bridgesong's avatarbridgesong

Born in 1947, I remember as a child tackling the Skeleton in my father’s Sunday Express before moving on to The Times at school with a classmate. For 20 years or so after leaving school I had no time for crosswords but started again in the 1980s, teaching myself to do Azed (with help from Don Manley’s Crossword Manual). Now retired after a career as a lawyer which culminated in appointment as a District Judge, I do the Guardian every Saturday, usually with my friend and neighbour Timon (who introduced me to fifteensquared). I also enter the Azed monthly competitions but have never done better than the very occasional VHC. More recently I have become a subscriber to the Magpie magazine and submit entries monthly, without yet winning a pen. My pseudonym comes from two of my other leisure interests, bridge and singing.

Azed 1988

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I found this puzzle considerably harder than usual, partly as a result of my failure early on to solve any of the four long clues which form the border to the puzzle. I … Read more >>

Azed 1967 – playing fairly

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So far as I can discover, this is the first Playfair competition puzzle for around two years, the last having been 1804, which must have been in December 2007 (probably the Christmas competition) … Read more >>

Azed 1953

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“Words may be false and full of art; sighs are the natural language of the heart”, by Thomas Shadwell is the quotation referred to here. The second part is obtained by the letters … Read more >>

Azed 1932

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A difficult enough puzzle anyway, made more so by the fact that the clues for 23 and 24 down were transposed in the version printed in The Observer (and of course in the … Read more >>