Observer

Azed is on good form in this crossword, and some of the clues have excellent surfaces. Across 1 DOWLAS — owl in (sad)rev. 6 PHRASY — p{oseur} (syrah)*, nice [something]&lit. 10 HONEYCARTS — … Read more >>

The scheduled blogger is unavailable, so I’m acting as sub with this rather brief effort. The “Eightsome Reels” idea was invented by Azed and pops up from time to time. Peter has again … Read more >>

This is one of the easiest of the regular Azed specials for me – even though this explanation may sound complicated. Each answer can be entered in 16 different ways, which sounds difficult. … Read more >>

An Azed of above-average difficulty this time, with I think what must be a higher-than-usual proportion of rare and obscure words, though in many cases the woprdplay was helpful in leading to the … Read more >>

Those who think Azed is beyond them might like to try this puzzle.  I solved it in pretty short order, and I’m due to blog it on Sunday.  I’m going to mention points … Read more >>

An enjoyable puzzle with some interesting words but with two clues which have defeated me. Favourite clue is 11 across. Across 2 COMPTE RENDU MP in COTE, which is an old word for … Read more >>

An Azed of average difficulty; somewhat marred, however, by three mistakes, the most serious of which is that the wrong word seems to have been clued at 26d (which, in the grid, is … Read more >>

A typical Azed outing involving quality time with The Big Red Book: a couple of wordplays still to be decoded and the requisite mystery clue. Thanks to Andrew all is clear now! Across … Read more >>

A fairly typical experience — one or two very nice clues, one or two I can’t understand, and quite a lot of working things out from the wordplay and saying “well perhaps it’s … Read more >>

Apologies for the delay.  i had been waiting for someone to put me wise on formatting, but I haven’t heard anything back. This was quite a tough challenge and took me about four … Read more >>

Solving time: about 70 minutes in 3 bursts, with Chambers used for last 15 or so answers. Some of this was pretty straightforward, but I was held up a long time by 17/23 … Read more >>

There seems to have been a bit of confusion on the blog scheduling front, with Azed 1911 not having been covered. In the interests of completeness I’ve taken the liberty of producing this … Read more >>

I found this mostly a little below average difficulty, but I think there’s an ambiguity in 1ac and a mistake in the wordplay of 13ac. This is the first Azed where the recommended … Read more >>

Solving time : a few hours, but it took me longer than it might have done because of a misprint in the pdf, whereby the clue for 23 down appeared as the clue … Read more >>