Never knowingly undersolved
I was somewhat surprised to find Quixote occupying this week’s Tuesday slot, since he tends not to appear on Tuesdays. However, as we have learnt in the past, such scheduling, far from being … Read more >>
As usual, Pasquale gives us a handful of less familiar words to keep us on our toes – but, as ever, these were scrupulously clued, so nothing to complain about there. I’m not … Read more >>
Straightforward and fun – favourites were 1ac, 11ac, 16ac. Thanks Rufus.
Nutmeg makes a welcome return to the Quiptic slot with a nicely crafted puzzle that provides a good Monday morning work out for the old grey cells.
New month, new Punk to do so saddle up…
Fairly steady progress this week, with just a handful to check in Chambers at the end. I made life difficult for myself by entering “theatrephone” at 10 across. Entirely my fault, but then … Read more >>
A tricky letters latent puzzle from Monk.
The usual educational foray into Chambers and the OED from Azed.
Poor Kairos must be getting fed up with seeing my name at the top of the blog for his Sunday Indy crosswords. His puzzles often seem to come around when I’m on duty. … Read more >>
The puzzle may be found athttp://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3581.
It’s always a delight for me to see Picaroon’s name on a puzzle and, once again, I was not disappointed. With Picaroon, we can often expect a theme – and here it became … Read more >>
I was glad when I found it was Monk today as he is one of my favourite setters. But this feeling changed as I discovered how tricky this one was. I had read all the … Read more >>
2 unclued entries to find and every clued entry with an extra letter in it’s wordplay. Then 41 squares to identify connected with the theme subtly revealed by the extra letters A new … Read more >>
A fun challenge from Gozo today, thanks to whom for serving up a real 20d ! 🙂 I got to the theme pretty quickly but then got held up by the NE quadrant, which to most others would have been quite workable. Thanks to Gaufrid for the prop up there.
The usual excellent production from Phi. My own stupidity resulted in lack of completion — I was looking for ages at 1dn — and in particular Phi has done two things of which I approve: although there are unches all round the edges he never has less than 50% checking, something that the grid makes a bit tricky; and in 12ac he has given us some wordplay. Many setters would have been quite happy with ‘Supporters of bridges’ as a cryptic definition, but not Phi, who gives us two ways into the solution, realising that there is nothing to stop you from having a clever and witty definition in a ‘straight’ clue.