Holiday update

This weekend includes 6 February, Waitangi Day, New Zealand’s national day. After a lot of wrangling about how the economy would collapse if there were any additional holidays (the inefficient are always suspicious of relaxation), it was eventually decided that the holiday could be ‘Mondayised’ – so Monday 7 February is a public holiday. It sits at the end of a little rush of local Monday holidays – January 31st was a holiday in Auckland, January 24th the one in Wellington, and so forth.  A full week at work is something of a rarity before mid-February, even without the trend towards working from home as Omicron takes hold.

This gives me a good long weekend to focus on the APEX clues for circulation, so this will be a short update. The fact that there has been more-or-less non-stop rain today has helped (though February came in with more excessive heat warnings, and some of the muggiest weather I can recall).

The puzzle I’ve put up today is one from the Church Times in 2016.  I have started experimenting with an interactive version (there are a couple elsewhere), particularly with the more straightforward blocked puzzles. But there’s still a PDF, and still a solution page, as I work my way through the possibilities. 

Upcoming puzzles: a bit more this time round. In addition to the usual Friday Independents (with a particularly nice Nina on 18 February, if I do say so myself), there’s a Times puzzle on 8 February, and one of its quick cousins a week later. There’s also a Telegraph Toughie from Kcit  on 17 February, nullifying last time’s statement.