Never knowingly undersolved
neildubya Paul’s salute to the ever-inventive British train companies and their feeble excuses for shoddy service. Not as difficult as some Paul crosswords can be, especially once you’ve cracked the theme, but very satisfying. … Read more >>
Following on from the non-appearance of a post on an Araucaria puzzle this week, we’re going to start using placeholders. This is how it will work: Either a full post or a placeholder … Read more >>
Across 1 (THE LAW)* in LEAP,ON – LETHAL WEAPON. 9 KIN,IS,G,ZED – I always think KIN whenever I see “family” so I got this fairly quickly. 10 SINUS – the wordplay seems to … Read more >>
http://picasaweb.google.com/fifteensquared Edit: as Rishi points out in his comments, the photos could do with some captions to identify who’s who. Anyone can add a comment to any photo so if you recognise someone or … Read more >>
This seemed quite a bit easier than previous Scorpion puzzles but still provided lots to chew over. I liked 23a and the definition in 17d is excellent. Across 5 MIR[-ror],AGE 10 UNION CARD … Read more >>
Satisfyingly diverse bunch of words here and some great wordplay. Paul’s clues are short and without a wasted word – like Bach to Araucaria’s Mozart . A few straight anagrams made it easier … Read more >>
A classic themed puzzle from Virgilius, which I was on to before I’d filled a single answer in as I saw “Idiot” twice in the Across clues, plus “nincompoop” and then quickly realised … Read more >>
4/14 provided the theme for this enjoyable puzzle, which I found a bit tougher than usual for this setter. What’s a bit strange though is that I count 13 men’s names in the … Read more >>
Across 1 (TURN TAIL HOME VIA)* – ITALIAN VERMOUTH, otherwise known as IT as in “Gin and It”. But how can “orbital” be an anagram indicator? 9 RY in TON – not difficult … Read more >>
<Insert my usual hero-worshipping gush about how great Araucaria is here> <Insert my usual slight whinge about clues that require obsolete copies of Roget’s Thesaurus here > ACROSS 1 PITTA – It’s usually … Read more >>
A year ago today I posted a message to this blog saying that my wife had just given birth to our first child. This was him then: And here he is now: Happy … Read more >>
I wonder if anyone will solve this without realising there’s a theme? There are a number of 6d 14a in the grid (highlighted in bold below) as well as in almost every clue, along … Read more >>
This is a place-holder as I haven’t yet given this excellent puzzle the time it deserves ACROSS 1 PLEA(SURE)T-RIP 8 U-(c)RANIUM 9 ? 11 NET-B-ALL 12 ? 13 DIRGE = (E.G RID) < … Read more >>
An entertaining puzzle from that nice man we usually see on Fridays. Across 1 INSE[-t],CURE 5 M[i]CE,WAN – the last one I filled in and the toughest clue of the puzzle I thought. … Read more >>
Around about this time each week I usually post a blog about the Saturday prize puzzle in the Independent. However, as I spent most of the weekend preparing to move house and then … Read more >>