A short preamble often causes the most bewilderment - and so it proved for the first hour or so of my solve of this crossword. Then I was very fortunate to solve two of one type and two of the other...
I hope nobody minds me starting the ball rolling again. Nice unambiguous ending this week, but rather too much cold solving needed before any sort of grid fill could be attempted. I'll be interested...
One word: wow! This was an incredible construction on a par with the original Quads from 2015. The subterfuge of the mutilated definitions was a new one for me, and each stage of solving was a...
Excellent challenge beautifully constructed. Shirley Curran is always good value as a setter. Fortunately for us G spotted the quotation very early on, which helped significantly.
A skilful implementation of a delightful theme. I found the clues incredibly tough, especially where clashes were involved, and spent almost as long getting the last few answers as I did on the rest...
Pencil sharpened, letters entered. Puzzle done. This approach seems to work! The finish was intriguing and the clues were OK, although I wasn't totally convinced by the approach that Schadenfreude...
Maybe I happened to stumble on a good place to start solving this, but having rather slogged my way through the last numerical, this one was much closer to plain sailing. My preconceptions about what...
Not like me to be done on Friday, still less posting first (if indeed I have). I found this very straightforward, but rather tedious, with lots of the same operation, occasionally speeded up with a...
Much easier than last week's offering, but with a nice mix of easy and trickier clues. It also showed that the Chambers CDROM has had its day in a way, as the boundary is not there, but it is in the...
A gentler one this week after last week's humdinger. I enjoyed this; the penny drop and endgame was quite satisfying so thanks to Ottorino. Thanks also for educating me with something I never knew...
After last week's Sabre I was expecting something simple - wrong! Was head scratching and cold solving for ages until I rumbled the verse and then had the huge PDM. Thought the 18 opposing pairs were...
I've only just started to look at this. It immediately occurs to me that those fourth powers are also square numbers so surely they will satisfy both properties. But this isn't allowed according to...
This is curious. All done, all seems OK ... and yet I am a letter out in the endgame. I'll assume that I have made a small error. Perversely, I hope that I have and that there isn't a problem here....
Normally I'm a bit wary of circular grids, but with some fortunate early clue solves I stumbled on the theme, including all of the message from the hidden letters. It's an understatement to say that...