Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25936 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
A very straightforward puzzle with only a couple of points to delay experienced solvers. One new answer for me, and only a few puzzling clues. Grid grumbles: none! A bit of a geography exam, but I doubt these entries caused serious trouble.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25930 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***

Another mixed bag of a Saturday puzzle for me. The grid is rather perverse. Combining 14-letter answers with the two 15-letter acrosses is a nice idea, but done a bit hamfistedly, making double unches (start of 7D, end of 17D), and although the 3 of 7 checking letters in these answers were uncommon enough to make these answers pretty clear, the double unches are not impressive. We also get four 5-letter answers with 2 letters checked, though again the checking letters for them are relatively helpful. The clues are generally good – I seem to be grumbling less than usual below – though the last one was disappointing.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25924
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
Given a 4-star difficulty rating mainly bcause it took me a long time to be sure of 9A, so the total time was about double my average for this puzzle. One of those rather odd grids that’s perfectly OK apart from the over-unched 5-letter words, but includes a whopping 16 7-letter answers, and only three other word-lengths. It’s easy to see changes that would both increase the variety of answer lengths and fix the under-unching.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25918
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **

Started this off very fast but slowed down in the bottom half. A saying to ponder from one of the Times for the Times bloggers: “Some of the words in a clue are there for their meaning, and some for their content”. As a solver, it’s well worth asking “why is this particular word used”, and any passing setters will already have realised that concealing the words included for their content can be quite difficult.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25912 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***

The best thing about this puzzle for me was the set of answers – these make a pangram (all letters of the alphabet appear at least once). Some tricky letters appear several times – there are 3 Zs and 4 Vs for example. The bad things for me were a couple of the selections for answers, and some clues that were either not very cryptic or could lead to more than one answer. Some will be delighted to see no obscure place names in this puzzle.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25906 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***

A mixed bag this one. The grid has a distinctive Telegraph style to it, with the longish answers at 12, 13, 18, 21 placed in the middle of the grid rather than at one side, and quite a few double unches. But it mostly comes up smelling of roses, with fair checking all round and very generous 80% checking for the 10-letter answers. The only niggle is that we get 12 four-letter words.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25900 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I found this a bit easier than last week’s, but based on recent goes at some old DT puzzles, there may be even easier ones out there (or I’m gaining from experience), so not worthy of one-star difficulty. The grid is mostly very sound, but spoiled a bit by some under-checking at the edges. On the placenames that the Saturday setter seems fond of, I don’t mind having them as answers, but would prefer not to have quite such difficult geographical wordplay as used today. I have a vague notion that I’ve seen a more approachable {town+town = town} clue before, but I can’t think of the places – maybe Sometown+Bury or Sometown+Chester?
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25894 – CD Collection
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***

This puzzle was memorable for the number of cryptic definitions. I like some of them and had reservations about others. The grid is good this week – six different word-lengths, no isolated corners, and 50%+ checking throughout. Other grid designers might have put the 11-letter words on the same row as a 3-letter word, but as Telegraph puzzles seem to have more three-letter words than some others, a puzzle with none of them is fine!
This was probably the easiest of the Saturday puzzles I’ve covered so far – there was no “nasty corner” to delay a solution when everything else was finished.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25888 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***

A better grid than the last couple – all entries at least 50% checked, and no isolated areas of the grid. I got through most of this pretty easily, but struggled with the NE corner, where 4, 5, 9 and the last word of 6 took longer than the rest put together.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25882 – Review
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***

Another strange grid – if you don’t get the 15-letter answers, this is four separate crosswords, with uneven checking – the 9-letter answers are underchecked (4 of 9) and the 3s and 15s are overchecked – 3/3 and 9/15. And of course, the 4/5/7/8/10/…-letter words can’t come out to play.
Lots of the clues seem like gentle puns rather than really cryptic clues, and several of the more cryptic ones use words/definitions so close together that the clue is very easy or might lead to more than one answer Continue reading “DT Cryptic No 25882 – Review”