Beelzebub 1,260

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Another solve of two halves for me, almost literally. I made steady progress in the pub on Sunday evening, but returned home with pretty much exactly 50% of the grid filled, in particular … Read more >>

Azed 2186/over the top

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Relatively gentle for an Azed (i.e. I solved it in about an hour which is fast for me).  A couple of uncharacteristic errors — incorrect enumeration at 31A and bad anagram fodder at … Read more >>

Everyman N° 3,525

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The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3525. Everyman is branching out – last week a Nina, here a mini-theme, if two Tolkien clues (and maybe in 12A a third, at a pinch) counts … Read more >>

Independent 8,595 by Phi

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The usual excellent crossword from Phi, who never seems to miss a Friday. Apparently there’s nothing about which I’m uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t misinterpreted something somewhere.

The unchecked letters at the top and bottom suggest a Nina, but evidently not. Anyway Phi’s Ninas are always far more obscure than this and will probably refer to some work of literature that I’ve never heard of, so there’s no point in looking. I’ll leave that to the hunters.

Definitions in italics.

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Guardian 26,249 / Picaroon

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Another box of delights from Picaroon, with numerous examples of his customary witty misdirection in the surfaces and ingenuity in the constructions. Not for the first time with this setter, the puzzle looked … Read more >>