July 2024 – Page 4 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

ST 3274 (Hints)

Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 3274 (Hints)

Hints and tips by Senf

A very good Sunday morning from Winnipeg where a typical Prairie summer continues.

For me, and I stress for me, I seemed to be right on Dada’s wavelength, not surprising I suppose as this is the 296th of his 297 Sunday puzzles that I have solved and blogged – six anagrams (three partials), one lurker, and one homophone all in a slightly asymmetric 30 clues; with 15 hints ‘sprinkled’ throughout the grid, you should be able to get the checkers to enable the solving of the unhinted clues. … Continue reading

Toughie 3308

Toughie No 3308 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Gazza

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

Osmosis has taken a leaf out of Beam’s book and given us a very enjoyable anagram-less puzzle. Thanks to him.

There’s a lot of cleverness on view in the grid. For a start we have (almost) a double pangram – there are no Hs but two of them are visible in the make-up of the grid. Also, we only have a single W but we do have a couple of spare Us (i.e. a double-U). Finally, and I don’t know how significant this is, several pairs of the higher scoring Scrabble letters appear separated by a single letter in the four quadrants (i.e. going clockwise from top-left  Q?Q, X?X, Z?Z and J?J).
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DT 30670

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30670

Hints and tips by Mr K

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BD Rating  -  Difficulty *** Enjoyment ***

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. It was a very long day in the lab today, so I’m afraid that once again I had no time to search for quality cat pics. However, since the commentariat did so well at providing pics last week, I’m hoping that readers will step up once again with suitable illustrations.  Continue reading "DT 30670"

Toughie 3307

Toughie No 3307 by Django
Hints and tips by Gazza

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

It’s interesting how Django’s style has evolved since he started producing Toughies to write more succinct (but equally enjoyable) clues. Thanks to him for the entertainment.

Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.
Continue reading “Toughie 3307”