ilancaron

Sorry for the late blog… no excuses (OK other than 48 World Cup games + Wimbledon). I thought this slightly harder than the run-of-the-mill Azed (oxymoron?). No lack of the requisite mysteries. Across … Read more >>

I completely forgot about this blog. Gaufrid kindly reminded me yesterday so I promptly forgot again. And then woke up this morning with something niggling my memory. That was about an hour and … Read more >>

I have several crossword ambitions, very few of which I’ll actually achieve. E.g. finish the T2 quick crossword in the annual top 10, an all-correct Listener year, win a Times clue competition and… … Read more >>

As per usual a wordplay or two which I’m not sure of. Somewhat harder than my last Azed outing (1958). And a surprised groan or two were elicited (Azed isn’t the most humorous … Read more >>

Surprisingly fast solve for me — I spent less than an hour before breakfast doing this with a bit of help from the Usual Suspects. Until I came to a crashing halt with … Read more >>

Not as many impenetrable wordplays (note to self: must improve wordplay decoding). I’m sure once this is posted, someone will put us quickly out of our misery and reveal all. I will say … Read more >>

Another wordplay debacle in the SE corner. I had the rest done in an hour or so (The Big Red Book consoling me as needed) — however, I struggled through the bottom-right for … Read more >>

Only realized this morning (Friday) that it was my Azed turn this week. A couple of hours of quality time spent with Chambers led to a full grid and a short list of … Read more >>

Somewhat of a Compu-Indo-Scots vocabulary this week. I did this rather fast (for me!) at an airport lounge… guessed some answers from the definition in several cases and left the wordplay for later. … Read more >>

Did this at work in my copious free time — which wasn’t much so I’ve left a few questions behind.  The 12 letter perimeter words were all compound words. Across 1 PINCH,COMMONS – … Read more >>

A typical Azed outing involving quality time with The Big Red Book: a couple of wordplays still to be decoded and the requisite mystery clue. Thanks to Andrew all is clear now! Across … Read more >>

I solved this with the help of a Google friend (Howard Trickey — thanks!).   Unlike a typical Listener, we cracked the theme well before solving all the clues (with the help of … Read more >>

Still restricting myself to a Listener-only diet, Azed comes as a welcome relief in the advanced cryptic scheme of things. I found this puzzle to have the normal level of well-constructed clues requiring … Read more >>

Having confined myself to a strict diet of The Listener over the last few months (and at the other end of the spectrum, the Times2 crossword), it was refreshing to solve a puzzle … Read more >>