Comments on: Independent 8187 / Anax

By: briggg

briggg — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:07:53 +0000

Double apologies, that should have been Punk (who sets as Mudd in the Financial Times)

By: briggg

briggg — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:05:21 +0000

Sorry to briefly interrupt today’s thread but could I urge fans of Mudd to visit the fifteensquared Announcenents page, you can navigate to it from the links top left.

By: Lancastrian Bluenose

Lancastrian Bluenose — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:29:37 +0000

Another hard crossword from Anax but always interesting !

By: MikeC

MikeC — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:50:51 +0000

Thanks B&J and Anax. Hard work but rewarding – needed help to parse some of these!

By: pennes

pennes — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:28:15 +0000

The paper version has 19/6/21A as 18/6/21A which gives only 27 spaces for 29 letters.I suppose I could have sorted out the confusion, but Anax puzzles are tough enough without clues being muddled up and I did the FT instead.

By: Flashling

Flashling — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:31:57 +0000

Thanks dean and b&j toughest by far for me today. Got stumped by axe thinking of a sneaky hidden of aga.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:30:30 +0000

Thanks, both, for blogging, and Anax for the puzzle. I did eventually manage it (not always the case with this setter), and I’m glad I persevered, because there was some good stuff in here. I have to say my heart sank slightly when I saw the 29-letter anagram – very clever and all that, but from this solver’s point of view, not ideal, since I am never going to solve that from the fodder without a good number of crossing letters. And with Anax, crossing letters have to be worked for.

But I liked CENTIGRADE and AXE, and THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE is smiley now that you’ve explained it (together with three or four others I couldn’t fathom).

Slowly getting there with the Indy Thursday puzzles …

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:01:51 +0000

Hi B and J

As with so many things, I only learned it from a crossword, a while ago.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:48:43 +0000

Thanks Eileen for the two links. Neither of us had come across the use of ‘my bad’ before. We meant to add 24ac to the list of great clues so thanks for that comment too!

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:43:29 +0000

Re Crossword Awards: I hadn’t visited Anax’s website for a day or two and so have only just seen his [and others'] detailed and thought-provoking observations. Worth a look:

http://anaxcrosswords.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/are-the-croscars-a-good-idea/