Never knowingly undersolved
A nice straightforward puzzle for the first Monday of the new year. My fellow bloggers have commented before that Vigo’s puzzles are good examples for beginners who want to learn how this cryptic … Read more >>
Some Monday morning fun with ZAMORCA… Some nice clues here, with a lack of straight double definitions, and some great surfaces. Some of the parsing was a bit fiddly, but enjoyable nonetheless. Thanks … Read more >>
A very pleasant Monday solve – favourites were 1ac, 9ac, 5dn, 13dn, and 21dn. Thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle.
My turn to blog the annual treat of the Cyclops Christmas Special – but maybe I shouldn’t have got rid of my stack of 2019 issues so early!… Recent Christmas specials have used … Read more >>
The puzzle can be found here. Hi all. A bit of an education for me today although not one which detained me past morning break. I needed to unscramble a few unknown words … Read more >>
A relatively straightforward plain puzzle this week from Azed.
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3820. Everyman seems to be settling into a generally straightforward style, with the trademark pairing of long answers. ACROSS 1 YOU DON’T SAY Liberal excluded from US … Read more >>
This is the annual Christmas Competition Puzzle where solvers were given two weeks for submission, hence the delay in publishing the blog. The preamble stated: Ten thematic clues are without … Read more >>
Instructions Crossing solutions to the clues clash in eight of the squares. The correct letters to enter in the puzzle spell out, in grid order top to bottom, a name connected with the … Read more >>
The puzzle can be found here. Hello and Happy New Year. I hope you enjoyed the festive period whether or not you spent it in festive fashion (I did and didn’t, respectively) and … Read more >>
It fell to Paul to round off the year with a Prize puzzle that I enjoyed solving, apart from one or two quibbles. I think if there were no name on the puzzle … Read more >>
“Several answers are shorter than the available grid length and therefore must be entered with blank cells. In 16 clues, the wordplay leads to the answer with one (and in one case, two) letters short. These suggest what must fill the unclued down entries, forming new words and signifying the FINAL RESTING PLACE. A symmetrical thematic string must be discovered (see 37, unclued) and naturally must move within the completed grid. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”
Another no-show by the scheduled blogger so here is a very quick analysis of the clues (I should have been doing other things this afternoon). . . Across 1 Servant attending queen, maybe … Read more >>
A typical CHALMIE-challenge this Friday. Thanks CHALMIE!
When one has solved a Phi clue the answer is so obvious that one wonders where the difficulty lay. Yet there was difficulty, to be sure. Perhaps it’s because, as Carol Vorderman used … Read more >>