Never knowingly undersolved
A nice crossword from Hob today (what’s happening? no Dac: I wonder why), although I didn’t quite finish it, 24ac and 4dn defeating me. Oh well, I said, it’ll be all right when I do the blog since the answer will appear. It did, and it also showed me that I’d got 19dn wrong — in my opinion perfectly acceptably.
Definitions underlined and in maroon.
It’s been almost six months since we last blogged a Radian puzzle – and this was worth waiting for. We found there were one or two rather unusual words to cause some head-scratching, … Read more >>
I don’t know what happened to yesterday’s scheduled blogger and so apologies for the belated coverage of this puzzle. I didn’t solve this one so here is just an analysis of the published … Read more >>
Long time no see from the editor.
It’ll be interesting to hear how other solvers found this one. I certainly made very heavy work of it. The wordplay seemed incredibly difficult to tease out in places, and there was a … Read more >>
Phi on Friday as usual The top half of the grid has a lot of wordplay or entry references to parts of the body, ailments and cures but the bottom … Read more >>
This is quite extraordinary: if you ignore the Saturday Prize Puzzles you have to go back to last August before you find a Klingsor that hasn’t been blogged by me. He must be suspecting some collusion amongst the people who organise these things, and must be crying out for someone else. So far as I’m concerned, however, it’s fine: I’d happily blog a Klingsor every time, with a few of the others thrown in for good measure. He always gets it just right — hard enough but he always loses gracefully, after presenting us with some very nice clues.
Definitions underlined. I have settled on maroon for them in my past few blogs as this seems best, but if anyone thinks otherwise then please do say so.
What can we say? It’s the beginning of the month so it’s Dac again with another of his excellent puzzles with their trade-mark great surfaces. We found this fairly straightforward. We had not … Read more >>
You never quite know who you will have to cross cruciverbal swords with on a Tuesday, as the work of numerous compilers is featured on that day of the week. Today’s themed puzzled … Read more >>
Gosh, I found this hard going. Some of the parsings had me scratching my head for ages but I think I got them all in the end. I’ve not come across this compiler … Read more >>
Good Sunday cryptic stuff from Hypnos once again. Last one in was 6 down, where the wordplay took me a moment to spot, but raised a smile once I did. Across 1 MAHREZ … Read more >>
Scorpion has the honour(?) of being the first Saturday Crossword available to solve on the Independent online site in the same manner as the usual daily puzzles on the day it is published. … Read more >>
The last paper copy of the Independent – but not the last puzzle. And one of my favourite setters as the sun finally sets on the printed paper. If you don’t know already you … Read more >>
Well I can see that today is April Fool’s Day, a day on which there is not much point in reading the newspapers since all the writers will be vying with each other to find the most amusing non-story. …
We found the top half of this puzzle much easier than the bottom. This wasn’t helped by us entering DRAGOON for 30ac. Yes, we knew we couldn’t parse it but we thought … Read more >>