Financial Times 14,907 by MUDD

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Traveling on work and a full day meant I got to this Mudd challenge a lot later than I would have liked to – so apologies for the late post. I found this to be a tough challenge to begin with but gradually picked up steam along the way. Outclassed on a few clues that required googling to confirm or supplement the parsings. Some deviousness exhibited by Mudd – enough to leave me seeking a helping hand on the deconstruction for a couple as well.

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Financial Times 14,906 by SLEUTH

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An enjoyable crossword, so first, thanks to Sleuth. We had almost finished doing the blog when there was a power cut and we feared we’d have to re-enter the lot. We should have known better. Our thanks to PeeDee for yet another great feature of the utility.

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Financial Times 14,897 – Dante

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Just as I thought the FT doesn’t see daylight on Easter Monday, there was a Monday Prize Crossword which only appeared at the very end of the day on the newspaper’s website. I don’t like stereotyping but this Dante puzzle was indeed full of cryptic and double definitions – no less than 8 of the latter!

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Independent 8,892 by Dac

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The usual thing: every clue has a silky-smooth surface that never compromises the parsing. I thought this was on the hard side for a Dac and it took me some while to understand one or two, particularly 23ac, which I almost gave up on, but my parsing is I think what he intended, although perhaps it is on the edge compared with Dac’s usual.

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