Blimey this was a tough one. That, plus most of the week spent at a conference means this week’s posting is a little late.

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A tough week, I found, so no danger of getting far without Chambers. Still an enjoyable challenge as always.

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My ongoing quest to complete a whole Beelzebub unaided led to a full grid, yet with a couple of silly errors. Still, a good week and always a pleasure to work out the unfamiliar words from the subsidiary indications.

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A very enjoyable week, with some really nice anagrams. For my own part, I managed all but 13ac unaided, which may be a record for me, yet that one eluded me due to a crisis of confidence having guessed the correct answer but misread the wordplay.

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A slightly strange one for me, racing through all but a handful unhindered and thus unaided, struggling on a few more, and finally finding myself absolutely stumped at 21dn, for which I’ve reproduced the clue in case readers can help out.

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A mixed week for me. I proudly managed all but a handful quite quickly without opening a dictionary, stumbled on a couple more, then failed on 4dn having inexplicably written in HORNPIPE at 4ac. More care is clearly needed in future.

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A good week, I think. This took me several sessions, but I was determined not to cheat. Everything was ultimately solvable, though 1ac was unfamiliar enough to require some undirected Chambers-browsing on my part.

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One of my fastest Beelzebub solves of recent times, as witnessed by me blogging this on the Sunday, for once. There is just one – at 29ac – for which I can find no reference. Some interesting, Azed-like clueing today.

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A very tough week for me, not helped by not being able to locate an unusually high number of the answers in Chambers, rather than just the names and places.

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I’m not sure if this was hard or easy – I made heavy weather of it at first, managing only a few answers in a first session, then raced through the rest on returning a day later.

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A solve of two halves for me – all but 25ac and a handful in the SE corner went in very quickly, while the rest took two or three more sessions, a bit of brute-force work and perhaps even some mild cheating. Still, I got there and can have no grumbles about any of the clues.

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I think this is me all up-to-date with Beelzebub now, as the closing date for this one was put back to the 29th, no doubt for seasonal reasons. No obvious Christmas themes in the puzzle that I can see – Beelzebub remains a welcome escape from the more tiresome aspects of modern life! Wordplay at 8dn and 22dn could use some confirmation.

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This one was tackled the East Coast Mainline, so with no access to aids. Sitting down to blog, I see that while I didn’t quite finish the puzzle, I did put in a pretty good showing, with around five answers in the SE corner left unsolved. Let’s hope the remainder make themselves known by the time I get to the end!

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This was easily the toughest Beelzebub I can remember having come across. A first, unaided session yielded only three or four answers. Reinforcements were called in, and the remainder of the puzzle took two of us several hours. In a couple of places, entries seem to differ from anything I could find in Chambers, but I may simply not have been looking hard enough.

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A quickish blog, as various factors have led to my falling a little way behind with solving Beelzebub. I’ll use this week to play catchup and then hopefully normal service can be resumed. While I have your attention, explanations for 21ac will be gratefully received. The clue is reproduced below.

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*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.

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A perhaps over-ambitious attempt on my part, to finish this without any kind of research materials. I filled the grid in reasonable time, but it seems I invented a couple of words in the process! SENHORA was particularly elusive, as neither SEN nor HORA was familiar. I had one other careless misspelling, but otherwise a pretty good showing, I think, and a great puzzle as always.

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Now here's a turn up for the books: a Beelzebub that I couldn't actually finish. The Chambers search suggests that the only possible entry for 11dn is BANANALAND, leaving 32ac as RD?EES, which is quite clearly preposterous. That said, my own entry for 32ac doesn't appear in Chambers, so who knows. I also can't make sense of 25ac, so not a great week for me, all in all.

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I was rather proud of how well I did here, managing all answers but one before even opening the dictionary. I won't tell which one defeated me as it's one of the easier ones here!

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Apologies for the later than usual blog. I only found out yesterday that I was expected to work today. So anyway, here's Beelzebub 1,027, which I found to be a fair bit more challenging than recent puzzles.

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*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.

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This is still one of my perhaps two favourite crosswords, the other being Inquisitor, also in the Independent the day before. Beelzebub seems to hit the perfect balance between challenging and eminently solvable, with the clueing never being less than flawless.

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This seemed a bit tougher than in recent weeks, but it all fell into place in the end.

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I managed almost all of this without opening a dictionary, but a handful of clues put up a fight to the end. Perhaps it was just the constant feline harassment I was having to endure by that point.

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I should probably blog these a bit sooner after solving, or at least take notes, since I have scant recollection of actually tackling this one. I do know that I once again managed it armed only with the hard copy of Chambers, and that this method seems to suit me well.

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