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Solving time: 35 mins It would be fair to say that I wasn’t firing on all cylinders when solving this puzzle. The clearest evidence was the five minutes I wasted trying to find … Read more >>

Solving time: 65 mins A very nice Christmas jumbo from Araucaria, with the phrases “We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year” and “God rest you merry gentlemen” hidden in … Read more >>

Solving time: 16 mins, one missing (6dn) If I’d been well schooled in Brontë, this would have been one of my fastest solves of an Araucaria crossword – surprising, considering the grid, which … Read more >>

Solving time: 6:50, with a self-induced hold-up on 13ac (ICKY) at the end. How difficult you found this probably depended on how quickly you spotted one of the long multi-word phrases; the central … Read more >>

Solving time: 11:36 (one mistake, 23dn) I really enjoyed solving this puzzle, despite a few quibbles. There’s no major theme that I can see but there is a lot of linkage going on … Read more >>

Solving time: 20:43, two mistakes (23ac and 5dn) I found this fairly difficult but enjoyable. A number of the answers, including the two I guessed incorrectly (EPISEMON and ERYSIPELAS), had ambiguous wordplays, which … Read more >>

Solving time: 13:40 An enjoyable puzzle from Araucaria, with a couple of strange clues thrown in. Several clues refer to the Suffragette movement. * = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’. Across 1 … Read more >>

Solving time: 7:44 An amusing offering from Paul, with a theme: the key clue is the one to 13dn/20ac, which yields “ASK A STUPID QUESTION”. The definitions to 10 other clues are given … Read more >>

Solving time: Gave up on 14dn after 20 mins, and wished I’d done so earlier! Most of this I managed to rattle through, but then I got stuck for ages on the final … Read more >>

Solving time: 9:51 A rare Saturday outing for Brummie. Nothing too difficult, although NO STRINGS, DROSOPHILA and LUTYENS probably accounted for a third of my time. I enjoyed the puzzle but thought a … Read more >>

Solving time: 12:56 I probably found this a little easier than usual for Araucaria, until I came to the last three clues (EMBRYO, MULCT and STEEL [BLUE]) which took a fair chunk of … Read more >>

Solving time: 9:51, with a whopping three mistakes (12ac, 26ac and 3dn). Very much 1-0 to the setter – I fell headlong into a beautifully-laid trap at 12ac (and shot myself in the … Read more >>

Solving time: 9:02 A very rapid blog this week as I’m already running extremely late! I found this much easier than some of Araucaria’s recent puzzles. There is a geometric theme running through … Read more >>

Solving time: 33 mins (one mistake, a misspelling of BREECHES) I found this ‘Araubetical’ (© Muck) very difficult, mostly because of the high number of unchecked initial letters – in fact, after 20 … Read more >>

Solving time: 28:59 My times this week have been dreadful, and this was no exception – I really don’t think this was particularly harder than normal, but after 5 minutes I’d solved only … Read more >>