Good fun yet again from Paul.
Independent 8818 by Alchemi
This was a puzzle of about the right level of difficulty for a weekday. It was a good one for those who …
Month: January 2015
Guardian 26,472 – Rufus
I’m short of time this morning, so please excuse the rather brief explanations below. A very Rufus-y Rufus today, with six double …
Cyclops 538
Apologies for the lateness — I had intended to work on this during our visit to London (well, on the train), but …
Independent on Sunday 1,299 by Poins
Apologies for the slightly tardy posting. I started this early this morning but was interrupted. I seemed to sail through the puzzle …
Everyman 3,562
Seemed to be the easiest Everyman I’ve done for a while but took a while to be convinced by one piece of parsing. Thanks …
Beelzebub 1297
I seemed to finish this one a little more quickly than usual, perhaps because 1ac and 1dn were my first entries, and …
Azed 2223
Azed has given us another masterclass in precise clueing Solving an Azed crossword is always a good source of …
Independent 8,811 by Hob (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 10/01/15)
I’ve very little experience with Hob’s puzzles, and may not ever have blogged one, though I can’t swear it. So this should …
Enigmatic Variations No.1155 – Reductions by Oxymoron
Oxymoron gives some hints about the possible construction of the puzzle here, by calling it REDUCTIONS, and telling us in the preamble of “a shortage of space” and “clashes”, and warning us that the number of cells given in grid entries may not be the number of letters in answers to clues.
All well and good. That still leaves a lot of questions.
Guardian 26,470 – Crucible
For some reason I found this a bit of a slog while I was solving it, but looking back I see that …
Independent 8816 / Phi
A very special thank you to Phi for this puzzle! We have been blogging now for almost 2 years and this is our …
Financial Times 14,830 by MAGWITCH
Magwitch, this Friday at long last ! She brings this work week to a close with a gentle and relatively straightforward challenge, which in keeping with her inimitable style, has several smooth and clean surfaces with a whiff of inventive constructions.
Independent 8,815 by Nimrod
What you always get with Nimrod, although I must admit that I tend not to do his crosswords nowadays since they are so difficult and I also usually end up being a bit irritated by something, but this time I had to see it through: quite extraordinarily difficult, for some reason, but some imaginative and brilliant clues.
This puzzle had a rather strange grid, which suggests that it was like this for a reason, but that reason is beyond me. Perhaps it was just because Nimrod didn’t want to go down the evil path of having less than 50% checking.
Definitions underlined.
Financial Times no.14,829 by Flimsy
No complaints, but not much to shout about, either: a bit of a ho-hum solve for me, all in all, redeemed in part by fuss-free clueing and some nice surfaces.