Enigmatic Variations

A nice short preamble…only 24 clues…this should be a doddle! But hang on, what is going on with the grid? No bars, no grid numbers, except 1-12 along the ‘axes’. No clue enumerations … Read more >>

All occurrences of a letter to be removed from all down answers; Five across answers to be jumbled and a message derived from the remainder. Not finished there – the message explains how to … Read more >>

This week, a setter who was new to EV, although there have been a couple of recent Magpie puzzles from Nudnix. The preamble seemed almost innocuous… no missing/extra letters, misprints, spoonerisms or other … Read more >>

DEFINITION ticks several boxes in the list of classic EV devices – misprints in definitions giving some thematic material (a song title and part of a line from it) followed by the removal of … Read more >>

The pre Christmas EV is a joke themed puzzle from a new setter (or was it a collaboration?). Can the jokes be as bad as a real cracker jokes? If so what about … Read more >>

First of all, apologies for not alerting fellow EV solvers to the early entry date for this puzzle. Although I saw that mc had put up a placeholder last week, I didn’t think … Read more >>

A fairly complex preamble for RESURRECTION MAN, with clashing letters in seven cells representing a ‘dissected body’, thirty-six clues containing redundant word whose first letters spell out further useful information and an instruction, … Read more >>

Ten clues are film titles which can be transformed with the addition of a single word. The across clues have an additional letter in the wordplay which spells out another film title with … Read more >>

Raffles is a new setter to me, although I see he has had a couple of Magpie puzzles. Here every across clue needs treatment; most need partial treatment, three need treatment in their … Read more >>

The preamble for PARADOX tells us:  “In clue order, the second or fifth letters of single extra words in 15 clues give a PARADOX that is epitomised by one of the unclued entries. … Read more >>

Some too short answers (half of which contain a misprint in the definition) and all the other clues have a misprint in the definition. How light an extension will this prove to be? … Read more >>