Guardian

I was at a beer-tasting event last night, so was hoping for an easy puzzle today – no such luck! I groaned when I saw it was Araucaria, but after looking over the … Read more >>

Apologies for the lateness of this entry, but I had technical problems earlier today, and have since had to sit through a mind-numbing Property Strategy meeting for a couple of hours.  The delay … Read more >>

Solving time: 16:49.26 I usually don’t time myself down to the split-second but I have a new desktop timer gadget thingy, with hundredths of a second which will be useful at the next … Read more >>

Solving time: about 14 mins + a bit of guesswork on 1dn, which I got wrong. The three starred clues, of which two were fairly straightforward despite being clued without definition, led to … Read more >>

Not quite sure how to summarise this puzzle. It was fairly easy, even if some of the references and definitions are not immediately obvious, and, for the most part, the clues made sense. … Read more >>

Solving time: 55’ Humbling. Stared at this for 5 minutes before DRESDEN dropped. The football “club” theme came to mind after another 5 minutes of frustration. At first I thought Premier League but … Read more >>

For a while I thought I was going to go sub 5 minutes on this puzzle, but in the end there’s one left that I can’t get. I got the two 15-letter downs … Read more >>

There’s usually (always?)  a theme from Breandan, and a rather clever one in this case. The six-letter downs in top left and bottom right are all three letter words doubled, and the eight-letter pairs … Read more >>

As usual with Rufus cryptic definitions abound. There are no fewer than 6 straight CDs in this puzzle with a fair number of punning definitions playing a part in other clues. I’m not … Read more >>

Solving time: 10 minutes, one mistake (7 dn). This felt a cavalier solve, with numerous across clues to which I didn’t look closely at the wordplay while solving (e.g. 1, 11, 14, 18, … Read more >>

I haven’t reviewed a Friday Guardian before and I admit that upon opening the paper and seeing Logodaedalus I did consider reviewing the excellent Phi puzzle in the Independent and simply pretending I’d … Read more >>

A preliminary scan through the clues had me worried, as I only got a couple on first reading. It eventually took me at least 30 minutes, probably longer, to complete this, and I … Read more >>

Solving time: 35’ A feeling of deja-vu crept over as I solved yet again a long anagram for AT THE DROP OF A HAT (in yesterday’s Times as well). I found the across … Read more >>

Apologies for late posting – I’ve been for lunch with the ‘gruntlings’, a group of contestants in the Azed monthly clue-writing comp who meet the week after to compare notes, or just eat, … Read more >>

Another very easy Monday puzzle from Rufus, although with a better mix of clue types than the last time I blogged one of his puzzles. Still, most of the answers are so obvious … Read more >>