Independent 12,316/Jeemz

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After a well-received debut last month, Jeemz is back again with the opening puzzle of the week in the Independent. I enjoyed this one: the clues are carefully crafted and varied with some nice twists here and there.

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Gemelo No. 28 – Plain

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After the brilliant Gemelo 27 with its Spoonerisms etc, we are now back to a plain Gemelo, and it seemed to me to be harder, possibly because I was solving at the computer (the software that I normally use has been tripped up by The Observer’s changes and this blog will look a bit different) with my reference books on my lap — I hadn’t learnt how to print a pdf, which thanks to The Observer I know now.  There are two whose parsing is at present beyond me and which I hope to understand while I’m doing the blog. [Later: no].

My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.

Definitions in some sort of red, underlined. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*

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Everyman 4144

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All fine. A nice crossword with nothing very controversial so far as I can see. Definitions in some sort of red, underlined. Indicators (homophone, hidden, containment, anagram, juxtaposition, etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated … Read more >>