Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29438
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where the Spanish summer is in full flow, 38°C on Saturday and not much cooler yesterday. Phew about sums it up!
Today’s crossword is a very pleasant start to the cruciverbal weeks and not too tricky, even though there’s a bit of rather arcane general knowledge required at 23a. At least the answer is fairly obvious so it shouldn’t hold you up too much. I’ll be interested to hear your opinions of that sort of clue. Continue reading “DT 29438”
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29426
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where the very quiet summer continues. Very few tourists about and all our bookings on the apartment have cancelled so there’s not much work to do.
Today’s crossword was about as I’ve come to expect for Monday. Not too difficult in the main but with a couple of head scratchers. There seems to me to be a lot of messing about with single letters today. There’s six clues requiring you to use either the first or last letter of a word. There’s also six clues involving anagrams so I know some of you will be happy.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29408
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from sunny Los Alcázares on the Mar Menor. Now that we’re allowed to cross regional borders we’ve come to the apartment for a couple of weeks holiday. We live in Comunitat Valenciana and the apartment’s in the region of Murcia so we haven’t been able to come here for about twelve weeks. It’s usually a couple of degrees cooler here than in Almoradí so it’s very pleasant in the heat of the Spanish summer.
Anyway, to the crossword. Apart from a couple of minor mistakes I thought it was great. Not too tricky but with enough for a little bit of head scratching. I’ll be interested to see who agrees and who doesn’t.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29396
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja where summer has finally arrived, the state of alarm is over and the nights are now drawing in. Just to make you all jealous here’s a link to the Vega Baja weather forecast for the next week:-
https://www.eltiempo.es/almoradi.html
Maybe it’s just me but I thought this was the trickiest Monday puzzle for some time but also the most enjoyable. I didn’t help myself by putting the wrong first word in 12a which made 13d impossible until the penny finally dropped. I wonder if any of you made the same mistake. There’s only one full anagram in this puzzle but there are five clues with an anagram involved in the wordplay and a couple of them are rather cunningly disguised. I hope you all enjoyed the tussle as much as I did. Continue reading “DT 29396”
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29384
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where summer seems to have been suspended for today. It’s a bit chilly this morning and I can hear a rumble or two of thunder in the distance. Normal service is due to be restored on Wednesday.
As to the puzzle, well it didn’t put up much of a fight. I got eight of the acrosses and then twelve of the downs on first pass so the horses didn’t even prick up their ears. My only pause was with 16d where I couldn’t believe that -A-C-D-G could be correct so I spent a bit of time checking my across answers before the penny dropped. I don´t think many of you will be requiring any hints today.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29372
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where summer seems to have arrived with a bang and pommers has had to get his shorts out (not a pretty sight!).
This crossword would probably be a ** difficulty if you don’t spot what it is that all the across answers have in common. I twigged it after getting four answers and so was able to fill in every across light before moving on to the down clues, hence the * difficulty rating. I don’t know if there’s some significance but all the across answers in the quick crossword have the same thing in common.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29360
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Hola from the Vega Baja where the lockdown is being eased a little from today. I’m in no rush to go anywhere though as it doesn’t mean the virus is any less dangerous, it just means they have room for me in the Intensive Care Unit at the Hospital Vega Baja. I’ve been there before with lung problems, as some of you may remember, and I do not want a repeat experience.
Today’s crossword is pretty straightforward. I got eleven of the acrosses on first pass and all but two of the downs. There’s enough anagrams for those that like them and two are fourteen letters each so if you crack them there’s plenty of checkers available.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29348
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where spring has sprung but the lockdown continues until May 9. Temperatures forecast to be in the mid to high twenties for the next week with plenty of sunshine so if I have to be stuck in the house and garden at least it will be comfortable.
Like the last puzzle I blogged I found this one about average for both difficulty and fun factor so ***/*** seems about right again. There’s a couple of bits of GK required and not many anagrams, but there’s a few gimmes to get you going so I think most of you will get on with it OK. I’ll be interested to see what you all made of it.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29336
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the Vega Baja where pommers is getting a bit “stir crazy”. We had the flood last year and now we have the plague so I fully expect we’ll have a plague of locusts later in the summer. Biblical or what?
Today’s crossword was one I found about average for both difficulty and fun factor so ***/*** seems about right. There’s some tricky bits and some gimmes and only three clues involving anagrams so I’ll be interested to see what you all made of it. Continue reading “DT 29336”
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 29324
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hola from the still locked down Vega Baja. It’s not been too bad so far because the weather has been cold and wet for the last three weeks so one doesn’t really feel like going out. A trip to the local bar would be nice though.
Today’s crossword was all set to be a one star difficulty when I got all but three of the acrosses on first pass but there’s a couple near the bottom that held out for a while so I’ve gone for two stars. I count seven clues involving anagrams so I know some of you will be pleased. Two of them are fourteen letters so you get a lot of checkers. Continue reading “DT 29324”