Guardian

An enjoyable and challenging Tuesday puzzle from Shed. Once you get the two longer answers, the rest is just clever enough to keep you interested, which is a good trick to carry off. … Read more >>

Audreus has picked up Rufus’s Monday gauntlet with panache: a straightforward puzzle as befits Monday but nothing cliched nor run-of-the-mill. In particular, I like her charades (e.g. 8D, 16A) and a couple of … Read more >>

Solving time: 10:36 The ‘same person’ referred to in the preamble is Ludwig van Beethoven: “E 1”, “O 1” and “N 1” refer cryptically to “Beethoven’s 3rd“, “6th” and “9th” symphonies (see 1dn), … Read more >>

Solving time: 45′ Nice (comic?) relief from yesterday’s Independent for which I’ve exonerated myself for not knowing Nigella Lawson (she’s probably never heard of me after all). Some clever &lits and overall a … Read more >>

Can’t really give a time for this – I breezed through the top half in my head between two tube stops, and thought it’d be a breeze, but got bogged down at the … Read more >>

Solving time: roughly 15 mins in total, although work intervened a few times. It’s the first time I’ve solved a Logodaedalus puzzle, so I didn’t know what to expect. This one seemed quite … Read more >>

Solving time: About 30 minutes, plus a later look to get the last three clues (asterisked); one mistake. After 10 minutes I think I had solved two and a half clues. Eventually I … Read more >>

I have found some of this week’s Guardian crosswords very challenging, and, given that I also had a Times blog to do today, was anxious that today’s would also be difficult. No such … Read more >>

Not an easy puzzle for me. Started off well and cracked the theme pretty quickly – but held up for a long time by the NE corner (got the PIGEON/pidgin homophone inverted). I … Read more >>

A relatively easy Araucaria today. There were few uncommon words, resolved by their word play, that I had to check just to make sure. As is the case with Araucaria there were one … Read more >>

Quite a hard one to get going with, though fell into place reasonably once I had the theme (with one exception, see below). But there are several whose wordplay I’m unable to explain. ACROSS: … Read more >>

Solving time approx 15 mins. Second blog of the day for me, luckily it’s quiet at work today as I’ve still got to do last Saturday’s Times yet on the other blog! Still, … Read more >>

Apologies to my fellow bloggers for letting the side down, but better late than never I suppose… I had hoped to get this posted before lunchtime on Friday, but work was far too … Read more >>

Solving time: 11:46 Amusing theme this week centred on 15ac involving several across answers (and 22dn), giving me an ideal excuse for a football rant. Steve McClaren wouldn’t even have been on my … Read more >>