Independent 8699 / Rorschach

There was much to enjoy in this puzzle despite its political and sports references not being of my persuasion. I struggled with the first part of 5/12 until I resorted to Google and I’m … Read more >>

Beelzebub 1,277

All very smooth this week, though not unchallenging. There are some particularly nice surface readings, while if someone could confirm 23 down, I’d be grateful. *=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition. … Read more >>

AZED 2,203

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.

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Guardian 26,351 – Qaos

I didn’t enjoy this as much as some other Qaos puzzles, as I think there are some dodgy constructions, and a couple of rather weak CDs. However, there are are some great clues … Read more >>

Financial Times 14,713 by PETO

What an interesting challenge from a setter I havent had the pleasure of blogging before! Thanks Peto for a terrific and refreshing challenge. Some of the parsings took longer than the time it took to solve the clue based on cross-refs. I was left, at my wit’s end on 26 ac which I couldnt quite figure out.

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