A real wrong ‘un (or, if you prefer, curveball) from Gozo here. I think this is the first FT puzzle I’ve blogged that comes with special instructions; the theme may well have a few non-sports-savvy solvers tearing their hair, and even those au fait with card games and cricket jargon might find themselves taking issue with some of Gozo’s liberties and contrivances – but, for all that, I thought it was a really enjoyable solve.

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I looked through my past blogs this morning to see if I had blogged a Monk before, and to my surprise, since Monk has featured on my crosswording landscape for a very long time, I had not.

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After the delightful Arachne yesterday, another welcome post-Christmas present to off-set the foul weather, in this quite challenging and entertaining puzzle from Puck. The characteristically witty and ingenious cluing provided a number of smiles and ‘aha’ moments along the way, making this a really enjoyable solve. Many thanks, Puck.

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I don’t blog Financial Times crosswords very often, so I haven’t encountered Dante before.  As I solved the puzzle, I thought the cluing style was familiar with very smooth surfaces, lots of double or cryptice definitiions and very few complex clue constructs.

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It was my privilege this year to solve and blog this puzzle whose theme was hinted at in the introduction:

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When this puzzle eventually became available on-line on Boxing Day I thought “Oh good. I enjoy alphabetical jigsaws” so I proceeded to convert the pdf into a format where the font size was such that I could read the clues and the grid more easily.

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