May 18, 2011 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

Toughie 564

Toughie No 564 by Shamus

A Couple of  ‘Unches

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

For the second day running I’m reviewing a Shamus puzzle. I thought that it was very entertaining with some good “doh” moments and only three anagrams (hurrah). I was proceeding quite rapidly until I reached the final (NE) corner where I came to a juddering halt for a little while.
I don’t usually pay much attention to the grid (in many years of doing crosswords before starting blogging here I hardly ever noticed them), but after yesterday’s discussion on “double unches” etc I thought I’d better inspect today’s. I see that it has two clues with a double unch and with less than fifty percent of the letters checked – this may be of little consequence or it may be a hanging offence; I don’t know and it doesn’t worry me.
Let us know what you thought of the puzzle in a comment.

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DT 26555

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26555

Hints and tips by pommers

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ***

Hello again from the Vega Baja. You’ll be pleased to know that I solved this one at a more sensible time of day than I did last week’s so it’s only getting 2* for difficulty!

The usual excellent stuff from Jay (presumably) with a nice mix of clue types and some unusual uses of common crossword terms. While I didn’t find the solving hard, writing hints for some of these was at least a 5* rating!
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