Inquisitor

A new Setter! I haven’t come across Rasputin before, and a very tricky crossword it was too! There was an error in the rubric, which was a bad start, but it was pretty … Read more >>

The preamble told us that just over half of the clues contain a superfluous word.  The first letters of these, in clue order, spell out a tribute.  The subject of this, its creators … Read more >>

A bit more difficult than some recent puzzles … not made easier by my going away for a weekend’s walking with no Chambers and only a rather dated Collins that I found in … Read more >>

With apologies to Kea, I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle 🙁 but I’ll try not to let it influence my blog too much. The preamble tells us that we’re looking … Read more >>

I found this offering by Loda pretty tricky. Due to my lack of knowledge of statistics and statistical modelling, the clue in the title utterly passed me by, and I had completed the … Read more >>

The preamble stated that the puzzle is based on of Phi’s favourite poems.  The poem features a recurrent phrase, which explains the entry of one normally clued answser.  The phrase is connected in … Read more >>

Raich is averaging about three Inquisitors a year since his first appearance in mid-2008, and all pretty decent ones in my opinion. (And he notched up his third Listener just the weekend before, … Read more >>

A nice easy preamble for a change. We’re told that six entries are clued without definition and all the other clues generate an extra letter. The extra letters generate a “line”, which identifies … Read more >>

I started this blog before having solved the puzzle element of this week’s offering by Ikela, so we’ll start with the clued elements. The rubric told us that wordplay in all but six … Read more >>

Ifor is a new compiler for the Inquisitor but he has had four crosswords published in The Magpie and one published in the Telegraph Enigmatic Variations series, all in the last two years.  I … Read more >>

With hindsight, quite a tame one from Phi.  A number of answers, with a common feature, are entered in an unusual manner, implying a numerical value for a letter of the alphabet. With … Read more >>

Ah, Schadenfreude, probably my favourite Inquisitor compiler!  I tend to find the clues seem very hard on first or second reading but on third or fourth (or fifth, etc.) reading, they start to reveal all. We’re told … Read more >>

Stunning puzzle with lots of elements from Lato. First the rubric: long and complex but, once understood, entirly fair and correct. We had eight clues with two consecutive redundant words which clued “pairs”. … Read more >>

The preamble stated that the first words of a traditional verse are spelled out by single extra letters generated by the wordplay in each down clue, in order.  The perimeter (clockwise, in which … Read more >>

What a great puzzle. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d take my hat off to Charybdis! The preamble is very confusing. Firstly we’re told that a 5-letter thematic character has to be found in … Read more >>