Never knowingly undersolved
I found this a difficult Quiptic, and when I’d finished solving and blogging it, I discovered why. Quiptics with a theme are about as rare as hens’ teeth, but there’s one here. It’s … Read more >>
A traditional Rufus medley, with perhaps more anagrams and fewer cryptic and double definitions than usual. There are a couple of places where the cluing seems rather awry but it’s perhaps me being … Read more >>
Another new setter before the demise of the print edition, I guess for a setter seeing your name on line doesn’t have the same cachet as seeing it in print where you’ve “made it”.
There were certainly a large number of mistakes in this puzzle. Gaffe, Lapse, Cock-up, Boob, Faux pas, Blunder and Goof, to name but a few. I couldn’t find any actual error though. Edit: … Read more >>
This was a little unusual for a Beelzebub in that I only needed to read a handful of clues more than once. Instead of my usual initial pass through all the clues, having … Read more >>
Hello, from an overcast North London.
I always cheat when doing Azed. In a normal daily cryptic this would be unforgivable until perhaps the very end when one is stuck, but with Azed I always say to myself that the words are so weird that one needs help. You may say that I should persevere and try to do it all from the wordplay and only then look up the word to see if it exists, and yes I do sometimes do that, but the wordplay itself also often makes reference to some impossible words and I’d never get anywhere. At least I would. but it would take me about ten times as long as I normally spend.
As always everything, with its neat clueing, is perfectly clear after the event.
Definitions underlined and in maroon.
(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.) This required 2 sittings to complete, … Read more >>
(Please post comments on ONLY the picture quiz hereinbelow. To post comments on the crossword puzzle, please click here.) This required 2 sittings to complete, with a couple of clues in the SE … Read more >>
So who’s Elroy? Well it’s a character in The Jetsons cartoon series however it’s also an anagram of Leroy, Royle or Oyler. As this puzzle was a joint effort by the editor, Samuel, … Read more >>
Well in the week that the Independent announced its departure from the newsagent stands – a tussle with Nimrod beckons and perhaps my last ever blog of an Independent crossword. I for one … Read more >>
I really enjoy Brummie’s crosswords – always entertaining and often with interesting vocabulary and wordplay. I didn’t spot any particular theme here; the notable thing that jumped out at us were a couple … Read more >>
It looked like it would be an easy week for me here. It was a small 10×6 grid, and there were only twenty clues, with no misprints or extra letters, and what seemed … Read more >>
I felt smaller than David in attacking this challenge from Goliath. I managed to get there in the end, but the parsing for a couple of clues evaded me, for which I turned to Gaufrid for help. Thanks Goliath, for raising crossword hell.
This is the fourth Picaroon puzzle in a row that has fallen to me to blog – absolutely no complaints from me but I suspect there may be from some of my fellow-bloggers. … Read more >>