Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A trickier offering from Virgilius this week with great clues and enjoyment factor throughout. Lots of ‘read the clue carefully’ and hidden words all added to make this solver at least very happy at the end of the Sunday morning brain stretcher. My favourite clues are highlighted in blue, my top favourite being 26a. Continue reading “ST 2602”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Giovanni is in a gentle mood today, with nothing too contentious. Let us know how you found it in a comment.
Crypticsue is having a day off, splashing through the rain in her wellies, but she has checked out the Toughie for us and tells me that it’s not as tough as many Fridays. She urges everyone to have a go at it because it has lots that made her smile.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Morning All! This was a funny old puzzle – very straightforward to solve but it had a lot of very smooth and apposite surface readings and a few very good spots in terms of synonyms or cryptic definitions. I for one really enjoyed it.
Continue reading “DT 26636”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
This was a real Toughie. I struggled with it for quite some time and think it almost merits 4½ stars for difficulty. The answers are all single words and that always makes life harder for the solver. Personally I’d prefer some multiword answers but that is not Beam’s style.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ****
I could be wrong, but this looks like a back-page puzzle from Toughie setter Petitjean. There are a lot of enjoyable clues, but a few that are probably too convoluted for a regular daily puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
This puzzle by Kcit is fine and enjoyable but doesn’t really warrant being called a Toughie. In my view it could easily have appeared on the back page.
Let us have your views and please take the time to click on one of the stars below to register your enjoyment.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja. Another excellent Wednesday puzzle today. On the whole it’s not too hard but it does have the usual 2 or 3 of a distinctly tricky nature. I’ve given it 2* for overall difficulty but if you want to disagree just put your own rating in a post and I’ll average them all as I did last week.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Just over two weeks I had the great pleasure of meeting Warbler and her husband – see photo on the blog’s facebook page. Today I have the great pleasure of reviewing one of her puzzles. Try to solve 24 across early on, as it is the key to several of the other answers.
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment **
Today’s puzzle is pretty gentle, though I’d never heard “wild mare” used to mean the apparatus in 9a. Let us know how you got on with it.
If you want to reveal an answer just slide your cursor through the space between the curly brackets under the clue that’s causing you problems.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
An ideal introduction for new cryptic solvers from Rufus today. Fun but not too difficult.