Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2546 A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + BD Rating – Difficulty tba – Enjoyment tba Peter’s expert review of this puzzle should be available [...]
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2545
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** - Enjoyment ****
A pretty straightforward puzzle after the two thematic Sundays. Not much excitement on the face of it, but we still get very precise clues, and a little bit of novelty at 20A.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2544
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** - Enjoyment *****
This took me about twice as long as an average Sunday puzzle, despite having thematic material nearly identical to a puzzle I blogged at the beginning of the 2010 World Cup. I can’t see now why it took so long – there are plenty of anagrams that now seem rather obvious. And I have to tip my neophyte setter’s cap to the clue-writing skill here – as well as the thematic aspects discussed below, he somehow gets away with four uses of SA or South Africa, and deftly marshals the crossword clichés like SAY and ED in 28 and meanings like those of “players”, and “supporter”.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2543
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****
It’s the fourth of July and the puzzle is from a setter who likes to do themes and has worked in the US for the last decade or so. So no surprise that there’s stuff about Independence Day and the USA, past and present. I guess this is a pretty wide thematic range, but I’m still impressed by the 3 very relevant 15-letter acrosses and a grid where the effect of the thematic material is small – the single extra black square in the top and bottom rows. (The 3-word columns at the edges don’t matter as there are only 29 grid entries.
Not the Saturday Prize Puzzle – 021
A Puzzle by Biddle
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Welcome to the twenty first in our series of weekly puzzles.
This week Biddle (regular contributor Peter Biddlecombe) has provided a puzzle with a topical theme – his first for the site .
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2542
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****
Back to the routine format for this report. The content of the grid is not routine – I can’t see any significant presence of those old favourite crossword grid visitors. And the clues are … you know what I’m going to say.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2541
Blow-by-blow solving accounts from two contributors
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** - Enjoyment *****
For clarity, it’s Peter writing this introduction. For a change this week, we’re trying to show you the solving process in action rather than an explanation of the clues written after the event. Two of us solved this puzzle while making notes about our thoughts, so that you can see two approaches to solving and the differences and similarities between our thought processes. If you’re reading this to learn something, Gnomethang’s solving experience will be more familiar, and mine may seem absurdly unlikely.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2540
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****
More Sunday class. As Brian Greer called me an “arch-roaster of chestnuts” or similar a few weeks ago, I suspect he may well have done this before without me noticing properly, but there is very little stale old cryptic xwd material in this puzzle – apart from some one-letter abbreviations like fifty=>L, which are almost impossible to avoid completely, there are just two bits of what I’d think of as “chestnut content”: four=>IV (25A), leg=>ON (4D).
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2539
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment *****
Watch out for the multi-word definitions in this one – among the def+wordplay clues, only 17A, 27A, 7D and 13D have one-word definitions. Watch out for lots of other good stuff too – three &lit/all-in-one clues, a 13-letter hidden word, and some classic examples of the trick of making you look for synonyms of words when you don’t need to. This is one for aspiring setters to keep as an example of what they should be aiming at – apart from the highlights, every clue has a convincing surface reading and every cryptic reading makes perfect logical sense.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2538
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment *****
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2537
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** - Enjoyment *****
More easy but classy clues this week, in a grid that gives you every word-length from 4 to 12
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2536
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment *****
Quite an easy one I thought – maybe as a lot of the answers seem to be words that come up in crossword grids. All clued as well as you’d expect, in a vey clean-looking grid, with just 10 black squares added the basic lattice.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2535
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment *****
No great difficulty with this one – just the smooth surfaces and fair clues that we expect. The grid consisting entirely of 5, 7, and 9 letter words probably helps to make it easy – these are the bread and butter of 15×15 grid-fill.
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2534
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** - Enjoyment *****
For once I looked at the hints posting before writing this, so I’m trying to highlight a few useful pointers for beginners. The Sunday puzzles are worth attention from beginners because Brian Greer is scrupulously fair – more so than some Telegraph or Toughie setters. Every clue has a fair definition, and every word in the clue is there for a good reason – there are no extra words added for the sake of the “surface” reading and not the cryptic reading of the clue.
April 30, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2533
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** - Enjoyment *****
Less difficult than last week, but I think still a notch harder than most of the puzzles written in the early days of Brian Greer’s spell as the Sunday setter. Most interest here is probably in the two long answers, but there’s plenty to talk about elsewhere.
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