In a comment on today’s Cryptic Crossword, Daisygirl inquires about the number of hits on the site and I thought it would be interesting to delve into this a bit. While there is a Statistics page on this site (under the About tab), it has not been updated since 2021.… Continue reading
Author: Falcon
DT 31176
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31176
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa where, following a brief spell where the daytime temperatures got above the freezing point, we are about to return to more frigid temperatures. It’s definitely a long way from spring here. This idea of spring starting on March 1st that Senf mentioned yesterday must be an invention of British meteorologists. I’ve never encountered it on this side of the pond.
I will not hazard a guess as to today’s setter. Smylers figures that at least four setters may be sharing Monday duties. Unless a setter displays characteristics as distinctive as those of RayT, I am hopeless at identifying them.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31164
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31164
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa, where today is Family Day – a mid-winter public holiday in Canada (what those of you on the other side of the pond would call a bank holiday). It is also the final day of Winterlude, Ottawa’s annual winter festival. On my last appearance here, which coincided with the first weekend of Winterlude, I rather unsuccessfully attempted to include a video showing some of the early stages of the event. At that time, the ice sculptors were just beginning work on their creations. Today’s video shows them well on the way to completion. The video concludes with a cute little parable that a few world leaders would do well to take to heart!
I spent some interesting time researching today’s musical dive into history. It dates to a period shortly before my time (which means it will be almost prehistoric for those who reported Karen Carpenter was before their time) and it may not even be too modern for Daisygirl!
I thought the puzzle was well suited to the Monday slot – a gentle but fun start to the week. For me, it was borderline one or two star difficulty.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31152
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31152
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Ottawa, where we are about to get a respite from a spell of bitterly cold weather (overnight lows below -20C and daytime highs below -12C). This week daytime temperatures will reach a more comfortable -5C. Our annual three week long Winterlude Festival has begun and the conditions are the best they have been in years. You can catch a glimpse of the preparations for the festivities in this video.
I found this to be a puzzle where the answers needed to be slowly teased out as the grid filled. In the end, I felt I had made harder work of it than it should have required. Nevertheless, it was certainly far from an unpleasant experience (and would have been even more enjoyable had I not been working under blogging pressure).
As the only way to halt my losing streak of setter predictions seems to be to stop predicting, I will not venture a guess this time.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31140
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31140
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Ottawa, where we are currently experiencing fairly typical winter weather (daytime highs of -5C) but a cold snap is forecast for next weekend when the high temperature is slated to be -20C (BRRR!) – although Senf will probably tell me that’s warm.
Again this week we have a fairly gentle introductory puzzle from X-Type (presumably).
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31128
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31128
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa on this twelfth day of Christmas. I hope you were able to concentrate on the puzzle despite the din from the twelve drummers who arrived today – not to mention all the birds, maids, ladies, lords and pipers who preceded them over the past eleven days.
X-Type has given us a gentle exercise with which to ease back into the crossword routine after the recent festivities. He seems to have taken a page out of RayT’s book and given us a puzzle that will appeal to those of us who have not outgrown our schoolboy sense of humour.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31116
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31116
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Ottawa where rain this past week has washed away most of the accumulated snow but a fresh dusting overnight has restored a bit of the Christmasy feel to the landscape.
Today’s puzzle does not feel to me like the work of any of our regular contributors (but, then, I have a dismal record in identifying setters). In any event, it is sure to be loved by those who delight in lurkers and anagrams.
As this will be my last appearance here this year, I would like to wish one and all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31104
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31104
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa where, apart from the temperature being marginally warmer than Winnipeg, Senf’s meteorological report from yesterday very accurately sums up conditions here.
Progress was swift through most of today’s puzzle, which I will assume is from X-Type (until someone else steps forward to claim credit), although a few clues at the end extended the solving time a bit. However, the Quickie pun proved to be a different kettle of fish. Neither I nor my human phone-a-friend resource could decipher the answer but Aria, the Opera browser AI assistant spit it out immediately.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31092
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31092
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Ottawa where a dusting of snow overnight has created a wintery landscape. Christmas preparations are officially underway with the city’s Christmas tree having been lit on Friday and several Santa Claus parades occurring over the weekend. Many retailers, however, were putting out their Christmas displays before the Halloween goods were even off the shelves.
Today’s offering (presumably from X-Type) provides a very gentle introduction to the week’s roster of puzzles so it shouldn’t hold you up too long from getting on with your own Christmas preparations.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.
DT 31080
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31080
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from snowy Ottawa where we are experiencing our first snowfall of the season. It began about noon yesterday and is forecast to continue for most of the week. Not a great deal is expected – perhaps only six inches or so.
We have a gentle puzzle to start the week which was much appreciated as I prepare the review Sunday evening and arrived home late from an earlier engagement having had to drive home on snow-covered, slippery roads.
I would like to take this opportunity to make a comment on the term “all-in-one clue” which we often see on the blog. My recollection – and I stand to be corrected by longer serving members of the blogging crew – is that Big Dave introduced this term as an alternative to “&lit. clue” which he regarded as pretentious jargon that did not align with his vision of explaining clues “in plain language”. In those early days, we used the terms all-in-one and semi-all-in-one in place of &lit. and semi-&lit. respectively. Over the years, this term seems to have acquired a broader meaning – perhaps through uninformed usage by more recent members to the community who inferred its meaning without knowing its origin – and I now see it being applied to other types of clues that, similar to &lit clues, don’t have distinct definition and wordplay components such as cryptic definitions and even acrostic clues. Thus it would seem that it is no longer a precise term for one particular type of clue but has become an umbrella term for a collection of clue types. I know it is unlikely that the hands of time can be rolled back, so – ironically – it would appear that if one wishes to be precise when discussing &lit. clues, one must fall back on the very term that Big Dave strove to avoid.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought of the puzzle.