Andrew

After a long break, Brendan seems to be making regular appearances again; a very welcome trend. As usual, this was not too hard – apart from the obscure (to me) 24d, but most … Read more >>

Chifonie seems to be getting the Monday slot quite often these days. Perhaps Rufus is (understandably) staring to take life a bit easier. Anyway, this is a nicely accessible puzzle to start the … Read more >>

A bit of a toughie from Paul today, with some quite devious wordplay. Those not familiar with cricketing terminology might have extra difficulty. Fortunately I got 22a early on, and liked the different … Read more >>

I got off to a quick start with this, slowed down a lot in the middle, and then had a sprint to the finish. A bit of a theme based around 5d, and … Read more >>

Good fun as always from this setter, though I have a couple of niggles on definitions, especially on the rather obscure 25a. Thanks to Qaos. Following on from the militaristic theme in Qaos’s … Read more >>

I found this very hard to get started on, and not much easier after that, even after getting the crucial 15d, though as is often the case the explanations are mostly quite straightforward. … Read more >>

A typical Rufus, with plenty of cryptic and double definitions – 5 of each. For variety there are also 5 pure anagrams and 5 clues of the form “A in B”. Thanks to … Read more >>

It’s been a while since I blogged an Arachne puzzle, but this was worth the wait, with clever clueing and characteristic wit. Thanks to Arachne. Possible Nina alert: I notice that JENNER appears … Read more >>

I don’t I’m ever going to be a fan of Otterden’s puzzles, so I’ll be brief. A few very easy anagrams to get us started, a nice couple of the subtractive anagrams that … Read more >>

A very ingenious construction from Picaroon, where the word “play” (or a variant) occurs in every single clue, used in a variety of ways. I found this in the Goldilocks zone of difficulty … Read more >>

I’d been thinking that some of Chifonie’s recent puzzles had been getting slightly more difficult, but this one is back to his old style, with lots of easy charades and anagrams, so it … Read more >>

Only two “pure” cryptic definitions from Rufus today, but a couple of double defs that only just count as double. Quite a few anagrams too, which helped to make this a very quick … Read more >>

I had fewer niggles than in previous Otterden puzzles, but I still found this hard work. With exactly half the answers having “8” as their definition – some of those being rather obscure … Read more >>