Toughie No 3701 by Beam
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ****
Well, well! Another Tuesday appearance for King Concision… You wait ages to blog a Beam puzzle, then two come along (almost) at once. That’s all to the good as far as I am concerned! We have three six-word clues, and everything else is even more concise.
I started off at a rate of knots and was starting to wonder whether “Floughie” and “Beam” had ever been linked in a Blog. I should have known better, and the South-west corner, along with 2d put up a valiant fight, the end result being pretty much spot-on for a Tuesday. I have ticks all over the place, notably 2d, 15d, 16d, 18d, 21a and 27a, but I’m giving my Gold Star to 12a. Thanks to Beam for a very enjoyable tussle.
Please accept my apologies for the absence of illustrations and the like. In the short time since competing the puzzle and typing the blog, I’ve started an attack of man-flu or the like, and need to leave it here.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3697 by Dada
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Well this is a genuine Toughie, no worries on that score. I thought the difficulty level was perfectly pitched for a Tuesday. There is plenty of Dada’s characteristic, quirky clueing and if his name hadn’t been plastered across the top of the page, I would have ventured a few small coins on the setter’s identity and been correct for once. 23a piqued my Inner Pedant, 5d gave it a hard poke, and I’ve abraded the top of my head a little trying to parse 25d. 12a made me smile, I liked 14d’s structure, as well as the solution being a great word, but the clear winner of my Gold Star today is the clever, smooth-surfaced 15d. Thanks to Dada for making the Tuesday morning tea work somewhat harder than of late.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3693 by Hudson
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment *****
We have a very entertaining puzzle from Hudson today, and whilst there are a few slight obscurities, these are not at the extreme end of the scale in Crosswordland. It did take me a fair while to get into the swing, which I’m blaming on an unusual excursion into solving outdoors, but once I got a couple of handles, it all went in fairly smoothly. We have a few footballing/sporting references, plenty of geography and a couple of Addams family references, but nothing that really amounts to a theme that I can see. There is a whole bunch of clues that would get podium places in any normal week, notably 1d, 8d, 10a, 14d, 19d and 27a, but I’m giving my prize today to 23a. Thank you, Hudson, for a top-notch puzzle.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3689 by Shabbo
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty */2 – Enjoyment ****
We have another excellently-clued puzzle from Shabbo today. Apart from a piece of parsing that gave me brief pause, and a piece of not-too-obscure Classical knowledge, the puzzle is very gentle. The principal issue I had was in treating Shabbo’s wonderfully constructed clues as actual crossword clues, and forcing myself to break them down into their constituents, as opposed to just taking them as statements in their own right. My favourites today, amongst many contenders, are the 1a/5a combo, 19d and 27a. Thank you (again), Shabbo, for a very enjoyable puzzle.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3685 by Beam
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
We live in interesting and unusual times, that much is now clear, if it wasn’t already: Beam on a Tuesday? Whatever next? Anyway, whatever cosmic upheaval has brought this about, I am delighted that I have finally had the chance to blog one of his puzzles. Beam, initially in his back-page guise, and then in Toughie form, was the first setter whose individual style and craft I really started to understand and appreciate. Of course, that was back in the day when he was more verbose, with as many as 7 or 8 words a clue…
Having been working through backlog of Sunday Toughies, some featuring Beam in full-on Tough Toughie mode, I was worried about what I might face here, but he has been kind, whilst still giving us a challenge – notably parsing 5d, which was much harder than the solving part, and almost worth an extra difficulty star alone. All of the usual suspects are there (royalty, initials, sweethearts), just the innuendo lacking to spare my blushes at breakfast. Amongst many fine clues, I’m giving my prizes to 4d, 9d, 14d, 29a and 30a. Overall, another masterpiece in concise complexity! Thank you, Beam, for another excellent puzzle.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3681 by Chalicea
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
A welcome return to the Setter’s Chair for Chalicea today, and whilst this is generally at the gentle end of the spectrum (and a very much needed emollient for the bruises left after the battering from Elgar’s Friday Beast) there are a few that required a bit of thought, and a new word for me necessitating a dive into the BRB. Whilst 1a, 16a, 17d and 18d get honourable mentions, I can’t look beyond 7d for my gold medal place today. Thank you, Chalicea, for a very enjoyable start to the Toughie Week.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3677 by Hudson
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings! For today, and next week, you find me in beautiful Dumfries and Galloway enjoying a loch-side lodge and the avian cacophony created by Canada and Greylag geese, with a supporting chorus of Little Grebe, Cuckoo and assorted warblers (sedge and willow primarily). So far the weather is more Mediterranean than Hibernian, so no complaints on that score!
