Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
We’ve had Notabilis on Wednesdays before but those puzzles have usually been somewhat easier than his Friday offerings. This one, I thought, was more like the Friday ones. Let us know how you got on. His puzzles very often have a Nina but I can’t spot anything today.
Continue reading “Toughie 1055”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *+*/2 – Enjoyment ***
The usual Wednesday fare to ease me back into Crosswordland. 1.5*/3* for me. Thanks to Jay.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *
A really grumpy old man writes:
Giovanni seems to think that the difference between a back-page puzzle and a Toughie is to throw in some words that are in the vocabulary of just a handful of people. That may well be fine in a barred puzzle where the solver expects to be using a dictionary most of the time, but in a puzzle that should be capable of being solved by the man on a Clapham Omnibus while he is on that vehicle it just doesn’t work.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Good morning from South Staffs on an overcast grey morning.
I found this fairly gentle, though a couple of clues could cause problems if the underlying general knowledge is missing.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
The usual enjoyable and relatively straight forward Monday solve, except for 16d!
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The sacred runes have been expertly cast by Mrs BD and the lot has fallen on Nick Hubbard as the lucky winner of the September Monthly Prize Puzzle. He correctly identified that the crossword produced by Radler omitted sixteen occurrences of the letter Z from the wordplay and that the answers to 1, 5, 11 and 13 across asked us to identify the number of times the letter Z was used in the solutions.
Explanations for the answers are given below.
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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.
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It’s your last chance to enter our Monthly Prize Puzzle!
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.
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You may remember the earlier post about TEDxAlbertopolis. It was announced that John Halpern (Dada in the Telegraph and Paul in The Guardian) was to create a “fiendishly difficult crossword especially for the event”.
Continue reading “TEDxAlbertopolis (September 2013) – Update”