Cineraria's avatarCineraria

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 18,204 by MUDD

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I usually find Mudd rather breezy and accessible, but I never really hit my stride on today’s puzzle. Except for one minor note, I think the clues are all right, so I am not sure what all my plodding was about.

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Gemelo No. 13 – Plain

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Stepping back from last week’s anagrammatic convolutions, this week’s “plain” Gemelo seemed relatively straightforward by comparison.  Completion of the grid was helped considerably by solving the four perimeter clues.

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Financial Times 18,192 by PETO

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I was really struggling with today’s challenge from Peto until I was nearly three-quarters done, when the remaining solutions seemed to fall into place all at once.  I found the clues quite good overall.

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Gemelo No. 8 – Plain

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This is my first foray into blogging a Gemelo puzzle. I have managed to solve Nos. 1-7, but I would agree with Andrew’s comment from last week, that the style of the clues is a little different from Azed–a style that I am still getting the hang of. This week’s grid is unusual for having six fully-checked three-letter solutions.

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Financial Times 18,156 by PETO

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I was sailing through today’s puzzle from Peto when I hit a brick wall of noncomprehension on the last four clues, which took me as long to solve and parse as all the rest put together. I think I have successfully explained everything in the end.

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