Azed

I found this a pretty tough Azed, making little progress in my initial cocky “no Chambers for me” mode, and requiring two solving sessions rather than one. Overall time was over an hour, … Read more >>

Azed starts the new year (though not, please, the “second decade of the 21st Century” – that’s next year) with a puzzle that was mostly straightforward: I manage to complete most of it … Read more >>

Nick:  My first blog on AZED and luckily it was a (fairly!) straight forward plod after the herculean ‘Christmas Parcels’ competition (and what a word to clue to boot!).  Some nice words this … Read more >>

This was one of the hardest Azeds that I can remember. I was certainly in need of the additional time allowed, even during a holiday period. I found that I needed to make … Read more >>

An Azed of average difficulty this week, I think; I needed a dictionary to check several answers. The words ‘whample’ and ‘sprangle’ were both delightful discoveries. No clue stands out as favourite of … Read more >>

Surprisingly fast solve for me — I spent less than an hour before breakfast doing this with a bit of help from the Usual Suspects. Until I came to a crashing halt with … Read more >>

As always with Azed apparently complete soundness in the wordplay of his clues; there are one or two places where I’m not sure how to explain this, but I suspect someone will do … Read more >>

Solving time: 35 minutes without Chambers, but with one mistake A fairly straightforward Azed this one – I managed to invent all the right words without help except for 30A. Across 1 ARCHIBALD … Read more >>

An Azed of mixed difficulty, I found. I sailed through about three quarters of it with trouble at all, including most of the five long answers, but made much heavier weather of the … Read more >>

I’m hoping that this puzzle from last Sunday does not have a similar deadline extension to last week’s prize puzzle. If you know that it does, please let me know with a comment, … Read more >>

“Words may be false and full of art; sighs are the natural language of the heart”, by Thomas Shadwell is the quotation referred to here. The second part is obtained by the letters … Read more >>

Due to the postal strike the closing date for entries has been put back to Saturday 14/11/2009 so today’s blog has been rescheduled for next Sunday.

An Azed with a mix of easyish and fairly difficult clues, and a few pretty obscure words, which made it interesting to solve. I think I will go for 17a as my favorite … Read more >>

Not as many impenetrable wordplays (note to self: must improve wordplay decoding). I’m sure once this is posted, someone will put us quickly out of our misery and reveal all. I will say … Read more >>

As always Azed produces a top-class grid, with four words crossing it completely and two more almost doing so. As a result, of course, there are many words that need a painstaking hunt … Read more >>