Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Friday’s current setter is Don Manley who is also known as Giovanni, Duck, Pasquale, Quixote, and Bradman (all punningly connected with the name Don or Donald)
Toughie No 3316 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
Osmosis has given us a proper Toughie with a lot of clever wordplay (which I really enjoyed working through). This time his puzzle is a full pangram with no missing letters.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.
Continue reading “Toughie 3316”
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BD Rating - Difficulty **** - Enjoyment ***
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. Complex wordplay and more head-scratching than usual for a Friday suggests that this nice puzzle might be the work of Zandio. While I found most of it about right for a Friday, parsing 4d pushed my total time into 4* difficulty territory. Continue reading "DT 30682"
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BD Rating – Toughie Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
When Elgar sets a Friday Toughie, you get exactly what it says on the tin. The usual stretching of the cryptic grey matter followed by a lot of smiles as I worked out exactly what was going on in the clues
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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. I thought this was the best Friday puzzle for some time, with tight cryptic grammar and lots of penny drop moments. The use of every letter but X in the grid fill suggests that it’s the work of proXimal. Thanks to him for today’s entertainment. Continue reading "DT 30676"
Toughie No 3308 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Osmosis has taken a leaf out of Beam’s book and given us a very enjoyable anagram-less puzzle. Thanks to him.
There’s a lot of cleverness on view in the grid. For a start we have (almost) a double pangram – there are no Hs but two of them are visible in the make-up of the grid. Also, we only have a single W but we do have a couple of spare Us (i.e. a double-U). Finally, and I don’t know how significant this is, several pairs of the higher scoring Scrabble letters appear separated by a single letter in the four quadrants (i.e. going clockwise from top-left Q?Q, X?X, Z?Z and J?J).
Continue reading “Toughie 3308”
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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ***
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. It was a very long day in the lab today, so I’m afraid that once again I had no time to search for quality cat pics. However, since the commentariat did so well at providing pics last week, I’m hoping that readers will step up once again with suitable illustrations. Continue reading "DT 30670"
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BD Rating – Toughie Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
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BD Rating - Difficulty **** - Enjoyment **
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. I thought that there was quite a lot of complex and convoluted wordplay lurking in this puzzle, so if that’s your thing you likely enjoyed it. Sadly, all my available blogging time today went towards unscrambling the wordplay, so there was no time left to search for pics. I will try to remedy that next week. Continue reading "DT 30664"
Toughie No 3300 by Sparks
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
We have an enjoyable puzzle from Sparks today. He normally includes something significant in the grid but I can’t spot anything (possibly due to the fact that I’m knackered after staying up most of the night watching the election coverage). Thanks to him.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.
Continue reading “Toughie 3300”
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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ***
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. Continue reading "DT 30658"