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 2175

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Having had a Competition Puzzle from Azed last week it was likely that this puzzle would be a standard one.  That is how it turned out.       The wordplay in this … Read more >>

Independent 8520 / Scorpion

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Scorpion is a regular monthly contributor to the weekday Independents and also an occasional contributor to the Saturday Prize Puzzle series.       With the word ‘capital’ appearing in every across clue … Read more >>

Azed 2169

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This was the final Azed puzzle of 2013 and was a standard plain puzzle comprising elegant cluing for a range of well known and obscure words, all of which can be found in … Read more >>