Guardian

A nice monday puzzle to start off the week. Across 1. OWN GOAL.  OWN + GOAL.  Own can mean ‘own up’. 5. ILLICIT. IL + LI + C + IT.  Lots of roman … Read more >>

Something of a treat for me today, to blog an Araucaria prize puzzle [entertaining, as ever] in Rightback’s absence. I can’t even dream of approaching his prodigious solving time – but then I … Read more >>

Not having a lot of time this morning I was happy that this was rather straightforward. A few clues held me back, 17ac in particular. Also not entirely sure about 22ac. Across 9 … Read more >>

This was quite a tough puzzle to blog, with lots of intricate wordplay. However, as always with Paul’s excellent puzzles, this was very enteratining and inventive. I’m not quite sure about 2 down, … Read more >>

I’d like to dedicate this blog to the beginners who sometimes comment about their dismay at how easy us bloggers say certain puzzles are. This one is, on paper, not too bad but … Read more >>

dd = double definition cd = cryptic definition rev = reversed or reversal ins = insertion cha = charade ha = hidden answer *(fodder) = anagram What a delightful offering from The Master … Read more >>

A surprise not to have Rufus this morning but I remember that, a while ago, Andrew came up with the lovely description of Rover as ‘Rufus-lite’. Some very easy anagrams and several cryptic … Read more >>

Solving time: 13:44 This seemed about average difficulty for Paul, though I think I made heavy weather of it. As always there are some extremely inventive clues, and the lack of hyperlinks in … Read more >>

As ever, a very enjoyable puzzle from Pasquale. There were quite a few here where I had to guess that a word existed and then look it up (CERE, MANA, PICKABACK), but the … Read more >>

A really enjoyable grid today, with a couple of royal references.  There are some very clever clues in here, with distinctively misleading surfaces –  I nearly stood up to applaud 20dn, it was … Read more >>

I got off to a good start with this one by getting 1/8ac straight away, but struggled later on. There are quite a few clues that I can’t fully explain: as I’ve run … Read more >>

Another quick post, I’m afraid – I hope there aren’t too many mistakes here. (I had a lot of trouble with this, which is pretty typical of my experience of Gordius’s puzzles.) Across … Read more >>

  A particularly gentle, I thought, start to the week from Rufus, with the typical sprinkling of cryptic and double definitions, but more than the usual number of simple charades. Across 1   PARAMOUNT: … Read more >>

Solving time: 20:43 Another impressive ‘Araubetical’ with answers beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Most of the difficulty for me came from getting started on the grid rather than the clues per … Read more >>