Beelzebub 1333

by

No double or cryptic definitions today but that is not unusual for a Beelzebub puzzle. There was the customary hidden, and a handful or so of anagrams, but I do seem to have … Read more >>

Azed 2259

by

A plain Azed this week       I found this to be a fairly standard Azed where 99% of the time you know whether you have got it right.  There is one … Read more >>

Enigmatic Variations No.1191 – Briefing Received by Gaston

by

Prior to this puzzle, there have been a couple of weeks where the EVs had misspellings in the clues’ definitions, which I tend to find rather hard.  I’m therefore heartened to see in the preamble that this one has extra letters in the wordplay.  There’s some highlighting too, which can sometimes give the puzzled puzzler an extra hint.

Read more >>

Guardian Prize 26,681 by Paul

by

A most entertaining crossword that I found very difficult.  Usually I solve Paul’s puzzles much more quickly than I did this one.  Was it just me having a bad day or did other people think this was hard too?

Read more >>

Guardian Cryptic 26686 Paul

by

(Please click here for this same blog but with a picture quiz added. Please do NOT post hereinbelow any comment relating to the picture quiz. Thank you.)  A slow start, but it worked … Read more >>

Independent 9,031 by Monk

by

As usual an expectedly difficult but good crossword from Monk. Most of the answers seemed fairly obvious after the event; it was just that they were so hard to see in the first place. Perhaps this is because of the high proportion of the definitions that are single words, making it hard to isolate them.

One can criticise the grid for a number of reasons, although it is a standard one that is often used by setters: it doesn’t allow for much of a range of answer-lengths (they are all 5, 6, 7 or 8 letters); four of the answers have less than 50% checking, something that I know doesn’t bother everyone but I don’t like it; and very quickly you end up doing a number of separate little puzzles.

Read more >>

Financial Times 15,035 – Dante

by

Monday Prize Crossword / Sep 14, 2015

I’m afraid that I cannot remember much of what I felt when solving this Dante crossword. When writing the blog, I wasn’t particularly bewitched by many of the inevitable cryptic definitions.

Read more >>