Guardian

Many congratulations to Rufus on this his 1,000th puzzle! Across 1 THEBES: almost THE BES(t) 5 SET ASIDE: SEASIDE around T (end of augus(T)) 9 DEMERARA: anagram of RARE and MADE 10 OTTAWA: … Read more >>

Solving time: 14 mins I don’t think I’ve ever finished a crossword having understood so few of the solutions! It took me at least as long again to fathom them all out. As … Read more >>

A quite quick second appearance  for  Bonxie this year,  considering we had only four of his / her puzzles last year [thanks, Andrew!]. There was nothing too taxing – some ingenious clues and … Read more >>

Quite a tough one from Paul, with some characteristic humour. I don’t fully understand 1 across, and I have some niggles about a couple of other clues.           Across … Read more >>

Maybe it’s the time of night, but I found this quite a slow solve for a Quantum and got held up in a few places despite the long clues falling early. A few … Read more >>

A mixed bag from Gordius. Some excellent clues, somewhat spoiled by a couple of mediocre ones. ACROSS 1 SEPTIC TANKS Ins of TANK (reservoir) in *(cesspit) Nice surface 9 NOISOME Ins of OM … Read more >>

A fun puzzle from Rufus – I had a bit of trouble with the bottom-left corner (21a and 24a) but otherwise this was pretty easy and satisfying to solve. Across 1. ORCHESTRA OR … Read more >>

I thought it would be interesting put together some statistics about how many puzzles there were from each Guardian setter in 2009, and how many comments the blogs have attracted on this site. … Read more >>

Solving time: 35 mins, 3 mistakes (ZEND, YAWL and COMPRADOR). This was a tough and enjoyable ‘Araubetical’ with a well-constructed grid and about the right amount of obscurity for a prize puzzle. I … Read more >>

Another very tricky puzzle to finish off the week. The many cross-references and multiple-entry answers made it hard to get started, and even after getting some of the key answers it didn’t get … Read more >>

We get roughly a puzzle a month from Brummie in the Guardian, so I think I end up doing more of his Private Eye puzzles (as Cyclops) overall and it’s good fortune to … Read more >>

An intricately crafted puzzle mini-themed on a subject, something well before my time. Thank goodness for Wikipedia that came to my rescue. Paul, to his credit, clued the themal words most fairly, thereby … Read more >>

It’s Monday. A classic Rufus puzzle. No further preamble necessary. Across 1   CRUMBS: cryptic definition: ‘Crumbs’ and Crikey’ were two favourite expressions of Billy Bunter, the ‘Fat Owl of the Remove’, in the … Read more >>