(Sorry for the late posting – last minute delays writing this up due to work commitments etc) Maybe it’s just me, but I think the Genius puzzles are getting generally harder. Number 91 was very tricky, and I found this tough going too, needing several sessions to finish; even then it was difficult to identify all the intended missing and added letters in the clues to confirm the unclued phrase at 16dn. I guessed the phrase quite early on, but it wasn’t much help! I’ve shown the clues below: these are show the eleven modified versions (clue numbers asterisked), with added letters like this and letters to be removed like this. The added letters (in clue order) are ND OON ASS F MEA FA ID (the last misprinted as just D in the annotated solution), and those removed MA ADI E SS, leaving NDOONFAF for an anagram of OFF AND ON. Read the rest of this entry »

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism
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Gentle and easy does it with Rufus today, with the usual smooth surface readings. On the other hand there are a couple of clues that I raise an eyebrow at because the cryptic construction is much too similar to the defintion.

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I found nothing particularly noteworthy in this workmanlike puzzle.  As 10 of the 28 clues involved anagrams it was easy to solve but lacked variety.

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