Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26062 – Hints
Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
As Saturday Prize puzzles go, this one is about the same difficulty as you have come to expect. What is different is that there are none of those names – boys, girls, obscure places, they have all been given a rest this week. OK there is a name involved in the wordplay, but that’s all. I am not too happy with the anagram indicator, or rather the lack of an anagram indicator, in one clue but the rest of the puzzle is an excellent introduction to cryptic crosswords.
By the way, the only palindrome on view today is the number of the puzzle – a missed opportunity?
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 by Tilsit will be published at 12.00 on Thursday, 22nd October.
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Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2505
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Quite a tough puzzle this week – a change from the usual gentle Sunday stroll. No harm in this when it’s a prize puzzle, and an easy few months or so may have been deliberate while solvers adapted to a style very different to the old Sunday Telegraph puzzles.
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Toughie No 235 by Citrus
“You had me cornered”
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Today I have a special treat for you as Anax joins the reviewing panel. He will be known by name to solvers of puzzles in the Independent and by reputation to those in the Times where, as with the regular Telegraph cryptics, the setters are anonymous. The Bloggers page has been updated, so you can read more about Anax there, as well as getting an insight into why he uses the name Anax! I’m sure you can work out for yourselves that anagrind and inserticator are crosswordese for anagram and insertion indicators respectively. BD
The NE and SW corners of this were hard to crack – the former because I was just being a bit dim, the latter because of one obscurity and two bits of wordplay I had difficulty unravelling. Much of the early progress was thanks to going with instinct for the long answer at 4Dn, which gives me an opportunity for a quick solving tip; far from being put off by long answers, they’re often a very good place to start. The simple truth is you either get them immediately or you don’t, and if you do they can provide plenty of starters for cross-checking answers. If you don’t – well, it was worth looking.
I’m unfamiliar with this setter’s style so, inevitably, my solution has a few questioning ticks here and there, but that’s not always an indication of doubt over clue soundness. The Telegraph house style trends away from Ximenean and what might puzzle “purists” may well be perfectly OK here.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26061
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
I was guilty today of breaking rule #1 in the I-SPY Crossword Solvers’ Handbook, “Read the Clue Carefully”. On 17a I decided that the answer must be the name of a plant hidden in the clue, quickly scanned the letters until I found “ERICA”, wrote it in and moved on. Only later, when I couldn’t shoehorn the answer to 15d in, did I scratch my head and revisit 17a, to find that the clue specifies “plants” and not “plant”.
We have another delightful puzzle from Giovanni, full of amusing clues, but it’s no easier than last Friday’s (sorry, Barrie!).
The answers are hidden, as always, inside the curly brackets – highlight the white space if you need to reveal one.
We’d be delighted to get your comments on the puzzle or the review.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26056
A full analysis by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment **
Tilsit hopes to be back in this slot next week. This was quite an easy puzzle – mainly because the handful of obscure words like corncrib and insheathe were well clued.
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Toughie No 234 by Busman
Lemon Squeezy!
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
I had to check that I had printed out the right puzzle today – the answers all went in thick and fast and only the last across clue brought out the dictionary, and then only to check the spelling was correct.
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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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26060
Hints and tips by Libellule
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
A comme ci comme ca crossword today, that has its moments. But after the fun I had doing yesterdays Toughie its hard to get excited by this one. The answers are hidden in the blank space between the curly brackets, just highlight it to read them directly. As usual feel free to leave comments.
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Toughie No 233 by Elgar
More Repeats than UK Gold
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
When I printed this puzzle off from Clued-Up and scanned the clues, my first reaction was that there had been another cock-up at our favourite site. But no, the apparent errors are all deliberate and part of a theme of repetition, duplication and repetition. I had to go out to buy a paper to find out the name of the setter – I had thought that maybe we had a new one, and I was very surprised to find the name of Elgar, not least because he is normally firmly anchored to the Friday slot. It certainly has a different feel to the usual Elgar puzzles, and I suspect that solvers will either love it or hate it with no fence-sitting – I am firmly in the “love it” camp.
As always we welcome your comments – and please give your opinion of the puzzle by clicking on one of the stars at the bottom of the review.
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Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26059
Hints and tips by a Grumpy Old Man
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
For those of you expecting Tilsit today, he has been pining for the lovely nurses at the Calderdale Hospital so much that he has gone back to see them for a couple of days. What he has missed is a pleasant but fairly easy puzzle, which should please a lot of you!
Don’t forget that the answers are inside the curly brackets and can be revealed by selecting with the mouse. 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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Toughie No 232 by MynoT
All U Ever Wanted!
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
I started this very slowly, getting 10a, 9d and 18a as straightforward, and then started to struggle. Then I realised what I was dealing with and things got a bit easier. If you hadn’t already noticed, the only vowel used in this crossword is a U.
There is one thing that bothers me, I wonder what MynoT is going to do next?
As usual please feel free to leave a comment.
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