Big Dave's Crossword Blog – Page 158 – Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English

DT 30772

by Mr K  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30772

Hints and tips by Mr K

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BD Rating  -  Difficulty *** -  Enjoyment ***

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Friday. Today we have a most enjoyable puzzle of typical Friday difficulty. The use in the grid of every letter but X indicates that it is likely the work of proXimal.  Continue reading "DT 30772"

DT 30767 (full review)

by Rahmat Ali  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30767

A full review by Rahmat Ali

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This puzzle was published on 9th November 2024

BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ****

Greetings from Kolkata. An excellent, lovely and gentle Saturday puzzle from Cephas that I enjoyed solving and thereafter writing a review of the same for your kind perusal and significant feedback.
Continue reading “DT 30767 (full review)”

Toughie 3375

by Gazza  

Toughie No 3375 by Beam
Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***

It’s Beam regular monthly outing – enjoyable as ever with the main problem being questions along the lines of ‘how does x mean y?’. Thanks to him.
Continue reading “Toughie 3375”

DT 30771

by Shabbo  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30771
Hints and tips by Shabbo

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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****

Good morning, dear puzzlers.

I thought this was quite tricky in parts, but all scrupulously fair, of course, and very elegant. 13a and 16a held out the longest for me and my ticks included 6a, 14a, 25a, 30a, 1d, 4d, 15d, 18d, 22d and 26d.  I also loved the Hertfordshire themed Quickie Pun. My CoD is 30a – quite brilliant.

In the blog below, the definition element of each clue has been underlined, anagrams are CAPITALISED and the crossword technique “indicator words” are in brackets. The answers are concealed under the “Click Here” buttons.  Please leave a comment telling us how you got on and what you thought of the puzzle.  Please also try to be positive – it’s only a bit of fun.

Thank you, setter.
Continue reading “DT 30771”

DT 30770

by 2Kiwis  

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30770

Hints and tips by 2Kiwis

BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****

“Kia ora. Kiwis are normally shy creatures who spend most of the day asleep and come out only at night, but we have emerged, blinking into the light to bring you our very first review of a Wednesday puzzle. It has taken much beak scratching.”

The above is part of the preamble we wrote in September 2014 on our very first BigDave blog. Today, the statistics on our computer tell us that this is our blog number 500 so we have decided that it would be an appropriate time to step aside and return to our underground nest as kiwis do as daylight approaches.
Before we started blogging we used to secretly refer to Big Dave as The Headmaster and the team of bloggers as The Prefects and it was a great honour to be invited into the prefect’s study. We still feel in awe of those amongst us who do so much behind the scenes to keep everything running so smoothly.
We don’t intend to leave the site but to continue to solve puzzles and make comments as we have done for so long but we will be able to use the word ‘Wednesday’ again instead of ‘Blogday’.

Once again we found a few tricky pieces in today’s puzzle to keep us on our toes.

Please leave a comment telling us how you got on.
Continue reading “DT 30770”