kenmac

The perimeter is clued thematically while the numbered clues (to the remainder of the grid) have a redundant letter in the wordplay, which spells out a message indicating what to do with the … Read more >>

What rotten luck, to have to blog a reasonably difficult Inquisitor in a week where I had to drive to both Galway and Dublin for “all day” appointments.  When I finally got time … Read more >>

With apologies to Kea, I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle 🙁 but I’ll try not to let it influence my blog too much. The preamble tells us that we’re looking … Read more >>

A nice easy preamble for a change. We’re told that six entries are clued without definition and all the other clues generate an extra letter. The extra letters generate a “line”, which identifies … Read more >>

Ah, Schadenfreude, probably my favourite Inquisitor compiler!  I tend to find the clues seem very hard on first or second reading but on third or fourth (or fifth, etc.) reading, they start to reveal all. We’re told … Read more >>

What a great puzzle. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d take my hat off to Charybdis! The preamble is very confusing. Firstly we’re told that a 5-letter thematic character has to be found in … Read more >>

This puzzle contained a device I’d never seen before, which, at first glance looked like it was going to prove troublesome. In the end, however, it was fairly easy-going. Each entry had to rebound off … Read more >>

Inquisitor 1146 Another fairly complex preamble. In essence it says that twelve entries are not clued in the conventional way. Four of them are clued by single extra words in four clues. Further, … Read more >>

The preamble tells us that redundancies have been made in 12 entries and their clues. My first thought was that we were probably looking for various standard crossword “workers” (bee, hand, ant, man, … Read more >>

This puzzle has an interesting preamble – “a significant minority of clues contain a misprint …” First thought is “What on Earth does that mean?” It could be anywhere between 1 and 16 … Read more >>

Probably my quickest Inquisitor ever, I had it done-and-dusted in less than an hour. Every clue contained an extra word, I must admit that I usually find those types of clues a tad … Read more >>

Pretty easy going at first. I had the grid (with the exception of the four thematics) filled in about an hour. The thematics, however, proved a little troublesome until the penny dropped. The … Read more >>

Well, this one put up a fight but I won through in the end. I guess it must have taken me about 5 hours over about 4 days. The title and preamble didn’t … Read more >>

Once a year, on average, two like-minded friends (I and A) and myself (K) meet for an IKA weekend of crosswords and beer. This year we chose to meet in my home town, … Read more >>

When I learned that The Inquisitor numbers were changing to what they would have been if they had gone sequentially from 1, I wondered if the editor had something up his sleeve for … Read more >>