Drawing a Scorpion on a blogging day is always a little daunting, and this was a thorough workout.

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Solving time: about two hours, but we were watching the United v Arsenal game at the time. I acknowledge the substantial contribution from my friend and neighbour Timon, but the blog (and any mistakes) are all my own. It’s not often that we see Pasquale given a prize crossword, and this puzzle was certainly hard enough, (particularly 26 across), although I do have one or two quibbles over some of the other clues. The theme of the puzzle was that all the across clues shared a common definition, which had to be deduced. It turned out that they were all birds. Read the rest of this entry »

A tasty treat of a puzzle – maybe at the easier end of the EV spectrum, once the nicely topical theme had been cracked.

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