Azed

Solving time: just about an hour. Greetings from the Royal Blackburn Hospital.  I was flung into here on Tuesday as the old pins were still knackered.  Reasonably tough fare from the Observer’s maestro, not … Read more >>

If you would like to write an Azed report about once a month, there’s a space going – one of our current bloggers wants to drop out. If you’d like to have a … Read more >>

Solving time: not recorded I can’t remember how long this took or how much I used Chambers. But I made a wrong guess at the first letter of 17D, which suggests that the … Read more >>

Quite a pedestrian Azed this week, I thought. Definitely one for those with TEA (or a similar anagram buster) to hand — some obvious anagrams for obscure words, which could be hard work … Read more >>

A pretty straightforward Azed — a few obscure words, but with plenty of checked letters to help, and mostly uncomplicated wordplay (though I did not fully persevere with 20a). There was a slip-up … Read more >>

Solving time 27 mins without books, then about 20 mins with Chambers to clear up the resulting mess. Doing Azed without books is an interesting challenge but sometimes you invent a word that … Read more >>

Solving Time: 55 minutes (with assistance on two clues from the wonderful Eric) Whether it’s because I am off solving barred puzzles at the moment, I can’t say, but this certainly took me a … Read more >>

Solving time: about 2 hours – with one answer wrong, it turns out I forgot I was down to blog this, so solved it today. I can’t remember whether we’ve had a 13×11 … Read more >>

An enjoyable crossword romp taking in a nice mix of the obscure, the ordinary and the Latin. There are a couple of answers I’m not certain about and one clue, 35, that seems … Read more >>

I made quite good progress at first: after about an hour I had the entire puzzle solved… except for 4 or 5 clues in the NE quadrant. The root of all evil was … Read more >>

My broadband connection was down all weekend, hence the lateness of this report. I managed to do most of this without the dictionary, although I cracked near the end and had to look … Read more >>

Solved in three sittings totalling over 75 minutes.  Quite a  tough puzzle by Azed’s standards with a grid that didn’t offer a great deal of help from one section to another.  I solved the … Read more >>

Solving time: not recorded, but I did finish this without looking anything up. 8/11 were the last two to go in. A couple of quibbles at 12 and 35, and some of the … Read more >>

I have mixed feelings about Spoonerisms puzzles — they can be fun, but they can also score pretty highly on the cringe-inducing scale. They can also depend on one’s accent (see 27d, which … Read more >>

I don’t know my solving time so I’ll break with the tradition of the last few blogs. I often solve puzzles piecemeal, here and there, and interspersed with bits of Listener solving, daily … Read more >>