Azed

The usual Azed, full of neat and tightly-constructed clues. Across 1 KEKS — keks are trousers and kex is a dry hollow herbaceous stalk 4 POPESHIP — (hopes)* in pip, and the Pope … Read more >>

A mostly straightforward puzzle, which I think took me around 40 minutes, with Chambers just used at the end to find the answer to 16D and correct my daft mistake at 23A. This … Read more >>

Quite a hard puzzle this week, with a lot more unfamiliar words than usual, I think. My favourites clue are 10ac and 22dn for their unusual and confusing – but totally sound – … Read more >>

Nick:  Fairly difficult AZED this week, due to a competition puzzle, I suppose, but great to solve.  30ac and 12dn seemed to be very convolute to work out, with 30ac being the ‘gotcha’ … Read more >>

After last week’s offering, which Jetdoc found easy, but which defeated me, I found this special very much easier than a normal Azed, doing much of it on the train without the aid … Read more >>

For me, this was very much at the easy end of the Azed spectrum, though I needed a dictionary to check a few words. No special favourite clue this week, though there are … Read more >>

I have several crossword ambitions, very few of which I’ll actually achieve. E.g. finish the T2 quick crossword in the annual top 10, an all-correct Listener year, win a Times clue competition and… … Read more >>

The usual very satisfactory offering from Azed. I have learned not to look too far for wonderful surfaces, but to admire the faultless construction of his clues. Across 2 J ASS — one … Read more >>

A reasonably difficult puzzle for me, taking about an hour, with Chambers used a lot. I think part of the difficulty was not getting 1A or 13D quickly. Azed seems to have errred … Read more >>

A puzzle of two halves, I found: I whizzed though about two-thirds very quickly and without aids, then struggled rather more to finish it off. As promised, I’ve done this blog in the … Read more >>

Nick:  I am trying a new format here, with the full clue next to the clue number and the solution with word play/comments underneath.  Often when reading other blogs on this site, I … Read more >>

So far as I can discover, this is the first Playfair competition puzzle for around two years, the last having been 1804, which must have been in December 2007 (probably the Christmas competition) … Read more >>

Better late than never, I hope. I was relieved finally to retrieve my solved copy of this from the recycling bin, as I did not want to find time for re-solving it before … Read more >>

As per usual a wordplay or two which I’m not sure of. Somewhat harder than my last Azed outing (1958). And a surprised groan or two were elicited (Azed isn’t the most humorous … Read more >>

It can hardly be that I am suddenly becoming quicker at these, but I found this unusually easy. Apart from the strangeness of some of the words, it presented no more problems than … Read more >>