Never knowingly undersolved
Several clues where I’m not 100% sure, and one that at the time of writing quite defeats me. However, I’m sure that all will be explained.
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
This week’s 11 x 11 crossword from the Guardian intended to teach cryptic crosswords, found here
Bluebird has come round on my Saturday blogging day again and I know what that means:
There will be a well hidden theme …
Another epic journey through the devious mind of the Enigmatist in Saturday Prize mode – with some brain-stretching definitions, imaginative surface reads, tricksy word-play and (for your blogger) one un-parseable clue at 14A…
This is IOA’s tenth Listener Crossword (or crossnumber – it seems that most of them were numerical puzzles).
Kite rounds off the weekday puzzles
It’s a normal Friday for Independent solvers with a puzzle from Phi.
A fun challenge with a couple of obscure parses.
Thanks Paul – this was an enjoyable struggle, with some tricky parsing to work through afterwards. My favourites were 15ac, 3/24, and 5dn.
Tack appears a few times a year in the Independent, but hasn’t landed in my blogging rota slot until now. The original puzzle is at https://puzzles.independent.co.uk/games/cryptic-crossword-independent/?puzzleDate=20260910.
A typically fun puzzle from Slormgorm today.
“Each clue is actually two clues run together. Either entry may be clued first; punctuation may mislead. Some answers are too short for their slots, and several others require two letters to occupy one cell; all enumerations count cells available. Cells in the latter group must each be divided by a diagonal line in a consistent way, entering one letter in each half such that entries read normally. Using the contents of these cells as a guide, solvers must insert an arrow in each vacant cell so that new words or phrases appropriate to the positions of the ONLOOKERS in the grid are symbolised. The Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended, but does not give the entry at 11 (in Collins and others).”
A tricky tribute puzzle.
Oh no! It’s Nimrod on a Wednesday!
It’s me again, with my scheduled blog this time. Thanks to Brummie for a typically entertaining puzzle. No theme that I can see, but you never know.