Fifteensquared – Never knowingly undersolved

Kairos is a long-standing but now occasional setter for the Independent. A pleasure to see his name crop up on my watch, because I’ve always enjoyed his puzzles.

Guardian 30,003: Vulcan

Tue May 12, 2026 at 6:04 amMon May 11, 2026 at 6:37 am by Andrew

Thanks to Vulcan for a smooth Monday offering.

Once again I’m off to hills, aiming to bag my hundredth Munro (this one) so won’t be able to respond to comments till later.

Financial Times 18,368 by Guy

Mon May 11, 2026 at 12:19 pmMon May 11, 2026 at 12:00 am by Pete Maclean

Puzzle from the Weekend FT of May 9, 2026

Apologies for the slightly later than usual blog, down mainly to the fact that it took me a longer than usual time to solve this Quiptic from Anto. Which might be an indication that its difficulty level is not quite appropriate for the slot. Those on the early steps of their cryptic crossword journey will no doubt be best placed to tell us below.

Independent on Sunday 1,889/Filbert

Sun May 10, 2026 at 8:39 amSun May 10, 2026 at 7:30 am by Pierre

Being a regular blogger for the Independent on Sunday puzzle means I get to tussle with Filbert often. And it is a tussle: as usual, this took me two goes. But it’s always satisfying to complete because this compiler’s work is invariably marked by impeccable setting and fine surfaces.

Azed No. 2,779

Sun May 10, 2026 at 11:59 amSun May 10, 2026 at 12:26 am by John

A medium-difficulty crossword from Azed. There seemed to me to be lots of answers where the parsing involves an anagram, but now I count them it’s not so excessive (25%).

My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.

Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*