Posted by kenmac on 11th April 2012
There’s a misprint in the definition in all clues. In clue order, they spell out a two part instruction, which will help us to identify a “running joke.” Once the grid’s complete, we have to transform the rows into background noise, in a suitably repetitious manner. Finally, we’ll find several instances of one particular letter already in place.
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Posted by Hihoba on 4th April 2012
Reasonable start this week, but a tricky finish.
We were asked to identify a “joiner” from “components” deduced from the unclued entries, and from misprinted letters in 15 clues.
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Posted by duncanshiell on 28th March 2012
The preamble for this puzzle appeared mind-bogglingly complex on first read through. It went as follows:
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Posted by HolyGhost on 21st March 2012
Answers to 16 clues have one letter removed (wherever it occurs) before entry; wordplay refers to the entry. The three unclued entries are of a kind with what these missing letters suggest. Ten cells are to be highlighted in the final grid.
If I were to stretch John H’s easy-to-hard ranking from 1-3 to a less coarse 1-5, I’d grade this a 2.
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Posted by kenmac on 14th March 2012
The preamble tells us that there are misprints in the definitions in some clues but doesn’t tell us how many. The corrected letters give a cryptic link to a location.
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Posted by Hihoba on 7th March 2012
This gave us a good workout and a dialogue between Ba and me (Hi) eventually sorted everything out with one minor exception in 20A.
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Posted by duncanshiell on 29th February 2012
The preamble stated that ‘Solvers must fill the central cell and highlight it together with 12 others, so identifying a character whose first action provides the theme. Each perimeter entry is a pair of words thematically related to solutions to the relevant clues, which are not to be entered. The answers to the remaining clues must be thematically modified before entry: numbers in parentheses refer to grid entries’
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Posted by HolyGhost on 22nd February 2012
Four clues have a misprint, and the rest have a redundant word. A jumble of the corrections to the misprints form a word that is thematically associated with eight unclued entries, and the initial letters of the redundant words spell five more thematic associations. The entries in the first and last columns are also relevant.
I must say, I found this remarkably easy. I solved about half the across clues on the first pass, then all bar three of the down clues. This allowed me to discover the theme, and fill in all the unclued entries. On the second pass through the clues, I finished off the across answers, and the remaining down ones. It was all over very quickly.
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Posted by kenmac on 15th February 2012
Phew what a workout! I just hope Schadenfreude derived a lot of “freude” from everyone’s’ “schade!” However, I got there in the end.
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Posted by Hihoba on 8th February 2012
We had to find a writer (1,4) and a work by him, with the first line in the top and bottom spaces and a mournful cry elsewhere in the diagram.
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Posted by duncanshiell on 1st February 2012
The preamble stated "the grid exhibits 90 degrees symmetry. Clues are in conventional order. One letter must be omitted from each answer before entry in the grid; definitions and letter-counts refer to the full answers, wordplay to the grid entry. Additionally, what you see in the final grid is what you get from the omitted letters."
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Posted by HolyGhost on 25th January 2012
Down answers are ‘affected’ before entry; Across clues are ‘affected’ before solving.
Either I got lucky, or this was easy (or both).
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Posted by kenmac on 18th January 2012
We have to find two quotes (from the same source) around the perimeter and then, cryptically, three down clues will combine to deliver the first. The allusion has to be completed by filling the one blank cell. I searched and searched but couldn’t find a barred-off cell anywhere. 
Every clue contains an extra word and the first letters of these spell out part of a third related quote. To help us complete the perimeter, Nutmeg has given us the phrase: MOTTO: I HIRE TEAHOUSE.
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Posted by Hihoba on 11th January 2012
A nice seasonal puzzle with some tricky cluing. I started at the top left (unusually) which turned out to be very helpful, as the most important theme word was at 1A. DA?E? led readily to DAMES. So we were looking for two types of Dame, and the rubric indicated pretty clearly that they would be real ones and pantomime ones.
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Posted by duncanshiell on 4th January 2012
The preamble stated "in every clue, the wordplay leads to the answer together with an extra letter not to be entered in the grid. In clue order these give the first line of a work, minus one key word. The work’s second line suggests the entry method for six answers; it’s final line, a timely message, completes the unclued part of the perimeter."
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