31152 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

DT 31152

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31152

Hints and tips by Falcon

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BD Rating  –  Difficulty ** –  Enjoyment ***

Greetings from Ottawa, where we are about to get a respite from a spell of bitterly cold weather (overnight lows below -20C and daytime highs below -12C). This week daytime temperatures will reach a more comfortable -5C. Our annual three week long Winterlude Festival has begun and the conditions are the best they have been in years. You can catch a glimpse of the preparations for the festivities in this video.

I found this to be a puzzle where the answers needed to be slowly teased out as the grid filled. In the end, I felt I had made harder work of it than it should have required. Nevertheless, it was certainly far from an unpleasant experience (and would have been even more enjoyable had I not been working under blogging pressure).

As the only way to halt my losing streak of setter predictions seems to be to stop predicting, I will not venture a guess this time.

In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.

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