Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Shamus is Philip Marlow [The fictional character Philip Marlowe, created by Raymond Chandler, lived in Shamus Town, a loosely disguised Los Angeles]. He sets puzzles as Hypnos in the Independent and Sleuth in the Financial Times. He also sets some of the questions on “Only Connect”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment **
We have quite a verbose puzzle from Shamus (my printout spilled over on to a second sheet of A4 which is fairly unusual). I thought quite a few of the clues were a bit ‘samey’ with lots of reversals and truncations.
Do let us know how you fared and please take the time to click on one of the stars below to record your enjoyment factor.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A steady solve with no hold-ups. The only minor problem I had was in getting my head round and unravelling some of the longer clues. The setter gets low marks for conciseness
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Bufo is taking a week off. If you like clues where a number of little pieces are fastened together to get the answer then you will enjoy this puzzle from Shamus.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
It was nice to have a challenging puzzle on a Thursday and I enjoyed it even though a lot of the clues are rather convoluted. I thought it was going to be a pangram but I failed to find the Z. This is somewhat surprising because a Z could easily have been incorporated by using the alternative spelling at 14 across. Perhaps Shamus had this originally but found it too awkward to clue.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
There are some good penny-drop moments in this puzzle but there’s also a great deal of wordplay involving adding or subtracting single letters. I don’t dislike this as much as some of our commenters do but even I got a bit fed up with it by the end. The puzzle (a pangram, by the way) is fairly tame by Toughie standards.
Let us have your views in a comment and please give your assessment of the enjoyment factor by clicking on one of the stars below.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
I breezed through this until I reached the SW corner. Up to then I was giving it barely 2* for difficulty and then 23 across and 21 down brought me to a complete standstill until I eventually dredged up the answer to 21 down. That left 23 across for which I had to resort to making up words from the wordplay until I came up with an answer that seemed reasonable even though I’d never heard of it. Despite my difficulties getting these last couple of answers I decided on 3* for difficulty on the basis that the rest of you will be more familiar with Greek cuisine than I am.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A pleasant puzzle which was slightly more difficult than I thought it was going to be. There were no major hold-ups though a bit of thought was needed to unravel some of the wordplay.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
I enjoyed this puzzle even though I found it to be at the easy end of the Toughie spectrum. There were some nice clues and all were perfectly fair.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This middle-of-the road, in terms of difficulty, Toughie was quite enjoyable. A number of the clues use bits of words, like a trio meaning the first three letters, but you get used to them.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This Toughie from Shamus involves a lot of Tilsit’s wordsums making it a little difficult to get into, but once the grid started to fill, it became a lot easier. Parsing 1 down caused me a bit of grief, but I think I’ve got it right.