Guardian Genius

First thought – oh dear, it’s Enigmatist this month…oh, well, at least I have 4-5 weeks to solve and blog it… A strange looking grid, with two large areas of black squares – … Read more >>

Picaroon has set the March Guardian Genius puzzle       The preamble was short and clear – "Several clues are consistently incomplete" I deduced the theme fairly quickly when I solved 14 … Read more >>

“Six of the 11 clues marked * contain only wordplay, their solutions being 21. The solutions to the other five clues marked * should be entered in the grid 21 (Roman or otherwise), … Read more >>

The Instructions: In each clue the wordplay indicates an extra letter, not required for its solution. These extras letters in clue order spell out an instruction as to how a number of solutions … Read more >>

I found this very easy (for an Enigmatist!). Having read the instructions, it seemed logical to start with the down clues, which I did, and 1, 2, 3, 7, 11,17 and 28 went … Read more >>

‘Chandler’ is a new name to me, and not obviously present on this site or the inter-web generally, so either a debutant(e?) or yet another collaboration of existing setters… The preamble states that: … Read more >>

The Genius puzzle this month is set by Qaos       There was a fairly short preamble – Nine letter clashes between across and down solutions are to be resolved, using a … Read more >>

Not too much genius needed to solve this one – I found it not much harder than a typical jigsaw puzzle (and a lot easier than Maskarade’s Bank Holiday monster). The fact that … Read more >>

Well – this was a proper genius puzzle!! A mind-boggling set of instructions that not only had us wondering how and where to start, but once we were getting into the puzzle, how … Read more >>

A relatively easy Genius, or so I found, with plenty of simple entry clues peppered around the grid to enable a foothold to be gained. Given that 10ac was unclued, and a key … Read more >>

The preamble to Genius 166 by Picaroon states that: “Two across solutions taken together indicate something missing from all the other 14 across clues, either as the definition or as part of their … Read more >>

Vlad set a challenging but very enjoyable Genius puzzle this month.       The preamble told us that eight solutions (four being of two words) comprise 6 across 29, which is clued … Read more >>

I’m sure the idea of replacing an answer with its ‘pair’ has been done in the Genius series before, but it gives plenty of scope to the setter. Some of the pairings here … Read more >>