Category: Monthly Club Special

What, April already? I’d totally forgotten to do this until just now but it was worth the wait, with some LOLsome words from the very darkest corners of the dictionary, and some truly splendiferous cluing, … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,234: A Daimen-Icker In A Thrave”

The usual abundance of cluing splendour, but to be honest this puzzle is all about the amazing Homeric-onomatopoeic word for the noise of the sea at 15ac – clue of the (~8th) century (BCE), my … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,233: By The Wordpower of Greyskull!”

Those who don’t like these puzzles could do worse than to point at the run of down answers from, say, 10dn to 16dn: UREDINIOSPORE, ANOBIIDAE, DAIDZEIN? Give us a break! Random bits of science jargon … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,232: Strip Jack Naked”

Once again the best crossword of the month, if not the whole year. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, MCS-detractors! So much interesting general knowledge required for this one, including basic fluency in … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,231: A Mad-Brain Wordsby, Full of Spleen, Setting Furiously”

Our usual monthly allotment of brilliance (13dn, 22dn) combined with sheer madness (26ac). A real cryptic workout to be sure, but one that must result in a great sense of satisfaction from any doughty enough … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,230: No Dirish Hacks Or Blogs”

I’m glad I did this towards the end of the month rather than the beginning as there were some pretty darn scary words in here, so I thought it worked very nicely as a Hallowe’en … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,229: Hallowe’en Special”

Another impressive exercise in dictionary-digging, with the spelling required for 21ac enough to make the most hardened solver blanch, and 11ac recalling the headiest days of the much-mourned TLS Crossword blogs. I enjoyed the mad … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,228: Be The Change You Want To See In Your Grid”

Hello from PDX! Our Airbnb is very nice, with antlered animal skulls arrayed all around the living room, with a real stuffed jackalope head taking pride of place! Very homely. Anyway I thought this was … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,227: TLS of the Unexpected”

As usual I feel mildly sorry for those who spurn the MCS because the vocabulary is too difficult – they are missing some of the best clues of the month, every month. As usual there … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,226: A Void (Lik Th Plagu)!”

Crikey, is the year half over already? This was another quality MCS displaying the usual delight in the mad, bad and dangerous to define words bulking out our dictionaries, all clued with the usual precision … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,225: Levi Stubbs’ Tears”