Enigmatic Variations

Typical!! One of my (two) New Year resolutions is to adopt the practice of giving the full clues in my EV blogs. And what happens? I get landed with a puzzle that has … Read more >>

After a few weeks of seasonal/festive-themed EVs, we are back to business with a ‘normal’ EV – but no less enyoyable for that! A fiendish looking preamble – with ALL answers entered ‘cyclically’ … Read more >>

We were told that twenty-five clues contained a superfluous letter or word that needed to be removed before solving and that these would give, in clue order, an abridged definition of a TRADITION. … Read more >>

So its Boxing day and the only one of the three (Inquisitor/Listener/EV) to be published this Christmas week. Sounds like a Christmas theme which promises to provide the solver with GOOD CHEER. Each … Read more >>

A basic 13×13 grid here with a couple of nicks in the outer edge. Clues are given in symmetrical pairs, and every clue has one of its letters moved to the perimeter. A … Read more >>

Cold comfort, indeed – a wonderfully themed EV for the weather at the time! The preamble seemed fairly complex – twenty answers entered ‘in a certain way’, most clues containing a misprint – … Read more >>

A tricky one this week, or could it just be that I’m out of practice? (You should take this with a grain of salt. You might find it cheesy. But then again, you … Read more >>

So not a misprint in sight this week – just seven undefined, but clued, answers to be determined, then find a cryptic observation hidden in the grid and then write the author under the … Read more >>

In my last blog, I suggested that very easy puzzles should have an ‘easy’ rating to attract solvers who would normally give the EV puzzle a wide berth. I think it worth adding … Read more >>

A fellow EV blogger recently mused on the ‘blogger’s nightmare’ of being allocated a puzzle he/she can’t get to the bottom of. Well, here’s an example (unless the penny drops some time between writing … Read more >>

I did not expect to be covering this puzzle and so I am writing this nearly two weeks after solving and my memory of the Sunday before last is now rather dim. I … Read more >>

So an impassable door this week, 23 misprints to spell out a quotation then find the quotation’s author and highlight AN IMPASSABLE DOOR. Chambers is defined as the only reference, so, logically, the quotation … Read more >>

The first line of a verse and a 6-letter word are to be identified and highlighted here with the help of four unclued entries. There has been the occasional discussion at the Crossword … Read more >>

 With ‘pencil recommended, at first’ and ‘upheaval’ threatened, I braced myself for some serious re-engineering of the grid post-solving…but in the end there was a relatively simple, but cleverly constructed, twist to the tale… … Read more >>

This brought back happy memories of the very first EV that I completed. That one also used this format (splitting the grid into quarters). It wasn’t that long ago, so if you’ve been … Read more >>