Guardian

 …. hardly ! It’s an Araucaria after all. Interim version of the solutions – feel free to help me out with the left side of the puzzle – managed to crack the RHS … Read more >>

I got about half-way through before I spotted this puzzle’s usp – every clue refers to horses, except for 18 down whose answer contains the word. This means some ingenious and intricate wordplay, … Read more >>

Greetings and apologies for the delay. While in hospital recently I managed to have a serious problem with my laptop which meant that my PC Doctor had to reformat the hard disk and … Read more >>

Solving time: 14:58 Another well-constructed alphabetical jigsaw from Araucaria. When I solved his last one I decided afterwards that I should have tried to fit answers into the grid more quickly, so I … Read more >>

Not having been lucky enough to get a crossword to solve for a while I was slightly disappointed that this one was so undemanding. I got through it in under 8 minutes. Still … Read more >>

A good puzzle to learn a few new words via clear wordplay (e.g. SATINY, ASGARD, COLUMBA). One unusual river (AMUR) and an unfamiliar actress (ANNA NEAGLE) and a couple of other more familiar … Read more >>

Apologies if you checked in earlier – a work crisis of Biblical proportions had wiped out my leisure time and my solution was sparse. Across  12 KENTISH = (THESKIN)* 16 A-TT-OR-NEY GENERAL – … Read more >>

A gentle start to the week as ever. Most of the clues are pretty straightforward, so I’ve only given a few explanations – more can be supplied on request. Across: 1. GRAFTS. Double … Read more >>

Solving time: 17:58 About the last 10 minutes were spent on two pairs: 16ac/18dn and 19ac/20dn. The first I sorted out once I accepted that 16ac was an &lit (and realised that 24ac … Read more >>

ACROSS: 4. JAM PAN. A guess now confirmed – it’s a kind of sedan chair. 9. BRIE(f). More familiar as a cheese than a place. 11. STATIN (patients* – pe). Complicated wordplay here, … Read more >>

A pretty straightforward daily cryptic, though you did need to know a few single-letter and two-letter abbreviations (like three ‘meanings’ of D). There were several obvious, as it seemed to me, anagrams; if … Read more >>

A very pleasant and reasonably humane puzzle from Paul. The best strategy with his puzzles I find is to pick off the rare easy ones, hope they give you letters for the multi-word solutions he … Read more >>

I see that a lot of you took advantage of the chance to comment on this beforehand, so I’m glad I left the placeholder message this morning. As it turned out, I was … Read more >>

I felt this was Rufus at his worst to be honest. There were too many long anagrams and too many unconvincing cryptic defs (yes, I realize this judgement is in the eye of … Read more >>

Solving time: 25 mins, one missing (18dn) This puzzle was largely a tribute to Enid Blyton who would have been 110 this year (see 24ac). The bottom half of the puzzle fell out … Read more >>