Never knowingly undersolved
Some normal clues to be jumbled and some clues with additional letters in the wordplay to be entered normally. The extra letters spelling out the adventurous group who are in two symmetrically placed … Read more >>
One of my favourite setters this week, and a nice short preamble. Nine answers were connected to their grid entry in some way, with the remaining clues having something restored before solving. 1ac … Read more >>
Kruger sends his ‘GREETINGS’ – will EV solvers return the hand of friendship? I think they should!… I thought this was a wonderful and (eventually) accessible puzzle – bit of a slow burner to … Read more >>
I have a soft spot for puzzles such as this that have clues presented in alphabetical order of their answers. Goodness knows why, when I might end up staring at a blank grid! Perhaps its just that the ‘sort and slot’ technique appeals to the same desire for order as jigsaws.
At any rate, ‘Lucas’ could be a number of things. Isn’t George still flogging the dead horse of Star Wars? Maybe it’s related to that.
6 answers to jumble after completing the grid to complete 2 groups of 3 creative people; 11 letters to be discarded from the definition of 11 clues describe where to put 2 letters … Read more >>
For the second month in succession, I’m blogging a puzzle with no extra/hidden letters/words or misprints. There were just a couple of unclued entries to find, and they would indicate which twenty-six letters … Read more >>
A nice short preamble…only 24 clues…this should be a doddle! But hang on, what is going on with the grid? No bars, no grid numbers, except 1-12 along the ‘axes’. No clue enumerations … Read more >>
I’m fond of these perimeter-quotation puzzles, although they can make things a little tricky if you can’t get a toe-hold in the centre of the puzzle. However, it’s not clear how much if any of the quotation will survive the dramatic cull proposed in the preamble (we are to delete almost three quarters of the grid once it’s been filled in).
All occurrences of a letter to be removed from all down answers; Five across answers to be jumbled and a message derived from the remainder. Not finished there – the message explains how to … Read more >>
This week, a setter who was new to EV, although there have been a couple of recent Magpie puzzles from Nudnix. The preamble seemed almost innocuous… no missing/extra letters, misprints, spoonerisms or other … Read more >>
DEFINITION ticks several boxes in the list of classic EV devices – misprints in definitions giving some thematic material (a song title and part of a line from it) followed by the removal of … Read more >>
Oxymoron gives some hints about the possible construction of the puzzle here, by calling it REDUCTIONS, and telling us in the preamble of “a shortage of space” and “clashes”, and warning us that the number of cells given in grid entries may not be the number of letters in answers to clues.
All well and good. That still leaves a lot of questions.
The pre Christmas EV is a joke themed puzzle from a new setter (or was it a collaboration?). Can the jokes be as bad as a real cracker jokes? If so what about … Read more >>
First of all, apologies for not alerting fellow EV solvers to the early entry date for this puzzle. Although I saw that mc had put up a placeholder last week, I didn’t think … Read more >>
A fairly complex preamble for RESURRECTION MAN, with clashing letters in seven cells representing a ‘dissected body’, thirty-six clues containing redundant word whose first letters spell out further useful information and an instruction, … Read more >>