Pan’s turn in the Quiptic slot this week.
Independent 9723 / Vigo
It would appear, that for some reason, the scheduled blogger has not been able to be with us today, so here instead is an analysis of the clues. . Across 1 Evil women … Read more >>
Guardian Cryptic 27,377 by Rufus
Typical Rufus fare…
Private Eye (Cyclops / 613) Super Wealthy Crescendo
Unusually for Cyclops here was a puzzle with a bit of a hidden theme. Several financial terms crop up as answers. Surely too many for coincidence. Especially with the longest and central answer … Read more >>
AZED 2,373
A plain puzzle with a 13 x 11 grid for this month’s competiton. No doubt Azed will delight us with something more complex for the Christmas special later this month.
Independent on Sunday 1,450 by Hoskins
It looks like Hoskins and myself have synchronised in our respective rotas, this being our third meeting on the trot, so I do hope the poor chap doesn’t get sick of me too … Read more >>
Everyman 3,712
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3712.
Independent 9722 by Monk (Saturday Puzzle 9 December 2017)
Some clever stuff from Monk today… …a high standard of clueing/misdirection, and a Nina to boot! After a couple of runs through the clues, the SW quarter remained stubbornly underpopulated, and it took … Read more >>
Guardian Prize 27,370 / Paul
I was away for a long weekend in Copenhagen when this puzzle was published and didn’t get round to tackling it until mid-week. At first read through, it was not looking promising and … Read more >>
Enigmatic Variations No.1306 – A Drop in the Ocean by Chalicea
“In A DROP IN THE OCEAN, six solutions, when entered correctly, have spaces into which solvers must appropriately move a thematic item which, carrying 19 and 22, ran into trouble at 25 and broke 36, finally settling on the 47. The wordplay in each across clue leads to the answer and an additional letter not to be entered into the grid; these letters give a further instruction. Initial and final grids, ignoring empty cells, contain only real words.”
Financial Times 15,727 by BRADMAN
A fairly basic challenge from the Don today with just a couple of clues providing some thoughtful moments in parsing.
Guardian Cryptic 27375 Vlad
This wasn’t easy, and the last two solutions had to wait until the rest of the blog was complete. Thanks to Vlad. Definitions are underlined in the clues. Across 7 Each one discarded … Read more >>
Independent 9,721 by Phi
As always with Phi everything is pretty obvious once it’s done, but to begin with things were often difficult: he writes clues that are open to a number of different promising approaches. I was delayed for a long time by 21dn; I think my parsing is correct, but in this and one or two other cases no doubt I shall be corrected.
Independent 9720 / Serpent
Quite a challenge from Serpent today, which took us a while to get into. There is a well-constructed literary theme based on two 5ds and their major works, which, as we found … Read more >>
Financial Times 15,726 by NEO
Today’s FT puzzle can be found here.