Independent

Time was a Tuesday blogger could rest assured that he’d be in for a relatively gentle Virgilius every other week, but with the master of the themed puzzle on a break, the overall … Read more >>

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism An enjoyable puzzled themed on American TV series. How you got on probably depended on how many of the series you’d heard of. I … Read more >>

A couple of unfamiliar words meant we couldn’t quite finish this unaided. Still, good to learn some new bits of vocab, and to remember ‘eclogue’, which was long forgotten from A-Level classical civ … Read more >>

After drawing two Saturday Anax puzzles in a row, including one of which I barely managed half, I’ll admit to being a little relieved to see Radian appear this week. Radian has consistently … Read more >>

Usual Phi goodness. As per usual with Phi there’s a composer. Doubt there’s much to trouble moderately experienced solvers today although 7d is an unknown phrase to me. Across 7 San Andreas Fault … Read more >>

I tend to enjoy Tees’ puzzles these days, but I struggled a bit with some of this one, so it’ll be interesting to hear how other folks got on. Spotting the Nina helped: … Read more >>

Delighted to make an occasional report on a weekday Indie, and to tackle a Dac puzzle well up to the usual standard. It’s not difficult but there’s lots to like. Obviously there’s the … Read more >>

I always fear crosswords by Scorpion, expecting them to be impossibly hard. However, this one was perfectly all right, several nice clues, one I didn’t and still don’t understand, but that’s only usual. To … Read more >>

Quite a tough and enjoyable puzzle from Mordred, some quite easy clues to start with but then it got much harder with the lower half of the grid especially quite difficult.    Solving time, … Read more >>

The usual collection from Quixote here, with the three long answers all anagrams, as often seems to be the case. 14 and 18 down were both new words to us. ACROSS 5. VEGETABLE … Read more >>

Punk (Paul really) is promised at a gathering in a few weeks: Nov 30: Secrets of the setters. In this crossword I felt he did not push the boundaries of his “libertarian” tag. … Read more >>

Another excellent puzzle from Phi. I seemed to get through this fairly swiftly, despite a few unfamiliar terms. One or two in the SW corner held me up a little though. *=anag, []=dropped, … Read more >>

Bannsider today, not sure I’ve seen him other than Saturday before. If there are any Nina type things I’ve completely missed it. Pretty tough I thought. There’s one I can’t see at all … Read more >>

One runs out of words of praise for Dac’s crosswords: as always this is full of smooth clues with elegant surfaces.  Often they need no explanation after the answers have been broken into their … Read more >>

Looking back over the year, this seems to be only the 4th Math puzzle we’ve had in 2010. If last year’s stats are anything to go by, we should be due two more … Read more >>