Fifteensquared – Page 867 – Never knowingly undersolved

Financial Times 15,439 by FALCON

Thu January 5, 2017 at 7:27 am by loonapick

Some relief from some of the festive difficulty

Guardian Cryptic 27,086 by Paul

Thu January 5, 2017 at 10:40 pmThu January 5, 2017 at 1:44 am by manehi

Admittedly vague memories of The Winter’s Tale…

Financial Times Christmas Crossword 2016 by Gozo

Sun January 8, 2017 at 6:53 pmThu January 5, 2017 at 12:01 am by Pete Maclean

Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of December 24, 2016 I was pleased to find that this year’s Christmas puzzle is a traditional cryptic and not one where one has to build a … Read more >>

Guardian 27,076 / Maskarade

Thu January 5, 2017 at 12:01 am by mhl

Merry Christmas, everyone! I’ve been lucky enough to draw the task of blogging the Christmas alphabetical crossword by Maskarade. The theme is popular bands or singers. Some of these are just surnames (or … Read more >>

Independent 9,431 / Dac

Wed January 4, 2017 at 11:13 am by RatkojaRiku

Dac has supplied the first Wednesday puzzle of the year, as he has doubtless done on many previous occasions. This was a rather gentle introduction to solving and blogging in 2017 for me. … Read more >>

Financial Times 15,438 by NEO

Wed January 4, 2017 at 10:33 am by PeeDee

Not too easy, not too hard, just right. Thank you Neo.

Guardian 27,085 – Nutmeg

Wed January 4, 2017 at 8:24 am by Andrew

Nutmeg can be quite a tricky setter when she wants to be, and I found myself making slow but steady progress with this one. (The fact that there are a lot of long … Read more >>

Inquisitor 1470: Plunder by Pointer

Wed January 4, 2017 at 12:01 am by Hihoba

Preamble: Once upon a time there were three innocent bloggers whose names were Hi Ho and Ba. They were set upon by an unscrupulous and extremely cunning setter. This setter produced a crossword … Read more >>

Guardian Cryptic 27,084 by Picaroon

Tue January 3, 2017 at 10:54 amTue January 3, 2017 at 10:21 am by loonapick

If I were clever enough I’d write this blog in rhyme
But as it happens I don’t have time

Independent 9430 / Scorpion

Tue January 3, 2017 at 7:30 am by duncanshiell

Thanks to Scorpion I have a good challenge for my first blog of 2017 The puzzle is a pangram. For a while I thought it was going to be a … Read more >>

Independent 9,429 by Punk

Mon January 2, 2017 at 8:12 pm by NealH

A very late appearance of this on the Indy website means the blog has been considerably delayed. It’s not giving too much away to say there was a theme of cities.

Guardian Quiptic 894/Hectence

Mon January 2, 2017 at 3:21 pmMon January 2, 2017 at 11:28 am by Pierre

A tricky little number from Hectence to start the New Year. Apologies for the late blog, but it did take me a while to sort it all out. And I’ve also got the … Read more >>

Guardian Cryptic 27,083 by Rufus

Mon January 2, 2017 at 1:59 am by PeterO

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27083.

AZED 2,324/CELEBRATIONS

Sun January 1, 2017 at 7:26 pmSun January 1, 2017 at 10:00 am by ilancaron

So playfair puzzles aren’t my favourite cup of tea. Fortunately, my colleague Frank Yellin doesn’t mind them and has a bunch of python code to prove it (we are both Jewish so had plenty of time on our hands this week). So he helped me no end figuring out the actual magic square — which this time had no Q rather than the more usual I/J merging (to produce 25 letters of the alphabet in a 5×5 grid).