Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Hints and tips for completing Daily Telegraph Cryptic crosswords
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
A mundane puzzle from our mystery setter(s). I can’t see anyone owning up to this one. Nothing really wrong with it, just lacking lustre.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Not for the first time I find myself reviewing a Shamus puzzle two days in a row. As Toughies go this is not one of the hardest and I enjoyed solving it a lot though I found the right-hand side quite a bit easier than the left.
Let us know what you thought in a comment, and please remember to grade the puzzle by clicking on one of the stars at the bottom.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A fairly straight forward mid week offering from Jay, with the usual number of interesting anagrams and a couple of clues to give you pause for thought, hence my awarding it three stars for difficulty. Although it took me the longest to work out, I am going for 23a as my favourite clue today.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
You never quite know which Giovanni is going to turn up when you tackle one of his Toughies. Having said that, it didn’t take me long to realise that I was in for a struggle today. The usual smattering of religious references and (almost – see 24a) impeccable cluing produced an excellent puzzle.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
Two clues turned this Shamus puzzle, for me, from a 3* to a 4* for difficulty – 14a which was the last to go in and which I’d have got much quicker if I’d realised earlier that it contained the one letter necessary to turn the puzzle into a pangram, and 30a which I made much more difficult by foolishly writing in 23d as a noun rather than a verb. Let us know how you got on in a comment.
If you need to see the answers, they are hidden between the brackets under the clues. Just drag your cursor through the white space between the brackets to reveal one.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
One of Rufus’ easier crosswords today – I think. If I hadn’t initially put Victoria in at 2d it would have been a “one or two stopper” to quote Prolixic. But that still doesn’t stop it from being entertaining and a fun crossword to do.
If the hints don’t help, just highlight the space in the curly brackets to reveal the answer.
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Another excellent puzzle from Virgilius – enjoy!
Don’t forget that you can give your assessment of the puzzle. Five stars if you thought it was great, one if you hated it, four, three or two if it was somewhere in between.
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Friday, 30th July.
One of Anax’s fortes is his ability to create clues that seamlessly merge definition, wordplay and link words. Looking at one of his clues you can never sure where one part of the clue ends and the other begins. In today’s cracker of a puzzle (pun intended), this ability comes to the fore with so many good clues it is difficult to pick favourites. Ones that I particularly enjoyed for the wordplay or surface reading are highlighted in blue.
There is a theme in this crossword. A number of the clues rely on definitions that are not given in the clues themselves but are defined by the wordplay in the clue (not the answer) to 22d.
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Welcome to the twenty fourth in our series of weekly puzzles.
This week we have another excellent puzzle from Anax.
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You will probably have gathered by now that the Wedding of the Year was held yesterday – hence the hints being a bit late.
This was me and the missus yesterday (taken by Tilsit):
And this is the happy couple:
I’ve added a few other pics to the facebook page.