Having just returned from a trip working away I thought I had remembered which puzzle I was meant to be blogging today. Once I got to the newsagent’s I had doubts and decided to buy both papers. It turned out that my regular shop had sold out of Guardians and Independents. A trek across Consett, not something I relish, was needed before I could start on either puzzle. Once on my bus into Durham I was pretty sure I was doing the Guardian today and so quickly rattled off most of Shed while making some mental notes on the clues. Once at work I discovered I was wrong, this was confirmed when I saw loonapick’s review arrive on the RSS feed. No time for a second puzzle so it’s off to work I go, hi ho!

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If I was asked what type of clues I’d like to see outlawed, it would definitely be homophones. There is an outrageous (in my opinion at least) example of this at 8dn, unless I have the wrong answer, in which case, please ignore this comment.  (It would appear that I am in the minority where this is concerned – up here in bonnie Scotland, we pronounce the letter R almost every time that it appears in a word, therefore BAWD and BORED never the sound the same, as BAWD is pronounced with a short O sound and BORED with a long O and the letter R). 

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