Those of us who attended the last Cruciverbalist’s Convention at the White Horse could not help but notice that Anax was more than a little preoccupied with a certain young lady known to denizens of Big Dave’s Blog as Moonstruck Minx.
Moonstruck Minx and Anax
The crossword contains lots of playful clues in the spirit of Elgar but there is nothing outrageous in the cluing – think of it as being a little like one of those saucy seaside postcards.
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. Gnomethang’s full review of this puzzle will be published on Thursday, 27th May.
This was quite a straightforward solve with mostly easy clues; in fact the only really tough bit was the sting in the tail wordplay conundrum posed by the very last clue.
There were just a couple of moments where I thought the legitimacy of the wordplay was questionable, but it was never anything that hindered solving and the clues rarely fall foul of Ximenean standards. The enjoyment rating for me was strictly moderate – good clues all round, but no “Wow” moments bar 7a which I think is very cleverly observed.
Favourite clues are highlighted in blue; how do they compare with yours?
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.
Quite an easy one I thought – maybe as a lot of the answers seem to be words that come up in crossword grids. All clued as well as you’d expect, in a very clean-looking grid, with just 10 black squares added to the basic lattice.
We have a good selection of smooth, entertaining clues from Giovanni today, but sprinkled among them are quite a few pretty easy ones (and I dithered between two and three stars for difficulty – I think that this is a definite 2½). Do you agree or not? In either case we’d love to get a comment telling us what you think of it.
The answers, should you need them, are hidden between the curly brackets under the relevant clue. Just select the space between the brackets to reveal them.
It was down to earth after last week’s gentle introduction. I gave up on this after half-an-hour’s hard slog with 3 answers missing and several others not fully understood. I then filled the gaps with the aid of TEA and Chambers but was still left with 2 or 3 answers for which I need enlightenment. I am sure that someone will oblige. I found the top half more difficult than the bottom half.
The puzzle contains several clues that contain no wordplay. This means that you stand no chance if you don’t happen to be familiar with the answer. For instance I couldn’t remember the answer to 14 across and so I had no alternative to looking it up. I also didn’t like the fact that there are also several answers (or part answers) that appear only in Chambers and not in the COD or Collins.
I have taken note of last week’s comments about not revealing the answers in my hints.
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.
Our usual Saturday setter has given us a bit of a mixed bag. There were a few very pleasant clues (2d and 22a for example) but some others I felt were slightly below par, or at least slightly well worn.
We have a thoroughly entertaining and laugh-provoking Toughie from Petitjean today. It contains some brilliantly-constructed clues with good surface readings. It also has several clues based on Cockney and rapper-speak (one of which I can’t explain fully).
Let us know whether you enjoyed it as much as I did, and please don’t forget to click on one of the stars below to indicate how you rate it.
