June 20, 2014 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

Toughie 1209

Toughie No 1209 by Firefly

A Grump writes…..

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BD Rating – Difficulty ***Enjoyment ***

Greetings from the AAU at Calderdale Hospital. Trying to write today’s blog while having a top-up of antibiotics. However the good folk at Microsoft deemed that if you have the latest version of their product, Office 365, you have to be online to use it! It won’t even let you cut and paste from your template into WordPad. So I have written the explanations into WordPad in the hope a Very Nice Man can transfer them when I manage to find a wifi connection. [I couldn’t find a Very Nice Man so I had to do it myself. BD]

Enough of my rantings about Mr Gates, time to rant about the puzzle. It’s what I would describe as a typical Firefly with some clues to make you smile and one or two that make you wince slightly as they are almost too clever for their own good. One or two of the cryptic definitions here don’t quite hit the mark for me.

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DT 27521

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 27521

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty ****Enjoyment ****

Deep Threat is unavailable this morning so I’m making a temporary return to my old stamping ground. I really enjoyed Giovanni’s puzzle today but I thought it was above average in terms of difficulty so I’ve given it four stars. Do you agree or disagree?
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DT 27516

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 27516

A full review by crypticsue

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BD Rating – Difficulty **/***Enjoyment ***

This puzzle was published on Saturday, 14th June 2014

A slightly trickier prize puzzle from Cephas this week.   My favourite was the nicely defined and well-hidden 8d.

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