The hidden theme of this excellent crossword is “Composers”: most uses of the letter C in the clues should be read as “composer” for the clue to make sense. This perhaps wasn’t as tricky as the last couple of Genius puzzles, but a good challenge nonetheless. (To give credit where it’s due, solving this was a joint effort between me and my partner.) Read the rest of this entry »

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

A Groundhog Day themed puzzle, although the joke of having the phrase appear three times owed more to the Bill Murray film than the weather forecasting event. I think 3 Groundhog Days might have been 1 too many because, once you’d got the other two, it was all too obvious that there was another one. Also, it was a bit disappointing that Phil didn’t make an appearance anywhere.

Across
1	Groundhog Day: Ground + hog + ‘d + ay.
8	Off Off Broadway: Off (= start in expressions like “from the off”) + off (=away) + broad + way.
10	Nooky: Nook + y for yes, definition = “it”.
11	Rot or
12	Desai: Aides with the AI moved to the back.
15	Hi De Hi: Hom of Heidi, hi.
16	Deja Vu: Hidden, reversed in “helluva Jedi”. I’m not exactly sure that Deja Vu would be the theme for the Groundhog Day film, since it’s more of a vague sense of having been somewhere before rather than history repeating itself.
17	Alamo: A La Mo (state abbreviations).
18	Gibbon: A reference to Edward Gibbon.
20	Limpid: Lid around I MP.
22	Acids: As around CID.
25	Aesop: A pose<.
27	Disco: Didn’t really get this – “Tracing not very noisy club”. I imagine disco=club, but don’t follow the rest unless there’s some word like disco[ff].
28	Full steam ahead: “Beats leading side as quickly as possible”. As quickly as possible is obviously the definition and “team ahead” is probably leading side but I’m not familiar with full meaning beat.
29	Punxsutawney: (way next sun up)*, but not the nicest of clues to have to do on the train with no reference books to confirm the spelling.
Down
1	Groundhog day: Cryptic def (ground hog i.e. stop hog taking off).
2	Off-road: Of (a ford)*.
3	Nifty: I FT in NY.
4	Hobble: Hobbe[s] (Thomas) around l[ogic].
5	Gloria: (a girl o)* + &lit.
6	Adder: double def.
7	Mantra[p]
9	Groundhog Day: a rather weak cryptic def, I thought.
12	Diana: (An aid)<.
13	Swam I
14	Idols: solid*.
19	Basque: Base around qu.
21	Pastern: P[anto] + a + stern.
23	Cortex: Cox around RTE (an Irish TV station).
24	Deja Vu: Jude* around AV (Authorised Version). I’m sure I’ve seen that before somewhere.
26	Pilau: Lip< + a + u.
27	Dram a

Sometime ago a kind soul had given a tip (among the comments here) on how to marshal all the posts of a particular blogger. I found it useful.
Now I am unable to recall what is to be entered in the address field.
Following a disk crash, I lost the file in which I maintained a record of my Tuesday blogs. Hence this query.
Help will be appreciated.
TIA.

Three Guardian blogs in a row – people will be getting sick of the sight of me! Anyway, a nice gentle Rufus for this snowy morning. I particularly liked 15ac and 27ac for their clever wordplay, and have slight niggles with 16dn and 21dn for rather unhelpful clueing of unusual words. Read the rest of this entry »

Another fairly easy outing from Cyclops, particularly in comparison to his Saturday Prize Guardian Brummie (24-Jan) which I struggled with just before tackling this one, so I may be over-judging how easy this was. Nevertheless, with the Private Eye puzzle being more accessible of late, it is the ideal time for anyone unfamiliar with it to have a go. Read the rest of this entry »