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 ***
An enjoyable, if not overly difficult, offering today from Jay (I presume). There is a fairly nice mix of clue types, although I expect some will think that there are too many “first and last letter of …” type clues in the puzzle.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
There is usually something hidden inside MynoT’s puzzles, but I was over halfway through before I spotted today’s message. The answer is hidden, in the usual way, at the end of the post.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
Today’s puzzle is pretty straightforward with nothing too difficult or exciting (but we did have our fill of excitement in the early hours with a famous victory in Adelaide!). Let us know what you thought in a comment.
If you’re struggling to get an answer just highlight the space between the brackets under the clue.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Another entertaining but typical Monday crossword from the maestro, which seems to have a bit of a theme (see 15a and 8d). Favourite clues for me today are 19a and 22a.
If this is your first visit here, you can reveal the full answer by highlighting the space between the curly brackets.
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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
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This crossword was produced by John Henderson, better known to Daily Telegraph readers as Elgar, in honour of the 7th Sloggers and Betters meeting. The meeting itself celebrated the fifth anniversary of Peter Biddlecombe’s Times for the Times crossword blog. In attendance from the far side of the world was one of the bloggers – Uncle Yap – who gets a mention in one of the clues.
You do need to know a little of the solvers and setters world to understand some of the clues. I have added some background information below. There is also a NINA around the perimeter of the grid that spells out {BLOGGER / SETTER / SLOGGER / BETTER}.
Continue reading “NTSPP – 043 (Review)”
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Welcome to the forty third in our series of weekly puzzles.
Elgar distributed a special puzzle at the recent Sloggers & Betters 7 meeting, and has kindly given permission for it to be reproduced here.
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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Tilsit is having a bad day today so I have taken over the blogging responsibility.
After twenty minutes I was staring at a puzzle with four answers filled in, then suddenly it all fell into place. Many Telegraph solvers struggle with Elgar puzzles, probably because his setting style is Libertarian rather than the more-usual Ximenian. This allows him to take “liberties” with some of the clues. I don’t want to go into more detail here, but will try to get something added to the FAQ.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****
Here’s a puzzle using one of those “natural” 15×15 grids with words of 5, 7, and 9 letters. These have the potential to include some very familiar content, but although there are a few old favourite answers here, there are plenty of less frequent visitors to the grid too, and enough difficulty to make it a relatively tricky Sunday Telegraph puzzle for me, even with 3 hidden word clues.