Never knowingly undersolved
Several clues where I’m not 100% sure, and one that at the time of writing quite defeats me. However, I’m sure that all will be explained.
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
Azed’s change to appearing only monthly and the vagaries of the schedule mean that I haven’t blogged one of his puzzles since January, so I feel rather out of practice. Quite a lot of unfamiliar in this one, I thought, but all fairly clued as ever, though there seems to be an error in 9 down, unless I’m misunderstanding (quite possible, of course). Thanks to Azed.
It is starting to feel like a privilege to have an Azed land on my rotation.
It’s the first Sunday of the month, so it’s Azed’s turn to provide our weekly barred puzzle.
A medium-difficulty crossword from Azed. There seemed to me to be lots of answers where the parsing involves an anagram, but now I count them it’s not so excessive (25%).
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*
Not a typical Azed plain this week.
How splendid to blog another Azed.
Bridgesong has the honour of blogging the last Azed monthly competition puzzle. Please take a moment to read his review in the following blog:
This is the first Azed puzzle to appear since the announcement last week of his retirement from the monthly clue-writing competition.
An unusual Christmas competition, in that there is nothing Christmassy about it.
I feel privileged to have received an Azed puzzle for my turn at this blog.
This Observer barred puzzle was published on the first Sunday of November, so under the new arrangements it is set by Azed as a plain competition offering.
A slightly odd grid in that there are the usual straddling 12-letter answers and sixteen 4-letter ones. But this apart we have a perfectly pleasant crossword with many of the usual nice clues. Sometimes Azed has just relied for difficulty on strange words, it being fairly obvious what is happening in the wordplay, but he is also as one would expect clever from time to time.
Definitions underlined, in crimson. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*.