Quite an easy outing this time with a few intra-Eye references and pet names, particularly several uses of Brenda for ER, and of course lots of botty humour. Read the rest of this entry »

Blunder on my part that is as I find that yet again my pen writes the letters for down answers in the wrong order. May be it’s the ink that can’t spell.

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Anyone would think the crossword was on Page 3 given the number of pairs of tits on view in the wordplay, usually as anagram fodder – there’s floppy tits, daft tits and of course tits out, as well as the occasional Bristol. Read the rest of this entry »

I lost track of the weeks. I knew we would have an extra week over Xmas, but then by this Friday I realised I should’ve had a Private Eye by now. Assuming it was lost I bought one on the way to work. Naturally this resulted in finding my issue on the mat when I got home. Then I found the crossword submission should’ve been received by then.

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This year the theme is the Dumb Britain section which takes questions and silly answers that contestants to popular quiz programmes have provided.  The trick is to guess what the flailing contestant might have come up with in the heat of the moment. These clues are asterisked in the detail table below.

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As It Occurred To Me this week:  I won 2nd prize in a contest!
You’re right, it wasn’t a Beauty Contest and I wasn’t playing Monopoly.
It was a crossword contest:  The 2009 “3D Calendar puzzle” indeed.
So I have no hesitation, in best Smashy’n'Nicey “does a lotta work for chariddy” manner, in shamelessly plugging next year’s offering.
Follow these links and Buy! Buy! Buy!

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I expect there’s a fair bit of copper in one of Brenda’s crowns too.
Intro joke: What’s green and misty? (ans below)
Let’s get stuck into the detail:
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That is, surface reading not found.

After doing a lot of crosswords I tend to read clues for their cryptic meaning without noticing, or should I say savouring, the surface reading. An example of this is 13A here:
Bum, almost round isn’t wobbling – flaming criminal (8)
I did not notice the excellent surface meaning till re-reading it for this blog. That’s one of the reasons I like blogging. When solving this I ignored the punctuation and read “Bum almost” (giving ARS[e] – what else could it be in this crossword) and registered “flaming criminal” as the def. so ARSONIST leapt out, the wordplay easily put to bed, but at the time I hadn’t noticed the little vignette, and social comment(?), that Cyclops had painted.

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What a cock-up – They repeated 402 in the magazine – Have they been taking on ex-Grauniad typesetters?

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One of those where most went in easily but I had to put myself to bed before a couple in the top left corner, so they had to wait till the next morning.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve misunderstood the wordplay on some.
Some particularly fine surface readings throughout this puzzle. Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas and Riddle of course.  Who else would inhabit an Eye crossword …
Not Tom Riddle, that would be … frightening.   Perhaps as frightening as … Cyclops himself  <Ta Da!>  who visited the blog for Puzzle 400 to set our collective mind at rest about the emailed prize submissions. Thanks for the comment, and all the work.
Now let’s decompose this lot …. Read the rest of this entry »

Number 400 Eh!
We only get 26 issues of this esteemed organ each year – if we’re lucky – so I reckon that’s 16 years that Cyclops has been working at the sharp end of scurrilous crossword setting.  So I will wish him well and say “Well done” to the old toe-rag.  Here’s to the next 400.

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Am I alone in finding this not too hard this time?
I was getting a bit worried as my subscription copy did not arrive till Friday – which is at least a day late even allowing for the Bank Holiday Monday – so I didn’t see it till I returned home that night. I always make a rule to read the mag before tackling the crossword, else I feel I’m buying it just for the crossword, and where will that end! In fact I didn’t look at it till gone midnight – an unusual time of day for me, I’ve normally been visited by the sandman before then.
Then I was surprised to find myself writing in the last answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Trouble with overconfidently putting in a couple of answers this time caused hold-ups but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out in the same solving session. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of anagrams this time with one interesting reverse anagram.  That probably contributed to the feeling that nothing that was particularly difficult. I suspect I would have recorded a fast solve time if I had looked.  A few chuckles along the way e.g. 15A, 22A and 17D

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A couple of topical answers to show the setting is reasonably up-to-date.

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Good stuff from Mr C in this issue.  Some tricky clues which I don’t think I could get without the crossing letters, but plenty pencilled in after a first pass to get going.
Longstanding readers may remember when I first started blogging this crossword I had just given up the evil weed coinciding with the smoking ban. Two years on I haven’t had a smoke since, so it can be done, and it’s as good a reason to celebrate something as anything, so: “Trebles all round!”. Read the rest of this entry »

Solving this went in waves.  A smattering of easy clues were entered quickly (e.g. Louvre, Political Asylum) and I thought it would be an easy solve.  Then I came to a halt and now I don’t know why.  When I picked it up later the clues began to tumble faster towards the end, though I had to think about some of the wordplay.   Finally I really enjoyed this one. Read the rest of this entry »

Judging by the scrawl on the crossy I’m blogging from I must’ve had a few when solving this.  So as I finished it, it was probably on the easy side for an Eye. Read the rest of this entry »

A particularly enjoyable offering in this issue. Not terribly hard, but with some cracking clues with the kind of surface readings we hope to see, for a laugh. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing too onerous here – I fair whipped through this one on half a journey home – but a few clues had some fairly convoluted wordplay. Read the rest of this entry »

One of those where I couldn’t get the last couple for days.   22D was the bugbear.  The eureka moment when I finally thought of RAG for “mock” was nice, but I’m glad I didn’t have to blog this as a daily because there’s no way I could’ve got this without coming back to it fresh.   I suspect that’s where I differ from the fast or competitive solvers – sometimes when I get  stuck on a clue and can’t see it what it’s saying from the right perspective, I need a big long break in order to look at it anew without going down the same train of thought yet again.

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A solid outing in this issue. Nothing to moan about. Nothing to praise to the rafters perhaps but tight clueing leading to certain answers. I solved this quite swiftly (approx. 1 pint) but I can’t bring myself to class it as an easy example of the oeuvre – I was in a good mood for solving. Read the rest of this entry »

I enjoyed this and didn’t find it as hard as last time. How hard anyone finds a puzzle must vary not just from puzzle to puzzle and person to person but also depends upon other factors such as your comfort, worries, tiredness, how many pints you are to the good, how many pints you haven’t had, and so on. Last time I did have a struggle, for whatever reason, but looking back at that puzzle now I can understand some of the comments suggesting it was easier than I described. Looking at this one, I’m unsure whether to describe it as easy. It was certainly enjoyable and there are some suitably rude and funny surface readings helped by another clutch of inventive anagram indicators. And I did finish it in one sitting. This time there were no nasty tail-enders hanging on with no score, sometimes overnight, till eventually stumped.
This was under quite idyllic solving conditions – quietly in the garden with the blossom out on an afternoon of a beautiful spring day after with a well earned pint (and another bottle to hand) after giving a couple of hours to turning over the vegetable patch.
This may not be everyone’s experience, and I can well believe there are a couple of clues here that would normally have resisted my attentions longer.

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