Never knowingly undersolved
The Spoonerism puzzle is a format invented by Azed that crops up every year or so. There hasn’t been one under the exact title since number 2551 in May 2021, but the last … Read more >>
The actual construction of Azed clues is often fairly simple.
A plain puzzle that raised my eyebrows in a couple of places.
We have a standard puzzle from Azed, no competition clues and no quirky cluing devices. That said, I reckoned there were more new words for me than in the majority … Read more >>
The four long clues around the perimeter of the grid provided immediate lift-off for the solution of this week’s Azed.
A fairly standard Azed completition puzzle.
Another high-quality puzzle to exercise our Sunday brains, though I do have a query about 4 down. Thanks to Azed. Across 1 BRITPOP Trip freely with disco music around – such as … Read more >>
Most of this was quite routine and the usual satisfactory product, but one or two gave me a lot of trouble. One was a complete mystery until I looked up one of the words, which was new to me. I’m still unsure about one of the others and would welcome explanations, since mine is a bit tenuous.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagrams shown (like this)* or *(like this), depending on where the indicator (in italics) is.
A 13 x 11 grid this week.
Azed gives us a plain competition puzzle this week where solvers are asked to write a clue for the entry at 5 down. This was a typical Azed crossword with … Read more >>
Assuming that I have parsed everything correctly, I found this Azed less daunting than some of the recent offerings.
A plain puzzle from Azed.
A slightly unusual grid, with 90-degree symmetry, and a large cross of bars in the centre that might have tended to break the puzzle into isolated corners, but Azed has avoided this with … Read more >>
How complicated this all is. It took me ages. I drew the grid on a piece of squared paper and armed myself with a pencil, not the usual pen, then started by solving as many of the clues as possible. Since I got two of the ten-letter answers I took a punt and pencilled them in at right angles to each other — there was a letter that fit both words where they crossed. Then I tentatively added the answers that I had and went on until things went wrong. For the second time I was lucky and the only wrong positioning quickly led to a dead end, and I could retrace my steps. I went on and on and to my surprise it all worked out OK, although I was very fortunate: similar such things have in the past led me to start all over again.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
A more than usually tricky puzzle from Azed this week.