Blogging the i
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳ A pleasant diversion from Phi that won t have taken too much time, unless you too were stuck on ORMERS, which I guessed but would never have parsed / got from definition. There s a Nina, apparently, which should have helped based on LIBRA in the unchecked middle row, but I [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳ More clues in Bluth s characteristic style today amusing surface readings, multiple components to the wordplay, some lengthy clues, and a process whereby you often solve the clue first from definition and crossers perhaps and then try and work out the trickly wordplay afterwards. I m sure regulars [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳ Wiglaf has set us a rather challenging crossword for this morning. It was very absorbing, though, and I therefore felt a great deal of satisfaction on completing it. At least part of the challenge lay in there being a number of obscurities (to me, at least), which required googling [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳ A little rusty still after my holiday I was pleased to finish this in a nippy time, albeit here and there the parsing was less forthcoming than the answer. LOI was VERTEBRA, my blind spot for hidden words showing no signs of abating. Elsewhere ASYLEE was an odd if [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of 5): ⌛⌛⌛ Another ‘plain’ Phi crossword devoid of theme or nina – although I was mildly surprised that there wasn’t a theme when I saw the original publication date of 11th November, Armistice Day, the observance of which has been revived in recent years. I made a fairly brisk start on [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳ A debut today from Laccaria, so welcome! This is the first puzzle I ve solved in a few weeks, so suspect I was a little rusty, but still solved this in about an average time. There s lots of praise on the other side for 29/19/20 which is a great spot [ ]
Difficulty rating ( out of five): ⏳ A fun, accessible crossword from Hoskins to start of the new working week. This one won t have held up any but the freshest of beginners for too long. It was all pretty straightforward, and I made only one quick Google, for Muso, a bit of slang I d not [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳ Actually, this probably wasn t as easy as ⏳⏳implies, but I rattled through it in next to no time, so I thought I d use the difficulty rating to show off the fact At least you can t accuse me of not being honest! Of course I missed the theme though [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳ High quality, high difficulty, for the second day in a row. Rodriguez isn t quite as hard as Nimrod, but he s getting there so perhaps four-and-a-half for difficulty would be called for today. Certainly there were a couple that were extremely hard to parse even after solving; I m thinking [ ]
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳⏳ This was very difficult. If more ⏳s were available on our grading scale I might have rated it a six or potentially even a seven. Some people on Fifteensquared said that it was easier than that, but I didn t think so. Even so, it was brilliant. It was witty, [ ]