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.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31122
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★ – Enjoyment ★★★
I find it hard to keep track of the days of the week at this time of year, but apparently it’s Monday and today’s Telegraph Crossword is at the gentler end of the range.
Welcome to all our readers, and especially anybody new to cryptic crosswords or who is only here because they found a newspaper while staying with relatives for Christmas (or discarded on a train back home). Do please leave a comment, especially if you made use of the hints or explanations — there’s no need to lurk until you complete a crossword without the hints! Big Dave’s etiquette guide covers how we do things round here.
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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.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31110
Hints and tips by Smylers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ★★ – Enjoyment ★★★★
Hello and welcome to Monday’s crossword. Yesterday our church held a brass band carol concert, where we sang Where Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night to the traditional tune of On Ilkla Moor Baht ’at:
That went better than last year, when the vicar introduced it as such — only to be met by a sudden look of fear on the faces of the band, who’d rehearsed the other tune. Though he still hasn’t gone with my suggestion that we should sing In the Bleak Midwinter to the tune of the theme from Hawaii Five O (try it!).
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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.
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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 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.
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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 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.
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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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