Never knowingly undersolved
One of Dac’s typically smoothly-constructed crosswords. The usual good clues and nothing to take any sort of exception to. I found most of this quite easy and then came to a halt on the quartet of 1ac, 9ac, 1dn. 3dn, failing to see the equivalence of a card game to cards, expecting the church bell’s noise to be a ring, thinking the female would be either f or a girl’s name, and expecting a bit of dope to be d.
Definitions in maroon, underlined.
This is Quaiteaux’ 2nd puzzle this year, a welcome return after a gap of eighteen months or so from her previous offerings. We think Quaiteaux must be from the same era as … Read more >>
Roses are red tories are blue…
Another lazy Sunday lunch type puzzle, in the old tradition of the IoS. Thank you Raich.
I had the pleasure of blogging Maize’s (debut?) Independent 9392 back in November last year, which turned out to be a quadruple pangram! What could be in store for us this time?… …well, in the … Read more >>
A typical Phi puzzle this Friday The grid looked a little bit odd with lots of unchecked letters in some of the acrosses so that hinted at a message or … Read more >>
This pleasant crossword from Crosophile took me slightly longer than usual. No good reason for this though, since it all seems to be pretty sound now the challenge is over.
Definitions in maroon, underlined.
This is the first Gila puzzle we have blogged, although we have enjoyed all the previous offerings, including the Inquisitors. This was an interesting puzzle, but we have a couple of queries on … Read more >>
Radian has provided today’s cruciverbal challenge, the first of his puzzles that I have blogged in a while. Crime and punishment is the theme that runs through this puzzle, with references (both direct … Read more >>
An enjoyable outing from Vigo of moderate difficulty.
A few unfamiliar bits and bobs to get to grips with this week. All very fairly clued though, so I think everything was manageable in the end. Across 1 STAR Expression of annoyance … Read more >>
This turned out to be an easier solve than we had expected, given Anax’s reputation, and the fact that it’s a Saturday puzzle. We were however held up by a few unusual words … Read more >>
This seemed to be a much harder Phi than usual. Once done it all seemed simple enough, as witness the simple parsing of almost all the answers. But in many cases the ‘synonyms’ that we had to find in the wordplay were not at all obvious. All perfectly fair, though.
The difficulty also was exacerbated by the large number of clues that required some sort of subtraction; at a quick count I found seven of them.
This is Anglio’s 9th Indy puzzle and the fourth of his that we’ve blogged. As with his previous offerings, there are excellent surfaces, crafty definitions and plenty of misdirections. The grid was … Read more >>
Today has brought a rare Wednesday outing for Punk, and an even rarer occasion for me to blog a puzzle by one of my favourite setters. I found this one not that difficult … Read more >>