Never knowingly undersolved
Solving time: 32:30 (1dn and 9dn wrong) This Bank Holiday special from Araucaria had a special feature in the across clues: the wordplay indicated the answer using a subsidiary word which ended in … Read more >>
Pleasant fare from Phi, with one clue that defeats me but which will I’m sure be quickly explained. I wonder if the clueing style used in 10ac and 13ac is consciously Azedian. Across 1 … Read more >>
I got off to a breezing start with this puzzle, filled in 90% of the grid without pause but then unravelling the wordplay for a few of them took some thinking. Not sure … Read more >>
I’ve nothing much to say about this puzzle. I quite liked 9ac but there are several clues I’m not happy with, particularly some ‘cryptic’ definitions. [ ]* anagram [ ] < reversal cd … Read more >>
A chess inspired puzzle from Mass, where every clue makes reference to the game and/or some its famous players. Like all puzzles from this setter I found this pretty tough but got there … Read more >>
This started as a placeholder post. This was a pretty straightforward puzzle – I managed to see through the trick of making the source of the quote much longer than the quote itself, … Read more >>
The preamble indicated that ten clues had an extra word each of which defined ten otherwise unclued entries. A further unclued entry (of three words) was said to explain ‘exactly’ where these entries … Read more >>
I found a few of the clues in this either flirted with verbosity and/or led to quite clunky wordplay. By way of redemption, we do have a couple of laudable clues (e.g. 12 … Read more >>
A puzzle in the quirky and individual Merlin style. Some gems. I found it ranged from very easy indeed to extremely difficult, with the SW corner taking me much longer than the rest … Read more >>
A typically clever Brendan puzzle where every clue contains (in fact ends with – thanks Colin) the word “note”, used in various senses. With almost no obscure words or references (I’d vaguely heard … Read more >>
Solving time, 19 mins. * = anagram < = reversed ACROSS 1 DA (GO) B A (a bad)< A type of Buddhist shrine found in Sri Lanka 4 OBJECT ED 9 RE MARKS … Read more >>
Monday Prize Crossword on 6 April 2009 dd = double definition cd = cryptic definition rev = reversed or reversal ins = insertion cha = charade ha = hidden answer *(fodder) = anagram … Read more >>
Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of April 3 Usually I find Cinephile’s strongly themed puzzles to be fairly easy; this one was more challenging for me than most. Took me a while … Read more >>
At long last, our 5th social gathering for the writers and fans of this blog and the puzzles behind it. Well actually “these blogs” – it’s equally open to folk from fifteensquared, Big … Read more >>
It’s fun to tackle Araucaria on a wednesday, he’s a bit less vicious but still as inventive as ever. I particularly enjoyed the pair of tricky anagrams in 5ac/7dn, the triply-defined 11ac, and … Read more >>