April 16, 2010 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

ST 2531

Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2531

A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe

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

The usual set of good clues – I’m doing this late, for which I apologise, so let’s get straight on. Imagine a 5-minute pause while I paste in the clue text.

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Toughie 338

Toughie No 338 by Osmosis

Please check your indicators are working

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

If you like your Toughies tough this one’s definitely for you… or was it just me? After 15 minutes I had only a handful of answers and wasn’t sure where the next was coming from. The problem seemed to be a fairly large number of long-ish clues and quite abstract surface readings which looked hard to break down but, as it turned out, the main difficulties were unusually presented (and occasionally questionable) wordplay indicators.

Although my enjoyment rating of three stars reflects the fact that not many clues were really satisfying to solve, there were some super ones as well, 29a probably being the pick of the bunch – this, and the others I liked, are shown in blue.

We really appreciate your comments, so please give us your thoughts on this puzzle. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.

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DT 26216

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26216

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ***

This is just about the easiest Giovanni crossword I can remember, so all of our usual correspondents should be able to finish it. As we always say, just because it’s relatively easy does not mean that it can’t be entertaining, and it has a fair number of clues which I enjoyed.
Let us know what you thought of it in a comment and please don’t forget to click on one of the stars at the bottom to show how you rate it.
For new readers, the answer to each clue is contained within the curly brackets beneath the clue, but masked out so that you can’t see it accidentally. If you do want to see the answer, just highlight the space between the brackets.

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