Azed 2734

Thanks to Azed for another quality puzzle.   Across 1 GRAITH Scottish dress (old-fashioned) one kept in sanctuary once (6)A (one) in GRITH (sanctuary) 7 YACCA Evergreen causing hard grind for Aussie by … Read more >>

Azed 2731

Azed provides us with a plain puzzle this week.       Azed seems to have been scouring the dictionary for alternative spellings this week.   I counted six entries that were not … Read more >>

Azed 2,729 – placeholder

The blog for Azed 2,729 (“Give and Take)” will now appear a week later than normal (October 20) due to the following announcement that is due to appear in the Observer on Sunday, … Read more >>

Azed 2728

Recently I’ve been solving Azeds quite quickly; on this one, however, I made rather a slow start, but once I’d got a few answers in the rest came reasonably smoothly. Thanks to Azed. … Read more >>

Azed No. 2,727 – Plain

A medium-difficulty Azed plain. I was a bit surprised to see two homophone clues: these always excite comment from people whose regional accents don’t make them obvious and Azed has in the past expressed misgivings about using such clues, for just this reason. In my case although I don’t have a regional accent one of them I pronounce differently from what is intended. But never mind; I won’t (like some) make an issue of it: it’s quite obvious what is intended.

Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.

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Azed 2725

We have a plain puzzle from Azed this week.       There didn’t seem to be as many really obscure entries this week compared to some others.  However the 1 across and … Read more >>

Azed 2722

A long answer at 1 across can be helpful in getting into a puzzle, but in this case I needed a lot of crossing letters to work it out. Apart from that it … Read more >>

Azed 2721

Maybe I’ve only just noticed, but Azed’s crosswords nowadays frequently have two or three subtraction clues, as here. These are often quite difficult, and I didn’t find this crossword all that easy, with so many crazy words that had to be looked up in Chambers. But otherwise it was much as usual, with its sound clueing. The doubts I have expressed below may well be down to me, not to Azed.

Definitions in blue, underlined (the rest of the clues are in crimson). Anagram indicators in italics. Anagrams indicated (like this)* or *(this).

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