Obviously this puzzle would have been set and commissioned well before the recent exams fiascos, but there are some prescient coincidences…
Private Eye/Cyclops
Private Eye (Cyclops / 682) Healthcare Buffoon
Medium difficulty for the Eye. About half in at the first pass and the other half filled-in without too much difficulty. So …
Cyclops 681 – Infection Price Tag
Typical Cyclopsean fare, book-ended by two references to ‘members’, neither of which are MPs…but also two uncharacteristic setting/editing slips, at 1A and 20D?
Private Eye (Cyclops / 680) Obnoxious Nobody
It had to happen sometime – I have finally solved one of these in one pass. It took about half hour – …
Cyclops 679 – Stir-Crazy Cabinet Meeting
We are well into ‘post-Covid’ setting now, with ‘lockdown’ and ‘coronavirus’ both getting a mention in the clues. Lockdown frustration still seems …
Private Eye (Cyclops / 678) Wealth, Unexplained
Solving kicked of quickly with 1A proving to be a write-in for me. The rest of the puzzle wasn’t so easy, only …
Cyclops 677 – Non-stick Morality
A wide variety of references from Cyclops this fortnight, from a popular 70s TV show to the current pandemic, with Trump, Johnson, Clegg and Elizabeth I getting mentions in the clues…
Private Eye/Cyclops 545 Meltdown Climax
I forgot that I was down to blog this so I solved it in the normal manner, in an easy chair, rather …
Cyclops 544: Who is Silvio?
A very straightforward Cyclops for me — an easy solve, with no clue holding me up for long. I’ve been writing the …
Private Eye/Cyclops 543 Campaign Phobia
Cyclops reminds us that we mustn’t believe anything we hear from politicians over the next 6 weeks. Solving went like this: Most …
Cyclops 554: Never a dull moment
Medium-difficulty for a Cyclops, I think — I finished all but 23a without much trouble, then had to resort to Google for …
Private Eye/Cyclops 541 Tragic takeover
With apologies to anyone who struggled, I found this Cyclops puzzle quite easy. There were a couple that I only pencilled-in early on because …
Cyclops 540 — A load of Balls
Sorry for lateness again, folks — we didn’t realise quite how time-consuming and disruptive to work a puppy can be. A Cyclops …
Private Eye/Cyclops 539 Stopcock dictatorship
This was a solid Eye crossword which had me getting many answers quite quickly but having to stretch to get those last …
Cyclops 538
Apologies for the lateness — I had intended to work on this during our visit to London (well, on the train), but …