Never knowingly undersolved
SOLVING TIME: 11 MINUTES Normal Monday fare, a gentle warm-up in the cryptic company of Rufus with the usual large quantity of Cryptic definitions and anagrams to encourage solvers. Ideal for the new … Read more >>
I’m feeling a bit “undone” myself at the moment – a fortnight into the smoking ban and thus a fortnight into my latest attempt to forego the evil weed. How can I possibly … Read more >>
Across 1 O,A,FISH,NESS – “o” is a short form of “of”. Good clue to get us going. 10 (ACTIONS IN A LAB IN)* – CANNIBALISATION has a few meanings, apart from the obvious … Read more >>
Back to Scotland again this week with Muriel SPARK. More than Everyman’s usual share of weak surfaces though: e.g. 9A, 2D, 5D, 17D. The rest are quite good though so perhaps this isn’t … Read more >>
Solving time: 10 mins, one mistake (14ac) I liked this, lots of inventive wordplay without being too complex or convoluted like some Guardian crosswords. * = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’. Across … Read more >>
Solving time: 20 mins < = reversal * = anagram ACROSS 5 STR (I P LIGHT) ING 8 SECOND S LIP 9 TR(O)Y 10 TE (A PART) Y YET< 12 A GREED … Read more >>
To my relief, on a day with multiple unexpected work deadlines to meet, this was one of Paul’s easier puzzles, and I polished it off reasonably quickly. Solving it depended on getting Truman … Read more >>
Some of you will have noticed that we haven’t had many of these lately. As I write this, I’m checking which of us are happy to write Azed reports. We already have enough … Read more >>
I thought this was a fantastic puzzle, maybe my favourite of the year so far. Not easy though – I got the first few across clues and one or two downs fairly quickly … Read more >>
I found this very straightforward and a quick solve but there were a few nice touches. Just a short review because most of the clues are reasonably self-explanatory but if anyone’s unsure of … Read more >>
I tore this one out of the paper, took it on holiday, and over-confidently left it until the day we were coming home. It turned out to be very tough – if our flight … Read more >>
Across 1. ANTENATAL CLINIC – cryptic def. issue=children 9. TH(e)ROW,IN 10. NUT,CASE 11. ELITE (hidden) 12. DEODORANT (too darned)* – good surface. 13. ETRUSCANS (runes cast)* 15. C,HAIR – ‘Hair’ is a musical … Read more >>
I think Quixote commented on this site some time ago that the aim was to keep the puzzle fairly easy, but that he would put a more difficult one in from time to … Read more >>
A challenging puzzle in parts with some superb charade clues that inventively stitch together the component parts and at the same time have very good surfaces. One word was new to me and … Read more >>
Sorry for the lateness of this blog; I thought I was due to do Friday’s this week, and only realised that it was my turn when the puzzle hadn’t been blogged. Upon checking … Read more >>