Independent

Independent 8,959 by Morph

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A nice, crossword from Morph today. I found it slightly on the hard side, though now that I’ve done the blog I can’t see why. The (possibly) CDs round the middle of the acrosses were a bit of a problem, but everything else seemed to fall into place well enough.

Some would make a very mild criticism of the answers in the grid: 18dn ends with the word OFF, as does 25ac. Possibly not the best: I did 18dn and then couldn’t believe that 25ac also ended with the same word, but there aren’t many possibilities for _ _ F.

Definitions in italics.

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Independent 8,957 / Knut

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Today’s cruciverbal challenge has been provided by Knut, a setter whose work I have only limited experience of. Perhaps due to that limited experience, I didn’t feel that I was really on Knut’s … Read more >>

Independent 8956/Raich

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A sound Monday puzzle in the usual Raich style.  Several that I found difficult to parse, and one I can’t parse at all.       Abbreviations cd  cryptic definition dd  double definition … Read more >>

Independent 8,954 by Phi

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Phi has not in my opinion shone quite so brightly this week as he usually does. It seems to me that several of the definitions, both of the answers and within the wordplay, are rather tenuous, although no doubt people will explain how I am missing things.

I took a long time to finish the NW corner; Rienzi was slow to appear, even though Phi gave us plenty of help by defining it as a German opera, which immediately cut out more than half of them. 12ac was apparently unsound, but more likely never properly understood, and the double definition at 8dn was also a problem. When I gave up and went to aids my Chambers Crossword Dictionary didn’t help: Bradford may have been better.

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