Guardian 26,247 – Paul

Good entertainment from Paul as usual. Most of this went in fairly easily, though there are a couple of places where I’m not totally convinced by my explanations.           … Read more >>

Financial Times 14608 Armonie

(Please click here for this same blog but with a picture quiz added. Please do NOT post hereinbelow any comment relating to the picture quiz. Thank you.)   A nice straightforward puzzle from Armonie, to … Read more >>

Beelzebub 1,259

This seemed to be a solve of two halves for me. Progress was quite smooth until the last half dozen or so entries, whereby I had to hit the Chambers search pretty hard … Read more >>

AZED 2,185

The usual Azed, where the wordplay is so precise that you can often be pretty sure of the answers without knowing the words. I solved most of this when away for the weekend and came home with many unknown words written by the clues but not yet in the grid, ready for me to look them up in Chambers.

I thought that 19dn was very good, but my godson had a point when he opined that the ‘e.g.’ takes away from the surface reading. However, Azed (but not all setters, including some in The Times) clearly abhors a definition by example. And rightly so in my opinion.

Definitions in italics.

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