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!

Independent 7912 / Tees

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Tees regularly produces crosswords that have attractions for beginners, while also catering for the more experienced solvers.       This was a crossword with a good mix of clues, some with basic constructions, … Read more >>

Azed 2067 / 15 January 2012

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This was a fairly typical plain Azed where the parsing is clear after a little bit of thought.  I normally find the surfaces of Azed’s clues to be very smooth, but I did … Read more >>

Guardian 25,507 / Gordius

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I tend to associate Friday with the more challenging end of the Guardian puzzle spectrum, so I was slightly surprised to see a Gordius crossword when I logged onto the Guardian website this … Read more >>