Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26244
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Another enjoyable puzzle from Jay. I particularly liked 12 across.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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Toughie No 355 by Campbell
A Festival of Fire and Vampyres!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
A entertaining, if straightforward, puzzle from Campbell. A certain amount of General Knowledge is required, but most of this will be familiar to regular solvers.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26243
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***– Enjoyment ****
We have a pleasurable 5d from Shamus today with only two anagrams (that’s a plus point for me and earns it an extra enjoyment star!). I can’t remember a Telegraph puzzle with fewer than this. As always we’re very keen to hear your views, so please keep the comments coming.
If you can’t get an answer even with the hint, drag your cursor through the space between the curly brackets under the clue and it should reveal itself.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26242
Hints and tips by Libellule
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BD Rating – Difficulty **– Enjoyment ***
Another very enjoyable Monday morning ramble through a Rufus crossword. How many of you were left with 18a and 19a as the last clues to go in?
If you want to see the answers directly, just highlight the space between the curly brackets. All comments appreciated.
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Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2536 – Hints
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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The usual few hints to get you going.
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Friday, 23rd May.
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Tilsit on the Telly
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If you missed Tilsit’s appearance on Newswatch (BBC News 24) last night and early this morning, it is now available on the BBC iPlayer (for a limited time, and probably only in the UK).
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Not the Saturday Prize Puzzle – 014
A Puzzle by Prolixic & Tilsit
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Welcome to the fourteenth in our series of weekly puzzles.
This week we have a timely puzzle jointly compiled by Prolixic and Tilsit.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26241 – Hints
Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club
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A few hints to get you started.
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. Gnomethang’s full review of this puzzle will be published on Thursday, 22nd May.
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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.
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Toughie No 354 by Elgar
The girls at 45
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Well, this was a struggle – but an immensely satisfying one. I don’t expect total agreement with my star ratings, but it seems likely that many of you will call it either 4/5 or 5/4. The difficulty came from clever clueing rather than obscurity – in fact there was only one bit (a wordplay component) I needed to look up.
It took a long time to get going, with only four answers placed on my first run through, but in the end, when I looked back on it, my very slow solve was down to absolutely fair deception from the setter. There aren’t really any LOL moments but plenty of “Oh, you clever bugger”. There was some extra help when I noticed the likelihood of four symmetrically placed girls’ names and I wondered if the grid contained any further thematic material, but I haven’t spotted anything so far. Another thing I noticed was a generous smattering of modern phrases and colloquialisms which certainly helped to give the puzzle an air of freshness and originality.
Favourite clues are in blue.
Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the puzzle. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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