Never knowingly undersolved
A very ingenious construction from Picaroon, where the word “play” (or a variant) occurs in every single clue, used in a variety of ways. I found this in the Goldilocks zone of difficulty … Read more >>
I noted that the “postamble” (like a preamble but at the end) says that the solution and winners will be published in two weeks. But where? The news of the reprieve of the … Read more >>
Better late than never.
I have to admit that, due to the site problems I found when I got up this morning, I didn’t actually solve this one, instead reverting to the ‘reveal all’ option due to … Read more >>
Vigo is an occasional contributor to the Independent daily series. I last blogged a Vigo puzzle in August last year. Vigo gives us our money’s worth today with 36 clues … Read more >>
Update 8.05pm: I have hopefully resolved the problem (eventually!). A WordPress plugin updated itself at 0100 this morning and this resulted in various issues with the WordPress core, including the loss of formatting … Read more >>
Pan has slipped in one or two tricky ones here, but I still think it’s a good Quiptic. It’s all there if you go looking for it and the cluing is clear. … Read more >>
History will perhaps record that the first Independent cryptic of the paper’s digital-only age was set by Punk and blogged by Pierre. I just hope that I’ve done it justice, because it was … Read more >>
The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26843.
A mid range Eye puzzle. Nothing terribly hard, nothing terribly easy, but some lovely smutty surface readings to the clues as usual. Across 1 SAVE Head of Tesco abandons staff cut back (4) … Read more >>
Am I more stupid than normal…?
It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen Quixote on a Sunday. In fact it’s almost five years to the day because his last IoS was No. 1102 on 27th March 2011. The … Read more >>
Hard! Normally I manage to finish AZED with just a paper copy of Chambers for aid. It may take more than one sitting but I get there in a reasonable amount of time. Not this week. I gave up trying to solve unaided early on and even using electronic aids I really struggled. At times I was basically cheating as I was trawling the web for information and using all sorts of word-search programs to try and make progress. Towards the end things got a little easier as the number of checking letters allowed me to revert to a more straightforward approach. Thank you AZED for a great challenge.
From today’s final print edition:
“Fantastic news: the Inquisitor will have a new slot in the i newspaper every Saturday.”
I have in my hand a piece of paper…and unfortunately this is the last time I will be able to say that about a newsprint copy of an Indy Prize Cryptic (;+<) (My understanding … Read more >>