Azed 1870
Solving time 27 mins without books, then about 20 mins with Chambers to clear up the resulting mess. Doing Azed without books is an interesting challenge but sometimes you invent a word that … Read more >>
Month: April 2008
Financial Times 12,728 by Cinephile — What the Dickens?
Cinephile frequently does themed puzzles and works his themes in many different ways. Here we have the gentlest of themes: three clues that refer to the Dickens novel “The Old Curiosity Shop”. Across … Read more >>
Independent 6702 / Dac Pleasant Stuff
This blog is brought to you you in association with the NHS – caring for you every day! Well that will teach me! Out on the town with the Sloggers and Betters and I … Read more >>
Financial Times 12,737 (Cinephile)
Across 1 PIKESTAFF: as plain as a, and ‘fishing rod’ 6 FOCAL: anagram of CALF O (love) 10 MARIJUANA: JUAN (John) in MARIA (Miriam) 11 GRUB STREET: GRUBS (foods) + TREET (sounds like … Read more >>
Independent 6701/Nimrod
Heavens what an effort. After a long time I’d done very little, and really thought that I’d have to cheat and look at the website, but eventually it all worked out, although there … Read more >>
Financial Times / 12736 by Armonie
I took a little more than an hour to complete this puzzle which I would rate as ‘above-average’ in difficulty. My entering one or two wrong answers initially did not help matters. I … Read more >>
Sloggers and Betters 4 – The Photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/fifteensquared Edit: as Rishi points out in his comments, the photos could do with some captions to identify who’s who. Anyone can add a comment to any photo so if you recognise someone or … Read more >>
Guardian 24,357 (Gordius)
Straightforward enough except for 26ac which took me ages to sort out and may well be wrong. Across 1 SHAMROCK: SHAM + ROCK 5 ACCORD: ACCORD(ion) losing I and ON, one and on … Read more >>
Inquisitor #65 CLASSIFIED by Ploy
Bit of a mix-up, so an emergency late blog. Please forgive any mistakes! Wonderful puzzle from Ploy, but you would have to be a REAL anorak (as in trainspotter) to solve it without … Read more >>
Guardian 24356/Rufus
I managed to solve this puzzle comfortably on the bus back home this morning. It’s a forty minute journey though I spent much of the time looking out of the window at the … Read more >>
Crossword No 6700 by Al
*=anag, <=reversed, [] =dropped I’ve not come across this compiler before, so wasn’t sure what to expect. It was a good, although not horrendously difficult puzzle with some excellent attempts at deception. The … Read more >>
Guardian 24,349 (Sat 29 Mar)/Paul – Que? Serah, Serah?
Solving time: 10:30 This puzzle contained several long phrases spanning multiple clues which can make things difficult, but some of the longer ones in this were very straightforward so it was a quickish … Read more >>
Independent 6698/Phi
This took a little longer than usual because so far as I could see there were some rather unusual words and meanings, and I also got one answer wrong, which threw me for … Read more >>
Independent 6693/Scorpion
This seemed quite a bit easier than previous Scorpion puzzles but still provided lots to chew over. I liked 23a and the definition in 17d is excellent. Across 5 MIR[-ror],AGE 10 UNION CARD … Read more >>
Guardian 24354/Rover
A straightforward puzzle with, and I apoligise for becoming boring on this, too many cryptic definitions. Most of the omitted answers were, for me, common words with good word play but please do … Read more >>