Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Currently Tuesday does not appear to have a regular setter, although Shamus usually features on alternate weeks. Until Autumn 2010 the other slot featured Ray T most of the time.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
An enjoyable, but not too taxing, puzzle with all the answers being single words. We have both a girl’s name and a city, so there may be some criticism from those who do not like the use of proper nouns – over to you!
As usual the answers are hidden inside the curly brackets – just select the white space inside them to reveal all.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Today we have a very pleasant, but not too exacting, exercise with some well-constructed clues – perfect for doing in the garden with a long, cold drink close at hand.
As usual, the answers are hidden inside the curly brackets – select the white space to reveal them.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Another Tuesday and another fine puzzle, full of well crafted clues. After last week’s debate on how difficult the puzzle was I’ll be interested to see how people react to this one – I vacillated between three and four stars but eventually plumped for three.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
After last Tuesday’s disappointing puzzle it is good to get a really solid one with some excellent surface readings. In terms of difficulty I would rate this half way between a standard cryptic and a Toughie, so newcomers should not be discouraged if they cannot finish it without assistance.
As usual the answers can be revealed, if required, by selecting the white space between the curly brackets.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
I feel as if I’ve drawn the short straw with this one. There are one or two nice clues, but these are outweighed by a number where the word order has been mangled or extraneous words introduced to try to improve the surface reading of the clue. Throw in a couple of very odd words and some “cryptic” clues which are not very cryptic, and you are left with what, to me, was a very frustrating puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Sitting in the garden with a long cool drink on a hot Summer’s day and doing gentle battle with a cryptic crossword – what more could you ask for? I thought that the clues in this one got better towards the end, with the last few down ones being excellent – or was it that the contents of my long cool drink were gradually taking effect?
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
This is a decent, solid puzzle which left me feeling just slightly disappointed because there are no really witty clues to make me laugh. Am I being over-critical and expecting too much? What do you think? – leave us a comment!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Once more we have an excellent Tuesday puzzle with some very entertaining surface readings. The layout of the grid encourages you to solve one corner at a time, and I was proceeding quite well until I reached the South-East corner which held me up for a while.
Can I point out to new readers (and to regular readers who have not yet read Big Dave’s FAQ!) that the curly brackets associated with each clue are not just there for artistic embellishment – the answer is hidden inside them, and if my hints are insufficient to give you the answer you can reveal it by selecting the space inside the brackets.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
In his review yesterday tilsit introduced a phrase “double unch” (double unchecked square) which I hadn’t heard before and which I determined to remember for future use – well, I did not have to wait long, because today’s puzzle is full of them! It’s a bit of a curate’s egg really, with a few nice cryptic definitions and some attempts at misdirection, but some of the surface readings are pretty poor, notably 16d.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This is another decent puzzle from our normal Tuesday setter, whose trademark is to have only single-word answers. Some will decry the layout of the grid, with each of the corners pretty isolated – but look on the bright side, you get four puzzles for the price of one!
