Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A crossword with some excellent clues but also some which raise questions or don’t satisfy me completely.
To see the answers, highlight the white space between the curly brackets.
Leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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Just before Christmas Tilsit offered a small prize for the best clue for THE CRAB. Twelve entries were received, and these were judged by all the contributors to the blog. The top five (of which there are six) are as follows:
Continue reading “Clue Writing Competition”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Once again a well-constructed puzzle from Virgilius (the name by which Brian Greer is best known these days). Very few easy clues, but all the answers should be within the vocabulary of the average solver, with the possible exception of 20 down.
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Friday, 8th January.
Continue reading “ST 2517 – Hints”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
You won’t need an atlas today for this relatively straightforward Prize puzzle.
Last week I said “One Saturday Cephas will fool us by setting a puzzle that is not a pangram” – how prophetic that turned out to be. Having spotted J, K, Q and X I was looking out for V and Z, but in vain.
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. A full review of this puzzle will be published on Thursday, 7th January.
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On behalf of all of the bloggers on this site I would like to wish you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
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I have recently arranged a link with Monk-ey Puzzles, the site run by, surprise, surprise, Monk. You can find it in the sidebar. During the course of the discussions we discovered our mutual love of Blues music. If you thought that crossword setters did nothing else with their lives then take a look at these two YouTube videos of Monk on his harp. Contrast this with his day job as an Applied Maths Professor at Leeds University!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ***
The expected smattering of Caledonian verbal specialities made this a challenging solve in a few places but at least – now I’m becoming familiar with this setter’s style – I was on the lookout for them.
Unusually I’ve given this five stars for difficulty, and I can only base that on solving time; this one kept me from bed for a good few hours after saying hello to 2010. Or maybe it was the drink.
Favourite clues are in blue.
Leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Those of us feeling a trifle fragile after last night and hoping for a gentle easing into 2010 may find this one a trifle more difficult than hoped-for. It’s well up to Giovanni’s usual standard and is highly enjoyable, but the 13a clue may be a total mystery to anyone who is not into rugby.
As usual the answers are hidden inside the curly brackets – just highlight the white space inside to reveal.
May I take this opportunity to wish everyone – fellow bloggers, illustrious setters and all our readers – a Very Happy New Year. Let’s hope that this year brings as many enjoyable puzzles as last year.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Elgar gives us yet another treat and a completely unexpected theme linking all of the answers.
SPOILER ALERT – only reveal the next sentence if you are really stuck
{All answers contain at least one instance of the letters RE, which are ignored in the wordplay – except for 10a, which is odd (unless I’m missing something). The first number in brackets refers to the number of letters used in the wordplay.}
My favourite clues are shown in blue (although it feels like a slightly odd thing to do – normally I’d highlight such clues only if they adhere to standard cryptic format).
For the utterly bamboozled, answers are shown within curly brackets – click and highlight to reveal them. And please chip in and let us know what you thought of the puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
An enjoyable crossword to end the year (at least I thought so), with a bit of a themed New Year crossword. How many references can you spot?
As usual the answers are hidden in the curly brackets, so if you cannot work out the answer from the explanation, just highlight to reveal. If any of you have any comments, feel free to leave one. Finally can I wish all of the setters, the bloggers and all of our readers a happy New Year.
Continue reading “DT 26125”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
Firstly, thanks to Big Dave for stepping in and doing my Cryptic review yesterday – it’s amazing how the loss of one’s broadband link for just 24 hours produces withdrawal symptoms!
Today’s puzzle is by the setter who polarises opinions more than any other Toughie setter. While I don’t think this is a great puzzle and it’s not really Toughie standard, it is nevertheless a distinct improvement on the ones we were getting from this setter 6-9 months ago – most of the surface readings are reasonable and we’re now getting less of the convoluted word order which were a feature of previous puzzles.
As usual we’d love to get your views – please leave a comment.