Just a quick blog between wrapping, baking, drinking etc. Almost all the clues have a festive reference, and most are pretty simple – this was a very quick solve bar 13 down, which maddeningly held me up even though, once the penny dropped, I had a nagginG feeling I’ve come across it before. Down blog all in italic – why? Why not?!

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I found this one fairly straightforward, as Azeds go. A fairly low percentage of obscure words meant I wasn’t flicking through Chambers as much as I usually do (or maybe my vocabulary’s finally improving!). There were a couple of glitches – unless I’m mistaken there’s a comp. anagram that doesn’t work, and in the online grid the number 24 appears in mid-word before 23 (although the numbering isn’t messed up as a result). Trying to copy Jane and others with a new layout today.

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I found this pretty difficult, although the preamble was a big help in that it suggested that other Indy compilers would be mentioned in whole or in part in the answers and, more obviously, in some clues. Some were easy to spot (Mordred and Nestor were the first two I got), others not so easy (it took me ages to see Virgilius). Read the rest of this entry »