Guardian 24,900 – Gordius
Gordius is not one of my favouruite setters, and this puzzle has done nothing to change my opinion. There’s nothing seriously wrong with it, I suppose, but just a few clues that have … Read more >>
Month: January 2010
Independent 7246/Dac
As always with Dac, a whole lot of transparently simple and elegant clues that leave one (me, at any rate) wondering how it was that they ever presented any problem. Yet some of … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,269 – Falcon
Monday Prize Crossword on 28 December 2009 Falcon gave me cause for pause with three new words I have never heard of. Otherwise, not too difficult for an FT week-opener. ACROSS 1 SUPPER … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,275 / Jason
Happy New Year to all! Some interesting clues from Jason today, but as usual, I’m afraid, also a few that didn’t quite seem to work. Across 9 INSTANTER STAN (Laurel of Laurel and … Read more >>
Independent 7245 by Merlin
An excellent themed puzzle from Merlin, quite hard, solving time 38 mins. * = anagram < = reversed ACROSS 1 CUD DIE A horse, like many of the across answers 4 C (dUCK) … Read more >>
Guardian 24899 – Araucaria
Araucaria, as usual, combines a great sense of humour with his enigmatic style of clueing. I particularly like his well-disguised definitions such as playgirl for Cressida and Great king for Alexander. Very challenging … Read more >>
Independent 7,244 by Raich
Well, well! I wonder how familiar Raich will be to Independent-solving Fifteensquareders 😉 I’ve tackled a few barred crosswords by Raich, including an Inquisitor that earned me a nice bottle of champagne, but … Read more >>
Guardian 24,898 (Rufus)
I enjoyed this start to the week. It is all that you might expect from Rufus with the usual imaginative cryptic definitions. Across 8 RAW-BONED: RAW (uncooked) + BONED (filleted) 9 EERIE: EER … Read more >>
Private Eye/Cyclops 407 – Xmas Special, Dumb Britain
This year the theme is the Dumb Britain section which takes questions and silly answers that contestants to popular quiz programmes have provided. The trick is to guess what the flailing contestant might … Read more >>
Genius 78: Brummie — contrariwise
As Geniuses go, this was on the easy side — the preamble was explicit about what needed to be done, and the clues were pretty straightforward. For those who missed the preamble, which … Read more >>
AZED No. 1,961: No nuts at Christmas
Nick: My first blog on AZED and luckily it was a (fairly!) straight forward plod after the herculean ‘Christmas Parcels’ competition (and what a word to clue to boot!). Some nice words this … Read more >>
Azed 1960 Christmas parcels – hard to unwrap!
This was one of the hardest Azeds that I can remember. I was certainly in need of the additional time allowed, even during a holiday period. I found that I needed to make … Read more >>
Everyman 3300
A rather nice and gentle end to the year – a couple of seasonal clues/answers and what with the slightly more obscure words being anagramatically clued, this was all pretty straightforward. Across 1 … Read more >>
Beelzebub 1,036 (27/12/09)
A solve of two halves for me – all but 25ac and a handful in the SE corner went in very quickly, while the rest took two or three more sessions, a bit … Read more >>
Independent 7,242 by Phi
Mostly quite manageable I think, my one stumbling block here was 1ac, which defeated me event with all the checking letters in place. Given what day it is, I had a brief look … Read more >>