Azed

I must confess that my heart sank when I saw the special instructions for this puzzle, but in the end it turned out to be only a little more difficult than usual. For … Read more >>

A pretty good Azed this week — it took a while to solve, because the surface reading in some clues was nicely deceptive. As for me, a seriously painful dental infection has hampered … Read more >>

Having confined myself to a strict diet of The Listener over the last few months (and at the other end of the spectrum, the Times2 crossword), it was refreshing to solve a puzzle … Read more >>

In Azed’s crosswords there is always an enormous amount of Chambers-checking meanings of words. If this blog were to contain all the unusual definitions it would be three times as long. I’ll assume … Read more >>

I’ll be back a bit later today with the blog on this puzzle.

Solving time 43:08, Chambers used when grid about half full – but one probable wrong answer. A fairly straightforward puzzle I think – took about half as long as Mephisto. In my current … Read more >>

Printer’s Devilry puzzles are an interesting and enjoyable change that Azed produces from time to time. I thought we’d had one fairly recently – it turns out I was thinking of the 2007 … Read more >>

A more demanding puzzle than some of Azed’s recent ones; and, to me, all the better for that. As usual, I learnt a few new words, though I’m not sure when I’ll ever … Read more >>

Solving time : about a day (but it was my birthday, so I was distracted).  Loads of unfamiliar words this week, and some excellent surface readings (e.g. 19 across).  I found the south-west … Read more >>

I managed to solve most of this one while multi-tasking at Lord’s last Sunday (otherwise known as looking up each time an England bowler sent down a delivery which failed to take a … Read more >>

At first I found this fairly easy going – in particular, several rather obvious anagrams (34, 28, 20…) were my way in, so that I swiftly filled in the bottom half. I was … Read more >>

Some nice clues, but – dare I say it – one or two whose surfaces are pretty vacuous. As usual, I’m afraid. Azed has produced some wonderful stuff over the years, but nowadays … Read more >>

This was probably Azed at his toughest and I am grateful to Peter B and the Cryptonuts for helping fill-in my gaps. First things first. As with all out-of-the ordinary puzzles, read and … Read more >>

I offered to do this blog, then discovered that I had thrown out my copy of the solution, which doesn’t yet appear to be available on the Guardian/Observer website, so I had to … Read more >>

Another fairly straightforward Azed puzzle for my first official blog, with some easy hidden answers and anagrams to get started on. The grid is slightly unusual, with 38 words in it rather than … Read more >>