Independent 7,318/Dac
Posted by Ali on 31st March 2010
More brilliance from Dac. As good a set of clues as I’ve seen in a long while, although he’s stumped me on 15D!
Posted in Independent | 13 Comments »
Archive for March, 2010
Guardian 24,972 – Enigmatist
Posted by Andrew on 31st March 2010
As is often the case with Enigmatist, I found it quite hard to get started on this one. Getting the long linked answers helped a lot, but even then there were some tricky corners. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Guardian | 36 Comments »
Financial Times 13,348 / Cinephile
Posted by Gaufrid on 31st March 2010
Not a lot to say today. The puzzle didn’t seem to have any sparkle though my feelings about it may have been affected by the high winds and heavy rain that are making the morning rather dismal.
Posted in FT | 7 Comments »
Financial Times 13,347 / Dante
Posted by Agentzero on 30th March 2010
Apologies to all — I did not have a chance to blog until quite late today.
Posted in FT | 3 Comments »
Independent 7317/Virgilius
Posted by John on 30th March 2010
Typical brilliance from Virgilius. At first I thought, after predicting confidently that the long word across was going to be SYMMETRICAL, what’s the big deal? All crosswords are symmetrical. Then I saw it (not immediately, having got so used to Virgilius using the across answers to illustrate his theme): all the down answers use only the letters A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, Y, so that they all have a vertical line of symmetry (not the rotational symmetry of the crossword grid). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Independent | 22 Comments »
Guardian 24971 – Gordius
Posted by Uncle Yap on 30th March 2010
Quite an enjoyable set of clues. I like it when compilers consciously try to inject some humour into their clues as we see in 1A, 21A, 26A and 14D.
Posted in Guardian | 23 Comments »
Indepedent 7316 by Morph
Posted by NealH on 29th March 2010
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Independent | 8 Comments »
Guardian 24,970 (Brendan)
Posted by diagacht on 29th March 2010
This has not been a good day for me: two clues I have not decoded and some others that I find unsatisfactory, which probably means I’ve missed something. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Guardian | 41 Comments »
Private Eye/Cyclops 413 – Drag me down
Posted by beermagnet on 29th March 2010
Our text today is taken from St Eter of the Managras:
Yea, it is harder for a good man to answer the inquiry of Chilcot than a Queen Bee to enter a Myrtle. Or something like that anyway.
Posted in Private Eye/Cyclops | 1 Comment »
Beelzebub 1,048 (21/03/2010)
Posted by Simon Harris on 28th March 2010
I’d say this was about average difficulty for Beelzebub, without too much to comment on, other than the unusually large number of abbreviations used – which became evident on formatting the HTML for this post!
Posted in Beelzebub | No Comments »
Azed 1973
Posted by jetdoc on 28th March 2010
For me, this was very much at the easy end of the Azed spectrum, though I needed a dictionary to check a few words. No special favourite clue this week, though there are several I like.
Posted in Azed | 3 Comments »
Everyman 3312
Posted by Arthur on 28th March 2010
This was nice and pretty gentle. The main features worth noting are three 15-letter anagrams and a rather nice long even-letters clue. If I was in a complaining mood I would say that it would have been more impressive if all four long clues were anagrams, but as it is, this passed the time very pleasantly. 15dn, I am still not wholly sure on part of it, but I’m sure I’ll be put right nice and quickly on here. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Everyman | 5 Comments »
Enigmatic Variations 906: Recognition by Kruger
Posted by Dave Hennings on 27th March 2010
Kruger has been setting EV puzzles for over ten years, with a puzzle every four or five months, and the occasional Inquisitor for good measure. I have always found his crosswords fair, but quite taxing, and covering a wide range of themes. This puzzle proved fairly tough, especially my last clue, 3dn! This necessitated a correction in the following week’s paper.
Posted in Enigmatic Variations | No Comments »
Guardian 24,963 (Sat 20 Mar)/Araucaria – Daysed and confused
Posted by rightback on 27th March 2010
Solving time: 33 mins
This was hard, and I was grateful for a couple of hackneyed clues at 12ac (INCA) and 28ac (DETERGENT) to get me going. The theme (abbreviations for days of the week being unclued in wordplay to ten answers) jumped out early on from 16dn (FRICASSEE) and I expected that to open the floodgates, but no. Still, I got there in the end.
Posted in Guardian | 23 Comments »
Financial Times 13,344 / Falcon
Posted by Gaufrid on 26th March 2010
Unfortunately Shuchi is unable to join us today so here is a substitute analysis. A fairly straightforward puzzle in the main but I have to admit that I had never heard of 12ac or 19ac before today and 27ac was only a very dim memory.
Posted in FT | 5 Comments »