Guardian

A remarkable grid with four 15 letter clues going down and lots of inventive and entertaining cluing… Across 8. RIBOSOME RIE (essentially bRIEf) covering BOSOM (“doing what bra does”). Ribosomes are organelles found … Read more >>

We seem to be without a Guardian blog today so here is a breakdown of the wordplay. I’ll leave it to regular Guardian solvers to provide comments on the clues. . . Across … Read more >>

Quite a gentle one today after Brendan’s toughie on Monday, and maybe it suffers in comparison to Paul’s Beatlefest yesterday, but some nice clues here, though as ever I have a couple of … Read more >>

dd = double definition cd = cryptic definition rev = reversed or reversal ins = insertion cha = charade ha = hidden answer *(fodder) = anagram What a nostalgic trip down memory lane … Read more >>

Quite tricky for a Monday, in my opinion.  A minor theme of -ee suffixes (9A, 12A, 30A, 17D, 18D) and the little square of three-letter words around the centre was quite interesting. Lots … Read more >>

Solving time: 12:56 I probably found this a little easier than usual for Araucaria, until I came to the last three clues (EMBRYO, MULCT and STEEL [BLUE]) which took a fair chunk of … Read more >>

An interesting grid, dominated by four long Down clues.  I managed most of it ok but came unstuck on 6D due to mis-marking it as 6,9 instead of 5,10.  A lot of the … Read more >>

As usual with Gordius’s puzzles, I found this one rather difficult, so there are quite a few questions below. It was very enjoyable, but something of a guilty pleasure considering the amount of … Read more >>

Some great clues here. Very entertaining but not easy. Across 1 CYBORG: CrY (losing R) + BORG (tennis player) 4,23 CANDLELIGHT: CAN + L (last letter of girL) in DELIGHT 9 TABU: TAB … Read more >>

dd = double definition cd = cryptic definition rev = reversed or reversal ins = insertion cha = charade ha = hidden answer *(fodder) = anagram Quite an enjoyable puzzle with some varied … Read more >>

No difficulties here, apart from the ones I made for myself by initially guessing SUBSTITUTE for 3dn. A nice gentle start to the week from Rufus. Key: dd = double definition cd = … Read more >>

Solving time: 9:51, with a whopping three mistakes (12ac, 26ac and 3dn). Very much 1-0 to the setter – I fell headlong into a beautifully-laid trap at 12ac (and shot myself in the … Read more >>

I’m a bit pushed for time this morning so apologies for the rather brief comments. A mixed bag today, I thought – nothing terribly exciting, and a few cryptic definitions that I thought … Read more >>

An interesting theme today, 23A is quite correct!  It took me longer than I expected, mainly because the theme psyched me out a bit! * = anagram “” = homophone dd = double … Read more >>

Apologies for the late posting today – I’m stuck on a train, so internet access is a bit frustrating, and I’m afraid that as a result some of these explanations aren’t as well … Read more >>