Welcome aboard! (bump)

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the The Nation Cryptic Crossword Forum.

It's now been a year since Hot and Trazom (*) beat out four very good rivals and won the job as crossword constructors for The Nation.  I think they've proven themselves worthy successors to Frank Lewis, so it's time they got recognized in the form of a solver's blog.

The object of this blog will be to form a repository for solutions and a convenient place for you to share your observations with other solvers.  I also want to make sure The Nation's puzzle gets the same level of attention as all the other major league (#) cryptics.

Hot and Trazom have their own blog, Word Salad, over at www.thenation.com/blogs/word-salad.  I strongly encourage you to read it religiously (or secularly if that's your preference).  They've been in the game a long while, and have much to share with us on the art of constructing and solving cryptic crosswords.

I'm Braze--I came to crossword blogging through Falcon and his National Post Cryptic Crossword Forum (where you'll see me as an occasional substitute blogger), so a lot of the style and features of the blog (the good parts) will be borrowed (%) from Falcon.  The bad parts are entirely my responsibility.

The plan will be to start with a few introductions, then get right in to the recent puzzles.  Once things are mostly in place, I'll catch up with the backfile, and eventually we'll have the whole run of puzzles here.  I'll also post a weekly roundup of other cryptics and variety puzzles to keep you busy until the next The Nation cryptic.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome, please drop me an e-mail with your ideas and criticisms.  

Howzat?!?

--Braze

*--Hot: Henri Picciotto, Trazom: Joshua Kosman.  If you're new to the cryptic crossword world, you'll notice that a lot of the players have "noms" that involve some kind of wordplay.  See an upcoming episode for the dramatis personae.

#--None of this "Premier League" [stuff]--this is an American cryptic blog!

%--Bad artists copy, great artists steal...