Financial Times 13,371 / Cinephile
A themed puzzle from Cinephile in his customary Wednesday slot. The ‘leaving body’ indicated a ‘body with leaves’ or put more simply a tree. It helped that I tackled the down clues first so … Read more >>
Inquisitor 1122: Last One Standing by Loda
Not that tough a crossword – many normal clues could be solved cold on the first pass through, and the theme yielded fairly quickly. But enjoyable for all that. (Was the puzzle number … Read more >>
Financial Times 13,370 / Neo
Another collection of devious clues from Neo. I am unfortunately stumped on two of them; I am sure help will be forthcoming shortly. And it was, from Rishi (inside two minutes!) and Eileen. … Read more >>
Guardian 24995 – Quantum
Quantum aka Quark (FT) aka the late Eric Burge who passed away in June 2008 … making today’s puzzle a blast from the past. Apart from a dictionary check to ensure there was … Read more >>
Independent 7341/Virgilius
Virgilius amuses us with variations on the colours pink and blue, as always quite delightfully. Across 1/3 PINK ELEPHANTS — (the pine planks)* — when one is loaded (i.e. drunk) one sees pink … Read more >>
Guardian 24,994 / Rufus
Morning all! Funnily enough, when we remembered that we were due to blog Rufus, H mentioned that this setter always uses a number of cryptic definitions and naval references, and this puzzle didn’t … Read more >>
Independent 7340 by Glowworm
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism A fairly easy start to the week with some neat clues and no obvious theme or NINA. 23 across was my pick of the … Read more >>
Private Eye/Cyclops 415 – Bill and two Bens
I made hard work for myself with this puzzle by writing in several incorrect answers. I guess I was hurrying and didn’t read the clues properly, and sometimes wrote in what I didn’t … Read more >>
Beelzebub 1,052 (18/04/10)
This seemed a very hard one to get in to, with six twelve-letter entries and a good handful of eights and nines. Solving time was therefore spent mostly on the first half of … Read more >>
Azed 1977
A mostly straightforward puzzle, which I think took me around 40 minutes, with Chambers just used at the end to find the answer to 16D and correct my daft mistake at 23A. This … Read more >>
Everyman 3316
Pretty nice this week. 10ac I am not sure of the exact correct parsing (I have 2 options which both seem equally likely) but I’m sure someone will clarify. Also I think 6dn … Read more >>
Enigmatic Variations 910: All the Initials by Oxymoron
A fairly straightforward puzzle from Oxymoron this week. Each clue requires a letter or a word to be removed before solving. These spell out a quotation which reflects the clues and suggests how … Read more >>
Guardian 24,987 (Sat 17 Apr)/Araucaria – Plane sailing
Solving time: 13 mins The theme here was British World War II aircraft, not really my forte although I had heard of most of these (apart from the Vickers Wellington at 27ac); of … Read more >>
Independent 7,338 by Phi
I’ll freely admit to finding this a bit of a challenge, and suspect I won’t be the only one. There were a good handful of unfamiliar terms and some quite complex wordplay in … Read more >>
Guardian 24,992 / Logodaedalus
I’d half expected a St George or Bardic theme today. There’s a small nod to the latter but, otherwise, I haven’t really anything to say about this: there’s nothing exceptional or exceptionable, I … Read more >>