Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26723
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Ottawa where we are experiencing rainy and unseasonably mild weather (rather British-like, I suppose) after a snowfall last week. Today, Jay gives us an entertaining puzzle with a theme appropriate to the date. I breezed through the bottom half but struggled a bit with the top half (in particular, the northwest quadrant). Perhaps my Scottish ancestry influenced the enjoyment factor.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26693
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from Canada where we are bracing for the first frost of the season. Today, we have a quintessential Jay puzzle, populated with lots of charades, plenty of clues where one must either take or delete the first, last or middle letters, and sprinkled with a few substitutions (A for B type clues). It took me longer than normal to complete it – but that is undoubtedly due to attempting to watch a hockey game at the same time (and, yes, my team did win).
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26651
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Fortunately, this puzzle is not overly difficult as I was working “without a net” today. Problems with the DT web site caused major headaches (and no doubt loss of sleep) for Big Dave who was able to ship the puzzle across the Atlantic but not the completed grid. I find this to be a typical Jay puzzle, one that leans a bit toward the easier end of the scale.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26627
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Today we have the usual enjoyable offering from Jay – one that I thought tended toward the less difficult end of the scale.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26603
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
It is a pleasant enough offering today from Jay which I was able to solve reasonably quickly. Given that a few British expressions presented hurdles for me that would be absent for those of you in the UK, I expect you did even better.
Big Dave attached a note to the puzzle saying “With gold mentioned, the downs are almost Goldilocks and the three bears! ” And, with hair being mentioned in the across clues (10a), perhaps the theme is complete.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26585
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
We have been served up a very solid offering today by Jay. Personally, I found it to be a bit more difficult than his typical fare. Nevertheless, I solving it was a thoroughly enjoyable exercise – and I toyed with the idea of giving it another star in that category.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26567
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I feel like a circus performer working without a safety net tonight. In the past, Big Dave has always forwarded a copy of the completed grid as a backup in case I am unable to solve a clue. However, tonight I guess he decided to take the training wheels off the bike, as I did not find a filled in grid in the package. Luckily, it was not needed.
I awarded this puzzle two stars for difficulty, given that I was able to solve it without the need of electronic assistance. I perhaps should clarify that statement – I found solutions to all the clues, but I remain perplexed by the wordplay at 4d. That mess I leave for Big Dave to clean up in the morning.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26537
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I presume that this one is by Jay, but I have to say that I didn’t derive as much enjoyment from it as I normally expect from his creations. It certainly seems to have a fair share of charades, together with a goodly dose of deletion-type clues – but lacks any real “Aha!” moment.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26507
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Today we get a good solid offering from Jay (I presume), one which (if I may borrow a phrase) could be described as a Goldilocks puzzle – not too easy, not too hard, but perhaps just right (depending on how you like your porridge, of course). While there are no clues that really stand out, there are no stinkers either. However, there is a rather hearty serving of charades.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26483
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
While I enjoyed this puzzle and was able to complete it fairly readily, I found it considerably more of a challenge to review. I found that the clues ran the gamut – from quite simple to very tricky. For a while I thought it might merit 2* for difficulty, but a few clues whose wordplay left me scratching my head for quite some time caused me to rethink the rating.
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