I think there might be some cries of ‘obscurity’ this morning but the less familiar [or unknown] solutions were all very fairly and clearly clued, I think. For me, the difficulties lay more in the misdirection in some of the clues and the parsing of some of the less obscure answers. I enjoyed the research and learned a few things along the way, which is always a good thing. [I apologise for the rather late posting of this blog - there were a lot of links to provide and the said research led me along several interesting diversions. Then, finally, I made an error in posting the blog and had to call on Gaufrid for technical help!]

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A change of blogger today due to work commitments. I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this puzzle, too many four letter words for my liking including one (12ac) that I cannot explain.

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Today has seen the latest of my many tussles with Nestor’s puzzles on a blogging day. My apologies if the blog seems a little cursory today: I was away from home until late last night, so time has truly been of the essence this morning.

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Monday Prize Crossword/ Oct 29

I have to confess that, despite some very easy clues, I found this the hardest Dante crossword  I’ve ever solved, or better: tried to solve. Probably due to the fact that a third (yes, a third !!) of the clues fell into the category “Cryptic Definition”, I could, after a few sessions, only get about 75%. But then there’s always my PinC.  With her invaluable help, I  made some progress, even though two clues were still lost on me/us (19d, 22ac).

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Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of October 27, 2012

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