Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment **
I found it really difficult to get going on this one which I thought was the trickiest Saturday puzzle for a while. Typing the review hasn’t made me change my original assessment of the enjoyment factor.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
It is cloudy and thundery in East Kent this morning but marginally less humid than yesterday which is good for sitting in the upstairs ‘office’ typing the blog of this excellent Giovanni puzzle.
Paper solvers like me will probably have noticed that there are a lot of squares to fill in the grid, and lots of words in the clues too. The on-line print version doesn’t look half as ‘busy’. The NE corner did hold out for longer than the other three put together, but the whole thing was a great pleasure to solve.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Another typical Cephas Saturday puzzle – there are eight anagrams but all with his usual excellently original indicators.
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
So hard to think of something original to say about the weekly treat from Virgilius. Once again a splendid mix of clues with too many ‘clues I liked best’ to pick just one.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ****/***** – Enjoyment *****
Nice to have a proper Toughie to get the cryptic grey matter working hard – some fluffy ‘ease you in clues’ and some more hob-nailed examples of the art of clue-writing, including possibly the most unhelpful placement of a double unch in the history of the cryptic crossword! Definitely a ‘game of two halves’ as the right hand side was completed first and then the left slowly but surely sorted itself out.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
The usual splendid start to Sunday morning.
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Congratulations to John Cruickshank, the winner of the July competition who receives “The Daily Telegraph Cracking Cryptic Crosswords Collection” – four books of daily puzzles in a slipcase, kindly donated by Tilsit – the prize will be posted when the latter returns to Tilsit Towers at the end of his Scottish adventures.
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
The presence of no fewer than six anagrams did make me check that this was indeed the Mysteron’s week to provide our Saturday morning entertainment. There also seemed to be several of those ‘take a single-letter abbreviation and follow it with a couple more’ type of clues. Didn’t take long to solve and I decided to be kind to the Gnome and not mention the significance of that river* today …. 
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
A very nice Prize Puzzle from Cephas – the right level of difficulty to leave plenty of time for other Saturday activities, and a nice mix of clues, including some lovely anagram indicators.