Those of you interested in some background information about setters and other people, past and present, connected with crosswords may wish to visit the new Crossword Who’s Who.

Always a pleasure to get a Morph puzzle, and I don’t say that just because I know he’ll be reading this. There’s always a good dose of humour in his puzzles and some very clever surfaces, 13D and 17D being good examples here.

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I think this was the toughest Beelzebub I can remember for some time, though I made it harder by entering one or two wrong answers early on. Even so it took a fair bit of research and/or cheating to fill the grid, let alone explain it all.

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My second Araucaria in a row, and quite a tricky one, with some devious wordplay. Some may complain at the theme of girl groups, but I knew all the names involved (apart from 3dn and a slight obscurity at 20dn (better explained by Eileen) despite it being definitely not my area of expertise. Read the rest of this entry »

One of those strange puzzle that took longer than average to gain an initial toehold, but then offered decreasing levels of resistance thereafter as the answers seem to flow with continual acceleration.  A couple of vocabulary blind spots (10A, 7D) prevented me from attaining terminal velocity however.

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Monday Prize Crossword on 30 August 2010
Another pleasant challenge from our slick Dante, entertaining us with his smooth surfaces and the inevitable cryptic definitions, which some people hate. Fortunately, I happen to like cd’s as they are about the only clues that you can pose to a non-crossword crowd and yet get a response.

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Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of August 28

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