Never knowingly undersolved
For some reason it took a while to for us to get momentum in solving this, although looking back I can’t quite see why: everything’s completely fair, and nothing really obscure. As with … Read more >>
If you knew your way around France and its history, you would have found this FT challenge from Gozo easy. Unfortunately, I didnt. 26ac needs work as well.
It was a surprise to see Maskarade’s name today, as he has previously only mostly appeared as a setter of bank holiday specials… … but the reason soon became clear, as the letters … Read more >>
It’s Phi-day again! We have to say that, as a solve, we found this rather ‘vanilla’ – not unenjoyable, but not really very challenging. Phi’s choice of entries for the four-letter words … Read more >>
This is my first outing as a blogger with Dutch, and a most enjoyable experience it was too! I found this to be a medium-difficulty puzzle, with a good few write-ins (mainly anagrams) … Read more >>
Well, this was certainly a puzzle to get your teeth into! Some easy entry clues but then others that required quite a bit of unpicking. My last parse (4dn) didn’t come until I … Read more >>
A tribute to an American poet from Chalmie.
Monday Prize Crossword / Jul 3, 2017
Dante in a very friendly mood, in my opinion.
Not that many cryptic definitions this time.
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of July 1, 2017
I don’t know what’s happened to PeeDee today, but something has prevented him from being with us, so here is a quick analysis of the clues. With 1ac and 1dn being my first … Read more >>
Tees fills the Wednesday slot this week. Tees has forsaken his usual classical and mythological path today and homed in on a more modern theme that fits with my childhood. The … Read more >>
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27247.
Chalicea starts off by giving us a pleasantly short preamble. Let’s see whether that lulls us into a false sense of security. This preamble stated "The unclued lights give a … Read more >>
Vigo has always been marginally difficult: not horribly so, but significantly. This crossword I found almost as easy as anything the Independent ever produces, and amazingly so for a Tuesday, which is usually one of the harder days. Not that that is a bad thing: it’s a positive on blogging day, and in any case the crossword itself was a good one: simple clues, but all sound and enjoyable. My only carp is with the use (twice, I think) of ‘with’ as a link-word, something that I find almost impossible to justify on logical grounds, although I have seen people who know rather more about these things than I do making a case for it.
Definitions underlined and in maroon.
A rare and welcome appearance from Shed, who has always been one of my favourites. I think it’s generally agreed here that Shed’s puzzles are much gentler than they used to be but, … Read more >>