Azed

I tend to enjoy empty grids in the Carte Blanche style — it makes me think I’m doing something more than just “mindlessly” solving clues.  In this case, I got lucky guessing that 1A and … Read more >>

As always of course, a very good crossword from Azed. Some of the clues (1ac and 1dn particularly) are marvellous and everything is sound and well-signposted. My solving performance is rather feeble: I … Read more >>

Another reasonably straightforward Azed, as far as I remember, helped by an easy 1 across to get me started, though as usual a fair bit of Chambers-trawling was needed to confirm all the … Read more >>

Nick:  A fairly easy stroll for an Azed this week. 18dn was the last in, as the instruction ‘The Chambers Dictionary (2008) is recommended‘ always steers me in the wrong direction when proper nouns … Read more >>

I found this very hard, partly because I had never heard of either of the two 13 letter anagrams at 15 and 29 across.  There were several other obscure words and I will … Read more >>

A rather more tricky Azed than some recent ones, largely because it has more than the usual quota of obscure words. I needed to check quite a few answers. The first answer refers … Read more >>

Appropriately enough, very much a tale of two halves for me. But in my case the top and the bottom: 1A came quickly enough and thus the top half. I stared at the … Read more >>

Azed’s Plains are usually done at one sitting, even though that sitting can be very long indeed. This time. however, there were several clues that gave me trouble, both in getting them in … Read more >>

I found this one of the hardest Azed plain puzzles for a long time, with, I think, a higher-than-average proportion of obscure words. I ended up with some rather tedious dictionary-searching to get … Read more >>

Nick:  A fairly tough AZED this week, I felt, but with some entertaining word play construction going on. There are several solution words I have never heard of this time around. A good solve. … Read more >>

A 13 by 11 grid this week,which is in fact one of Azed’s standard sizes. We were spoiled recently with a 13 x 13 grid (2012). Still, I shouldn’t grumble as I got … Read more >>

An Azed of average difficulty — most answers were pretty straighforward to work out from the wordplay, but I needed Chambers to check that some of the words really existed. Skelder, fratch and … Read more >>

We have had a plethora of Azed Specials recently, caused no doubt by things occurring at inconvenient times: first we has TWO THOUSAND, which was in effect the October competition and celebrated Azed’s … Read more >>

I missed the boat on this one. Later than I thought with this post. Work? Anyway, a couple of disappointing wordplays that escape me with a few very good clues with very well-hidden … Read more >>

Due to the festivities, the closing date for entries for this puzzle was put back to Saturday 8 January (this was not indicated in the on-line pdf version). The blog for this puzzle … Read more >>