Crossword – Page 1053 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

Toughie 565

Toughie No 565 by MynoT

Hints and tips by Bufo

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BD Rating – Difficulty ***Enjoyment **

With this puzzle MynoT passes the half-way stage on his rainbow quest with several answers being connected with the colour green. I found no real difficulty in filling the grid though I did have to then check and confirm a few things.

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DT 26556

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26556

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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

A peek at the Quick crossword confirmed for me that this was Ray T’s handiwork. Not as risqué as some, but still very enjoyable.

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Toughie 564

Toughie No 564 by Shamus

A Couple of  ‘Unches

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

For the second day running I’m reviewing a Shamus puzzle. I thought that it was very entertaining with some good “doh” moments and only three anagrams (hurrah). I was proceeding quite rapidly until I reached the final (NE) corner where I came to a juddering halt for a little while.
I don’t usually pay much attention to the grid (in many years of doing crosswords before starting blogging here I hardly ever noticed them), but after yesterday’s discussion on “double unches” etc I thought I’d better inspect today’s. I see that it has two clues with a double unch and with less than fifty percent of the letters checked – this may be of little consequence or it may be a hanging offence; I don’t know and it doesn’t worry me.
Let us know what you thought of the puzzle in a comment.

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DT 26555

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26555

Hints and tips by pommers

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ***

Hello again from the Vega Baja. You’ll be pleased to know that I solved this one at a more sensible time of day than I did last week’s so it’s only getting 2* for difficulty!

The usual excellent stuff from Jay (presumably) with a nice mix of clue types and some unusual uses of common crossword terms. While I didn’t find the solving hard, writing hints for some of these was at least a 5* rating!
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DT 26554

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26554

Hints and tips by Gazza

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ****

Shamus makes a welcome return today (we know that this is one of his because he told us a couple of weeks ago when his next puzzle would appear) with a not-too-difficult but very enjoyable puzzle. Let us know how you found it.
To reveal an answer just highlight the space between the curly brackets under the clue.

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DT 26553

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26553

Hints and tips by Libellule

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BD Rating – Difficulty ** Enjoyment ***

A little trickier than normal? How many of you waited for checking letters to be sure of some of the answers? Otherwise it’s the usual stuff from the Monday Maestro.

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Toughie 562

Toughie No 562 by Elgar

Be scared! Be very very scared!

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

It’s that day of the month, when ladders are left alone and black cats are encouraged to go walking, and we have a cracking themed puzzle from Elgar to celebrate the day and its number.

Lots of amusing clues and presumably the Telegraph lawyers felt comfortable with 10 across 1 down (the numbering on the web print is wrong, by the way). I prefer Hammer Films to the modern gory trend of horror films so had to Google a couple of the answers to check them out. And any excuse to play one of my favourite singers’ version of a certain song is fine by me! Thanks to Elgar for one of his best-ever Toughies, although I suspect solvers abroad may not agree with me.

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