Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Since the beginning of 2010, Wednesday’s regular setter is Jeremy Mutch who has visited the blog as Jay. During 2009, Jay set almost all the Thursday puzzles.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
An enjoyable, if not overly difficult, offering today from Jay (I presume). There is a fairly nice mix of clue types, although I expect some will think that there are too many “first and last letter of …” type clues in the puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
An excellent Wednesday crossword from Jay today. I enjoyed the solving process and am even more of a fan having written the review. A very nice mix of clues, some nice misleads and some lovely double definitions. I can already see the comments regarding my difficulty rating but that’s how I found it. I just hope you all found it as entertaining as I did. Thanks Jay.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Our Wednesday Wizard casts his spell and the result is another fine puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Slightly harder than usual today, but another fine puzzle from Jay.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
If you enjoy charades, you’ll love this puzzle. At least 17 of the 28 clues involve this type of clue. I must say that it was far more enjoyable to solve than it was to create hints for. After all, there are only so many ways to describe a charade.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Jay consistently turns out Telegraph-quality puzzles, and this one is no exception.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Jay entertains us once again with a typical Telegraph-quality puzzle. I found this slightly easier than some recent Wednesday offerings.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Like Gazza yesterday, I wasn’t sure I enjoyed this much while I was solving it, particularly as I had quite a struggle with some clues, but having typed the review, I find it has grown on me. Thanks to Jay for a good Wednesday morning brain workout.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
I had a slight case of blogger’s nerves when I read the first few clues but soon settled down and thoroughly enjoyed Jay’s puzzle which has a very nice mix of clues including quite a few insertions and some very nice anagrams. Thanks to Jay for the very nice Wednesday work out – we do seem to be returning to the ‘old’ system where the difficulty increased on a daily basis with Friday being the ‘hardest’.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This is the second occasion that I’ve had the honour to sit in the reviewer’s chair, so I am still a bit of a rookie – at least in this forum. Interestingly, the previous puzzle that I reviewed was DT 26346 and when Big Dave sent me DT 26364 this time, I had to do a double check to make sure I was working on the correct one.
Overall, I would say that this is a typical puzzle in terms of both difficulty and enjoyment. After quickly finding a starting point and making rapid progress through about half the puzzle, I felt that it would likely rate two stars for difficulty. However, the remainder of the puzzle proved more challenging and caused me to up my rating to three stars.