Never knowingly undersolved
It looks like Hoskins and myself have synchronised in our respective rotas, this being our third meeting on the trot, so I do hope the poor chap doesn’t get sick of me too … Read more >>
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3712.
Some clever stuff from Monk today… …a high standard of clueing/misdirection, and a Nina to boot! After a couple of runs through the clues, the SW quarter remained stubbornly underpopulated, and it took … Read more >>
I was away for a long weekend in Copenhagen when this puzzle was published and didn’t get round to tackling it until mid-week. At first read through, it was not looking promising and … Read more >>
“In A DROP IN THE OCEAN, six solutions, when entered correctly, have spaces into which solvers must appropriately move a thematic item which, carrying 19 and 22, ran into trouble at 25 and broke 36, finally settling on the 47. The wordplay in each across clue leads to the answer and an additional letter not to be entered into the grid; these letters give a further instruction. Initial and final grids, ignoring empty cells, contain only real words.”
A fairly basic challenge from the Don today with just a couple of clues providing some thoughtful moments in parsing.
This wasn’t easy, and the last two solutions had to wait until the rest of the blog was complete. Thanks to Vlad. Definitions are underlined in the clues. Across 7 Each one discarded … Read more >>
As always with Phi everything is pretty obvious once it’s done, but to begin with things were often difficult: he writes clues that are open to a number of different promising approaches. I was delayed for a long time by 21dn; I think my parsing is correct, but in this and one or two other cases no doubt I shall be corrected.
Quite a challenge from Serpent today, which took us a while to get into. There is a well-constructed literary theme based on two 5ds and their major works, which, as we found … Read more >>
Today’s FT puzzle can be found here.
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27374.
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of November 26, 2017
Gila has provided today’s cruciverbal entertainment in what used to be Dac’s weekly spot. I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable, medium-difficulty solve. I completed the grid unaided, but I needed to … Read more >>
Another good straightforward puzzle form Chalmie. Very enjoyable, thank you Chalmie.