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 ***
If you like cryptic definitions you’ll love this puzzle which has lots, some much better than others. It’s challenging and entertaining, the two qualities you most want from your daily fix.
As usual the answers are hidden inside the curly brackets – just select the white space to reveal them if my hints prove to be totally inadequate!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This morning I received an email from Facebook saying that someone had added me as a friend. Those familiar with the site will know that this is frequently the equivalent of email spam, but the name looked familiar so I followed the link rather than binning the email. The result of this is that I am lunching tomorrow with a friend from University that I haven’t seen for 44 years. I have added his website, gastropods.com, to the links in the sidebar. Why am I telling you all – well I immediately contacted Tilsit to see if he could cover for me on tomorrow’s Toughie. The result is that I am doing today’s contribution from the Monday Maestro, and Tilsit will be with you tomorrow.
Those of you who are used to speeding through the Monday puzzle were probably flashed by the Gatso crossword camera today (your ticket will be in the post)! While not difficult, this was definitely harder than most previous weeks.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A Sunday puzzle that is tougher than some Toughies. Each answer must be carefully coaxed from the clue.
For the weekend prize crosswords I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. A full analysis of this puzzle will be available at 12.00 next Friday, 24th July.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
This has been a particularly good week, and it does seem that many of the setters are raising their game. I hope that is in part due to the feedback that they have received from this blog. While I would expect that some notice is taken of the opinions of the person writing the individual review, it is your comments that have the biggest impact, so keep them rolling in. Everyone concerned, whether thay be bloggers or setters, is interested in what you have to say.
Now to today’s puzzle. A improvement on last Saturday, but while the inclusion of two well-known places, and names from art and literature were absolutely fine, I was disappointed by the girl’s name at 26 across. I do wish that these prize puzzles were a bit harder, but I’ve gone over that ground before. I was sent a copy of last Saturday’s prize puzzle from The Independent, and it was a breath of fresh air!
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on Thursday, 23rd July.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Yet another excellent Sunday puzzle – if you don’t do these you are missing out.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
To be honest, this was light relief after yesterday’s marathon. You need to get 5 down early on otherwise a large section of the puzzle will be made more difficult than necessary.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Another classic Friday crossword, that cannot be faulted – enjoy. The top right corner is the most tricky, but it’s where the best clues are for me. Your views and opinions appreciated as always.
Continue reading “DT 25983”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment **
The difficulty of this puzzle was about average for a Saturday Telegraph. I didn’t enjoy this one much because there seemed to be quite a few problems of various kinds with the clues. So let’s get down to business.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
Last time up we gave Giovanni only two stars for difficulty and the time before that it was three. Well, today it is payback! A true Toughie, which gives that real sense of achievement when you have filled in the final square.
Today it is Tilsit’s turn to suffer hardware problems. Unfortunately, his email to me got lost in the ether for nearly 4 hours, so my apologies for the lateness of the review. I think you will agree that this puzzle was worth the wait.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
We’ve been given a really excellent puzzle today, full of beautifully crafted clues with splendid surface readings. It has one obscure word (just to keep you on your toes!). As has been mentioned before, a puzzle like this gives the reviewer a double dose of pleasure – firstly when solving the puzzle, and later when writing the review. Of course you can get the reverse effect with a sub-standard puzzle!