Daily Telegraph – Page 857 – Big Dave's Crossword Blog

DT 26525

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26525

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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BD Rating – Difficulty **Enjoyment ****

Pommers is flying to the UK today, so I am filling in for him.  Another fine puzzle from Jay, which I enjoyed as much as ever.

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DT 26524

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26524

Hints and tips by Gnomethang

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** Enjoyment ***

Morning All!. Once again Gazza kindly offered me the chance to blog ‘on the day’ so thanks to him. I enjoyed this puzzle from (I presume) the mystery setter. I thought that some of the anagram indicators were very well chosen to maintain the theme of the surface reading. There are one or two possibly unfamiliar words but in each case the wordplay is clear.

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DT 26523

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26523

Hints and tips by Libellule

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BD Rating – Difficulty ** Enjoyment ***

The usual stuff from the Monday maestro. 13d had me thinking for a while, is 4d cryptic? Otherwise an enjoyable crossword.

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Toughie 542

Toughie No 542 by Notabilis

Wot no Nina?

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

Tilsit is unwell, so I have put this review together quickly.  The usual class puzzle from Notabilis with a number of those penny-drop moments.

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DT 26516

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26516

A full review by Gnomethang

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BD Rating – Difficulty ***Enjoyment ***

We had a reasonably tricky puzzle this week from our mystery setter with a couple of very good clues, particularly 20 Down. Reviewing this I was struck by the number of charades (word sums) in the puzzle – does anyone else think it was excessive? Continue reading “DT 26516”

Toughie 541

Toughie No 541 by Elgar

Hints and tips by Bufo

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

We had been reliably informed that tomorrow was to be an Elgar day and Big Dave had offered to let me swap to Friday this week so that I could wrestle with an Elgar puzzle. I had turned down the offer because of time constraints tomorrow so it was a bit of a surprise to see Elgar appear today. This was a typical Elgar puzzle full of his usual inventiveness (or do I mean deviousness?) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I completed the top half fairly quickly but needed to take a break (to do today’s Times puzzle) before managing to complete the bottom half.

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DT 26520

Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 26520

Hints and tips by Big Dave

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

I always do the Quick crossword first on a Thursday to get a hint as to whether or not Ray T is the setter. I knew what I was up against before I started this one, and, rather surprisingly, it took me five minutes longer than today’s Elgar Toughie.

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