DT 26295 (Hints) – Big Dave's Crossword Blog
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DT 26295 (Hints)

by Big Dave  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26295 (Hints)

Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club

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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.

Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.

A full review of this puzzle will be published on Thursday, 22nd July.


Across

1a    I’d pass him stumbling towards centre of vessel . . . (9)
An anagram (stumbling) of I’D PASS HIM gives the part of a vessel towards the centre

16a    To do with set of principles Ruby found in California (6)
The adjective meaning to do with a set of principles is constructed by putting the colour associated with a ruby inside an abbreviation for CAL(ifornia)

18a    Dozen removed from the score (5)
… simple arithmetic!

21a    Bright getting bonus, quantity yet to be ascertained (5)
A word meaning bright is built up from an incidental benefit from one’s employment and a letter used to represent an unknown quantity in algebra

Cogitation time!

ARVE Error: need id and provider

28a    Cheers to the greatest extent going round court in a diplomatic way (9)
A short word for thank you (cheers) and a word meaning to the greatest extent are placed around the abbreviation of C(OUR)T to get a synonym for in a diplomatic way

Down

2d    Thomas rises to give a few words (5)
Reverse (rises, as this is a down clue) the shortened form of Thomas and then add TO and the result is a phrase accompanying a coat of arms

4d    The man taking Ecstasy may produce animal sound (6)
My favourite clue in today’s puzzle – the male pronoun is followed by the abbreviation for Ecstasy and the produce of the may tree to get an animal sound

7d    Changing one’s mind about leaving (13)
It might look as if there is an anagram or a charade in her, but no – it’s a cryptic definition of changing one’s mind about leaving one’s worldly goods

26d    Territorials’ military language in southern Asia (5)
Combine the abbreviations for the Territorial Army and MIL(itary) to get a southern Asian language

The Saturday Crossword Club will open at 10.00 am (after Sounds of the Sixties on BBC Radio 2). Membership is free and open to all. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions before that time.

Please don’t put whole or partial answers in your comment, else they may be censored!

68 comments on “DT 26295 (Hints)”

  1. Found todays a bit of a struggle, just couldn’t get to grips with the train of thought of the Setter.
    I dragged on forever with 17a. Thak goodness it has cooled down, my brain has been in stassis for a week.
    Good puzzle though today it was all my own self inflicted wounds that kept me finishing quicker.
    Thanks for the tips Dave. I must have looked at 7d for 20 mins.

  2. Good range of clues today with some easier ones to get you started and some to get you thinking. Many thanks to Cephas for an enjoyable start to the weekend.

  3. Finding it tough today even with Daves hints which I had to resort to early on, still stuck on 5 clues, would help if i could get 9d, anyone? :) please

    2. Mary,many thanks for your congratulations last week,much appreciated.9 d.What rooms do shops have ,first 5 letters next 4 another name for a heap.Hope that some help.

  4. OK finished all except 25d only one word can fit there and if that is correct, i don’t understand it at all, quite a tough one today i thought, without Daves help i wouldn’t have made it, thanks Dave, off to have a shower to refresh the brain, good luck everyone :)

    1. 25d Halls used when a legal process has been curtailed (5)
      This is built up as (1,5) being A and a legal process; just drop the last letter to get the halls. This is the plural of a Latin word which ends in -IUM – a fancy name given to those entrances to offices that are all glass and trees.

    1. Welcome to the blog Jeff

      We haven’t seen for a while model being the Ford car that you could allegedly have in any colour you like as long as it’s black.

  6. Very interesting and enjoyable puzzle today, very tough in parts but gives you an encouraging start (wish all setters would do this more often). Finished everything APART from 25d which I suspect is some legal term that I have never heard of. Any help to finish this nice puzzle would be much appreciated.

    1. I didn’t think you’d like that one, Barrie! I found Big Dave’s comments on it (above) very helpful, so thank you Big Dave, and thank you to the setter. 23d may be my favourite.

  7. hi all, thoroughly enjoyed this one, bar 22d, cant begin to make sense of. Thanks for the help on 7d, i was convinced it was an anagram

    1. 22d Was brown model still in existence? (6)

      was – as in a former partner
      brown – a shade of brown
      model – a very old model of Ford car

      still in existence – definition

  9. Thanks for the hint on 22d, Dave. It is a new word for me. Todays puzzle was a good one for me; hard enough to make me think, but not so difficult that it stumped me completely (apart from 22d, until you came to the rescue!)

  10. Straining at the leash to get started, I went to collect the Telegraph at 7.30, only to find that the wholesalers had omitted to include them [and the Independents]. How do they manage it? Grrrrr! As a result, I’ve started late but haven’t experienced any problems but couldn’t get excited about any of the clues.

  11. I thought that this was a fine puzzle from Cephas today. As Prolixic pointed out there were some good straightforward starteras and some that took a fair bit of working out.
    I liked 11a and 4d – an often overlooked little word in there!.
    Thanks to Cephas and BD for the notes. Off to watch the golf now with a pint in my hand!

  12. A very fine Saturday brain work out – I did wonder if we were going to have a theme given the first two across clues. Like Gnomethang I found it a mixture of straighforward and more difficult, but unlike him I won’t be watching the golf, although a beer may feature with lunch as it may help me work out why each answer was what it was for my review.

