Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25954 – back into the atlas
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Decent grid, harder clues than usual for me – say 50% longer than a typical Saturday timing. Quite a few place-names, though I’d only count one as difficult. Last few answers in approx order for me: 11, 8, 1A, 5, 2, 4. (Dave says I should put A or D next to all the numbers, but I’m too good at choosing the wrong one and generating “You did really mean 8A didn’t you?” comments. So no letters from me except where they’re essential. Tough answer words or wordplay elements were: 8 (medlar), 11, 5, 23. Most of the clues were good, but some really let the side down.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25958
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
This is a workmanlike puzzle which should not cause too much aggravation. When starting out with a blank grid it’s always nice to find a few clues that offer you an easy “way in”, and we have several here such as 12a, 24a and 5d.
As usual the answers are inside the curly brackets – just select the white space inside the brackets to reveal them.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25957
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
What a good week this is turning out to be. Today we have a first class puzzle with some of the best surface reading that I have seen in a daily cryptic for some time. One or two minor quibbles where that surface reading gets in the way of the accuracy of the clue, but when you get quality like this who cares!
Following recent discussions on the difficulty rating I have increased this from two stars to three to compensate for clues like 18 down which, while making us oldies smile, will no doubt cause problems for the younger solvers
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25956
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
After last Tuesday’s disappointing puzzle it is good to get a really solid one with some excellent surface readings. In terms of difficulty I would rate this half way between a standard cryptic and a Toughie, so newcomers should not be discouraged if they cannot finish it without assistance.
As usual the answers can be revealed, if required, by selecting the white space between the curly brackets.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25955
Hints and tips by Tilsit
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Another Monday and here’s our regular setter to entertain us. A pleasant enough solve with not to much to cause stress. Just the thing to help you clear the Monday morning blues.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25953
Hints and tips by Libellule
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Up nice and early this morning to try and get this review done before doing some “real” work and what do we find, a CluedUp site that’s up and down like a yoyo, and even when it seems to be up you can’t even log in. How complicated is it to run a web site like this? Anyway enough of the complaints about CluedUp, lets concentrate on the crossword. This was another entertaining Friday crossword. Not too difficult, but not too easy either and as always the crossword is characterised by the carefully crafted clues.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25948 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A pretty sound puzzle of moderate difficulty. No grid gripes, no geography, no arbitary people. Rejoice! Well, there are some gripes below but it feels like fewer than usual.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25952
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
After the discussions of the past few days on whether a puzzle is easy or difficult it is with some trepidation that I suggest that this is one of the easier daily puzzles. This is, however, only a personal opinion, and as the quizmaster used to say “the questions are only easy if you know the answer”.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25951
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Rather like last Wednesday’s puzzle, this one is not too difficult but has some well-constructed clues. This could be a good one for all you newbies out there (and you too BigBoab!).
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25950
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
I feel as if I’ve drawn the short straw with this one. There are one or two nice clues, but these are outweighed by a number where the word order has been mangled or extraneous words introduced to try to improve the surface reading of the clue. Throw in a couple of very odd words and some “cryptic” clues which are not very cryptic, and you are left with what, to me, was a very frustrating puzzle.
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