Category: Announcement

If anyone’s considering a purchase of Chambers Dictionary for barred-grid puzzles, you might like to know that the 11th edition is due to be published on 22 August. Unlike the 2006 edition which matched the … Read more “New Chambers”

Another posting for a Friday, where you can chat about anything Times crossword that doesn’t fit elsewhere, but I’ll give you one topic to ponder. And it is you, as I’m off-blog for most of … Read more “Olla Podrida – what slices in our pie?”

Tucked away in the comments for yesterday’s puzzle was a suggestion that non-Brit solvers needing tips on cricket and the like should have a look at a web-page I wrote a few years ago. It’s … Read more “Advertising my own stuff”

Ken Gillett (7dpenguin) joins us to write about some Jumbos, and Uncle Yap (yfyap) joins the subs’ bench waiting for a chance to give an occasional far-east view of the daily puzzle. Welcome to both. … Read more “New bloggers”

Like my previous posting about Times xwd “house style”, this one is under the “tips&tricks” tag. You can use the link to this under ‘tags’ on the right to just see postings with the tag. … Read more “Good books for the Times xwd”

This is an experimental message for the benefit of people with questions that don’t fit elsewhere, or about old postings that you don’t expect people to still be reading (specially folks doing syndicated versions of … Read more “Olla podrida”

Back in 1968, Stephen Sondheim (yes, the famous one) had a go at introducing the US to cryptic crosswords. (Someone else had tried back in the 1940s, but that attempt produced the Puns and Anagrams … Read more “A bit of crossword history”

Solving time : shhh, it’s a secret. I’m not entering the Crossword Championship – even if they had a Southeastern US regional final, I wouldn’t be able to make it to the UK in October. … Read more “Championship Qualifier #1”

Pictures are at: http://picasaweb.google.com/fifteensquaredI’m about to add comments to them to identify people.

Last week we had a slight delay on a report when the Times website had no grid for a puzzle.  To get round this if it happens again (or the more likely ‘wrong grid’ problem), … Read more “More than you ever want to know about grids”