Never knowingly undersolved
Today saw my monthly Friday encounter with Phi. I found this to be a medium-difficulty Phi puzzle. I made steady progress through it from the start almost to the finish, faltering only in … Read more >>
The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26572.
It’s a real treat for me to get Vlad’s second puzzle to blog. I’ve come to grief several times with his Tyrus puzzles in the Indy – he’s there today – so I … Read more >>
Tyrus has given us a good challenge today with only one entry that I don’t remember coming across before. The one word that was new to me was ALAMEDA at … Read more >>
A curate’s egg. Our enjoyment was spoiled by what we saw as some very contrived answers necessitated by the special feature referred to in the rubric.
Monday Prize Crossword / May 4, 2015
One of Dante’s easier crosswords, I thought. Still not easy to finish it without obstacles. The combi 11ac/9d almost defeated me. Almost!
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of May 2, 2015 This was another tough one for me but it has a few sparkling clues topped by the brilliant &lit of 18d (LITERATO). Other … Read more >>
Cracking puzzle from Io. There were many of WTF? moments in this puzzle where I had no idea at all about what was going on. Thankfully it (mostly) became clear in the end. Overall this was pretty tough! Thanks Io .
There are still a a couple that I can’t quite get to the bottom of. Any help with the finishing touches appreciated.
Enjoyable but not too tough, with the left hand side going in very quickly. Favourites 3dn and 17dn. Thanks Brummie.
I am usually trying to write a clue in some clue-writing competition or other; and it is nearly always tortuous. In Dac’s case none of his clues are tortuous: they all seem to be perfectly natural, and they always have a simple and strong surface. Why it should be that the words Dac clues are so different from those that I try to clue is beyond me. Actually they’re not: it’s just that he is rather better at it than I am.
Definitions underlined.
One week she’s the Listener setter, next Chalicea‘s providing the Inquisitor puzzle. Preamble: Groups of cells (49 in all), identified by corrections to misprints in the definition parts of 26 clues read … Read more >>
A few nice clues here, including some ingenious “subtractive anagrams”, and a mini-theme around the answer to 25d … … but in general I’m afraid this confirms my opinion of Otterden’s puzzles as … Read more >>
(Please click here for this same blog but with a picture quiz added. Please do NOT post hereinbelow any comment relating to the picture quiz. Thank you.) A little tricky, with a nina … Read more >>
(Please post comments on ONLY the picture quiz hereinbelow. To post comments on the crossword puzzle, please click here.) A little tricky, with a nina that did help me with the last one … Read more >>
As soon as we saw that it was Scorpion today, we thought there might be a hidden theme. When we started looking at the clues, it was clear that there was a … Read more >>