Well after yesterday's mauling by Kite (DNF) I was ready for a more gentle offering from Everyman but it took a good hour to finally complete. Tls three-quarters through - now completely stuck viz A strange way to be alone in Anthony's 2014 first novel A? I thought perhaps he LUSTed OVER RAG (matches all the crossers) but didn’t see how that went with blowing a fuse. This is an extremely popular crossword puzzle in which for sure you will pass some great time and also keep your brain sharp with all the interesting crossword clues found on each day on The Guardian Everyman Crossword puzzles. The erne is commonly seen flying in the corners of American crosswords where the setter has backed himself in, so all I needed was the definition on that one.

I did find quite a few clues that were a bit loose with the “rules” of cryptic clues as I understand them: either the definition wasn’t quite accurate, or the cryptic grammar wasn’t quite right. Maybe they deliberately want to put up little barriers to entry, just high enough to keep the submission pool small and mostly local.That’s not enough to merit a prize but at least gets me on the scoreboard for this year’s competition. Didn’t think Lesotho was a monarchy never thought about it tbh just knew it was a land locked enclave. After seeing your description of this puzzle, I went and did it and also went back to try some previous Everymans. Where I take issue with Everyman is in his use of question marks: he doesn’t always use them when he should, and he sometimes uses them pointlessly. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

When I came back to cryptic crosswords again recently after a long hiatus, I started doing the daily puzzles in the Guardian. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. The puzzle was fairly tricky to solve but, as always with the Azed Competition entrants also have to compose a clue of their own.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Then I could go back to 3 down, which had foxed me, and knowing that it probably rhymed with 11 down, I then I saw dressing room. I didn't spot any rhyming pairs and was a tad disappointed that 1a wasn't put to better use and used as a possible theme. They’re not as challenging as Azed, but I always like to tackle the Everyman puzzle as a sort of warm-up exercise before doing that one.