS to indicate which bits are part of the answer. E.g “R in CREASE” means that “in” is not part of the answer.