Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Hints and tips for completing Daily Telegraph Cryptic crosswords
Toughie No 3572 by Osmosis
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A properly tough Friday-level puzzle with no anagrams which I enjoyed doing battle with. Thanks to Osmosis.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.
Continue reading “Toughie 3572”
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BD Rating - Difficulty *** - Enjoyment ****
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. I thought this puzzle was very enjoyable with a difficulty level around average for the Friday slot. I hope our setter drops in later to claim it. Continue reading "DT 31066"
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This puzzle was published on 18th October 2025
BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
Greetings from Kolkata. A nice, lovely Saturday puzzle from NYDK that I enjoyed solving and thereafter writing a review of the same for your kind perusal and significant feedback.
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BD Rating – Toughie difficulty */** – Enjoyment ****/*****
Django’s been fairly gentle today, gifting us a puzzle studded with clever touches and smart surfaces, as ever. His delightfully eclectic cultural references range from The Simpsons to Victor Borge, via the Coen brothers, and, accordingly, it proved hugely entertaining. All yours.
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31065
Hints and tips by Shabbo
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Good morning, fellow puzzlers.
Ray T entertains us again this Thursday with a fine puzzle. The Queen and the sweetheart are there as ever, with brevity of clueing at a miserly 5.25 words/clue. The jury is still out as to whether Ray’s self-imposed brevity and single word answers limit the opportunity for humour in his puzzles.
I will be blogging from North Norfolk next week, with fingers crossed that today’s storm will have well and truly blown over by then!
In the blog below, the definition element of each clue has been underlined, anagrams are CAPITALISED and the crossword technique “indicator words” are in brackets. The answers are concealed under the “Click Here” buttons. Please leave a comment telling us how you got on and what you thought of the puzzle.
Many thanks to our setter and to the DT Crossword Team.
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BD Rating – Toughie Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
I found this to be quite a friendly Toughie, but will others agree?
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
A very good Wednesday morning from Winnipeg where, with a temperature of 4 degrees and a North wind blowing at 23 km/hr with gusts to 45 km/hr, the black coat had its first outing at this end of the year yesterday!
For me, etc© (I have to say that for Terence), somewhat quirky with some head scratching when it came to some of the parsings. I am not going to attempt to guess the setter, but thanks to them.
Sunday Toughie No 194 by Beam
Review by Sloop John Bee
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This puzzle was published on the 12th of October 2025
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***