Introducing "The Crossword and i"

This is a new blog documenting the crosswords and some of the other word puzzles in the daily i newspaper.  Each day from Monday to Saturday I'll be giving my thoughts on the Five-Clue Cryptic, Concise, Codeword and main Cryptic, along with any other puzzles I think are worth commenting on.  They'll probably appear by mid-afternoon, depending on my other commitments and on how tough the puzzles are that day.

On Sundays, when the paper isn't published, I'll be going through some unsolved Cryptic puzzles, either ones I was unable to complete during the week, or older ones from my backlog (accumulated during February and March).  This week only, I'll be attempting Saturday's puzzle on Sunday because of lack of time today; in reserve I also have #3289 from last Monday, when I was away.

There's not normally much to say about the Saturday Jumbo General Knowledge Crossword - either you know the answers or you don't - but if I have any comments I'll be including them in Sunday's blog as well.  I'm expecting one on Bank Holiday Monday as well; not sure when I'll get round to that!

One puzzle I won't be commenting on is the Inquisitor; it relies on far too much esoteric knowledge for my liking, and the last one I tried took me four days to complete.  A detailed solver's blog on that puzzle can be found at Fifteensquared, which also has blogs on several other daily and weekly newspaper cryptics.

The daily i Cryptics are in fact all reprints of puzzles originally published in the Independent around four years ago.  The "official" blog for the daily i Cryptic is at the idothei site run by Jon Summers, in which I used to participate.  Unfortunately my comments were deemed too lengthy for that format, so I've decided to move them to my own site where I can waffle on as long as I like!  

I'll be giving a link to the idothei post for each puzzle, where star ratings are given and a Clue of the Day, along with a link to the original Fifteensquared blog where detailed solutions and parsings are given.  I'll try to avoid duplicating both those sites, but instead give my own angle on the solution.

From time to time I may also make additional posts on crosswords and the solving process in general.  At the moment I'm particularly interested in the disparities between different dictionaries, and how the setter's choice of dictionary can make things harder for solvers who don't happen to possess the same one - a particular bone of contention recently.

I hope you can find time to comment!  All comments are welcome, and completely unmoderated.



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Monday 30 August 2021

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