Hints and tips by Bufo

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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ***

My 100^th 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).

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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BD Rating - Difficulty ** - Enjoyment ***

A pleasant but not very taxing puzzle today.

I've made a few changes to the site in order to try and speed up the page load time – all statistical widgets can be found on the Statistics page and other widgets have been selected to only occur on certain pages. There's also an events widget that links to up and coming events like the Sloggers & Betters meeting in London on 30^th May.

A Short Jumper

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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ****

Hints and tips by pommers

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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****

He's a rebel!

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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment **

Osmosis makes a legitimate return after sneakily being released in the newspaper instead of Warbler a few weeks ago. As Toughies go, this was fair to middling in difficulty, but I'm not a great fan of some of the wordplay used.

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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Well, I thought 30gb was going to be enough bandwidth, but you all proved me wrong! I received an email at 5:20pm advising me that I had exceeded 80% of my bandwidth (actually it was 90%) so I immediately applied for an upgrade to unlimited bandwidth. Then at just after midnight 100% was reached. I have been given a day's grace to process the upgrade, so all should be back to normal very soon.

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****

Hints and tips by Libellule

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****

The sun is shining here in the Loire and I have really enjoyed doing this Rufus crossword. It seemed slightly trickier than usual, but there are some excellent and entertaining clues which provided more than a few "of course" moments.

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the more difficult clues and provide hints for them.

Big Dave's Crossword Club

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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, an assortment of clues, including some of the more difficult ones, have been selected and hints provided for them.

Moonlighting?? – No, Just Dancing on the Sand!

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BD Rating - Difficulty ***** - Enjoyment *****

Matron has insisted that young Tilsit remain for another week in Convalescent Corner, which means that I have crept out of the Weekend Retreat for the second time this week, in order to blog my first whole Toughie. Having sorted out the wordplay (I hope!), I do wonder if perhaps Matron knew what Tilsit was in for with this particular crossword!!

At the bottom of the puzzle in the paper it says ‘All at sea? See the note under the back-page Cryptic Crossword solution’. Look there and, if you can read upside down, you learn that tomorrow is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of the 6a whose best-known work is celebrated here.

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty **** - Enjoyment ****

A full review by crypticsue

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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ***

Cephas put on his slightly trickier hat last Saturday and gave us an entertaining crossword with a nice mix of clues, including his usual beautifully indicated anagrams. The difficulty rating just sneaked into the 3* category because of problems I had with two clues.

Hints and tips by Bufo

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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.

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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BD Rating - Difficulty ** - Enjoyment ****

Ray T is back! I thought this was one of his easier puzzles, but feel free to disagree. Just a little bit of innuendo and a brief visit from the Queen this time

A full review by crypticsue

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BD Rating - Difficulty * - Enjoyment ****

Before I start getting comments from people who think I have reviewed the wrong crossword, can I just remind everyone that, because Telegraph Puzzles have extended the end date for Sunday puzzles from five days after publication to eleven days after publication, this, if you can remember that far back, is the crossword which appeared on Sunday 29 April.

Once again, Virgilius provided us with a splendid treat of a puzzle – it was almost a shame that it was so straightforward as it was over all too soon. Lots of entertainment as usual and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.

100 of the most difficult crosswords

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The Telegraph has just released two books of Toughie Crosswords, covering the first 200 Toughie puzzles. I was pleased to see that, in his Editor's Note, Phil McNeill describes Elgar as being "known to his fans as 'Vlad the Impaler'". You read that here for the first time in a comment that I made back in July 2011.