Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
ProXimal is Steve Bartlett, who sets crosswords for The Independent as eXternal (which he first used in our NTSPP series), and for the Financial Times as arteXlen.
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ***
An enjoyable and solver-friendly Toughie from proXimal. I did search for a pangram as the grid is one of his ‘usual’ ones where the Xs appear in the black squares but the solutions are also missing a Z so just an ‘ordinary’ crossword this time
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought.… Continue reading
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ***
Now that was a proper Toughie and no mistake! Continue reading “Toughie 2544”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
A gentler proXimal with some lovely clues, making for an enjoyable solve. Continue reading “Toughie 2525”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A nice proper Thursday Toughie with lots to enjoy throughout Continue reading “Toughie 2504”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ***
It has been quite a while Continue reading “Toughie 2480”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A slightly friendlier proXimal Toughie than some, presumably why we find him in the Thursday Toughie spot, which suited me because I quite often struggle with his more difficult Toughies.… Continue reading
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
Splendid! Not overly difficult, and clever clues that are clever for all the right reasons. A lot of lovely surfaces, some of which seem topical. As often happens, I appreciated the puzzle all the more when writing the blog and added an enjoyment star
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ***/****
As often happens, I gained further appreciation of the puzzle on writing up the blog, when I could savour all the clues again. Plenty of good surfaces to like here today, such as in the excellent 18a, but also in clues like 20a, 26a and 21d – as well the nice Excalibur mislead in 22a.… Continue reading
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ****
Dutch is on holiday this week, giving me a chance to review a puzzle by one of my favourite setters.
Not many setters seem to have grasped what solvers expect from a Toughie, but proXimal certainly has. I was sailing through this, one clue at a time, before I came to a grinding halt in the southwest corner, which is why I added an extra helf a star to the difficulty. With a compound anagram it can be difficult to spot what is going on, and I needed to solve 27a before having any chance of knowing which four-letter name was required in 24d. Continue reading “Toughie 2389”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
A very worthy Friday toughie. I’m in a bit of a rush today. Thank you Gazza for the parsing of 1a!
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