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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
My 100th blog for Big Dave features a Giovanni puzzle that was enjoyable to do though not very difficult. Even the pairs of unchecked letters in many of the down answers didn’t cause any significant problems (except perhaps for 1 down where the answer is a word that was new to me).
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
I enjoyed this puzzle even though I found it to be at the easy end of the Toughie spectrum. There were some nice clues and all were perfectly fair.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
MynoT continues to work his way through the alphabet in this puzzle and has now reached the letter L. It was a fairly gentle solve with the four 13-letter anagrams and the presence of the L’s adding to the gentleness.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A fellow blogger (not BD) sent me an email describing this puzzle as “utter tripe”. I wouldn’t quite go that far. I agree that technically it’s not very good but I found it a pleasant enough solve. Maybe it’s because I’m partial to tripe that I’m being generous and awarding it 3* (rather than 2*) for enjoyment. I have now blogged 9 Excalibur puzzles and have given 7 of them 3* for enjoyment. Other bloggers have blogged a total of about 35 Excalibur puzzles and have never awarded more than 2* for enjoyment. What do other people think of them?
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This was trickier than I thought it was going to be. I made reasonable progress until I stalled in the NE corner and the time I spent finishing it off pushed the puzzle into the 4* difficulty level.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
This turned out to be a gentle solve which posed no significant problems. There is a bit of a theme in that 16, 21, 7, 14, 3 and 27 form a sequence.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
The quiz team that I play for was in action yesterday. At one point we had to answer three questions on centenarians. One of these included the quote at 21,25,13,22 and the answer was 1 across. This newly-acquired knowledge enabled me to get off to a flying start on this puzzle and I made steady but somewhat slow progress until I was left with two to do. I eventually managed 19 across but I don’t think I would ever have come up with the answer to 9 down without using solver aids. These two clues meant that I had to assign 5* for difficulty.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This was definitely a puzzle of two halves as far as I was concerned. I breezed through the bottom half with no problems whatsoever and it looked as though I was on the way to a very fast time. Then I got totally becalmed on the top half and had to fight for every single answer. In the end my time was way above average. So thanks to Giovanni for the challenge. It was most enjoyable.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
This is only the second Messinae puzzle that I have blogged. I gave 4* for difficulty to the last one which was unusual because bloggers usually only give Messinae puzzles 2* for difficulty. This one was 2* at most and I might have been tempted to give it 1* had I not had to think a little about the last couple of answers. So once again we have a Toughie that is anything but tough.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
How do I rate the difficulty for a puzzle like this where everything is plain sailing apart from one clue? I made OK progress until I was left with 25 down. Although it seemed likely that the answer was what it is, I couldn’t justify it and I needed to have it explained to me.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I thought this was more back-page standard than Toughie standard. I’d never heard of 13 down but it was easy enough to work out from the wordplay and it took me a bit of thought to unravel the wordplay at 17 down. Otherwise I had no problems whatsoever.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
I thought this was another pleasant puzzle of genuine Toughie standard. I did struggle on the bottom half because the long answer wasn’t obvious and I decided to wait until I had a fair number of intersecting letters before attempting to solve the anagram.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
After a slow start I made steady progress without ever stalling. I found the difficulty level to be slightly above average. I think the difficulty was enhanced by Beam’s policy of not including multi-word answers and by the complete absence of anagrams.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This was trickier than your average Giovanni Toughie (but maybe not as tricky as the back page puzzle). It was an enjoyable puzzle and, as always with a Giovanni puzzle, the clues were perfectly fair. I did waste time trying to justify a couple of incorrect answers but eventually saw the light and inserted the correct answers.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This was quite a tough Toughie where a fair amount of thought was needed to unravel some of the wordplay.
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