Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A medium level toughie from Giovanni today, with a couple of nice surface readings, and at least one clue where explaining the wordplay took longer than the solving process.
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ****
The lovely Gazza is always keen that those of us whose day jobs mean that we can’t do on-the-day reviews should be afforded the opportunity to enjoy the frisson of slight terror that comes with undertaking such a blog whenever we can. I hadn’t even set off for the hospital before I had an email asking me to let him know when I would be recovered enough to do some hints and tips!!
You always know what to expect on the Friday DT back page and today’s very enjoyable Giovanni was no exception to the rule, apart from the fact that with this one, it would have helped to start with the downs (that’s where the slight terror comes in, as I got halfway down the acrosses with only a few solutions written in – fortunately the downs went in without any problems at all so the blogger’s panic was totally unjustified.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
The Saturday Mysteron provided us with another of his typically straightforward Prize Puzzles, the main cause for celebration on the day being the fact that, for a change, the apostrophe was actually included in the enumeration for a clue – 27a .
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Congratulations to Keith Williams, the lucky person whose name I ‘drew’ out of the electronic ‘hat’. He wins a choice of two of the great Telegraph puzzle books published by Hamlyn Books as he correctly worked out that the missing American Vice-President was Rockefeller. As the instructions state, not only is Rockefeller missing from the list, but there isn’t an 11 letter solution in the grid so he wouldn’t have fitted in anyway.
Alchemi provided an interesting challenge for the January puzzle competition – I bet I wasn’t the only solver to think we were looking for Presidents of the USA before realizing we needed some of the Vice-Presidents! . I have marked the themed solutions in green.
As always, thanks to our sponsors, Hamlyn Books. Do take a moment to look at some of their publications below Continue reading “MPP – 008 (Review)”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **– Enjoyment ****
Another superb Virgilius Sunday puzzle – hidden words, clever definitions and lots to make you smile along the way. Quite a few anagrams but even the anagram ‘haters’ would have to admit that they appear in such clever convolutions. My top favourites are marked in blue.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *– Enjoyment ***
The last Virgilius of 2012 proved to be fairly straightforward – even the 14 letter solutions didn’t take that long to work out.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *– Enjoyment **
Cast your minds back to last year and the time just before the Christmas Festivities started and you might just remember that the Weekend Mysteron provided us with this very average and straightforward puzzle on the Saturday before Christmas. Perhaps he thought we needed extra time to fight our way round the supermarkets and wouldn’t have much time to ponder over crossword clues.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **– Enjoyment ***
Gazza has very kindly offered me the chance to do an on-the-day blog – if it is raining as much in Devon as it is in East Kent, I hope he has opted for the long lie-in rather than the early dog-walking option!
You always know what to expect on the back page of the paper on a Friday morning, and the final Giovanni of 2012 turned out exactly as expected with a good mix of clues, with a couple of chances to smile and some which I know are bound to give rise to comment!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***– Enjoyment ***
This Cephas Saturday Prize Puzzle would have merited just under 2* difficulty but has been given 3* because of the problems with 23a caused by having the wrong word in 21d 
Continue reading “DT 27050”