My Cyclops blogging debut — I’ll be sharing this with Beermagnet. It’s great to blog a Cyclops, because I’ve been taking the time to appreciate his clues, with their clever use of double meanings and their witty, topical and economical surface reading. This one was fairly gentle in terms of solving difficulty, I thought — so often with a Cyclops puzzle, there’s just one clue that holds me up for ages, but not this time.

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Christmas at the Eye – another year – another big grid with proportionally inflated prize**.

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My subscription copy of this issue did turn up –  a week late.  A little bit of snow and the world stops round here.  And with much more snow on the ground as I blog this, I don’t hold out many hopes of seeing the next issue before Xmas – but I will make sure I get a copy as I’m keen to see what theme Cyclops has picked for us in the Giant Xmas Special this year. My prediction is names from the “Pseudo names” letters section.  The Eye seems to have hit on an inexhaustible supply from willing contributors such as Rachel Discrimination and Jack Hughes. Read the rest of this entry »

So it was at the London Sloggers’n'Betters in The Salisbury that I realised that almost a week had passed and I hadn’t finished this puzzle. In fact I had only got 10 answers by then. Events had conspired to make me do real work rather than crosswords for most of my waking hours the previous few days (that’s my excuse) and I hadn’t been on Cyclops’ wavelength when starting it. Anyway, eventually finished it with a bit of a struggle, and the usual then happens – I go to write up the blog and I wonder why I had so much trouble. Everything’s easy when you know the answer and the wordplay shines out (apart from 1D). Really though, I rate this at the harder end of the Eye crossword spectrum.

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I’m well aware that when we bloggers baldly present the answers and wordplay it can make the solving process seem all too easy. But for some of us our calm exterior belies frantic activity, like a head sticking out of a pool while the legs are treading water like the clappers underneath.
Take for example 8A ALGEBRA: I realized most of the wordplay, but hadn’t understood the definition and thought “putting on” was an insertion indicator. So I tried to put (ALEG)* inside BRA. I have things like BALEGRA and BREGALA pencilled in the margin.
Then there’s the clumsy error that causes trouble: I quickly and gleefully got 6D CRACKLE – then wrote it in the space for 8A. I had an otherwise blank top-right corner till I sorted that out.
I have given up using a pen – pencil only for me.

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Lovely stuff as usual. Nothing too tricky or unexplained this time.  Pleasant solve over a couple of pints.  I noted I had 9 unsolved when starting pint number two. Read the rest of this entry »

Good work from Cyclops in this crossy. Some clues easy enough to cold solve to get going but funny, and a few tricky ones that fall after a few crossing letters. I nearly got mislead into writing in a wrong answer at 1 Across but just stopped myself in time.

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If there is a theme to this crossword it is that several clues refer to the male member, some in ways that I, as a sensitive soul, find difficult to contemplate. Jacqui Smith is possibly the only female member present, well, present in the past if you see what I mean.  No?  I don’t think I’m making much sense either.  Let’s chalk out the clues … Read the rest of this entry »

I got one wrong.  And I even sent in my entry for the prize competition with it wrong.
So I’m expecting my entry to be picked from the gazillions – and then rejected.  And then it’ll be another 400 years before I’m picked again, on average.  So I’ll just have to console myself with another pint. Read the rest of this entry »

Another excellent crossword from our resident setter with no depth to his vision – presumably that’s why he concentrates on the clue’s surface. Read the rest of this entry »

Half-way through solving this I thought I was on for a record time – covering half the grid in a very few minutes. Then I slowed and then got interrupted by Real Life. Coming back to it a few hours later I finished it off with not much trouble except for 1/23 CROSSWORD SETTER which took far too long and especially the final 17D BESMEAR.

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I made a note that I only had 10 answers in place after the first pint, which is an indication that this was harder than the last few Eye crossies.  On the other hand, after a breather the rest fell in short order.  Crossing letters helped for the last few but nothing that didn’t have wordplay understood.  Last to drop – 8D Empathy.
I see Selfridges are being lambasted again for starting the “Christmas Shopping Experience” five months early.  As a computer programmer I like celebrating early and often, at Halloween as well as the other one. Why? … Read the rest of this entry »

Woah! Cyclops revealing his Republican tendancies in his central down answers,
and possibly extolling the virtues of early applications of antibiotics in the central across answers: Preempt anthrax.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this . Read the rest of this entry »

So there I was wondering where to do my Eye crossword this time. I thought what about another time and found myself in a smoky pub in about 1972. “The Worlds End”.  God it was awful! – the beer was dreadful, the atmosphere could be cut with a knife, and someone sat down at the piano and started belting out “Blue is the Colour”.  One good thing was that it had lots of separate bars and there was a reasonably quiet snug where I could settle down to tackle the crossword.  Of course when I finished it I found myself back in the real world.  Shame. Read the rest of this entry »

… are better, maybe.
Maybe Edward Woodward would have had something to say about that, if he was foreward.  The three Eds here are the ubiquitous Editor, one Miliband, and the inevitable Balls.
Political topicality provided the longest answer.

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