Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31098
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★ – Enjoyment ★★★★
Hello from Ilkley, where we were delighted to discover the place we’d booked for a meal to celebrate the children’s performances in The Nutcracker has been crowned crowned the best restaurant in England.
Hints and explanations for today’s Telegraph Crossword are below. Everything on this site is provided free of charge by enthusiasts of cryptic crosswords who wish to share this pastime with others, and we don’t expect anything in return. But if you do wish to express your appreciation for Big Dave’s Crossword Blog, maybe you could make a donation to the MND Association, as part of the newspaper’s Christmas charity appeal for this year?
Crossword Editor Chris Lancaster has written movingly of life since his unexpected diagnosis with motor neurone disease just 2 years ago, and how the MND Association have helped him — so this is a cause close to those of us on this site. Click on the donation link above and you can choose for your support to go specifically to the MND Association or to be split between all of this year’s charities. Or if you prefer to do these kinds of things by telephone, there’s a number at the bottom of the article.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31086
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★★ – Enjoyment ★★★
Hello. It’s a busy week in our household. Both children are dancing in The Nutcrackers and the Music Box, which has its first performance on Thursday and rehearsals in the theatre every night before then. We’re hoping school doesn’t set them much homework this week (though the eldest is taking some Latin revision to this evening’s rehearsal, for a test tomorrow).
I’m guessing today’s Telegraph Crossword is by X-Type — but do note I’m writing this introduction on Sunday evening, before having seen the crossword, so that really is a guess, not an opinion based how solving went! Hints and explanations to each clue are given below, with answers hidden inside the Tickets still available. Discount for the Thursday evening performance. blobs.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31074
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★ – Enjoyment ★★★
Hello and welcome to hints and explanations for today’s Telegraph Crossword. No obscure vocabulary in this one, so I think those who are good at anagrams will find it quite gentle.
It’s the end of the school half-term holidays here, which have featured a wedding anniversary weekend away in Alnwick (the 8-course tasting menu in Sonnet was wonderful), doing a tree-top ropes course with relatives, getting the children to so many children’s dance rehearsals I lost count (at least some of which were actually at the advertised times), running a tots-to-teens board games afternoon at our church, and seeing Matilda the Musical — which was one of the best things I’ve ever seen on stage, and well worth experiencing if it’s on near you. This morning we waved the 11-year-old off on a 3-day residential trip for their first year at secondary school, a mere 3 months after their previous residential trip to mark the end of primary school!
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31056
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★ – Enjoyment ★★★
Hello and Happy Thanksgiving to all those in Canada, especially to Falcon with whom I share this Monday slot. Also Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Columbus Day, and Sukkot as appropriate.
And, perhaps more relevantly to this blog, Happy National Train Your Brain Day — something which is surely best celebrated with a cryptic crossword. Today’s Telegraph Crossword has gentle cluing, no obscure words, and a friendly grid†. If you’re as bad at anagrams as I am then increase the difficulty rating to ★★ (but almost none of you are, so I’ve rated it accordingly).
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31050
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★⯨ – Enjoyment ★★★
Hello from Ilkley, where this year’s Ilkley Literature Festival has started. This weekend all four of us saw Gyles Brandreth on AA Milne; Spouse and I saw Stuart Maconie on The Beatles; and Spouse has also seen Rachel Joyce and Emma Freud, and a talk on the material world of Austen and the Brontës. The festival runs for another fortnight, during which time we’ll see Simon Armitage (Poet Laureate), Lady Hale (former Supreme Court Judge), and Jo Hamilton (wrongly convicted subpostmaster), among others less famous. Some events are streamed online, so you don’t even have to live nearby if you’d like to see them.
The festival was founded in 1973, with WH Auden appearing that year, making it the second-longest-running book festival in the UK. Quiz question for you: which is the longest-running?
Today’s Telegraph crossword has a helpful grid and contains no obscure vocabulary, but it took me a while to decode some of the wordplay and cryptic definitions. Hints, explanations, and hidden answers are below.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31038
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★★ – Enjoyment ★★★
Welcome from Ilkley, where we now have the best butchers in the country. And happy World Rhino Day — here’s one we saw yesterday at the Art of the Brick exhibition in Leeds (also on in Montreal and Schenectady):
(You can click to enlarge this photo, and the other Lego pictures in the hints below.)
Today’s Telegraph crossword has a helpful grid and accessible wordplay, but also several words unfamiliar to me — so it’s probably an ideal puzzle for somebody who’s a beginner at cryptic crosswords but has a good vocabulary.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31026
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★⯨ – Enjoyment ★★★★
Hello. Here are hints and explanations for today’s Telegraph crossword, which has an unusual grid arrangement that I rather liked. I solved it more quickly than usual, but it does include some knowledge I didn’t have, so I didn’t think I could award it a single star.
Please do leave a comment — it’s lovely getting to know you all. See Big Dave’s etiquette guide for the house rules, and I’ve had a special request from somebody who solves the quick crossword after the cryptic and sometimes finds coming here spoils answers in the quick. It’s fine to mention the quick crossword; and if you had thoughts of admiration or otherwise on the quickie pun, then do of course mention those — but if you can do so in a way which doesn’t give away any of the answers, that’d be appreciated.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31020
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hello and welcome to autumn — or spring, depending on your hemisphere. Thank you to Falcon for covering for me last week when we were on holiday. And Happy Labour Day today to Falcon and everybody else in Canada — or indeed Bonne Fête du Travail, depending on where in Canada. And the same but without the ‘u’ for those in America.
We had a lovely week in Wells-next-the-Sea, on the north Norfolk coast. It’s the 8th time we’ve stayed there in 11 years, always in the same home. The familiarity makes it easy, I naïvely commented to a colleague. That was before we discovered our favourite animal park at Norfolk Lavender has closed; that our hosts no longer have a beach hut (which we’d enjoyed using on previous visits); and that on a day we’d turned up at the beach, the sea was closed — that’ll teach us not to be complacent and to plan and research properly next time!
Anyway on to today’s crossword. Hints and explanations for each clue are below, and you can use a Congratulations! You are today’s lucky clicker! blob to reveal the answer. Comments are welcome, especially from anybody new — don’t make me misidentify an antelope every time just to provoke newcomers to leave a message! Do read Big Dave’s etiquette guide.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31002
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Some solvers might find today’s cryptic crossword is * for difficulty, the only obscure word being a lurker. I wasn’t one of those solvers, which is why I’ve rated it **.
If any clues are baffling you, hopefully you will find éclaircissement below.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30990
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Welcome to Monday and today’s cryptic crossword, one of those with long answers around all the sides, which can lead to solvers experiencing quite different overall solving times based on how many of the long ones they get straight away. (Zero in my case; I needed crossing letters for all of them.) Hints for and explanations of answers are below. Do leave a comment, especially if you haven’t commented before. Don’t worry about it being ‘too late’: many of us often do the crossword later in the day, and all comments get read no matter what time (or even day) they are made.
Did anybody else see Friday’s episode of Countdown? If you haven’t, it’s recommended for two reasons: it was a particularly good episode, with two fantastic players of the game, and one of those players was a Telegraph crossword setter.
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