October 25, 2013 – 1:00 pm
Toughie No 1073 by Firefly
Know Your Onions!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from the Calder Valley! Firefly is back in the Friday slot with a puzzle that is one of the more gentle Friday challenges. I thought it a bit odd to have a few clues with the word ‘onions’ in, all of which were a particular type of clue; usually when that happens the word is hidden in the puzzle and referred to be a clue number.
It’s a big weekend in the Crossword World with a certain Friday Toughie resident celebrating his 50th birthday with a couple of gatherings, one in Sheffield tomorrow, and one in London on Sunday. We will be playing our part here on the blog, pop in tomorrow lunchtime and have a look. I will be at the Sheffield gathering, along with many of the great and the good and if you can make it, I’d love to meet you. No doubt there will be photos.
October 18, 2013 – 2:00 pm
Toughie No 1069 by Notabilis
Hints and tips by Tilsit
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from the Calder Valley! It’s Friday and as usual, the difficulty is ramped up with today’s puzzle. Notabilis is back with a nice puzzle to warm up those taking part in the Times Crossword Championships tomorrow. This seemed quite tricky, especially as the big phrases were not ones that your normally see in a puzzle (how many times have you seen Weston Super Mare or Advertisements?). As usual, lots of elegant clues and clever definitions from our setter, demonstrating why he is one of the finest around.
September 13, 2013 – 1:00 pm
Toughie No 1049 by Micawber
A Talented Young Setter Named Mick ….
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from the Calder Valley! I spent some of this week getting myself ready for a trampling by the hobnailed boots of Elgar, and instead I get the pleasant surprise of a Friday visit from Micawber.
Some of you probably don’t know but Micawber is the mastermind behind a clever piece of fun on Twitter where you use the 140 characters to produce topical limericks, quite a challenge but lots of fun. However, his success at this has led to a book deal and Tuesday saw the launch of There Was an Old Geezer Called Caesar: A History of the World in 100 Limericks, by Mick Twister. The book is available on Amazon – http://tinyurl.com/Twitmericks
August 23, 2013 – 2:00 pm
Toughie No 1037 by Elgar
Word-Sums
(or Never Decreasing Circles)
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from the Calder Valley. Just when you think you can relax and sleep easy, over the hill comes the tramping of hobnailed boots, and Elgar’s back to drive you berserk. And it’s probably my favourite puzzle this year, I think. This time, our Evil Genius is undoubtedly at his most devious. I like cross-referential puzzles; at one time the Guardian used to feature one most weeks, usually by Araucaria, but now you don’t see them as often. This is a thing of beauty to be treasured. We should be giving out badges saying “I cracked Toughie 1037″
A mind-bending mixture of evil word play and that little extra to have you going round in circles. I’m not going to spoil the fun at the moment, but just ask you to persevere and stretch your brain a little. Even BD was stretched formatting this beast to go here as well. After starting by solving the anagram at 17d/28, I went off looking for the categories associated with the phrase. Wrong!
Because of the nature of the puzzle, some of the answers make up the clues so where they appear in the blog, they have been set so that they have to be highlighted as well, so it doesn’t spoil your solving.
Toughie No 1017 by Notabilis
A 20 Across!
or You Can’t See The Wood For The Trees
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from the Calder Valley! In a bit of a rush as I am packing for my holiday in Scotland starting tomorrow. One of my favourite tormentors returns today and hasn’t disappointed with another clever and stunning puzzle that challenges and makes you smile in equal measure. Another fine puzzle I would encourage you to tackle. Several of the clues, one in particular, were a bit tricky to work out, even though I had the answer and all the bits. However, they fell into place, a couple after some very large prompts from a certain Cryptic Lady!
Toughie No 1001 by Elgar
Doctor, Strange Puzzle!
(Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Let My Brain Hurt)
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from the Calder Valley. What better way to conclude this special toughie-fest with the king of the Evil Puzzles, and here he is doing his best impression of Mark Labbett, the Chaser on the TV quiz. Big, mean and unforgiving. Well, not so much of the big, more pocket battleship. But you get my drift?
The Toughie’s promise is to supply some of the hardest puzzles in Fleet Street and there won’t be anyone prosecuting this one under the Trades Description Act. That said, for me, it was a wonderful solve, as good as yesterday’s.
Toughie No 980 by Notabilis
The Fine Art of Clue Writing
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *********
Greetings from the Calder Valley! It is nice to be making one of my occasional ventures into Blogland and even more so when the puzzle you get to blog is so stunningly breath-taking.
James Leonard
Aka Rustic, Mr Lemon and Citrus
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James Leonard (right) at a Listener Dinner
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 27143
Engaging Pencil before Brain
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from the Calder Valley! I’m helping BD out today as his Toughie blogger is not around. We have a pleasant offering from Ray T (I thought it was Petitjean because of the pop references!). Nothing too taxing, although I hadn’t heard of the alternative spellings of 4 down and 5 across, which I had only seen in the Bible in that form. I wonder how many of you have an answer at 7 down which is actually correct. I had an answer in there which when I came to parse it, I couldn’t and realised with a prod from BD, that I was wrong. A good example of answering without thinking fully.
December 28, 2012 – 1:00 pm
Toughie No 901 by Micawber
That Was the Year that Was!
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Greetings from Nether Wasdale! I am away on a week’s holiday, but couldn’t resist bringing you the annual offering from Micawber reviewing the year’s news. As usual, it’s a lovely offering that makes you smile and brings back some of the characters that hit the headlines in 2012 (though I suspect a certain Elgar will be disappointed his hero Silvio hasn’t made an appearance).
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a belated Merry Christmas and a really Happy New Year. Thanks to everyone involved in bringing this lovely site to life and especially Big Dave for all his work in keeping it running. A special word of appreciation though to Mrs BD (aka the lovely Pam) for putting up with His Nibs! I shall be back regularly after my break once I have got on top of my Open University course and one or two other things. Speaking of our glorious leader, I must thank him for nudging me on a few of these explanations that baffled me!
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