Having not looked at a crossword for over a week, and with a healthy dollop of jet-lag still floating in my brain, I was hoping for a relatively light workout.  While this was far from a breeze, thankfully there were a few more freebies on offer from Alberich than usual.  That still left plenty of room for several of his trademark gems, though.

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To say that my heart sank when I saw that I had to blog one of Anax’s crosswords wouldn’t have been quite accurate: the knowledge that I was in for a tough solve was tempered by the fact that it would be very enjoyable. As expected, there are many outstanding clues here, but also two that I don’t understand, and one or two that seem to be a bit odd, but they’re probably not odd really and just need to be explained properly. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Thursday all. Did all of this one pretty swiftly, apart from ‘agaric’, which we looked up in Bradford’s when we got home. In retrospect, ‘smelly plant’ = ‘garlic’ should have been pretty obvious, but it didn’t occur at the time. Nothing exceptional here, but plenty of accurate and enjoyable clues regardless.

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Good morning all! You’re getting a double dose of us today. We’re very excited to be blogging a Paul puzzle as he’s a favourite of ours. This was an enjoyable puzzle, with a pleasing mixture of clue types and a good sprinkling of the setter’s trademark humour.  We’ve a couple of unresolved details here (10ac and 1dn), but I’m sure you’ll be able to put us right… And indeed you were, within the space of about five minutes. See below.

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Monday Prize Crossword on 3 May 2010
Once again, the prolific Dante entertained and teased us with his brand of smooth surfaces and slick construction.

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Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of May 1
Much of this puzzle is fairly pedestrian but I would single out 27A and 4D as especially good clues.

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