Enigmatic Variations

I thought that this was a tough puzzle from Dysart. The preamble seemed to have so much going on that I needed a bit of a lie down after reading it. That, together … Read more >>

A tasty treat of a puzzle – maybe at the easier end of the EV spectrum, once the nicely topical theme had been cracked. The solver was to find four unclued entries making … Read more >>

I-I-I! Mea culpa! The piercing eye of the acute observer will have noticed that I’m a tiny bit late with this post. Sorry. I was obsessively cataloging my alphabetti spaghetti. I’m sure you’ll … Read more >>

So a complicated preamble – the character referred to as X is to be found in the completed grid, his sweetheart is revealed from 9 asterisked cells, 4 unclued entries comprising 25 letters, … Read more >>

I think Kruger has set some tough puzzles in the past, but this week’s was comparatively easy. The wordplay in every clue had an extra letter not entered in the grid, and these … Read more >>

Several of the classic components of an EV on display here – extra letters/words in clues building a thematic sentence (minus one key word), some entries (approximately half) reversed in the grid, and … Read more >>

Not too tricky this week and a nice note for what was hopefully the last bit of winter. An awful lot of Scots, too (though, as per usual, nothing that any real Scottish … Read more >>

Half the clues are normal and half need alteration. Where a conflict arises, this must be resolved to produce a real word. Simplicity personified for an EV, or so it sounds.  Will half … Read more >>

Typical!! One of my (two) New Year resolutions is to adopt the practice of giving the full clues in my EV blogs. And what happens? I get landed with a puzzle that has … Read more >>

After a few weeks of seasonal/festive-themed EVs, we are back to business with a ‘normal’ EV – but no less enyoyable for that! A fiendish looking preamble – with ALL answers entered ‘cyclically’ … Read more >>

We were told that twenty-five clues contained a superfluous letter or word that needed to be removed before solving and that these would give, in clue order, an abridged definition of a TRADITION. … Read more >>

So its Boxing day and the only one of the three (Inquisitor/Listener/EV) to be published this Christmas week. Sounds like a Christmas theme which promises to provide the solver with GOOD CHEER. Each … Read more >>

A basic 13×13 grid here with a couple of nicks in the outer edge. Clues are given in symmetrical pairs, and every clue has one of its letters moved to the perimeter. A … Read more >>

Cold comfort, indeed – a wonderfully themed EV for the weather at the time! The preamble seemed fairly complex – twenty answers entered ‘in a certain way’, most clues containing a misprint – … Read more >>

A tricky one this week, or could it just be that I’m out of practice? (You should take this with a grain of salt. You might find it cheesy. But then again, you … Read more >>