Toughie No 648 by Osmosis
Just a Couple of Showers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
This is an enjoyable, moderately difficult puzzle from Osmosis with, as usual from him, lots of clues involving initial letters, final letters, insertions and reversals. It has only two anagrams which may be some sort of record and certainly earns an extra enjoyment star from me.
Let us know how you found it and please take the time to click on one of the stars below to record your enjoyment factor.
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Toughie No 636 by Osmosis
Wednesdays aren’t so simple any more
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
If this is the level of difficulty for Wednesday then I won’t be envying Tilsit by the time we get to Friday! I thought that this Toughie was great but pretty hard. Let us know how you got on, especially if you found it a doddle!
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Toughie No 622 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Tilsit is on holiday in the Lake District today, so I am filling in for him. A very enjoyable puzzle with some clues that needed a fair bit of unravelling.
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Toughie 605 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Bufo
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
I found this one a bit of a struggle but got there in the end. I’ll be interested to see if others struggled or whether it was just me having an off day
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Toughie No 590 by Osmosis
In the Can!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from the Calder Valley. Thanks to BD for helping out last Friday when my hospital appointment got messy. I managed to make the Crossword Meet at Birmingham the following day and it was a joy to meet up with Rufus and Eric Westbrook, as well as the other setters and solvers. Thanks to Anax for a grand day and there are some great pictures around especially those taken by Jane Teather. I’m not a fan of pictures of myself, but this is quite a decent one of me wrestling with the Anax special puzzle!
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Toughie No 572 by Osmosis
If You Don’t Like Football It’s Tough
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BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment ****
This is a superb midweek Toughie from Osmosis, jam-packed with “penny-drop” moments. It’s not terribly difficult (nothing obscure) but it is tremendously entertaining. Let us know what you thought of it in a comment.
Please take the time to record your assessment of the puzzle by clicking on one of the stars below.
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Toughie No 558 by Osmosis
Creatures of Habit
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Osmosis is back with his fiendishly complex clues to torment us today. A very enjoyable puzzle with a few creatures featuring in the solutions, as well as some contemporary references and clever surface readings. One of the attractions of the Toughie for me is that we get up-to-date and topical clues in many of the puzzles (the Rooney clue in yesterday’s Giovanni made me giggle!). I particularly liked today’s offbeat clue at 25a, but quite a few of the others were equally clever.
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Toughie No 546 by Osmosis
Back to the Future!
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Tilsit is busy acting as the family chauffeur, so I’m filling in again. Osmosis usually gives the grey cells a good workout, and today is no exception. There is a mini-theme of actors and films from fifty years ago.
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Toughie No 528 by Osmosis
See You Jimmy
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
In spite of a problem with CluedUp which wiped all my answers out when I’d nearly completed the puzzle, I really enjoyed this one. Osmosis seems to have changed his style a bit over his last couple of puzzles and now we’re getting less of the extremely complicated wordplay and some clues which are more cryptic. The result is a very entertaining puzzle with some “laugh out loud” moments. It’s also a pangram.
Let us know what you thought of the puzzle and please remember to grade it by clicking on one of the stars below.
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Toughie No 516 by Osmosis
Cogito Ergo Word Sum (I think I’ve got the wordplay)
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Afternoon All!. Gazza has graciously stepped aside this afternoon to let me have a bash at my first Toughie review. I must admit to a feeling of trepidation when I realized it was to be Osmosis as I sometimes struggle with him.
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