Cineraria

Born in 1963, I began with crosswords as a little boy by “helping” my grandfather with the puzzle in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I have done American-style crosswords since I was a teenager, and I enjoy many other types of word puzzles, including cryptograms and acrostics. I cannot remember when I discovered cryptic crosswords. I used to do the Guardian puzzle every day, but being a lawyer by profession does not leave me a lot of time to indulge my deliberate yet desultory solving method. I have been doing the Guardian Prize every Friday and the Azed every Saturday since 2020, and the Genius every month since 2018 (typically succeeding, but admittedly with some DNFs). I was even gratified to be a Genius winner a few years ago. I have learned an awful lot from studying the post-mortems on fifteensquared. As for other interests, I have a large collection of origami books, and I like folding the most complicated models I can find.

Financial Times 17,570 by PEDROCK

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NOTE:  This puzzle was previously published as FT 17,464 and blogged by Teacow, and inadvertently republished and reblogged.  See comments below, including one from the FT Crossword Editor.

A solid and seemingly straightforward puzzle today from Pedrock.

Please let me know if I missed anything.

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York S&B 2023 by Fez

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A fun solve that requires a little extra brainpower to complete.

The puzzle may be found here:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Fez_SBYork2023.pdf

Fair warning: This blog is a bit coarser than the typical Fifteensquared write-up.

Fez advises: “Thematic elements of 12 answers are omitted from wordplay, possibly due to 1a taking an off-hand remark literally.”

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