Azed

Surprisingly fast solve for me — I spent less than an hour before breakfast doing this with a bit of help from the Usual Suspects. Until I came to a crashing halt with … Read more >>

As always with Azed apparently complete soundness in the wordplay of his clues; there are one or two places where I’m not sure how to explain this, but I suspect someone will do … Read more >>

Solving time: 35 minutes without Chambers, but with one mistake A fairly straightforward Azed this one – I managed to invent all the right words without help except for 30A. Across 1 ARCHIBALD … Read more >>

An Azed of mixed difficulty, I found. I sailed through about three quarters of it with trouble at all, including most of the five long answers, but made much heavier weather of the … Read more >>

I’m hoping that this puzzle from last Sunday does not have a similar deadline extension to last week’s prize puzzle. If you know that it does, please let me know with a comment, … Read more >>

“Words may be false and full of art; sighs are the natural language of the heart”, by Thomas Shadwell is the quotation referred to here. The second part is obtained by the letters … Read more >>

Due to the postal strike the closing date for entries has been put back to Saturday 14/11/2009 so today’s blog has been rescheduled for next Sunday.

An Azed with a mix of easyish and fairly difficult clues, and a few pretty obscure words, which made it interesting to solve. I think I will go for 17a as my favorite … Read more >>

Not as many impenetrable wordplays (note to self: must improve wordplay decoding). I’m sure once this is posted, someone will put us quickly out of our misery and reveal all. I will say … Read more >>

As always Azed produces a top-class grid, with four words crossing it completely and two more almost doing so. As a result, of course, there are many words that need a painstaking hunt … Read more >>

Another occasion when I have to cast my mind back eight days to try and remember how I originally parsed these clues. My recollection is that I had a little difficulty with one … Read more >>

This was definitely from the easy end of the Azed spectrum: I managed to solve all of it except 31ac without recourse to Chambers or other aids (though with some lucky educated guesses). … Read more >>

The preamble said that “The twelve unclued answers (a complete set) have something in common”, andwere given their unchecked (and mutually checked) letters. Twleve unclued answers seemed quite a lot but there was … Read more >>

As well as the usual quota of obscure words, we have what I believe is a first, for Azed anyway, which is a clue entirely written in French (6 down). Perfectly fair, in … Read more >>

An Azed with some nicely challenging clues this week. I managed to complete it without a dictionary, while watching England lose the first ODI at Lord’s — though I did need to double-check … Read more >>