Special Puzzle – 010
New Year Double Toughie: Disappearing Acts by Elgar
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Today we have a bonus treat in the form of Elgar’s traditional end-of-year Double Toughie. The Daily Telegraph Puzzles Site was unable to publish it as usual on Christmas Day, and so we have been given the opportunity to present it here as our first puzzle of 2023. Click on the grid above to access the puzzle.
Thanks to Elgar allowing us to offer his puzzle here
Wishing everyone a Very Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2023.
No, I didn’t solve this in record time today – I was fortunate enough to access the puzzle last week and completed it over a couple of days. Still, it turned out to be not quite as formidable as previous experience had led me to expect. The anagrams and ‘jigsaw’ were more of a brain-teaser than a crossword, with just a few checking letters from some clues to act as anchors. However, some head-scratching was then required to complete the cryptic clues. I needed seven ‘look up’s to confirm answers I was unfamiliar with, but had arrived at (or very near) through the wordplay. I don’t construct a ‘podium’ for Elgar’s Double Toughies as the whole is greater than it’s parts, but I particularly enjoyed some crafty mis-directions which I only managed to twig after re-reading those clues several times, my LOL favourite being 10d and my most resounding PDM being 31d. I still have two minor parsing question marks remaining (synonyms which I’m not comfortable with, which usually means I’ve missed something!) so I will look forward to the review…
Thanks, Elgar, for concocting a puzzle I look forward to each year, and to the Magi in BD’s Blog for making it available.
Not so difficult as previous Elgar double toughies! So completed in much less time unfortunately! I like them to last much longer and give my brain a tougher work out. The theme was quite obvious from the first anagram solves. However I did come to a bit of a halt trying to fit the multiple word anagram in the lower half.
It was the Chronicler that sorted that out! However it does mean I am not too late to post a comment which usually happens. Happy New Year to all!