We have a relatively gentle puzzle from Hudson today, to whom, many thanks. I added an extra half star for difficulty because of a couple of pieces of General Knowledge I didn’t have, but nothing that wasn’t clearly indicated by the clues. I was on Pangram alert after getting 25a early one with lots of other “high value” letters cropping up, but in the end, that only made the solve harder, given that we are lacking a W, so trying to squeeze one in was a waste of time. 23a, 4d and 14d occupy my podium places this week.
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Toughie No 3673 by Dada
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Welcome to another Toughie Week. I’m back in a Very Spring-like Wirral for this week. The migrants continue to arrive or pass through heading North; the sand martins are back exploring the nesting wall at RSPB Burton Mere, and I managed to successfully twitch the wryneck that spent a day in one of Burton village’s sheep fields. Well, just its head, really – I didn’t have much time en route for a stroll with The Present Lady Whybird through Burton Mere’s lovely bluebell wood.
We have a full-on Toughie from Dada today that could easily have slotted in a day or two later in the week. There are a few musical references, but I’m not sure there are enough to constitute a theme. My solve wasn’t helped by the Dead Tree arriving late, which meant I started on the iPad and only really got into the swing once I had a suitably-folded Broadsheet in my hands. I felt this was a rather quirky puzzle, with a few I’ve had to scratch my head over, but there are also a few absolute belters. I knew I was going to love 14d from the moment I saw it – the idea of an extra brock in reserve that it brought to mind made me smile, although I doubt that was the allusion Dada intended. Nothing to do with the solution, either. Anyway, 14d takes top spot in a 28a with 2d, and with honourable mentions for 1a and 20a. Thank you, Dada, for getting the mental cogs spinning.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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Toughie No 3669 by Shabbo
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
Greetings! This week your Itinerant Blogger finds himself in a cottage on the Eaton Manor estate close to Church Stretton – views of Wenlock Edge (complete with Brown Hares on the slopes) to one side, and Long Mynd across the valley. Blackcaps and Nuthatches singing in the garden (and the latter also bizarrely from top of the tower of St Edith’s Church), red kites over the valley. It’s a tough assignment, but someone’s got to do it…
We have another high-quality puzzle from Shabbo to start our Toughie Week. I had just enough of a battle with a few of the clues to take this into Gentle Toughie Territory. Even with some of the gentler clues, I found I had to force myself to break the clues down into their elements and not get distracted by the surfaces. Like Django, but usually more concisely, Shabbo has a knack of leading me down the garden path! My favourites today were the Operatic Repairmen in 22a, the distracting surface in 2d and the narrative anagram in 14d. Thank you, Shabbo, for the entertainment.
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Toughie No 3665 by Django
Hints and tips by Whybird
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from a very Spring-like Wirral – just as long as you can stay in the sun and out of the rather toothy wind!
I was delighted -and somewhat nervous – when I saw Django’s name when I opened my Dead Tree. I missed his recent Tuesday appearance and was hoping for a repeat visit. However, I was also well aware that I don’t always find his puzzles straightforward, so solving against a deadline adds an element of peril. I always start by getting lost in Django’s narratives – I read the clues as mini stories, and forget to take them as directions to an answer, and it takes a little while before I start to treat them like a puzzle. That’s a large part of what I like about Django’s crosswords, and today was no exception.
We have an interesting mix of (relative) “gimmes” to get the ball rolling, some good mid-rage difficulty clues and some that took quite a lot of head-scratching to tease out, hence the elevated overall difficulty rating. A fun challenge, though, and many thanks to Django for giving the brain cells a jump-start! I’m giving rosettes today to 12d, 16d and 19d. However, top prize goes to 24d, for the amusing mental image.
Please let us know how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
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