Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26947
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Giovanni does vary the difficulty of his Friday puzzles quite a lot and I thought that this one was well towards the easier end of the spectrum. Easy or difficult, his puzzles always contain smooth surface readings and impeccable wordplay. Let us know how you got on with it.
I’ve followed the Scchua convention today by underlining the definitions in the clues – I’ll continue to do this for back-page puzzles unless there are significant objections. I’m not sure whether it’s something that’s needed or worth doing for Toughies as well – do let me have your thoughts.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26942
A full review by crypticsue
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
I didn’t take long to solve this one but being a fan of Cephas puzzles I certainly enjoyed the process, people may mutter at the number of anagrams per crossword, but his original anagram indicators are the best! Thank you to Cephas once again for a lovely start to Saturday morning.
Apologies in advance for any errors in this blog but I was on my way to bed when I decided to read my emails and found a plea from young Gnomey – apparently my promised microbrewery is being upgraded to Shepherd Neame! (if you don’t live in Kent, you need to know that this is the name of Britain’s oldest brewer).
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Toughie No 825 by Micawber
Hints and tips by Bufo
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
A very nice puzzle of moderate difficulty
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26946
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja. I found this puzzle to be very enjoyable, perhaps because I solved it this morning instead of in the middle of last night!. There are quite a few penny-drop moments and some clever cluing so definitely a 4* for me. It should have been only 2* difficulty but on first pass I confidently put in two answers for across clues that later turned out to be wrong, which of course held me up for some time with the downs! Quite a bit of chemistry included, surely that couldn’t have been done on purpose!
I thought it might be RayT’s turn today but now I’m not sure. There is one Queen reference but it’s a bit short on innuendo. Perhaps he’ll drop by and let us know.
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Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2651
Hints and tips by gnomethang
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Morning All!. I found this puzzle reasonably straightforward although I couldn’t remember how I arrived at 2d when writing the review and there was a bit of controversy on 5d on another site – it does appear to contain a factual error although that didn’t really affect the ability to solve the clue – more of a niggle.
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Toughie No 824 by Shamus
Less of a Tiger and More of a Pussycat
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
There are some good penny-drop moments in this puzzle but there’s also a great deal of wordplay involving adding or subtracting single letters. I don’t dislike this as much as some of our commenters do but even I got a bit fed up with it by the end. The puzzle (a pangram, by the way) is fairly tame by Toughie standards.
Let us have your views in a comment and please give your assessment of the enjoyment factor by clicking on one of the stars below.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26945
Hints and tips by scchua
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ** :
Today we welcome Scchua to the blog. He has been posting excellent reviews on fifteensquared for a while and I thought it was about time that he joined us here. Pommers, Pommette and I met Scchua at the Sloggers & Betters meeting in Derby last year, while he was visiting the UK. You can see a picture of of him, with regular commenter Andy and today’s setter Jay, on the blog’s facebook page. BD
This is my debut on Big Dave’s, so hello to all, and I look forward to being part of the community. I’m still learning to use the software, so there could be some problems with layout. More important, I hope I’ve got the right balance between giving too much or too little away. So please let me have your comments. Regarding comments – because I’m in a very different time zone, I may not be able to respond until the next day. If there are any gaps in the blog, I’m sure there will be others happy to fill in, and thanks to them.
This was a kindly puzzle for a first blog. I put it at between 1 and 2 for difficulty – lots of containment clues, and after a while one can get used to the style. It was fairly enjoyable, between a 2 and 3, I feel, so thanks to the setter. I know that these ratings are very subjective, so mine may be very different from yours.
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Toughie No 823 by Petitjean
Olympic Games!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
My surprise at finding Petitjean in the Tuesday slot disappeared when I realised that this was one of his easier puzzles. I didn’t need my “slightly-mad” hat today. There is an Olympic feel to a couple of the clues.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26944
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja, where it is ridiculously hot and sticky tonight (ask Prolixic if you don’t believe me!). Forecast 37C and 74% humidity for later today – Agosto en Espana, yuk! Anyway, we’ve got a bit of musical chairs again this week! Big Dave yesterday instead of Libellule and now me today. Pommette’s in the UK again (she’s now on first-name terms with the Ryanair cabin crew that are based in Alicante) and so, having no job list to do and therefore being at a bit of a loose end, I’m giving Gazza a well-deserved day off. Not sure who’s doing the rest of the week but I’ll be back again for the back pager on Thursday, which will be my regular slot in the future.
Don’t know who the setter is today but I really liked this puzzle, not too difficult but enough to make you think a bit – perfect for a Tuesday (at least I think it’s Tuesday)!
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26943
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Libellule is having a well-earned break this week, giving me another opportunity to enjoy a Rufus puzzle. The usual mix of clues with a couple of barely cryptic definitions thrown in for good measure. While not particularly difficult, I did find myself smiling while writing the review.
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