The Judge will also point out where you went wrong! You will find the wise words of The Judge in each issue of BIG, Colossus Crosswords, MEGA! and Collection magazines. If there are any clues you'd like explained The Judge is the one to ask – get in touch here.
Anthony Trollope was a very successful and popular novelist in Victorian England. One of his famous series of books was the Palliser novels, including Phineas Finn written in 1869. When it came to our Demon clue, ‘Trollope novel, Phineas …’ at 27ac, many of our puzzlers not surprisingly tried to fit FINN, but this [more…]
Tackling a Demon can be like climbing a mountain and this was true of clue 7dn in the November BIG. ‘Mt McKinley’ didn’t even seem like a clue to some, but the clue referred to the fact that Mt McKinley has another name.
The highest mountain in North America is in Alaska and in 1896 [more…]
The Mega Stinker was as smelly as usual in issue No. 59. It was enough to keep some of you awake especially at 47dn where ‘Wakefulness’ was INSOMNIA and not IMSOMNIA.
As you saw the sun come up you may have been tackling 134ac ‘Solar radiation (1,1-1)’. This was UV-B not USB or UBB. Ultraviolet [more…]
As this is our Christmas issue I am going to try and stick to writing only about words that make us feel good.
Our clue for HALCYON was ‘Golden (past)’ but the word came from a Greek myth about a bird (no not a partridge) and has a Christmas association.
Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus, who controlled [more…]
Ban Ki-moon has been the ‘Secretary-General of the UN since 2007’ and featured in the Mega Mix contest No. 58 at 46dn. If you spelt WEIRD with the weird spelling of WIERD at 59ac then you had BAN KE-MOON.
Ban is the family name and Ki-moon his given name. In Korean families it is usual [more…]
The Demon didn’t fail to live up to its name and we could hear the brain cogs turning as you tried to find the answer to 67dn ‘Subjective reporting, … journalism’. Gung-ho didn’t fit, neither did genre. The answer (you may want to make note of this one for future reference) was GONZO. It [more…]
Cryptic clues have the ability to take you into a fantasy world where ageing can be reversed, where Sue keeps her horse in a backstreet and where Eisenhower put a ban on floral art. What fun!
In the Giant Cryptic contest ‘Why age son, when it can be reversed with a bouquet?’ at 7ac gave [more…]
We like to think of ourselves, along with all you good readers, as a happy, puzzling crew, especially when it comes to matters of words; veritable comrades in clues!
The comradeship may have been stretched a bit thin at 9ac in The Demon when we had to disqualify a few entries because of the misspelling [more…]
Did you hear about the man sitting under a toadstool? He was a real fungi! (Though there wasn’t mushroom under there!)
Toadstools are associated with magical beings in many cultures, but why? Is it because they appear magically overnight, or because they look like colourful pixie caps? Maybe it’s because of the hallucinogenic affects, if [more…]
