Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2524
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Back to normality after the Valentine puzzle – no theme, and unusually for BG, no &lits/all-in-ones. But there are a couple of unusual bits of wordplay. Well I said no theme, but several clues and wordplays have sporting references. Difficulty: pretty gentle.
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Toughie No 310 by Myops
I am about to tackle today’s Toughie. I may be gone for some time.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ***
Did I have this one coming? After several weeks of easy-to-moderate Fridays this came along with “absolute stinker” tattooed on its forehead. Some tricky wordplay is combined with several very obscure answers.
There is a theme, but there is also a departure from the thematic norm in that the completed grid appears not to contain any thematic material. Instead, we have clues presented as rhyming couplets (hence the forward slash bits) and, spread among them in sequence, all twelve of the calendar months. As a result some of the surface readings come close to being nonsensical but that’s hardly surprising given the constraints imposed by two thematic elements.
My favourite clues are in blue.
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52.254523-2.266838
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26174
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Having to describe every clue makes you realise how beautifully crafted all Giovanni’s clues are, with every word counting and no excess fat. I don’t think that this is one of his more difficult puzzles and it gives all solvers a very fair chance of completing it.
Leave us a comment, telling us how you got on and what you liked (or didn’t like) about it.
As always the answer to each clue is hidden between the curly brackets under the clue. To reveal an answer just drag your cursor through the white space between the brackets.
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