Never knowingly undersolved
Although the structure of most of these clues is fairly straightforward, as witness the number of them that can be parsed in one bit, I found this one of Azed’s harder crosswords, with many difficult words and shades of meaning. Coomassie blue and makunouchi aren’t things I talk about every day. Indeed there are red squiggly lines under two of these words and they won’t go away.
As usual I’m not going to explain all these difficult words. I don’t want to be up all night.
Definitions underlined.
I’ve never been a great fan of DLM (definition and letter-mixture) puzzles: I tend to find them very hard to get started on, but once even a couple of answers are in it … Read more >>
My first Azed puzzle as a regular blogger entailing a very enjoyable trawl though Chambers. The great thing about blogging an Azed puzzle is that it gives me the perfect excuse to spend the afternoon reading the dictionary without attracting unwelcome comments about ‘needing to get a life’ etc. Thank you Azed.
A plain competition puzzle this month after the intricacies of July’s competition.
A plain competition Azed this week. I enjoyed this, especially the two clues where there were two sets of wordplay leading to the entry – SCANDAL SHEETS (34 across) and LIND … Read more >>
I found this quite hard. Lots of “indirect” clues — where the wordplay requires solving for this. A good example is 33A. Across 1 Twangy instrument I am, bass, kept in box? GU(I’M,B)ARD … Read more >>
How Azed produces these grids I just don’t know. He doesn’t so far as I know use technology but compiles them neatly in an exercise book, something that I would find virtually impossible. He sticks comfortably to the Ximenean advice about unchecked letters in words and both grid and clues are full of words that require a close examination of Chambers. Amazing, week after week.
Definitions underlined.
I knew something special was coming up for this month’s competition, because Azed had mentioned in a previous Slip that constructing this one had caused him some trouble. Not surprising, with what are … Read more >>
Nick: A game of two halves this week. The top half of the grid flew in, but then I ground to a halt on the bottom half, taking a few hours to complete it. … Read more >>
A routine plain Azed this week, made a little harder if you were using the online version.
This was a standard plain crossword from Azed with the usual mix of precise cluing and unfamiliar words. I got into this through the two long down clues – CLAPTRAPPERY … Read more >>
Other than a numbering malfunction in the online edition once it had finally become available after a couple of days (across clue numbers from 29 needed to be incremented which I spent far … Read more >>
The usual solid workout from Azed. In his clue-setting competitions, there is an extraordinary preponderance of comp. anags. but in his own crosswords he has apparently only had one or at most two. Until now, and I don’t remember three before.
Definitions underlined.
A medium-difficulty Azed (for me) this time. As usual, no problems with the excellent clues (apart from a slight eyebrow-raise at 1d), but there were a few mistakes/misprints in both the online and … Read more >>
The particular feature of this puzzle presented a problem to your blogger.