Guardian

Across 1 TESTAMENT: the male organ is presumably STAMEN but I can’t get offensive from TET 9 THE BEGGARS OPERA: anagram of A BERG’S GREAT HOPE 10 ROUT: gROUT firing German (g) 14 … Read more >>

Solving time: 10 mins, one missing (13dn), one wrong (18ac) I love rhyming slang but was caught out today by one I didn’t know. 18ac is possibly my favourite clue so far this … Read more >>

I ended up feeling slightly deflated by this puzzle. There were a couple of clues which I really liked, and several that I thought were a bit pedestrian. Maybe it was me that … Read more >>

Across 1 JETSAM: SAM (American) after JET 8 ITCHIER: anagram of RICH TEa + I; you need to replace the “a” with an “i” (one for a) 9 HACKSAW: HACK (reporter) + SAW … Read more >>

Quite straightforward, with a pleasing lack of green dolphins (see yesterday’s puzzle) ACROSS 1 PERI-PAT(h)ETIC : “peri” is a new one on me, but wiki has a good entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peri 9 E-ROSIV-E : … Read more >>

Well, according to my local clock it’s still today Tuesday. So by the letter of the law, this isn’t late. I like Orlando’s clean Ximenean sensibility which means precise, albeit sometimes surprising clues. … Read more >>

One of Rufus’s easier offerings for the most part, with some real beginners’ clues. Look at the first 4 across clues – you have easy examples of the 4 basic clue types: anagram, … Read more >>

Solving time: About 30 mins; two missing, one wrong. I made an absolute pig’s ear of this puzzle. After a slow start I unravelled most of it, but with some very dull moments … Read more >>

Solving time – 17:05 This started out fairly straightforward and I made good progress, thinking I was going to finish inside 10 minutes for a while. Then I got stuck in two places, … Read more >>

Too many cryptic definitions for my taste. The answers I’ve not blogged are probably CDs. Quantum’s best clues here are the short simple clues rather than the CDs. * = anagram < = … Read more >>

A toughie for my first blog – I’ll be busy most of the day so I’m posting this early. I’ve filled in the grid and everything looks more or less right, but I’m … Read more >>

I don’t have a lot of time this morning, so it was convenient that I got most of this quite quickly. Lots of long solutions, with lots of falling, dropping and coming to … Read more >>

Too many cryptic definitions (albeit one or two are rather good) and anagrams. Which means this was a fairly typical Rufus of a Monday morning. Across 9 MO,HAWK – nice clue. Brit docs … Read more >>

Solving time: 18 mins Appropriately for the date, this puzzle (and especially its perimeter) was themed around Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog from the borough of Punxsutawney in Pennsylvania which supposedly predicts the next … Read more >>

I’m putting this short post in place to carry the chat requested by others elsewhere. I, too, would like explanations for a few answers here. I’ll remove this post on request. [Additions made … Read more >>