Independent

Apologies for the delay – a review of today’s debut by Nestor will appear shortly.

Some of you may have seen this post appear, disappear and reappear. That’s because I posted on the wrong day after looking at last week’s schedule and then removed it while I found … Read more >>

Solving time: 13:16 (one mistake) Another excellent puzzle from Virgilius with a theme (7, arguably 10 answers) based on a work by one of my favourite authors. Anyone unfamiliar with the excerpt in … Read more >>

Solvers of advanced cryptics will recognise the name Obtrox as he/she has compiled a number of crosswords for the Listener, Enigmatic Variations and the Independent’s own Weekend Magazine over the past few years. … Read more >>

This was really tough.  Merlin has a monthly slot in  the Indy. As a solver who tackles the Times Listener Crossword every week, Merlin is familiar to me in that context also as … Read more >>

Solving time : 30 minutes. In many ways a typical Phi puzzle, very fair. The clues that marred this puzzle for me were a couple of cryptic definitions that I didn’t feel worked … Read more >>

Some tricky clues – solving time 22 mins.    Hope setters are not paid by clue, just 24 in the puzzle. ACROSS 5  GRIN AND BEAR IT  anagram of “Britain – danger” with the … Read more >>

Something of a bruising encounter for me and I’m still licking the wounds. I find Mass puzzles very tough – enjoyable, but tough. Matters weren’t helped by getting 19A and 22a wrong and … Read more >>

Independent 6272/Dac – easy but nice Solved in 5:05.  Got a reasonable start with 5A and then the easy anag at 5D. Should really have had 1A first time for a sub-5 clocking, … Read more >>

Solving Time: 18 minutes After yesterday’s enjoyable Tees puzzle, the momentum of the excellence of the recent Indy puzzles continued with today’s puzzle by Virgilius, although the brilliance of most of the puzzle … Read more >>

Solving time: 7:45 I really liked this puzzle on the theme of 11s (coincidentally the first clue I solved), though I wonder if I have missed some of the thematic references. A very … Read more >>

I got confused about who was writing what and wrote stuff on both of last Saturday’s puzzles.  So this one is a duplicate… another excuse for putting it up is that I referred to links … Read more >>

Solving Time:  23 minutes  An enjoyable Saturday romp from Nimrod with a topical theme given the recently announced departure of Des from Countdown.  If the puzzle had a weakness, it was that Countdown … Read more >>

Solving time: 11:05 Not the easiest, but I think I made a bit of a meal of some of this, although there were a few difficult words. Nimrod continues a recent theme of … Read more >>

I found this very easy, solved in 13 mins. Typical Quixote style, light in cultural references, homing in on the everyday experience of the solver.Simple constructions with, I think, just three complete anagrams. … Read more >>