Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I have selected a few of the better clues and provided hints for them.
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.
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Friday, 25th June.
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Evening All!. For the 19th in our NTSPP collection we have a very entertaining puzzle from Prolixic. I found this much more balanced than his earlier offerings and the difficulty level should appeal to all. Enjoy!.
As ever you can leave you assessment via the stars at the bottom and you can check the answers between the curly brackets
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Welcome to the nineteenth in our series of weekly puzzles.
Prolixic returns with another super puzzle.
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Some of the recent posts from members of the Clueless Club have made me despair and so I give below my thoughts on the DT Cryptic Puzzle.
First of all, I am not an “expert”, I don’t think even the most experienced solver – and I speak from the point of view of 40 years of DT Cryptic solving – could ever be an expert as there is always something new to learn every day. I was introduced to the mysteries of cryptic puzzles by a fellow commuter and was hooked. They do, however, take a lot of practice to get into the minds of the various compilers, all of whom have different styles and methods of stretching our brains.
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A few hints just to get you started – more than usual this week as some of the wordplay is a bit tricky.
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. A full review of this puzzle will be published on Thursday, 24th June.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
More Sunday class. As Brian Greer called me an “arch-roaster of chestnuts” or similar a few weeks ago, I suspect he may well have done this before without me noticing properly, but there is very little stale old cryptic xwd material in this puzzle – apart from some one-letter abbreviations like fifty=>L, which are almost impossible to avoid completely, there are just two bits of what I’d think of as “chestnut content”: four=>IV (25A), leg=>ON (4D).
Next Friday’s report will be a bit different. Gnomethang and I will both record our thought processes as accurately as we can while solving next Sunday’s puzzle (2541), and the blog will be a report showing our progress in parallel. The idea is to show you a bit of how we get from the clue to the answer – the analysis you usually get explaining the answer is useful (and all you can be sure of being able to write after the event) but not quite the same. It will also show you that there are many ways to skin the solving rabbit – there will be clues that one of us sees easily and the other misses completely on first look – both ways, I hope.
Continue reading “ST 2540”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
I really enjoyed this, but I also found it very difficult – not that I had to look anything up beyond confirming a couple of answers I’d written in. But, after solving, it turns out a couple of my partners in solving crime had far less trouble than me.
Notabilis has been one of my favourite setters for a long time and, as ever, what shines through in this puzzle (beyond his usual inventiveness) is conciseness, clarity and fairness. The enjoyment rating is only at 4 stars, though; for me the clues were pretty much faultless – just one very tiny grumble – but it just needed a genuine WOW moment to tip it into 5-star territory.
My favourites clues are shown in blue text, but these are the pick of a very high quality bunch.
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 ****
Morning All!. I really enjoyed solving this puzzle. It was one of those that looked quite daunting on the first read through but with time and a bit of Crypticsue’s ‘cogitation’ each clue unlocked itself. As one comes to expect from Giovanni there are some lovely surface readings and images therein and a few diverting clues that require the crossword equivalent of a gentle a tap with a taffy hammer before they can be broken down.
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 and as ever, if you still feel the need, you can get the answers by dragging your cursor between the curly brackets.
Continue reading “DT 26270”
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Peter Biddlecombe has written his equivalent of “Cryptic Crosswords for Dummies” (now there’s an idea for a new book!). … Continue reading
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
I completed this puzzle in reasonable time but struggled to understand some of the wordplay. I think that I’ve now worked it all out correctly.
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.