Big Dave's Crossword Blog

Welcome to Big Dave’s Crossword Blog

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You have reached the world’s biggest and best crossword blog.  If you are looking for help with the Daily and Sunday Telegraph cryptic crosswords, a total of 11 puzzles a week, then you have come to the right place.  Here  you will get help with solving these puzzles, and the wordplay will be explained by fellow solvers in simple, easy to understand, terms.

If this is your first time, or for more information about this site, please click on Read More…

My aim is to have the main cryptic review available by 11.00 each morning, and the one for the Toughie by 2.00 in the afternoon, but please remember that all work on this site is voluntary (that’s a euphemism for  unpaid!) and that circumstances may mean that some days they will be a little later.

This help will sometimes be gentle prods in the right direction. Other times it will be  the correct answer, particularly where to add a hint would just mean setting a different, and unnecessary, problem.  Mostly it will be  somewhere in-between, with the main emphasis on the wordplay.  In the later posts, CAPITALS are used for both emphasis and the avoidance of any ambiguities, and,  following a successful trial, all of the answers are now given inside curly brackets using a white font – just select the area inside the brackets and the answer is revealed ~

try it here: {THIS TEXT IS REVEALED WHEN SELECTED}.

Some hints have links to items of interest, some useful, some totally frivolous – just click on the highlighted words.

As far as the Saturday & Sunday Prize Cryptic crosswords are concerned, I intend to publish only a few hints actually on the day, with a full review appearing at noon on the following Thursday (Saturday puzzle) of Friday (Sunday puzzle), which is after the deadline for submission of competition entries.  This is in common with most of the other serious crossword blogs.   I am interested in helping true crossword enthusiasts rather than serial prize seekers.

Home

On the home page there are extracts from the latest fifteen posts.  Scroll down and when you find the post that you are looking for, just click on “Read More…”.  Alternatively, you can select recent posts from the sidebar, or use the calendar.  All posts are filed under the date the crossword was published, except for the full reviews of the weekend prize crosswords which are filed under the fifth day following publication.

Introduction

You can find out more about the (very short) history of this website here

About

And more about Big Dave and the other bloggers here

Gallery

This has pictures of my home village; I intend to add more each month throughout the year, and the header picture at the top of each page will also reflect the changing seasons.

Crosswords

Here you will find articles about crosswords and some puzzles, most of which are unique to this site.

The Mine

Contains information that you could find useful when solving some clues.

The Kitchen

Big Dave’s Kitchen was inspired by my curry making exploits, although Mrs BD has added her signature dish,Tiramisu. Delia, Jamie and Nigella now have a serious rival!!

FAQ

This is the first place to look if you have any kind of query about this site or about Telegraph crosswords in general.

Disclaimer

Following a suggestion that I should not express my opinion of whether I thought a clue was good or bad, I decided to add a disclaimer!

Guest Book

You can sign the Guest Book and, optionally, leave a photograph, should you so choose.

Contact

You can get in touch with me, or any other contributor, via the Contact page or feel free to add your own hints, experiences and other observations as comments to any of the posts.

Site Map

If you are not sure how to find any of the fixed pages, then the site map is there to help.  If it’s a post you are looking for then the various methods of locating the right one are discussed in the FAQ.

Finally

I hope you enjoy your visit, and hope you will return each day.