Category: Monthly Club Special

Once again the best cryptic workout of the month, because biffability has been all but subtracted from the equation – if you could readily define more than half a dozen of these words without resort … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,237: I Fought Scots Law, And Scots Law Won”

I found this quite hard work overall, despite a fair proportion of straightforward clues in the mix: there were a few real stinkers to balance them out, of which LOI 12dn was the ringleader. COD … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,236: Oh Stewardess? I Speak 24D”

I thought this puzzle made for a strong counterargument against those who think that the MCS is an unnecessary exercise in wilful difficulty and obscurity. Yes, there was a handful of Scots dialect, and a … Read more “Monthly Club Special 20,235: A Stroll In The Woods”

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”