Observer

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 >>

Solving time 47:10, with one clue left (which I eventually got while writing this blog entry). This one was split roughly half and half between entries using familiar vocabulary and those that had … Read more >>

Solving Time: around 75 minutes. A tough challenge from Azed this week with some straight-forward stuff, but one or two really tricky clues that took me a while to work out.  Music:  Maria Callas giving her … Read more >>

In theory I should delay this another hour but I’m sure anyone intending to write a clue to HUMONGOUS will have done so by now. Solving time: 22:20 – no books – and … Read more >>