Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
ProXimal is Steve Bartlett, who sets crosswords for The Independent as eXternal (which he first used in our NTSPP series), and for the Financial Times as arteXlen.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
I plodded rather than raced through this puzzle with each answer needing to be prised out but there was a sense of satisfaction in completing it. There did seem to be a lot of container/insertion type clues.
Continue reading “Toughie 1322”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***/**** – Enjoyment ***
Thanks to proXimal for an enjoyable puzzle and one with no obscure words. It took me longer than it should have to unravel a few bits of wordplay.
Continue reading “Toughie 1291”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
‘Phew!’ was my reaction to the first proXimal puzzle that I blogged and so I started this one with some trepidation. However the bottom half went in fairly quickly with the help of the two long anagrams. The top half took longer but even so I would have probably only have given the puzzle 3* for difficulty had I not spent a long time trying to suss out how the clue for 25 across worked.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
A competent but far-from-difficult puzzle from the setter formerly known as eXternal. I’m not sure why this was picked for the traditionally difficult Friday Toughie – in my opinion it would have sat quite nicely in the Tuesday slot.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Not yet quite up to the standard set for Friday Toughies by Elgar, but a very pleasant puzzle nonetheless.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
This is the first time I have been exposed to a proXimal Toughie and I struggled throughout. I only got one answer on my first read-through of the clues but this gave me a toehold in the SE corner from which I managed to fill the left-hand side of the grid without too many problems. I then stalled completely on the left-had side and I had to tease out just about every answer. It was definitely my slowest solve of a Toughie for a long, long time. I’m not sure why I found it so difficult because all the clues are perfectly fair and I didn’t have to do much head scratching to untangle the wordplay. I’ll be interested to know how the rest of you fared so I can see if it was just me who couldn’t get on proXimal’s wavelength.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
We welcome a new Toughie setter today – I’m not totally sure who proXimal is but the capital X is perhaps a broad hint that it’s a new pseudonym for someone who’s a regular commenter here and a contributor to the NTSPP series as well as a setter for the Independent. In any case he (or possibly she, if my guess is wrong) is very welcome and has provided us with an entertaining debut puzzle with lots of very well disguised definitions. I would have given this 2* for difficulty but I ended up cheating on 9a so I’ve bumped it up to 3*.
Continue reading “Toughie 1179”