Cryptic crosswords

It's been a strange thing that since my mother has been in hospital I've been doing the cryptic crosswords in the daily paper almost completely on my own - not only in the sense that my mother hasn't been helping (she no longer can) but also in the sense that I'm not even using the usual help tools, such as one or other of the little electronic 'machines' that help figure out crosswords or anagrams, or the thesaurus. Either the puzzles have been easier than usual, or else my brain is relaxed enough (having the time to do them without having to worry about other things I should be doing) to just get on and think. I can't say the sudokus have been quite so successful, but I have a suspicion that the paper has got them out of sync: the ones marked with one star, which should be easy, have been quite tough, and today's two-star job was also difficult to get moving on. Last week they published as the answer to the previous day's sudoku exactly the same sudoku as you were doing - without the answers. Since then things haven't been good!