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I started solving at a very young age and when other young men were discovering different magazines, I was discovering the joys of Quiz Digest and Tough Puzzles, although didn’t fully understand things except Printers’ Devilry puzzles. Cut teeth on Altair in the Guardian and went on to discover the joys of Araucaria and Bunthorne, the latter becoming a personal friend. With the advent of the Internet, I rekindled my joy of solving and with encouragement got into the murky world of Azeds, Listeners and such-like. Became a moderator on Derek Harrison’s excellent site and finally got into compiling, having had puzzles published in the Indy Mag, The Magpie and others. Ambition is to be good enough to be published regularly and to see in print his idea of a Listener puzzle on the works of Barry Manilow. However, success at one may prevent the other from materialising. Other recent highlights include not making a fool of himself on Mastermind and likewise on Countdown.

Azed 1874 – A Slip of the Pen

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Solving time: just about an hour. Greetings from the Royal Blackburn Hospital.  I was flung into here on Tuesday as the old pins were still knackered.  Reasonably tough fare from the Observer’s maestro, not … Read more >>

Azed 1869 / Plain – Stiff Challenge

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Solving Time: 55 minutes (with assistance on two clues from the wonderful Eric) Whether it’s because I am off solving barred puzzles at the moment, I can’t say, but this certainly took me a … Read more >>

Independent 6684 – Dac

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Solving time:  23 minutes  Apologies for the late hour of posting, but a long day of hospital treatment left me rather zonked.   This was a typical enjoyable Dac puzzle with elegant surface readings and … Read more >>

Independent 6667 / Nimrod

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Solving time: 25 minutes.  Quite devious from young Nimrod today with a couple of ambiguous solutions until you get the intersecting answers.  Very enjoyable with a couple of forehead slapping moments.  ACROSS  (*) = … Read more >>

Azed 1,864

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Solved in three sittings totalling over 75 minutes.  Quite a  tough puzzle by Azed’s standards with a grid that didn’t offer a great deal of help from one section to another.  I solved the … Read more >>

Independent 18.02.08 by Dac

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Apologies for the lateness of posting, but some intravenous drugs managed to lay me low for a little while longer than expected today.  Solving time: 19 minutes. Always a joy to solve Dac’s … Read more >>

Azed 1859 (Plain)/ Tricky Stuff

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Solving Time: around 75 minutes. A tough challenge from Azed this week with some straight-forward stuff, but one or two really tricky clues that took me a while to work out.  Music:  Maria Callas giving her … Read more >>