Admin

Hosting Company Move – Update

Fri December 7, 2012 at 9:55 pmTue December 4, 2012 at 4:50 pm by Admin

First of all, many thanks to all those who have offered to donate towards the hosting costs etc. I will let you know about the preferred method of payment in a day or two. It will probably be a case of my sending you a request via PayPal (you will not need a PayPal account in order to send your donation).

I have now heard that the transfer of the site to the new hosting company will start at around 9pm on Sunday (9th Dec.) so could I please ask that you stop adding any comments from 8pm onwards. The site will be closed just before the transfer commences but unfortunately I cannot give you a time when it will reopen since this depends on the performance of the current hosting company’s server which has been notoriously poor at times recently.

Important Announcement

Fri December 7, 2012 at 9:55 pmMon December 3, 2012 at 12:00 pm by Admin

In view of the problems experienced recently (slow/no access), and the similar situation at the beginning of the year, I have signed up with a new hosting company today. I am aiming to have the site transferred to the new server on Sunday (9th Dec). At this stage I do not know how long this will take but there is bound to be some downtime, however I will try to ensure that this is kept to a minimum.

Getting a better level of service and support obviously comes at a price. Since its inception the annual hosting and domain name renewal costs for Fifteensquared have been met by Neil Wellard, the site’s founder and former administrator. I do not think it is reasonable to expect him to dip further into his pocket for the benefit of us, the site’s users, so I am therefore seeking donations towards the hosting costs.

A change when adding comments – please read

Mon December 3, 2012 at 12:01 pmSat November 24, 2012 at 4:49 pm by Admin

This site currently receives over 65,000 spam comments each month. The vast majority of these (>99.9%) are intercepted by the excellent Akismet spam filter and so never appear on posts but they are … Read more >>

Slow loading times and outages

Sat November 17, 2012 at 4:38 pmTue November 13, 2012 at 10:10 pm by Admin

You will have noticed recently that the site has become slow to load or is unavailable (FTTP500). When this occurred back in January the problem was due to a couple of other websites, … Read more >>

Sloggers & Betters (Manchester), Saturday 8th September 2012 …..

Thu September 13, 2012 at 1:54 pmSun August 5, 2012 at 5:41 pm by Admin

….. and Dean Meyer’s 50th birthday bash. Dean has sent the following information about these two events which I post verbatim: “Actually this is what you might call Sloggers & Betters Plus, as … Read more >>

Sloggers and Betters (London) – 30th May

Thu May 31, 2012 at 8:03 amWed May 16, 2012 at 11:10 am by Admin

The annual lunch for Times setters is taking place on 30th May and this will be followed by a Sloggers and Betters get-together in The Town of Ramsgate (62 Wapping High Street E1) … Read more >>

Live Chat with Enigmatist

Sat March 24, 2012 at 8:59 amThu March 22, 2012 at 2:55 pm by Admin

After last week’s live chat with Arachne/Anarche, this week it’s the turn of John Henderson (aka Enigmatist/Nimrod/Io/Elgar). The session will be from 1pm to 3pm tomorrow (23rd March). On Saturday, the Guardian Open … Read more >>

A BIG “THANK YOU” FROM RUFUS

Tue March 6, 2012 at 10:42 pmWed February 29, 2012 at 12:15 pm by Admin

The last ten days have been very busy, and very enjoyable, for me, and so many people have taken time and effort to make it so. From the February 18th surprise party at … Read more >>

The Magpie

Thu February 2, 2012 at 10:41 amSat January 28, 2012 at 8:49 pm by Admin

The Magpie is a subscription-only crossword magazine that publishes thematic cryptics of the sort found in the Enigmatic Variations, Inquisitor and Listener series. The difficulty level varies from a little above that of … Read more >>

Sunday Cryptic Puzzles

Mon January 23, 2012 at 5:17 pmThu January 19, 2012 at 10:50 am by Admin

Anax is trying to get some feedback as to what people think about the level of difficulty of the Sunday cryptics. To this end he has added a poll to his website. It … Read more >>

Tips For Solving Alphabetical Jigsaw Crosswords

Sat November 26, 2011 at 4:00 pm by Admin

The following is a copy of a blog written by PeeDee for an Araucaria puzzle that appeared in the Guardian on 19/11/2011. It contains useful tips for those who have not met this … Read more >>

Today’s (25/11) Indy by Phi

Mon November 28, 2011 at 9:33 amFri November 25, 2011 at 12:05 am by Admin

From Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine at the University of Buckingham:

In 2010/11 we invited a number of crossword solvers to take part in recorded trials at Buckingham, during which they solved a cryptic crossword while commenting on their progress out loud. This crossword has been published today in the Independent newspaper as ‘Cryptic Crossword 7385 by Phi’.

In order to gain a richer understanding of the particular dynamics of this puzzle, we are inviting comments on it from all solvers who tackled the published version on or shortly after Friday 25th November 2011.