  13. Only needed your hint for 7d, thanks. Then i finally got 12a but don’t understand the Quick part, assuming it to be a double definition.

  14. After seeing the initial comments, I didn’t expect to finish this. But I have. I did the simple arithmetic for 18a and thought, no,it can’t be! Needed some of the initial hints and grateful for the extra hints. Some good stuff here, enjoyed it a lot.

    Thanks for puzzle and hints.

  16. Enjoyed today’s puzzle – even managed to finish in reasonable time without using any of the hints, apart from needing an explanation for why 4d was what it was – had completely missed the significance of “may”! No particularly favourite clues today.

      1. Good puzzle, stuck just stuck on 20a, can see a capital city there but not sure how it works?

        1. Welcome to the blog Jaycat

          20a Another going round, not round capital (6)
          It’s so easy you will kick yourself!
          An anagram (going round) of AN(O)THER without the O (not round) gives you the capital city.

            1. Many thanks for the blog which I have been reading for some weeks now.

              I was wondering as I puzzled at making a capital out of the anagram, how often the same anagram letters to a clue are used in two words parallel on the grid.

              1. Hi Pachyderm – welcome to the blog.
                Do you reckon that was accidental or deliberate?

                1. By the time the puzzle reached us I think it was deliberate.
                  Thanks for the welcome.

  17. I got 25d from the checking letters & the fact that I used to work in a building witha singular version but I cannot for the life of me work out what the curtailed legal process is.
    Anyway all done so now we’re going to York to celebrate our 30th wedding annivesary with family, I expect it’ll involve several libatrions…

  18. Seemed a typical, fairly easy Saturday puzzle. Last in was 22d, everything else went in without too much trouble. An enjoyable diversion for the afternoon!

  19. I am a regular visitor to this site and it has helped me enormously with doing crossword puzzles , I especially like weekends I guess when there are just a few hints , all power to your hints , they have given me hours of pleasure logging in all over the world ………………..Steve Cox

  20. Thanks BD -I realised as soon as I pressed the send button what it was – put it down to brain fade…

  21. Finished, with a lot of help from you all, except for 24a which I cannot fathom out – any help would be very gratefully received !

    1. DP, this is a charade of a pronoun in Spanish and the IVR code for South Africa. I assume that you know that the answer is a fever!

      1. Thanks Gnomethang – I thought this was an English crossword ! However, as I’m not exactly fluent in Spanish, I guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with the name of a filmstar sheepdog but with an “a” as the last letter and replacing one of the s’s with a Z ? !!

        I’m off to mow a meadow – otherwise a very overgrown lawn !

        1. Gnomethang has thrown you a slightly curved ball Pete. The South Africa reference is an accepted abbreviation for the country, NOT the IVR code (the one with the Z). It’s similar, in a way, to the abbreviation for California used in 16a, which is NOT the usual ZIP code (CA).

            1. Thanks BD, I’ll sleep easy now !
              Especially as the “meadow” looks a bit more like a lawn – need to work out how to get the horse ( that my wife’s just bought for grand-daughter ) into the garden to do it for me, without upsetting the neighbours !!

  22. Struggled today as I like to do crosswords on paper, and CluedUp would not print. Does anybody else have this problem? I don’t know if it’s the site playing up, or my computer?

  23. Enjoyed doing that – bit late as have been watching golf and so it took longer than it should have. Some nice clues – my favourite was 22d.

    Thanks for the hints Dave

    1. say a word meaning belonging to a particular South American country out loud!

  25. All done last in was 7d that had me stumped for a while. Otherwise a fairly straightforward challenge. Thanks Cephas.

  26. Not sure about this one. Used the gadget for 7d and 25d. Think 7d clever. Could have done 25d without the gadget by working through the alphabet to fill the missing letters but I get bored by those sort of clues/answers. Loved 6d, liked 9d, 27a and 18a. Got 18a straightaway but not sufficiently confident to put it in till I had some letters. First one in was 1a (wrongly because I missed the first letter!) 8a good when got it (eventually!). I was barking up the wrong tree. Never saw the anagram until much scratching of head. Thought 12a and 5d had to be what they are. Still not sure about the “after a bit of” though. Is it weak or am I missing something – probably the latter. Certainly kept me occupied longer than last Saturday’s!

  31. Just got 19a,11a and 9d – finished. Needed help on 19a though from Crypticsue tks.

  32. Missed out on some of today’s Open, because I incorrectly inserted ‘acute’ for 12a, so took me a long time to get 7d which was one of the best clues together with 25d.

    Tell me friends of Big Dave how does one ever win an inscribed DT pen, as I must have spent a fortune on postage stamps in the last 10 Years without success ?
    Perhaps the postal service from Milton Keynes is not up to scratch with Sunday collections now a thing of the past !

    Terry

    2. You’re asking the wrong people Terence – I’ve been doing the prize crossword for about 50 years and have never bothered to send one in. The number of entries is into 5 figures, so your chance of winning is pretty small. 10 years entries = 10 x 52 x £0.41 = £213.20 = a very nice pen + inscription + change

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