Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
Hints and tips for completing Sunday Telegraph Cryptic crosswords
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
Quite an easy one I thought – maybe as a lot of the answers seem to be words that come up in crossword grids. All clued as well as you’d expect, in a very clean-looking grid, with just 10 black squares added to the basic lattice.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
No great difficulty with this one – just the smooth surfaces and fair clues that we expect. The grid consisting entirely of 5, 7, and 9 letter words probably helps to make it easy – these are the bread and butter of 15×15 grid-fill.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
For once I looked at the hints posting before writing this, so I’m trying to highlight a few useful pointers for beginners. The Sunday puzzles are worth attention from beginners because Brian Greer is scrupulously fair – more so than some Telegraph or Toughie setters. Every clue has a fair definition, and every word in the clue is there for a good reason – there are no extra words added for the sake of the “surface” reading and not the cryptic reading of the clue.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
Less difficult than last week, but I think still a notch harder than most of the puzzles written in the early days of Brian Greer’s spell as the Sunday setter. Most interest here is probably in the two long answers, but there’s plenty to talk about elsewhere.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment *****
Reporting duties remembered on-time this week, for this relatively tricky one. Along with the sheer class that’s so consistent in these puzzles that I don’t always mention it, there’s something quite unusual about this puzzle – did you notice it? As usual I’m writing before I look at the comments made on the day, so I don’t know whether anyone did.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
The usual set of good clues – I’m doing this late, for which I apologise, so let’s get straight on. Imagine a 5-minute pause while I paste in the clue text.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
Four-letter words scuppered me in this one – at 1D I wrongly had SHED when the large number is “shed load”, and at 23D I missed LEFT as one of the possibilities for ?E?T, and gave up with WENT, BELT and RENT all fitting only half of the clue. Both my fault, though helped by a fear/loathing of 4-letter words with common checking letters. Also helped by not realising that one apparent double definition was actually triple.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A notch or two harder than most of the Sunday puzzles for me. The most interesting clues for me were 1A and 1D – both as cryptic clues and as a possible controversial comparison! (BG has expressed one or two political opinions in other puzzles.)
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
This puzzle has a grid that looked a bit scruffy but grew on me after I looked harder – every word length from 4 to 12 is included, and 11, 12 and 13-letter words can easily be under-used, so 3 of these is a good feature. And of course someone who contributed to the Times puzzle’s exemplary set of grids is not going to give us one with isolated sections or under-checked words. Quite a tricky puzzle by Sunday standards, taking me about as long as an average Times cryptic.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment *****
Sorry for lateness of this report – lost copy and had to resolve. The usual elegant but not too difficult Sunday outing, with some special bits to note.