Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment *
This turned out to be an unintentional rehash of Toughie 110. See the Hints post for more details, but that accounts for the low rating allocated.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
While still tougher than most, I found this Toughie from Elgar to be a bit easier than usual. I managed, or hope I did, to unravel all but one of the clues unaided.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
A smorgasbord of a crossword today, with historical, poetic, botanic and film references all in the mix. That, however does not detract from the crossword’s enjoyment. If you are new to the blog, to see the answer, just highlight the blank space between the curly brackets.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Much harder than most recent Saturday puzzles – something like double my average time for them. Mostly good grid, though it does have eight 7-letter words with only three checked letters. Some of my potential quibbles disappeared after looking up words in Chambers, so there are only a couple of clues I’d count as unfair.  That said, there are some very easy cryptic definition clues to go with the difficult ones. Generally a better puzzle than most Saturdays as others said in the hints posting. My main reservation is the number of cryptic definitions which seem weak to me, like 28A. It seems very hard to make these difficult unless they’re unfairly vague. Did any readers get the same satisfaction from this as from working out the wordplay and def in a clue like 17, or even just half-remembering Polly Flinders at 2? Continue reading “DT 25960 – Review”
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from the top floor of Calderdale Hospital where I am currently holidaying as a guest of the NHS. It’s 1am and it’s rather warm in here, since they seem to have forgotten to install air-conditioning. However one of the lovely nurses has brought me a nice cold glass of orange Juice. Thank you for all the kind wishes and I hope to be home sometime over the next few days.
After two fairly gentle puzzles so far this week, this really made me ramp up the thought processes, and we were treated to superlative stuff from Notabilis today. One or two of the clues (e.g. 1 across and down) were utterly fiendish and took me a while to decipher.
As usual, I welcome your thoughts and observations. New posters please note that there may be a slight delay before you see it; this is because we check new posts to protect you (and the site) from spammers.
Off we go….. Continue reading “Toughie 170”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
This puzzle was a very pleasant Thursday surprise for me, with many clever and amusing clues. I enjoyed it a lot.
Continue reading “DT 25964”
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As usual with Home screen problems, this one only lasted for the day and the following day’s Home screen was OK.
Libellule reports that you can’t get the printable versions of the Quick or Daily Cryptic crosswords from the Home screen.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
We’re having an easy week (so far) with the Toughies. This one is not quite as easy as yesterday’s but is still pretty straightforward, and it offers some entertaining clues.
As usual the answers are hidden inside the curly brackets – select the white space if you want to reveal them.
Continue reading “Toughie 169”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A pleasant puzzle that didn’t overly exercise the brain cells. Continue reading “DT 25963”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
When I saw that Warbler was today’s setter I looked forward to a difficult puzzle. What I got was one that was, to me, easier than most of the regular daily cryptics. Just as Gazza vacillated between 3 and 4 stars for today’s cryptic (I had that as a 2 star!) I rounded this one up to 2 stars. Let me know what you think.