Sometimes you can be lucky with a puzzle – the words are familiar or you quickly see how most things work and go through it fast. This happened me with this one to give me my fastest Indy solve of the year so far. On reflection, a big factor in this, I think, was that the puzzle contained 4 15-letter entries, 3 of which I solved straight away.

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No major problems with this, which had some clever ideas.

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I don’t think I’ve blogged an Araucaria before so seeing the puzzle this morning worried me a bit. I like Araucaria, in fact my only published Listener puzzle was a tribute to him. However, my clues were strictly Ximenean (I hope) and I have over the years wrestled with his cluing. Some of his clues are brilliant and some of his techniques novel but I still have problems with the liberties he takes. That said I found this puzzle a (relative) breeze with the theme—coinciding in one entry with the recent Virgilius—helping. Read the rest of this entry »