Never knowingly undersolved
Most of this was quite routine and the usual satisfactory product, but one or two gave me a lot of trouble. One was a complete mystery until I looked up one of the words, which was new to me. I’m still unsure about one of the others and would welcome explanations, since mine is a bit tenuous.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagrams shown (like this)* or *(like this), depending on where the indicator (in italics) is.
A 13 x 11 grid this week.
Azed gives us a plain competition puzzle this week where solvers are asked to write a clue for the entry at 5 down. This was a typical Azed crossword with … Read more >>
Assuming that I have parsed everything correctly, I found this Azed less daunting than some of the recent offerings.
A plain puzzle from Azed.
A slightly unusual grid, with 90-degree symmetry, and a large cross of bars in the centre that might have tended to break the puzzle into isolated corners, but Azed has avoided this with … Read more >>
How complicated this all is. It took me ages. I drew the grid on a piece of squared paper and armed myself with a pencil, not the usual pen, then started by solving as many of the clues as possible. Since I got two of the ten-letter answers I took a punt and pencilled them in at right angles to each other — there was a letter that fit both words where they crossed. Then I tentatively added the answers that I had and went on until things went wrong. For the second time I was lucky and the only wrong positioning quickly led to a dead end, and I could retrace my steps. I went on and on and to my surprise it all worked out OK, although I was very fortunate: similar such things have in the past led me to start all over again.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
A more than usually tricky puzzle from Azed this week.
A plain Azed for us to enjoy today. Possibly there will be something different this Easter weekend. The thing that struck me most about this puzzle was the quality of … Read more >>
A few flashes of insight finally got me into the groove on this pleasant puzzle . . .
A plain Azed puzzle.
Slightly harder than some recent Plains, I thought, but not too many problems. Thanks to Azed. Across 1 UMBRELLA‑STAND Bit of hall furniture? Broken tumblers land around one (13, 2 words)A in … Read more >>
A pleasant and not too difficult crossword from Azed. I got into a bit of a mess with the software that produces the blog (which was thrown by the strange enumeration at 1ac), but with some help from the writer of the software and a little fiddling I think it’s now in an acceptable form. Some of the anagram indicators are a bit extreme, but Azed basically allows anything where there is a little bit of jiggling.
Definitions in crimson, underlined; anagram indicators in italics; anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*.
A couple of typos appear to have crept in to this week’s puzzle.
Azed has given us a non-standard puzzle this week where we have to add or subtract letters to or from the clue answers before entry in the grid. The preamble … Read more >>