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 ***
I rate this as a 2.5 in difficulty and about a 3 in enjoyment. Begun in fits and starts, getting an answer here and there without being able to use checking letters. However, it became much smoother after a while, and didn’t prove too difficult. Thanks to setter.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I found this reasonably easy, difficulty of 2*, thankfully, as I’ve yet another blog to do today; and enjoyment at 2.5*. My favourites were 16a, the it’s-not-what-you-think 13a, and 13d. Thank you to setter.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ** :
Today we welcome Scchua to the blog. He has been posting excellent reviews on fifteensquared for a while and I thought it was about time that he joined us here. Pommers, Pommette and I met Scchua at the Sloggers & Betters meeting in Derby last year, while he was visiting the UK. You can see a picture of of him, with regular commenter Andy and today’s setter Jay, on the blog’s facebook page. BD
This is my debut on Big Dave’s, so hello to all, and I look forward to being part of the community. I’m still learning to use the software, so there could be some problems with layout. More important, I hope I’ve got the right balance between giving too much or too little away. So please let me have your comments. Regarding comments – because I’m in a very different time zone, I may not be able to respond until the next day. If there are any gaps in the blog, I’m sure there will be others happy to fill in, and thanks to them.
This was a kindly puzzle for a first blog. I put it at between 1 and 2 for difficulty – lots of containment clues, and after a while one can get used to the style. It was fairly enjoyable, between a 2 and 3, I feel, so thanks to the setter. I know that these ratings are very subjective, so mine may be very different from yours.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
In case you are confused, I have swapped days with Pommers. Just to further confuse you, Pommers has swapped with Gazza for this week only, so it will be Gazza tomorrow. If you’re still with me, this is a fairly gentle puzzle from Jay, who consistently hits the bull’s-eye with regard to the standard expected of a back-page puzzle, even though it is probably not on the back page today!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** / *** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa where it looks like the drought will be interrupted by a few rainy days. At least, the farmers will be happy – although it may be too little, too late. Today’s puzzle has a good mixture of clue types with varying levels of difficulty – a few easy ones to get you started and a few challenging ones to make you think.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja. Another fine crossword from the Wednesday Wizard. There’s a few anagrams to get you going and some clever clues as well. Not too difficult but I really enjoyed it. How about you?
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja. Today we have the Wednesday Wizard with his slightly trickier than usual hat on! Some very clever stuff and very enjoyable as the pennies dropped but not quite the “Stinker” as predicted yesterday! There again, you may all disagree with my assessment, wouldn’t be the first time! Won’t mention the weather apart from to say it did rain here yesterday morning – for a whole hour!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja. In view of the weather in the UK recently I won’t mention what it’s like here! Today we have the usual enjoyable fare from the Wednesday Wizard. Not too tricky but with a couple to cause a bit of head scratching.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Ottawa where we are experiencing a spell of sunny, 30+ degree weather. We just celebrated Canada Day on July 1 and our neighbours to the south are celebrating their national holiday today. So Happy Fourth of July to any American readers out there. The puzzle makes no specific mention of the occasion (only a passing reference to an American in one clue), but there is certainly ample food and drink to throw quite a party.
I found the puzzle, while quite enjoyable, to be a bit less difficult than usual. Jay has also given us a good variety of clue types today. There are the customary ‘select certain letters from a word’ clue (but the puzzle is not overloaded with them) as well as at least one of his substitution type clues.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja. On the night shift again! Been out to dinner with some friends and got home at exactly 0100CEST so the puzzle had just come on line and it seemed rude to ignore it! Glad I didn’t as I really enjoyed it as an after dinner treat (if I’d gone to bed at that time I would have been very grumpy in the morning)! Maybe it’s the post prandial brandy but I thought one or two of the clues were a bit tricky but overall not too hard, maybe only 2* for most of you but it was just into 3* time for me. Nice spread of clue types today though so that added to the fun.