Enigmatic Variations

As seems usual for me these days the preamble turned out to be harder to follow than the puzzle. In the end it was a fairly straightforward puzzle once the penny had dropped. … Read more >>

Completing this puzzle was not helped by the enumeration being incorrect in 13a and 19a and, unless I have got something seriously wrong, by the preamble referring to “a famous artist or performer” … Read more >>

Luckily for me, a fairly straightforward offering from Kcit this week. I got back from golfing hols on Sunday, and everything has bunched up nicely, including some crosswords that need solving and blogging … Read more >>

The preamble to this puzzle confused me at first: the anagram or homonym of the required word. The answer? Indicated? Unindicated? Either way what was the rest of the clue doing? After over-analysing … Read more >>

A rather tough offering from Lato this week with several steps needed before the grid could be completed. At the end of the initial session I had all the normal answers entered, along … Read more >>

A quick comment that I’m glad I didn’t have last weeks blog, What You’ve Got to Do by Syd Lexis; it looks like I made a complete Horlicks of the final step! Luckily, … Read more >>

With the preamble stating that there were 5 normal clues and 5 lines breaking up two misspelt words in the quotation there was clearly a connection. I found the clues easy enough (except … Read more >>

A reasonably quick solve for this one, then a lot of head scratching trying to parse 17d and 26d. This was greatly helped once I had realised the theme and could complete the … Read more >>

A nice short preamble: five answers have one letter added or removed and then arranged for entry. The lengths for these clues refer to the answer, rather than entry, lengths, so they are … Read more >>

The preamble made this sound more complicated that it turned out to be. Once a few answers were in the puzzle fell in to place quickly and the straight definitions were mostly guessable … Read more >>

In the asterisked clues the wordplay for the grid entry gave a Spoonerism of the answer suggested by the definition. The normal clues were for the most part (too) easy, though some (presumably) … Read more >>

A puzzle from one of my favourite setters (with another one from him in this week’s Listener as well). A quick read of the preamble and ‘Oh my giddy aunt’!! What on earth … Read more >>

A few misprinted letters didn’t really tell me anything but getting 5dn and a couple of the potentially intersecting across answers helped. I guessed that some squares would be left blank and looking … Read more >>

This was a relatively straightforward puzzle with an easy to find theme since it was clearly indicated by the extra letters in the wordplay and the ‘three components’ in ‘appropriate relative positions’ could … Read more >>

Nineteen normal clues, with the rest needing one or two added or subtracted letters; that sounded a bit tricky. It proved to be a tougher puzzle than most EVs recently. The NE corner … Read more >>