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Been slowly going through the Roger Wolff curated “Cryptic All-Stars,” and it suddenly dawned on me that I’d never mentioned it. I might have mentioned it when it was at the Kickstarter stage, but it’s been out now for a couple months and, well, I’ve been enjoying them. Here’s the short review: Variety cryptics, some done by at least two titans of the game (Henry Hook and Joshua Kosman) and a few by some demi-gods (Mike Selinker and Kevin Wald), published entirely independently = time and money well spent. I’ve done about half of the book now and let me say I was floored by two of them: Mark Gottlieb’s stellar treasure map puzzle and Mark Halpin’s “Missing Pieces.” The latter one reminded me of some Listener puzzles in terms of complexity and erudition, however, unlike most of the Listener puzzles, this one was totally solvable. Definitely a fun book, and cryptic fans should pick one up.
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Another superb BEQqer. I prolly have copied about a myriad of crosswords straight from newspaper, websites, and magazines. Not Xeroxing, but copying box by box, letter by letter. No graph paper used, either.
Really enjoyable solve. Some favorite clues: 16A, 24D, 44D.
Is having 13D and 15A in the same puzzle maybe a little redundant?
4D, “missing a piece”, good one!
How is rap future music?
Oh, he’s a rapper. Clue makes sense then. lol
I think there is a mistake on 61A. Wrong number, should be II, if I remember my Egypt correctly.
Cryptic All-Stars is definitely as good as BEQ says. Some very novel variety puzzles there. The wine’s also good: not just for the label (http://thenationcryptic.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-he-drinks-on-job-intoxicated-braze.html)
Mark Gottlieb’s treasure map cryptic is unthinkably fantastic.