Never knowingly undersolved
IMPORTANT (updated) I’ve now changed the security level from “critical” to “high”. Thanks all for your indulgence. Many of you will have experienced slow response times and/or error messages on Monday. This morning, … Read more >>
It is a privilege to be able to blog this latest milestone in the Azed series.
Azed reaches a major milestone in his setting career today. We have a plain puzzle from last Sunday to consider first in this blog.
I believe I have managed to arrive at a plausible explanation for the solutions in this week’s offering from Azed . . .
Possibly my quickest Azed solve yet.
I found this mostly not to hard on the Azed scale, though a few clues held me up at the end, especially the crossing pair 30a and 22d. I have a couple of … Read more >>
Pleasant crossword from Azed this week. I didn’t think it was all that difficult by the usual standards, but would have appreciated a bit more guidance for words that are not in Chambers.
Solvers of The Observer’s Azed crossword, both regular and occasional, are invited to a special lunch to celebrate puzzle No. 2,750 at Wolfson College, Oxford on Saturday 3rd May, followed by afternoon tea at Azed’s Oxford home. For full details please email heald (dot) richard (at) gmail.com.
A 13 x 11 grid this week, but no 13-letter words.
We have a plain puzzle from Azed this week
Some of the clues in this week’s Azed felt a bit quirkier than usual. I think that I have provided a fair parsing for everything, but I look forward to any further elucidation that might be forthcoming in the comments.
Sorry this blog's a few hours later than normal.
Several Azed bloggers, myself included, have commented that the appearance of a Playfair puzzle is a scary prospect, as it involved both cold-solving the italicised clues, and deducing the codeword from the answers and the crossing letters.
The Azed Christmas puzzle has a stated closing date of 29th December. This is unusual in two ways: first by being a Sunday, and secondly by not giving an extra week, as is … Read more >>
A pleasant but not a terribly demanding Azed before the trials of next week’s Christmas competition. There are unusually several mistakes, which makes one feel that he’d have benefited from an editor, who could have noticed them. But who’d be Azed’s editor? What he says goes, and it’s amazing that for well over 50 years every week we’ve had a nice crossword with very few mistakes. I shall be surprised if next week we find any, even though it will no doubt be highly complicated.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.