Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Campbell is Allan Scott. He is also known as Ascot and as Falcon in the Financial Times.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
A entertaining, if straightforward, puzzle from Campbell. A certain amount of General Knowledge is required, but most of this will be familiar to regular solvers.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A much better puzzle from Campbell today, this one took me nearly twice as long as the last two or three. Not yet a difficult Toughie, but definitely a step in the right direction.
Regulars will have noticed that yesterday the view count went hrough the 1,000,000 barrier – not bad in just 13½ months! Many thanks to all of you for your continuing support.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
There’s nothing really wrong with this puzzle (if you disregard a couple of dodgy anagram indicators) except that it’s not really a Toughie. All the clues, with the possible exception of 12a, could have appeared in a daily cryptic, and not one of the harder ones at that. So, what’s going on? Surely, with the luxury of having two cryptic puzzles in the paper, it should be possible to arrange it such that there are two distinct ranges of difficulty?
Let us know what you think! – please leave a comment.
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment **
I am not sure what to say about this Toughie, so I won’t. But if you want to claim that you have done a Toughie, then this is the one to go for…
As usual please leave a comment if you want to share a thought or two with us.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Only a handful of tricky clues separate this Toughie from a regular daily cryptic. I haven’t been out to get a paper today, so don’t know who the setter is yet.
Leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
Having completed this puzzle, I felt that it had taken me longer than it should have done. It’s a good solid Toughie with a couple of new words (to me, at least) thrown in, and enough classical, literary, floral and geographical references to delight any polymath. There is an error in the version on Clued Up which has the wrong length for 9d.
Please take the time to vote for the entertainment factor by selecting and clicking on one of the stars at the bottom of the review. As always we’d be delighted to get your comments.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Some setters appear more often than others on the Toughies and Campbell, known elsewhere as Ascot, is certainly one I would like to see more often. On my usual scale this rated only three stars for difficulty, but I have increased it to four to compensate for some lucky guesses on 1, 15 and 27 across and 9, 14 and 16 down!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This is an average sort of Toughie with a man’s name, a woman’s name, a river, an English town, a couple of Greek mythological characters, a historian, a poet and a festival all making an appearance. As usual you can reveal the answer by selecting the white space between the curly brackets if my hints are not good enough.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
