Never knowingly undersolved
Once a year, on average, two like-minded friends (I and A) and myself (K) meet for an IKA weekend of crosswords and beer. This year we chose to meet in my home town, … Read more >>
A rather work-a-day puzzle, I fear. 1A provided an easy entry, and then gravity pretty much took care of the remainder. 11A raised a smile, but I was underwhelmed by 18D on a couple … Read more >>
Another enjoyable, well clued puzzle from Quixote. The south-west corner took longest, for no good reason – just couldn’t think of the right words for a while. H was pleased to see ‘demotic’ … Read more >>
An interesting themed puzzle with some tricky clues. The special instructions refer to different rules for 13 and 15, and that is the way in to the theme. Across 1,16D LONDON BRONCOS: LONDON … Read more >>
An unusual Thursday appearance for Dac, caused by the jiggling necessary to fit in Virgilius’s St Patrick’s Day crossword on Wednesday, so this must be one of the gentler Thursday offerings; but surely … Read more >>
Monday Prize Crossword on 8 March 2010 In the scheme of things I do on a Monday, I would tackle the puzzles in the following order : Times, Guardian, Financial Times and Sunday’s … Read more >>
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of March 6 Here we have two clues with, if I am understanding them correctly, cryptic containment indicators, 6D and 23D. Interesting. I like the latter one. … Read more >>
A special puzzle on the Irish national day, St Patrick’s Day, by Virgilius who hails from there. Impressive that so much thematic material was packed into clues and answers. Great stuff as always … Read more >>
A relatively straightforward puzzle by Cinephile standards with only a couple of clues giving pause for thought …..
Lots of ducks in today’s crossword – yet another rushed post from me in rather awkward circumstances, and I’m afraid I don’t get 12 across or 7 down Across 1. SCALE UP LE[vel] … Read more >>
This was mostly straightforward, but there were some creative elements here, noted below. Across 1 REPORT REP (salesman) OR T (“agent”‘s conclusion) 4 SCREWS UP CREW (ship’s company) in PUSS (cat) reversed 10 … Read more >>
A pretty tough but enjoyable themed puzzle from a Fifteensquared regular. The theme is spelled out in a Nina across the top row, and fans of prison-based sitcoms, or perhaps just those of … Read more >>
Paul certainly knows how to make a theme exciting, right from 1Across to 22Down. In between, he sprinkled his wit and humour liberally. Challenging in parts but mostly very very entertaining. Bravo, Paul, … Read more >>
The usual Rufus combination of cryptic [not too many] and double definitions and elegant and witty surfaces. Across 7 PHILATELY: PHI [anagram of HIP] + LATELY 8 QUICK: double definition [‘quick’ = ‘living’ … Read more >>
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism I finished this fairly quickly, with only the NE corner giving me a few problems. There was an unusually high number of &lits, of … Read more >>