I actually finished the last couple of words (SOARE and EXORDIA)around 11am on Saturday, so could have made it to the post with this, but I couldn’t quite bear to part with it. The reason being the clue competition Prizewinners’ panel on the right, which has my name and address for only the second time ever. And the book tokens have already arrived! Anyway, to the puzzle – I’d say it was on the hard side for a plain Azed, but satisfying.

Read the rest of this entry »

Solving time: 23:35

After five minutes I had solved four clues. Then 15ac helped me tumble to the theme: ‘S’ = ‘State capital’. Most of the puzzle then fell out quickly but I stubbornly resisted the urge to look up the last couple of capitals so took an age to finish off the top right and 8dn/13ac. The state numbers and ‘original’ references were no use to me, and initial errors in 6dn and 12ac didn’t help matters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday’s Monk puzzle was difficult enough but I thought this offering from Merlin was even tougher. This was mainly due to the theme of the puzzle – all but two of the down clues made reference to a Saint and, more specifically, how they died their horrible deaths. As themes go this was very original (and an amazing achievement to get them all in the grid and even come up with clues which echoed the deaths – 2, 5 and 6) but it did the make the puzzle a difficult solve and it could only really have appeared on a Saturday, when it’s assumed that solvers have access to references. Despite all of that, I really enjoyed and there were some excellent clues. Read the rest of this entry »