Feel free to leave a comment on this page
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
If you wish to comment on a specific Telegraph Cryptic puzzle, please use the appropriate post.
Please read the Comment Etiquette before posting a comment:
| Comment Etiquette |
Click on this button for an index of
| Previous Comments |
Created 1st Jan 2022
Far be it for me to claim any responsibility for a change in the clue-writers methodology, let alone that they follow this blog, but in a truly remarkable coincidence, my complaints of Dec 26th – valid for the past several months – were rendered history the very next day and remain so into the new year. I for one am very grateful..
Given the time that usually elapses between the compiling of a crossword, its submission to the editor for approval and its publication, I am very sure the the change you noticed is just a coincidence
Hello all
The daily blog seems not to be registering my comments, as described below:
i enter a comment
i post it.
nothing appears
i post it again
i receive the duplicate comment message
nothing appears.
Can you assist please or have i offended someone ?
Regards
It takes me a while to finish just one crossword but I really appreciate being able to check my answers and the reasoning behind them! Thank you.
Hi.
I see that the main thrust here is the setting & solving of full crosswords. I’m a member of the Cryptic Cossword society on Facebook ( and elsewhere, possibly ) ; mainly we share individual clues, which maybe isn’t as fulfilling as posting whole puzzles, but is enjoyable in it’s own right.
One of my own to chuck in : This is neat ; untidy is the opposite (10)
Great site btw – keep up the good work !
I have been working my way though archive Toughies. My MO is to print off a couple of week’s worth then turn to the blog to a) find out who the setter was (relatively recent entries on the DT site do have the names of setters, older ones do not), and then b) look over the review after having solved the crossword, often to find out that that there was a Nina I hadn’t seen, or in some cases (usually Elgar) after having failed to complete and in need of expert assistance (usually Dutch)
Now here’s the thing – there is no blog entry for Toughie 2875 published on 23 June 2022
It may be that the review is long lost to posterity, but I don’t suppose there are many folk around who ‘audit’ the blog archive, so I thought you might like to know…
The Wayback Machine has the page archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20220629165210/https://bigdave44.com/2022/06/23/toughie-2875/
I can’t see anything controversial in the comments so perhaps it was deleted by accident.
Question a) was answered for me this morning when I read the review for Dada’s Toughie 2873 – CS had left a comment which listed the week’s Toughie setters. Now you have answered question b) so my cup floweth over
BTW, I thought this was a nicely engineered clue by Dada in #2873 – “20a. Performance of comic remarkable in show’s interval (10,5)” */*****
I’ve never heard of the Wayback Machine before – what an interesting phenomenon. A Large Language Model style of hold-everything database that precedes AI…? Not sure if that’s a really good thing, but in this case it has proved useful (akin to my thoughts on AI). Mmm, maybe I could have asked AI to find Toughie 2875 rather than the Blog Comments team
Thanks, Twmbarlwm – your response is very much appreciated and I look forward to reading the #2875 review and comments ere long
Hi I was in a museum this week and saw a copy of the DT from the date Germany surrendered in November1918 after WW1. On the last page as usual, DT 6090 and quickie! Photo attached for readers to have a go!
Welcome to the blog
Does anyone know if Crossword Compiler works on MacBook? I understand it can if certain programmes are downloaded but I hesitate to download anything.
Hi Steve
Crossword Compiler only runs on Windows, so you would need to install a hypervisor like UTM or VMware Fusion to enable you to install and run Windows in a virtual machine on the Mac. I’ve no experience of doing this, but if you get no further responses on this thread you might try posting a question on the Crossword Centre’s General Discussion board; this is viewed by quite a few compilers, so you’d have a reasonable chance of finding someone who’s already using CC on a Mac.
Just wanted to say thank you big Dave.
I’ve always felt drawn to cryptic since I couldn’t really do them since the late 80s. Then golf and family and a psychiatry career distracted me from persevering.
This site is so precisely the bridge between my natural ability and my potential for cryptic solving and enjoyment.
absolutely the perfect synthesis between the dialectic prongs of either
a) trying without training and failing to get more than a few on my own on the one hand
and
b) to fathom the conventions from ‘today’s’ answers to ‘yesterday’s’ puzzles
Oh… hang on… I’ve previously tried a third strategy, equally unhelpfully, of buying the occasional airport “how to solve cryptic crossword puzzles” paperbacks. They end up left in the netted pouch of the easyJet seat in front of me on the plane.
Maybe that’s not sufficient to play around with the notion of a trialectic…. Perhaps crystallisable imagining the triceratops’s horns of a tri-lemma?
Anyway- hugely grateful for the approach you of big Dave – having the underlined synonym helps me solve around half the clues in a daily Telegraph cryptic puzzle now! And the other hints about the solves are just opaque enough to engage my own mind without that learning process getting shorted out by having the answer directly visible. Also, I would literally never have realised loads of conventions without your approach helping.
I really can’t thank you enough.
Truly fantastic job!
Tom
PS although 15years in Liverpool + 22 in Wales… the first time I stumbled across BigDave a couple of weeks ago, the first words I read were about the damp weather in Harpenden. Well… if that’s the one outside Henley, then that’s where I learned to play golf as a junior member back in 1985, when i was 13!
Welcome to the blog, Tom.
I’m glad that we’re able to help you. Now that you’ve introduced yourself I hope that we’ll see you commenting on the puzzle blogs.
Welcome, Tom. Please come over to the main blog and add your comments to the merry daily debate. 👍😊
This has to be the longest the site has been down.
Is it me or does anyone else find the DT puzzles site a tad “clunky” when scrolling up or down the pages?
Definitely not smooth scrolling!
Definitely. When all you want to do is open the cryptic or Toughie, you have to get past all the stuff you don’t want to get to them and then when you try to click on the puzzle link, the whole thing suddenly shoots to the top of the page and you have to start again, often multiple times. It’s beyond frustrating
I think it’s called “rubber banding” when a scroll suddenly darts back to a previous position. It happens sometimes when I scroll the comments.