March 23, 2010 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

Toughie 323

Toughie No 323 by Citrus

Return of the Grumpy Old Man

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** Enjoyment **

What could have been an entertaining puzzle was, for me at least, spoiled by some of the constructs. I was particularly unhappy with wasting a lot of time on 13 across, only to find out that you had to solve one homophone before tackling the next.

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DT 26195

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26195

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ***

I thought that today’s puzzle was less tricky than most Shamus puzzles (I assume that it’s by Shamus – apologies if I’ve got that wrong), but as we’ve said before a puzzle doesn’t have to be very difficult to be entertaining. It does have rather a lot of place names (three in England and one in South America) which I know that some people won’t like – let us know what you think of all the place names and of the puzzle generally with a comment!
The answer to each clue is concealed between the brackets under it – just drag your cursor through the space between the brackets if you want to reveal it.

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