This week’s puzzles selection includes a brainteaser from The Last of Us
The Telegraph Puzzles website is filled to the brim with puzzles that get refreshed every day. Keeping up with it all can be a little challenging, especially in a week where you might not have had to commute because of strikes.
With all the business of the week over, it may be a better time for you to settle into a good long Toughie or Sudoku. Normally I’d recommend that you do that in bed in the morning, but, considering our discovery that bedroom puzzling can lead to soiled sheets, perhaps that’s one to avoid for today.
This week started with a new themed puzzle. Monday’s Cross Atlantic featured a number of clues and answers related to HBO’s new series, The Last of Us. Based on a video game of the same name, episode 3 has caused an incredible amount of conversation, and many are calling it one of the best pieces of television they’ve ever seen, if not the best. Since the game is too scary for me a lot of the time, solving the themed Cross Atlantic is more my thing; at least it shouldn’t make me cry.
On Tuesday we had a Quick Crossword from Paul Bringloe, a compiler who is known for working groan-worthy puns into his puzzles. Put together the answers to the clues Small and delicate (5) and 007 enemy (7), and you might have a somewhat unwelcome visitor.
For Wednesday we have the return of comedian Dave Gorman. You may have seen him on your screens in Taskmaster or QI, but when he sets puzzles for us, Gorman goes by the pseudonym Django. In Toughie Crossword 3,002, Django puts us through our paces with his usually amusing and misleading clues. Take this clue, for example; it may read like a description of a lobbying MP, but if you think that then you're hooting up the wrong tree:
Someone who could take you out: well-dressed southern member of parliament? (12).
Our puzzle of the day from Thursday is Cryptic Crossword 30,213, in which the standout clue needs some lateral thinking to solve, and has little to do with actual illness.
Feeling better than you are! (8)
Friday’s Toughie Crossword 3,004 includes a Marmite type of clue: a Spoonerism. If you’ve not come across these before, then Spoonerisms are a form of mangled speech named after Oxford don Reverend William Archibald Spooner. Spooner was infamous for inadvertently swapping the starts of words, allegedly coming out with phrases such as "The Lord is a shoving leopard" rather than "The Lord is a loving shepherd". In today's clue of the day, can you spot the Spoonerism?
Warehouse worker that's essential, more expensive according to Spooner (11)
If you are more interested in numerical challenges than verbal ones, then our new puzzles website has plenty to test your brain. My own favourite of the week is Sudoku 6121, which felt a little tougher than our regular offerings.
