Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment ****
This is a fairly tough Toughie with a few obscure words. I liked some of the clues and disliked others, but the whole thing was certainly an enjoyable challenge.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
This puzzle draws on a wide variety of words – two cities, a Scottish town, a Shetland fire festival, food and drink, a lake, an American President and a type of railway. All of the proper nouns are well-known apart from the fire festival, but I enjoyed reading about it.
Today is the big day when I am entitled to collect my pension, so it is a bit hectic here at the moment! The hints and tips may take a litle while to complete, but I will get them done.
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
This is another fine Tuesday crossword, made up entirely of single-word answers. It contains some excellent and amusing clues and a number of clever attempts at misdirection. For those readers who have not read BigDave’s excellent FAQs, note that the white space between the curly brackets actually contains the answer – double-click on it and all will be revealed!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Greetings to everyone from my local hospital. Unfortunately I was readmitted in the early hours of Saturday morning and am likely to be here for a few days yet. Rather than overload Big Dave with more work, I thought I’d try a slightly different approach.
I am a bit of a night-owl at the best of times, so I thought I would sign in to the Telegraph website, Clued Up, just after midnight, solve the puzzle on line and make notes, as I have no access to a printer. Three different browsers and 40 minutes later, I finally managed to get the crossword to load using Safari web browser.
A fairly enjoyable puzzle with a couple of superbly clever clues, but I also have one reservation in that I think you could technically make a case for either spelling of the word required at 5ac. As well as the usual smattering of clever cryptic definitions, I really liked 26 across as a nice neat clue, 10 across likewise. On the other hand I couldn’t see anything other than a single definition at 3 down and I’m not sure about 16 across, I have offered my interpretation below.
Thanks to our Monday Maestro for his usual challenge and I hope to see you all later in the week. Thanks to Big Dave for his assistance with posting this.
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****
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 Thursday, 23rd April.
Some hints to get you started: Continue reading “ST Cryptic No 2480 – Hints”
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Codewords 1279 has now been changed, using numbers that are different from both the original online version and the printed version – with any luck this one will be OK.
While the main crosswords have been fairly reliable recently, apart from DT 25899 which was labelled as 8155 online for quite a while, problems with codewords persist. Continue reading “ScrewedUp News – Apr 18”
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment **
Peter Biddlecombe’s full review of this puzzle will be published at 12.00 on St George’s Day – Thursday, 23rd April.
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A very enjoyable puzzle that took longer to complete than I thought it should, but then hindsight is always 20/20 vision!
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Another generally enjoyable Friday puzzle, but a bit more complicated today, than it has been for a while.
