Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2504
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
A pretty straightforward one this, with quite a few unsurprising breakdowns of words. But then I knew the funny word at 27 from years of Times solving, and as mentioned below, this setter is feeding other little bits of Times xwd culture into his Telegraph puzzles, which is fine with me – I’m all for shring the tricks around rather than having parochial specials. As ever from this setter, this easy puzzle has lots of good clue-writing in it and there are good surface readings achieved without resorting to dodgy practices like perverse word ordering.
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Toughie No 231 by Firefly
Is this one tough enough for you?
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
I sometimes wonder about the affect this blog is having on the setters. Firefly, known elsewhere as Glow-worm, was the first to leave a comment on the blog, way back in February (Toughie 92) and his puzzles do seem to be getting steadily tougher. This is the first one of his to get close to making me lose my bonus points on CluedUp! While I enjoyed the puzzle there were a number of instances where I had to guess an answer from the checking letters and then pick my way through the wordplay afterwards.
Feel free, as ever, to leave a comment and don’t forget to give us your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26055
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
It was all a bit like groundhog day. There was I, relaxing over a late breakfast and wrestling with today’s Toughie, when I got a message from Libellule saying that his communication problems have resurfaced so that he could not do the review. So I’m afraid that you’re stuck with me again.
Not that reviewing a Giovanni puzzle is ever a chore – it’s well up to his usual standard, so that means some excellent surface readings with a number of smiles, not to say guffaws.
We’d be delighted to get your comments as usual.
Continue reading “DT 26055”