June 18, 2009 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

DT 25954 – Review

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25954 – back into the atlas

A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe

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BD Rating – Difficulty ** Enjoyment ***

Decent grid, harder clues than usual for me – say 50% longer than a typical Saturday timing. Quite a few place-names, though I’d only count one as difficult. Last few answers in approx order for me: 11, 8, 1A, 5, 2, 4. (Dave says I should put A or D next to all the numbers, but I’m too good at choosing the wrong one and generating “You did really mean 8A didn’t you?” comments. So no letters from me except where they’re essential. Tough answer words or wordplay elements were: 8 (medlar), 11, 5, 23. Most of the clues were good, but some really let the side down.

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Toughie 166

Toughie No 166 by Shamus

Hints and tips by Tilsit

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** Enjoyment ***

A fairly entertaining challenge from Shamus, who always provides puzzles that are both fair and a reasonable test for solvers.  I have to say I found this one a little easier than his usual challenges, but it did contaion  things that made me reach for the Chambers.

Shamus is one of Azed’s band of solvers from the Observer every Sunday, and regularly appears in the prize winners for his monthly clue writing competition.   Solvers may be interested to know that another of Azed’s band of regulars sadly passed away the other day.  Dorothy Taylor, who was 98, had a rather particular claim to fame.  Dorothy used to enter puzzles under her sister’s name Mrs B Lewis and her name was used, along with that of another eminent solver, Sir Jeremy Morse, by Colin Dexter, himself a regular Azed prizewinner. And so Morse and Lewis became famous.

[You can see a picture of Dorothy, with Sir Jeremy, in this post on Derek Harrison’s Crossword Message Board.  The following entry in the same thread has a picture of her with Colin Dexter and Don (Giovanni) Manley .  BD]

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DT 25958

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25958

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** Enjoyment **

This is a workmanlike puzzle which should not cause too much aggravation. When starting out with a blank grid it’s always nice to find a few clues that offer you an easy “way in”, and we have several here such as 12a, 24a and 5d.
As usual the answers are inside the curly brackets – just select the white space inside the brackets to reveal them.

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