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...
I was absolutely loving this crossword, but then got to the point where I'd completed the grid, used exactly the letters given and identified exactly ten targets of the specific kind - but only used...
This was less fearsome than the preamble suggested it was going to be. All done and dusted apart from seeing how the switching of letter and symbol works - I'll leave that till tomorrow. An odd...
Nice theme and some excellent clues but the jumbled entries, combined with a serious amount of guess-and-search for the outer ring, made for far too much cold solving for my liking. If it had been...
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...
Have finished this more or less and very fine it is too - except that I'm left with several ambiguous cells and no indication that I can see on how to resolve this. The subject of line 2 also eludes...
I can't find another thread so here goes. What an absolutely brilliant endgame! How setters can achieve such complex constructions so elegantly, I will never know. The denouement went a long way...
A pleasing, if gentle, challenge after previous frustrating weeks. A week’s holiday in early June (much enjoyed) led to us abandoning 4505 with 98% done and little time to tackle 4506. Well done to...
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...
This had all the elements to make it extremely daunting: Sabre - check; unconventional grid - check; long, complicated preamble - check! And it lived up to its billing. How does Sabre manage to make...
After last week's rather harsh welcome home from holiday (perhaps I should have taken two weeks), this was much smoother and more welcome. An interesting mixture of clues, some less obvious to me than...
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....
After being too tired to make much progress on this last night, I made the most of a delayed flight this morning and got there in the end (in both senses!). This was a clever construction, with mostly...
I shuddered when I saw the name of the setter and I was totally wrong. This puzzle is extremely approachable and I felt that the clues were very generous at times. A newcomer should not be afraid of...
I haven't been able to find another thread so here goes ... I thought this was quite a straightforward offering this week; the clues didn't take too long to solve. There will be some argument about...
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...
