Category: Monthly Club Special

A tough puzzle even by Monthly Club standards I thought, involving not just the usual pangrammatic vocab from all four corners of the club, but also some unusually inventive cryptic devices (my hat is off … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,214: Well *I* Didn’t Find This 28ac”

A real vocab-fest this month, taking in Antipodean and American slang, Indonesian medicine, a heated Chinese sleeping platform, a Japanese hostelry, an Indian water porter, an African mountain and that glorious German mouthful, a synonym … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,213: Around The World In 29 Clues”

There are some Club Monthlies whose sole agenda seems to be to use as many of the “fun” letters of the alphabet as possible, and this puzzle seems to be firmly in that school. COENZYME … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,212: XKCD Got Nothing On Me”

Let us first address the loxodont in the room: there was a lot, and I mean a lot of obscure natural history in this puzzle. If you are the kind of person who can see … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,211 (1/4/2014): Isn’t Nature Wonderful”

A sad DNF from me on this one – the entire top row being way too sporty for my blood, I failed to register the full import of “hitting canvas” in 1ac and though TAKENOMA … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,210: When Irish Clues Are Smiling”

For some reason there was 50 minutes plus on the clock already when I started this one, which was good really as it meant any sense of time pressure was off and I could just … Read more “Monthly Club Special No 20209: Return of the Pregnancy Frogs”

Greetings all, the appearance of a new Club Special reminds me that I need to post up a blog of the last one. This puzzle is a curious beast (I find): the wordplay is scrupulously … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,208: Explosion in the Scrabble Tile Factory!”

So .. welcome to my last scheduled blog. My first Club Monthly blog was no. 20110, for November 2009, and I’ve done all those since I think, bar two that I swapped for Mephisto blogs, … Read more “Club Monthly 20207 – December 2017, and Good Night.”

Just over forty minutes for this, in two sessions, so a little easier than average for me. Entertaining as always, and although there is the usual high number of classical and archaic references, there are … Read more “Club Monthly 20206 – November 2017”

Solving Time: An hour, over two sessions. Roughly average for me and this crossword seemed to be about medium difficulty .. now that I have no statistics or leaderboard to consult, it is hard to … Read more “Times Monthly Club Special 20204 – September 2017”