Azed 1934 – Right and Left
The luck of the draw is giving me all the Azed specials to blog these days. Right and Left is another one that comes up fairly regularly: I think the format was devised … Read more >>
Everyman No. 3273 (June 21st).
Our first blog (as the The Trafites), and we look forward to doing this. A fairly straight forward Everyman this week. 25ac is unusual as we have seen RED RUM used for the … Read more >>
Beelzebub 1,009 (21/06/09)
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition. Top stuff as always. I think I’ve managed to explain everything, but there’s a couple I’m a bit shaky on. Across 1 STICK INSECT – … Read more >>
Guardian 24,731 (Sat 20 Jun)/Paul – Sweet sixteen
Solving time: 13:44 This seemed about average difficulty for Paul, though I think I made heavy weather of it. As always there are some extremely inventive clues, and the lack of hyperlinks in … Read more >>
Independent 7081/Phi
Before I solved 11ac it was hard to cope with all those clues that referred to it, but fairly soon that was all right, and there were no terribly obscure 11s. Although most … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,113 / Falcon
Fairly easy, pleasant puzzle today. I was briefly held up in the NE corner, I thought COLOGNE and BETEL were cleverly clued and it didn’t help to not know the two Lancs towns … Read more >>
Independent 7,076 by Nestor (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 20/06/09)
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition. Nestor’s puzzles are always good, and I doubt that this was an exception, but for some reason I couldn’t really get any momentum going here. … Read more >>
Guardian 24736 / Pasquale
As ever, a very enjoyable puzzle from Pasquale. There were quite a few here where I had to guess that a word existed and then look it up (CERE, MANA, PICKABACK), but the … Read more >>
EV867 — The Three Rs by Obtrox
Oddly, my previous blog, and my final blog for the Inquisitor series, IQ 128, was an Obtrox puzzle. More oddly, it used exactly the same device: two extra letters from the wordplay in … Read more >>
Inquisitor 129 TWENTY20 CRICKET by Loda
Wow! Tremendous stuff from Loda! A puzzle with 20 across and 20 down clues where all the answers were 6 letter words corresponding to the balls in an over, using vowels as scoring … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,112/Flimsy
This felt like a tougher than average puzzle from Flimsy, although that impression may be influenced by the longest/quadrant-linking entries being particularly slow to come to me. Commiserations to the setter on having … Read more >>
Independent 7080 by Nimrod
Unusual puzzle. Got almost nothing on first run through. Then with three crossing letters saw what 8 was likely to be. After that made quite good progress, until getting badly stuck on 9. … Read more >>
Guardian 24,735 – Paul
A really enjoyable grid today, with a couple of royal references. There are some very clever clues in here, with distinctively misleading surfaces – I nearly stood up to applaud 20dn, it was … Read more >>
Independent on Sunday 1010 by Quixote (21 June 2009)
Solving time, 22 mins * = anagram 1 PAWN BROKE R & lit My last answer and my favourite clue 6 (D)(AVID) 9 ASPIRES Dreaming spires of Oxford 10 TO WARDS 13 DISORDERLINESS … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,103 – Crux
Monday Prize Crossword on 15 June 2009 dd = double definition cd = cryptic definition rev = reversed or reversal ins = insertion cha = charade ha = hidden answer *(fodder) = anagram … Read more >>