An easier than usual puzzle this week,  which I completed in just over an hour and a half, although I am still puzzled by the wordplay to 9 down.  It’s a 13 by 11 grid, with both the 13 letter clues (at 1 and 34 across) having a classical theme.  There were three hidden clues, which always helps, and perhaps fewer unfamiliar words than in your average Azed.  Here’s a link to the pdf of the puzzle.  The printed version had a couple of minor misprints, both to clue numbers, but no real difficulty arose.  In the interactive version, there was an error about italicisation. Read the rest of this entry »

I find Poins one of the more difficult IoS setters, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this offering.  If I’m being critical, this crossword lacked a bit of sparkle; and the large number of solutions with less than 50% checking coupled with a solver-unfriendly grid meant that I struggled to finish it in one go.  However, a second look on Sunday evening with a glass of red finally put it to bed.  For me, this was a sound enough puzzle, but without anything special to make me smile while I was solving it.

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The puzzle includes one or two things which might be less well known to some, but I do not see any great difficulties. Read the rest of this entry »