I managed to solve about three-quarters of this puzzle without any assistance from Chambers or the internet.  It’s surprising what being on holiday in remote places can do for the brain.   However, I made somewhat heavy weather of the remainder on my return home.    Fewer anagrams than usual, I thought, but with a couple of easy hidden clues to help get one started.  As is often the case, it’s the shortest words that can be the hardest to solve. Read the rest of this entry »

A fairly straightforward Azed, with not too much tricky wordplay; quite a few words that needed confirmation from Chambers, though. I may have misunderstood the wordplay at 11a.

Read the rest of this entry »

The standard, routine, par for the course, vanilla wordplays waiting for reader enlightenment.
Across Read the rest of this entry »

What you always get from Azed: apparently tortuous clues, but everything’s do-able so long as you persevere with all the wading through Chambers, because all the clueing is completely sound. Read the rest of this entry »

Azed 1991 – Ars Magna

Clues led to two words which were anagrams of each other – the definition provided one, and the wordplay the other.
In the lists below, the definition word is shown first, the wordplay one second. In the acrosses, the wordplay word was entered in the grid, and in the downs, the definition one.

Read the rest of this entry »

A pretty easy Azed this week: with some judicious guessing of unfamiliar words (which one gets quite good at after solving these puzzles for several decades) I managed to finish this in less than an hour with no aids at all. On the other hand, writing up the blog has required numerous references to Chambers to confirm the details. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick:  A perhaps more difficult AZED this week, due to the strange grid having two words per quarter connecting each ‘mini-grid’;  for me, this made it like four very small crosswords, with the SE corner the last to go in.

Read the rest of this entry »

I found this puzzle considerably harder than usual, partly as a result of my failure early
on to solve any of the four long clues which form the border to the puzzle. I am still
struggling for explanations to 23 across and 4 down.

Read the rest of this entry »

While many of you were watching England’s unfortunate demise in South Africa last Sunday, I was sitting on the top deck of an almost deserted Lord’s pavilion, watching a T20 match between the Pakistanis and an MCC side featuring Brian Lara and a rather entertaining chap aptly called Blizzard, and captained by Sourav Ganguly. I think I made the better call.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry for the late blog… no excuses (OK other than 48 World Cup games + Wimbledon). I thought this slightly harder than the run-of-the-mill Azed (oxymoron?). No lack of the requisite mysteries.

Read the rest of this entry »

The usual pleasurable experience. All the clues are utterly sound and you know you’ll get there in the end, even if the progress is a bit slow. The words are — in this crossword it seems exceptionally — incredibly difficult and one spends ages wading through Chambers. Often one knows what the answer must be but simply doesn’t know words along the way. Read the rest of this entry »

This puzzle reminded me (after completion) of a famous clue from N C Dexter, back in January 1984 (Azed 610), when the word to be clued was DOUBLETHINK. The winning clue was: By it, ‘truth’ and ‘lie’ looked alternately interchangeable (anag. of alternate letters). This time, of course, it’s the puzzle number rather than the date which provides a reason for an Orwellian theme, and those like me who didn’t see the significance of the puzzle number probably saw the light when ORWELLIAN emerged as the unclued answer for use in the competition.

Read the rest of this entry »

A relatively easy Azed this week – I managed to solve most of it without aids, with only the SW corner causing some difficulties. I can’t fully explain 18ac, and there seems to be a mistake in 24ac No, I was mistaken – see Bob Sharkey’s comment. However there does seem to be a mistake in 4dn Read the rest of this entry »

Nick:  Typically nice AZED this week which I feel was a tad more difficult than some weeks.  I had to use Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to confirm 28dn and fully understand the reference in 12dn (I have added information internet links to these clues).

Read the rest of this entry »

A fairly straightforward puzzle this week, which took me a little over two hours to solve, although there were the usual number of obscure and unfamiliar words. No major quibbles, except for one about enumeration.

Read the rest of this entry »

I usually enjoy a jigsaw, because I like the way that progress accelerates once you crack a critical step.

Read the rest of this entry »

I completely forgot about this blog. Gaufrid kindly reminded me yesterday so I promptly forgot again. And then woke up this morning with something niggling my memory. That was about an hour and half ago. This is the paltry result.

Read the rest of this entry »

The usual Azed, full of neat and tightly-constructed clues. Read the rest of this entry »

A mostly straightforward puzzle, which I think took me around 40 minutes, with Chambers just used at the end to find the answer to 16D and correct my daft mistake at 23A. This meant that I failed to spot an overconfident wrong answer at 26 down until I wrote this report.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a hard puzzle this week, with a lot more unfamiliar words than usual, I think. My favourites clue are 10ac and 22dn for their unusual and confusing – but totally sound – constructions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nick:  Fairly difficult AZED this week, due to a competition puzzle, I suppose, but great to solve.  30ac and 12dn seemed to be very convolute to work out, with 30ac being the ‘gotcha’ clue that could lead unsure solvers into entering the wrong word (I hope I am correct ).  9dn is a compilers Christmas present, and I was amazed when I read it in Chambers. ‘So-and-so’ in 1ac made me laugh – being from Pompey I was once told off by my (female) boss in Montreal for using it, until I explained it also meant ‘idiot’ here…

Read the rest of this entry »

After last week’s offering, which Jetdoc found easy, but which defeated me, I found this special very much easier than a normal Azed, doing much of it on the train without the aid of Chambers. For those who haven’t encountered the DLM formula before it may at first seem a daunting prospect, but as ever the generous checking in an Azed grid makes it easy once you get started. I find the key to making a start is to concentrate on the shorter words, where it’s easier to find the anagrams, and as it happens I solved 1 down very soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

For me, this was very much at the easy end of the Azed spectrum, though I needed a dictionary to check a few words. No special favourite clue this week, though there are several I like.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have several crossword ambitions, very few of which I’ll actually achieve. E.g. finish the T2 quick crossword in the annual top 10, an all-correct Listener year, win a Times clue competition and… solve and completely understand an Azed. Maybe next time for the last.

Read the rest of this entry »

The usual very satisfactory offering from Azed. I have learned not to look too far for wonderful surfaces, but to admire the faultless construction of his clues. Read the rest of this entry »