*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed

I haven’t had chance to see who the compiler is yet, although it seems a bit easier than some of the recent monday puzzles. Read the rest of this entry »

Printer’s Devilry puzzles are an interesting and enjoyable change that Azed produces from time to time. I thought we’d had one fairly recently – it turns out I was thinking of the 2007 Christmas puzzle, which had some PD clues. Solving PDs requires different skills from other types: for a start there’s no definition in the clue to latch on to (perhaps a small flaw in the format?). My usual two-pronged approach for getting started is (1) try to find a word in the clue that is obviously out of place; and (2) look at rest of the clue to try to get hold of a sensible meaning. (The rubric “every passage, when completed, makes sense” is important.) I usually start off on the shorter answers, as they are often easier to detect, leaving the longer ones until a few crossing letters, especially at the start or end, are available. The first few answers I found in this puzzle were 7ac, 15ac, 17ac, 23ac, 34ac and 17dn. I think there was a mistake in 26ac.

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