Guardian Genius

Six months have passed, so it must be my turn to blog a Guardian Genius again.   I have solved one or two Lavatch puzzles in The Listener so I knew this would … Read more >>

The special instructions were quite clear, but it took a few readings, and a few answers, beofre I fully got the sense of them. Apart from that, this puzzle turned out less daunting … Read more >>

I found this easier than some recent Genius puzzles. There was only one obscure word and most of the clues were fairly straightforward. The requirement here was to identify how the answers to … Read more >>

This month’s theme involved removing words from a number of across clues and then putting anagrams of them in some of the down clues. Two further unclued entries were to be found by … Read more >>

We found it tough to get going with this puzzle, but once we’d got the theme of 7-letter characters from Shakespeare, and, I’m afraid to say, resorted to using Wikipedia’s lists from A … Read more >>

An entertaining puzzle from Lavatch — and not too difficult once you spotted what was happening. Where a clash occurred, you needed to 1a,25 — use the letter alphabetically half-way between the two … Read more >>

It’s nearly a year since I blogged a Genius and it clearly hasn’t got any easier.  This one took me an age to get into, but eventually I got a chink of light … Read more >>

I struggled with this puzzle when I first tried it, though getting enough down answers to guess that they all had one or more Bs missing. Then I left it for a couple … Read more >>

Oops! I should have assigned this for blogging, but have been somewhat preoccupied. So here’s a very quick, last-minute attempt at a blog. The deadline was orginally given as 6 February, but the … Read more >>

I have now published the blog — see above.

As Geniuses go, this was on the easy side — the preamble was explicit about what needed to be done, and the clues were pretty straightforward. For those who missed the preamble, which … Read more >>

Four symphonies with nicknames provide the theme for this puzzle: the undefined anagrams lead to the composer (with a missing letter) and the nickname. The “clue of sorts” given by the missing letter … Read more >>

I found this extremely tough, unlike some of the earlier offerings in the Genius series. I still have a problem explaining a few of the clues. The main difficulty was simply the obscurity … Read more >>

This felt a little like a puzzle designed to test out a thematic entry technique. The clues were good, and the process of making new words by moving one letter produced some intriguing results and … Read more >>

A tough challenge from Paul that took me several sessions to complete, though looking back at it now there’s not much that seems particularly obscure or difficult. The crucial 8dn was actually one … Read more >>