Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2516 – Hints
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
A pleasant post-Christmas puzzle to solve while eating the left-over turkey!
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.
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 Tuesday, 5th January 2010.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26121 – Hints
Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
I hope you all enjoyed Christmas yesterday and that you are not suffering from a hangover this morning.
One Saturday Cephas will fool us by setting a puzzle that is not a pangram, but not yet! This one is relatively easy, but with one or two slightly tricky clues. The construct used in 16 down will be unfamiliar to many of you as it is usually only found in the more difficult Toughies.
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.
As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them. A full review of this puzzle will be published on Wednesday, 6th January 2010.
Continue reading “DT 26121 – Hints”
52.254523-2.266838
Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2515
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment *****
Not too surprisingly, this puzzle has a seasonal greeting and many seasonal answers and clues – only five clue/answer combinations have nothing to do with Christmas or midwinter, by my reckoning. I went slightly astray by guessing a wrong continuation of the greeting in 28A, but this didn’t hold me up for long. There’s a fair number of very easy clues and a bit of repetition (one = I occurs at least three times) but the entertainment and theme is worth it. The message is repeated from me, especially if you should be reading this on the day when it’s scheduled to appear, with the addition of “, bloggers, setters and editors”. Now go back to your family and/or friends!
[As usual, I wrote this before reading the comments on Sunday – pleased to see that Brian has abandoned whatever anonymity he’d managed to keep. I hope my reports on his puzzles don’t sound too creepy – he’s one of my favourite setters and that’s hard to disguise. If there is anything to criticise, I’ll be on to it, but he doesn’t slip up very often!]
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Christmas Day Puzzles
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I was rather disappointed to find out that the promised “free” access to CluedUp today appears to be via the 7-day trial, which is available for the other 364 days of the year as well. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on these excellent puzzles, so you can download them here in pdf format.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Thanks to the bloggers who have volunteered to produce these posts every day of the year, to the setters without whom we would have nothing to write about, to the Phil, the Puzzles Editor, whose work has come under more scrutiny than he can ever have anticipated, and especially to you, the viewers, who have contributed to making this one of the most successful crossword blogs in the world.
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Toughie No 100001 by Elgar
Christmas Streamer
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This is a marvellous piece of crossword construction by a superbly entertaining setter. As we’ve come to expect there is a smattering of rule bending but we wouldn’t have it any other way, and the rewards are spectacularly good. With so many answers contributing to the message it’s inevitable that a couple of obscurities have crept in, but that didn’t spoil the fun for me.
The message itself takes up no less than 12 grid entries – in order, 20d, 12a, 28a, 15d, 10a, 1a, 17d, 5a, 21a, 30a, 16a and 9a – a mighty achievement and you’ll see how these placings pretty much forced everything else into place. The message forms the first lines of a poem by George R Sims.
My favourite clues are shown in blue – how do they compare with yours? 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.
A Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.
Continue reading “Toughie 100001”
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 100001
Happy Christmas, Everybody
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
On this festive day there are, of course, no newspapers printed, so this puzzle exists only in cyberspace on the Clued Up site. I understand that it should be available even to non-subscribers, but I cannot verify this.
Based on a comment left by Rufus earlier in the week, we can take it that this is another of his, so that for the second day running the Maestro has produced a gentle puzzle with a seasonal theme, designed no doubt with the thought in mind that many solvers may have partaken of a small sherry and may not be in the best shape for deep thought.
I hope that you are all enjoying a peaceful and happy Christmas, and if you do have time to leave us a comment, we’d be delighted to read it.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26116
A full analysis by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
One of the best Saturday Prize puzzles for quite a while has no answer of less than six letters. Most of the recent puzzles from Cephas have been pangrams – that is all 26 letters of the alphabet are used – and this one is no exception.
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Toughie No 274 by Elgar
Christmas cracker!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
Seasonal Greetings from the snowy Calder Valley!
An absolutely stunning festive puzzle from Elgar today, which not only features a special Christmas favourite as the theme but a rattling good set of clues to boot. Only one clue I have a bit of a grumble about but I can see what our setter is aiming at with it. A couple of new words to me as well, but that’s all part of the fun of solving a Toughie. If you are really, really stuck, there’s a big hint at the very end of the puzzle.
As a chum of Elgar’s I am probably a bit biased, but this shows a compiler at the top of his game and why he is often regarded as a “setter’s setter”. I am already looking forward to his next one which may well be lurking around Clued Up tomorrow. Don’t forget that you can have a free trial this week, so do make sure you get the two special puzzles on the site tomorrow. If for any reason you miss them, I am sure one of the nice bods around these parts may oblige!
Leave a comment telling us what you thought of it. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26120
Hints and tips by Libellule
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
A bit of a cornery grid, too many cryptic definitions, how does 9a work, is 16d cryptic? Bah humbug! In general an enjoyable Christmas themed crossword, what more can you ask for. According to a comment made by J, this is one of Rufus’ crosswords, but many thanks to J. for all of the crosswords he has set this year.
I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all of the Telegraph setters, the readers of this blog, and the bloggers a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
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Toughie No 273 by Cephas
The Back of Beyond
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
Today’s compiler is the usual setter of the Saturday Prize Crossword and this puzzle is a pangram (i.e. it contains all the letters of the alphabet), which is becoming his trademark. Apart from a couple of dodgy anagram indicators (at 22a and 28a) there is a horrible clue at 5d which expects you to find a very obscure village with the only help being that it is in Cambridgeshire!
As always your comments are very welcome.
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