Klingsor is a fairly recent addition to The Independent team and I know I’ve done his crosswords before, but I couldn’t remember what they were like and didn’t know what to expect. This turned out to be a very pleasant offering, with some excellent clues. Often the definition is cleverly concealed, as in “Could be Indian cricket side”, when it’s simply ‘Could be Indian’; what the great Mark Goodliffe I think calls ‘lift and separate’.

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A technically solid puzzle, but about as easy (and, in parts, uninspired) as the FT gets.  In fact I solved all bar two of the Acrosses straight off the bat, which had the unfortunate effect of the rendering Downs to be almost as readily solvable simply from definitions alone.

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We found this quite tricky, at least in the time available to us. There are a couple we haven’t managed to parse as yet, so clarification very much welcome as always. Although there were some neat touches (1ac was enjoyable, and the use of ‘eye’ as a theme was nice) we never quite clicked with this one, and found it rather hard going.

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Monday Prize Crossword on 18 October 2010
A very varied mixture of clues to tickle and entertain us. Quite fun to solve

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Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of October 16

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