Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26546 (Hints)
Big Dave’s Saturday Crossword Club
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As is usual for the weekend prize crosswords, I will select a few of the better clues and provide hints for them.
Tag: Daily Telegraph
Toughie 558
Toughie No 558 by Osmosis
Creatures of Habit
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Osmosis is back with his fiendishly complex clues to torment us today. A very enjoyable puzzle with a few creatures featuring in the solutions, as well as some contemporary references and clever surface readings. One of the attractions of the Toughie for me is that we get up-to-date and topical clues in many of the puzzles (the Rooney clue in yesterday’s Giovanni made me giggle!). I particularly liked today’s offbeat clue at 25a, but quite a few of the others were equally clever.
DT 26545
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26545
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Friday’s puzzle is meant to be the toughest of the week and I think that this one lives up to its billing. I found it to be on a par with Giovanni’s Toughie yesterday for difficulty. There are some very entertaining clues and 3d on its own earns it a fourth enjoyment star from me.
If you want to see an answer drag your cursor through the space between the brackets under the clue.
DT 26540
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26540
Hints and tips by Gnomethang
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Morning All!. Despite the number of ‘two synonyms plus a letter insertion’ type clues that I encountered whilst reviewing this puzzle I actually enjoyed the solve quite a lot. There were a few very good clues although the ambiguity at 12 Across was quite surprising.
Continue reading “DT 26540”
Toughie 557
Toughie No 557 by Giovanni
Hints and tips by Bufo
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
This was a very pleasant puzzle from Giovanni. I didn’t find it too difficult although I did slow down in the north-east corner where 8 down was new to me and the wordplay at 6 across evaded me for a time.
DT 26544
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26544
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
As promised, a double dose of Ray T this week. What you see is what you get!
Toughie 556
Toughie No 556 by Notabilis
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
Today we have another really good puzzle from Notabilis – it’s turning out to be a fine Toughie week so far. It’s no mean feat to provide a challenging and entertaining puzzle without needing to resort to a single obscure word or phrase. Let’s have your views in a comment.
DT 26543
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26543
Hints and tips by pommers
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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Hello from a not so sunny Spain! Pommette and I may have taken the sun with us to the UK but we seem to have forgotten to bring it back!
After my rather grumpy blog a couple of weeks ago I’m pleased to say I thoroughly enjoyed this fine puzzle from Jay (presumably it is he) and recommend it to all. There are a few fairly easy clues to get you started and a few to make you scratch your head a bit – a nice mixture IMO. I took longer in the NE corner than the rest of the puzzle put together but looking back I’m not sure why that was. I’ll be interested to hear how you get on with it.
Toughie 555
Toughie No 555 by Beam
Hints and tips by Big Dave
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Once again we have a Beam puzzle with cleverly concealed definitions and synonyms which stretch the imagination. This was a pleasure to solve, which is more than I can say for the previous couple of Tuesday Toughies.
DT 26542
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26542
Hints and Tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment **
I was hoping for a Shamus puzzle today but I’m pretty sure that this is not one of his (I’m laying myself open to a big egg-on-face moment here!). It seems to have a North American bias and is one of the easiest back-page puzzles I can remember. I completed it without deriving a great deal of enjoyment and found the surface readings of quite a few clues quite awkward, but on the plus side it should provide the opportunity for a mass escape by members of the Clueless Club.