Toughie No 482 by Elgar
Seasonal Rhyme Time!
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
1 / 27 / 14 / 17 / 19
12 / 21 / 10 / 26 / 4
28 / 8 / 29 / 10 / 18d / 10 / 23
28 / 8 / 15 / 18d / 10 / then / 34
A suitably seasonal offering from Elgar and one which sits comfortably at the tougher end of the scale. However, I was somewhat derailed by the confusing numbering in the clue format and would probably have welcomed seeing the quote as above. Even with the above, there is also a clever little word play which had me flummoxed for a bit! In this review, I have taken the liberty of diverting from the numbering on line and in the paper to explain the lines of the quote.
I suspect that this will divide the regular Toughie solvers somewhat but I would urge you to persevere and admire the way our setter has managed to get virtually the whole verse into the grid. Unfortunately it was used (very differently) in another newspaper puzzle earlier in the week, which gave me a bit of a head start once I’d seen how 1a 27a worked out.