i506 by Phi

Sorry this a bit late my internet connection is playing up a lot.

Found this rather hard to put it mildly, old link here http://fifteensquared.net/2007/08/10/independent-6495-by-phi

 

I’ve finished it (I believe correctly) so if you want explanations not given in the blog please ask.

511 Monk

A wonderful puzzle from Monk first blogged here, full of effortlessly inventive clues with that mix of misdirection and exactness that makes a clue worth repeating to your friends. My first in was also perhaps my favourite at 9ac: “Curry – see whence it might come the second I missed the toilet.” My only quibble is with 4d where ‘relief’ in the wordplay clues ‘tel’ – thankfully the original blogger pointed out the link via ‘let up’. I think this kind of thing terribly weak. Still plenty to entertain any palette, including a nice hidden theme which you need to spot to know why you’ve got the right answer to 5d.

510 Merlin

Pretty tricky, I thought. neildubya seems to have been as confused as I was back in 2007 by some of the clues. Got there in the end, but on a bit of a wing and a prayer, with too many clues not fully understood.

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/09/17/independent-6527merlin-wizard/

509 Dac

Another nice offering by Dac, with only the NW corner holding me up for any time. It helped that I spent a long time the other day trying to justify filling in 17ac, mistakenly, in another crossword. Favourite clues, amongst many good ones, 3d and 6d, with the latter getting the casting vote. “Nurse would need extra energy for long-term work.”

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/09/19/independent-6529-by-dac/

508 Virgilius

A bit more difficult than usual for Virgilius, I thought, with the top quarter taking most of the time. No theme that I could see, despite the suspiciously placed REFORMATION and DIFFERENTLY at 1 and 22ac.

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/09/18/independent-6528virgilius/

507 Quixote

Reasonably straightforward, apart from 4 or 5 at the end that are all explained in nmsindy’s blog from 2007:

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/09/27/independent-on-sunday-919-by-quixote/

505 Glow-Worm

A late post for last Friday’s i! 🙂 If I remember rightly, I found this fairly easy, putting in the long anagram at 1/2 on first sight.

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/08/06/independent-6491-by-glow-worm-tough/

Mea culpa and a call for volunteers

Oh dear! I was away last week and in the mad rush forgot to ask anyone to cover Friday’s crossword.

I’m actually going away in mid-October for a couple of months, so if anyone would like to take on some crosswords then they’d be welcome! jonofwales and flashling may be happy for some relief sometimes too. Any takers?

504 Morph

Nothing too difficult here, I thought. A bit of wordplay I didn’t get, but the answers were obvious enough given some checking letters, and explained by:

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/08/13/independent-6497morph/

503 Dac

This would have been very easy, were it not for the printing errors that left, for example, 13d almost illegible. Despite that, struggled through, with just a couple of question marks that were swiftly cleared up by:

http://fifteensquared.net/2007/08/15/independent-6499-by-dac/