Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
It was a pleasant, non-controversial puzzle with some nice clues for me to blog this week. There was nothing really obscure in it and for once I had no problems working out the wordplay.
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 ****
Reading the first few clues, I had to check whether I had the right day of the week, as it seemed to me that the puzzle was slightly harder than previous Saturday offerings. Once I got into it, however, and 1a’d to the compiler’s cunning plan, it turned out to be a relatively quick solve with some splendid clues, 17a, 27a, 2d being just some of my favourites.
Please 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 ****
I have nearly worn out the blue highlighter today – there were so many excellent clues in this puzzle. Once again we don’t know the name of the setter, but we have not had a puzzle as good as this one on a Thursday since Jay relinquished the slot at the start of the year.
The clue at 8 down is one of the best I have seen in a long time. I hope the setter owns up to this one.
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 *
Disjointed, lacking structure and providing very little entertainment. But enough of the England football team, what of today’s Toughie? Well, pretty much the same really. I did think at one time that Excalibur’s puzzles were improving a bit after some of the very poor ones from last year, but it’s difficult to find much positive to say about this one (well, one thing, I did quite like 26a). Some of the surface readings (e.g. 19a, 15d and 25d) are gibberish, and there was nothing that made me smile, let alone laugh.
You may of course have a totally different view, and, whether you do or not, we’d love to get a comment from you.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
I can’t think of much to say about this puzzle. Perhaps my mind is on other events today!
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 ****
Usually I find Busman’s puzzles to be on the easy side and not particularly enjoyable. Although this one is not difficult, apart from the Greek abbot and the Spanish composer, there were some excellent clues. The biggest smiles came from 1 across and 11 across, with 15 down not far behind.
I rounded the difficulty up to 3 stars, mainly because of the aforementioned foreigners.
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 ****
We have a challenging and very entertaining puzzle today from Ray T with some very amusing clues. It’s well worth persevering with, but, if you want something a bit easier Prolixic informs me that today’s Toughie is not as difficult. Let us know what you think of this one, and how you think it compares with the Toughie.
If you want to see the answers, they’re hidden between the curly brackets under the relevant clues. Highlight the space between the brackets to reveal.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **– Enjoyment ***
First of all I would like to thank Dr. BlueDragon for his appreciation of the blog on DNUK. Now having done that, we can turn our thoughts to Monday’s crossword by Rufus. Although I did enjoy this, there are some fun cryptic defintions, I did at times feel as if I was dipping into a box of old chestnuts.
If you are still struggling with the answer after reading the hint, just highlight the space between the curly brackets.
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A few hints just to get you started – more than usual this week as some of the wordplay is a bit tricky.
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, 24th June.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
More Sunday class. As Brian Greer called me an “arch-roaster of chestnuts” or similar a few weeks ago, I suspect he may well have done this before without me noticing properly, but there is very little stale old cryptic xwd material in this puzzle – apart from some one-letter abbreviations like fifty=>L, which are almost impossible to avoid completely, there are just two bits of what I’d think of as “chestnut content”: four=>IV (25A), leg=>ON (4D).
Next Friday’s report will be a bit different. Gnomethang and I will both record our thought processes as accurately as we can while solving next Sunday’s puzzle (2541), and the blog will be a report showing our progress in parallel. The idea is to show you a bit of how we get from the clue to the answer – the analysis you usually get explaining the answer is useful (and all you can be sure of being able to write after the event) but not quite the same. It will also show you that there are many ways to skin the solving rabbit – there will be clues that one of us sees easily and the other misses completely on first look – both ways, I hope.
Continue reading “ST 2540”