Posted by mhl on 28th April 2012
I think this was the easiest Saturday crossword we’ve done in quite a while – at least, it was very fast work until the final two clues (15a and 16d), neither of which we knew.
Posted in Guardian | 16 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 31st March 2012
(Sorry to the lateness of this post – I meant to do it yesterday evening but it slipped my mind, I’m afraid.) This was an enjoyable puzzle, although we found it quite tough going, only getting the meaning of “T” rather late.
Posted in Guardian | 20 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 3rd March 2012
I count myself very lucky to have a third Paul in a row to post about! As usual, this was lots of fun, with a good amount of surprising definitions and intricate wordplay. We found this slow going to start with, until guessing the theme from 4 down – then it was a fast solve until having to deal with a mistake (11 across) and an idée fixe (6 down) to complete it.
Posted in Guardian | 16 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 4th February 2012
We thought this was fairly tough for one of Paul’s puzzles, but very enjoyable, as usual. Our main problem was putting an incorrect (but fairly plausible) answer in for 28 across.
Posted in Guardian | 11 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 7th January 2012
An enjoyable prize puzzle from Paul, which seemed mostly straightforward except for some general knowledge I was lacking with regard to the theme…
Posted in Guardian | 15 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 10th December 2011
A lovely puzzle from Crucible, and on the easy side for a prize puzzle, I thought.
Posted in Guardian | 16 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 4th December 2011
This was a fun Genius puzzle, we thought, and quite doable once you untangled the rubric. There were plenty of smiles for me, particularly in how the missing letters changed the meaning of the clues.
Posted in Guardian Genius | 10 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 12th November 2011
This was a typically enjoyable prize crossword from Araucaria. We struggled with this for a while before guessing the theme, after which everything went very fast, apart from some troubles working out the parsing of a few clues.
Posted in Guardian | 30 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 15th October 2011
As usual with a Paul crossword this was full of fun and lovely surface readings.
Posted in Guardian | 17 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 17th September 2011
This was a delightful crossword, with a theme of Last Night of the Proms (which was in the evening of the day the crossword came out) and every clue having a musical theme. In terms of difficulty, we found this very easy compared to recent prize Guardian crosswords. The most surprising clue to me was 11a, due to a construction that you rarely see outside advanced cryptics. The quality of the cluing here was excellent, I thought, as we’ve come to expect from Crucible.
Posted in Guardian | 13 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 20th August 2011
A fun and very devious prize crossword, which took us a couple of train journeys to complete. There’s a nice theme of film and television which linked six of the clues. Some points of note include two hidden answer clues where the hidden part could only be found indirectly, and a rather outrageous definition in 13d
Posted in Guardian | 32 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 22nd July 2011
A nice puzzle from Bonxie. I found the top half of this puzzle remarkably hard, although on writing the post I can’t quite see why.
Posted in Guardian | 33 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 6th July 2011
This is a rushed post, I’m afraid, so apologies for any errors. (Also I probably won’t be able to make corrections until much later.) I didn’t enjoy this much, partly due to circumstances (no access to a printer or a printed copy), and partly because of the style of the clues. Personally, I don’t like clues with verbose linking phrases, which there are many of here – I think they make the cryptic structure obvious and the clues seem less elegant. Update: As Berny points out below, there’s a good reason some of these might read a bit strangely, which I’ll mention in the next paragraph to avoid spoilers on the front page…
Posted in Guardian | 35 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 30th June 2011
An easy but enjoyable puzzle from Chifonie – and for once I have a time-zone difference that makes it easy to get the post done in time :)
Posted in Guardian | 40 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 24th June 2011
A delightful puzzle from Pasquale – scrupulously fair clues, as ever, and not too hard today. Incidentally, I think this is my 150th post on fifteensquared :)
Posted in Guardian | 35 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 8th June 2011
There are lots of nice clues in this puzzle, but this was a typically problematic Araucaria for me, in that there were lots of references I didn’t know …..
Posted in Guardian | 35 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 6th June 2011
A very clever puzzle from Lavatch. Below I’ve set out the clues with the answers they directly lead to, and below that I’ll explain what has to be done to them to get the grid entries. In each, I’ve put in bold the definition part, and crossed out the word that should be ignored.
Posted in Guardian Genius | 6 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 2nd June 2011
A very enjoyable crossword from Shed. I got stuck on quite a few here, but I suspect that people won’t generally have found this too difficult.
Posted in Guardian | 27 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 16th May 2011
No Rufus today, but to replace him we have an (as ever) excellent puzzle from Orlando. There are some lovely clues here.
Posted in Guardian | 25 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 11th May 2011
A nice puzzle from Gordius – with a few exceptions (noted below), I don’t think this should have created too many problems.
Posted in Guardian | 33 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 5th May 2011
A very nice crossword from Shed, with some tough words / general knowledge, but all fairly clued. (I may not be able to make corrections until much later today, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.)
Posted in Guardian | 34 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 29th April 2011
As always, an excellent, entertaining crossword from Paul. The clue of the day is certainly the brilliant and topical “Fancy lad and me tied knot!”
Posted in Guardian | 31 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 18th April 2011
I found this trickier than usual for Rufus, but with lots of nice clues – I particularly liked 14a, 4d and 5d. I suspect I’m missing something in 22a…
Posted in Guardian | 21 Comments »
Posted by mhl on 7th April 2011
Another wonderful puzzle from Brendan, with precise and elegant cluing. (I found the bottom half much easier than the top here, but perhaps that was just me…)
Posted in Guardian | 43 Comments »