duncanshiell's avatarduncanshiell

Born in 1948. I retired from full-time work in May 2007, after 37 years with Ordnance Survey and associated bodies and now have time to devote to crosswords, something not available for many years. Product of 17 years in the Scottish education system, but lived overseas or in southern England for virtually all of the time thereafter. I moved back to Scotland in 2010. Regular road runner and recently returned to orienteering and golf after a 35 year gap. Developed interested in cryptic crosswords in the mid 1960s (Scotsman, Sunday Express skeleton), but working overseas and then raising a family, meant dropping out of crossword solving for about 30 years. Now a regular solver of Times, Guardian, Independent, Inquisitor, Listener and Magpie crosswords. Reasonably regular finisher of the first four. Started blogging in late 2007. Any solving ability far outweighs any clueing ability. Krypton Factor contestant 1983; eliminated in the first round, but the obstacle course finish made good television!

Azed 2235

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Given that this puzzle was published on Easter Sunday I was expecting an Azed special, so I was slightly surprised to see just a plain Competition puzzle.       There was the … Read more >>

Independent 8888 / Phi

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There was one entry I haven’t come across before, but otherwise everything else covered reasonably common words or phrases.       Inevitably with Phi there was a theme.  Today we had MARVIN … Read more >>

Genius 141 / Vlad

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The preamble told us that in 11 clues the wordplay produces a letter surplus to the solution. In order, these 11 letters provide a cryptic definition for 10 other solutions, represented in their … Read more >>

Azed 2229

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This was a plain Azed puzzle with everything you would expect in such a puzzle       There is one clue – 16 across, for INTENSE, where I am not sure of … Read more >>