Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25933
Hints and tips by Big Dave
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *
Tag: Daily Telegraph
Toughie 148
Toughie No 148 by Kcit
Not as difficult as it looks
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
I’m still struggling with the effects of Saturday’s hard drive crash combined with an Internet connection that is varying today from poor to non-existent. Will be back with this puzzle after a trip to the dentist. Can the day get any worse?
Well, I finally managed to get around to this puzzle, and it looked at first as if it was going to be difficult. However, the setter was very kind with all four long answers being anagrams. One or two curiosities, but overall not a bad puzzle.
DT 25932
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25932
Hints and tips by Gazza
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
Once more we have an excellent Tuesday puzzle with some very entertaining surface readings. The layout of the grid encourages you to solve one corner at a time, and I was proceeding quite well until I reached the South-East corner which held me up for a while.
Can I point out to new readers (and to regular readers who have not yet read Big Dave’s FAQ!) that the curly brackets associated with each clue are not just there for artistic embellishment – the answer is hidden inside them, and if my hints are insufficient to give you the answer you can reveal it by selecting the space inside the brackets.
DT 25931
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25931
Hints and tips by Tilsit
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
One weak one this time round, with a couple of surplus articles, but nothing major to write home about.
.
.
.
.
Continue reading “DT 25931”
DT 25930 – Hints
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25930 – Hints
Selected Hints by Gazza
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Big Dave is taking a well-deserved weekend off, so I’ve been volunteered to provide selected hints for today’s and tomorrow’s prize puzzles. As usual a full review of today’s puzzle by Peter Biddlecombe will appear next Thursday afternoon. I enjoyed doing this one, especially the cryptic clues.
Toughie 147
Toughie No 147 by Elgar
Another five star performance from Elgar
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty ***** – Enjoyment *****
Once again Elgar serves up a Toughie that is worthy of the name. Always tough, always enjoyable, each answer has to be carefully extracted. Even after I had completed it, I still had to sort out the wordplay for four of the clues.
DT 25929
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25929
Hints and tips by Libellule
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A tricky crossword today, but with some very good clues.
DT 25924 – Review
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25924
A full analysis by Peter Biddlecombe
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ***
Given a 4-star difficulty rating mainly bcause it took me a long time to be sure of 9A, so the total time was about double my average for this puzzle. One of those rather odd grids that’s perfectly OK apart from the over-unched 5-letter words, but includes a whopping 16 7-letter answers, and only three other word-lengths. It’s easy to see changes that would both increase the variety of answer lengths and fix the under-unching.
Toughie 146
Toughie No 146 by Notabilis
Hints and tips by Tilsit
+ – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ****
An elegant and challenging puzzle from one of the best crossword setters and a personal favourite of mine. Some very clever and thought-provoking clues mixed with accessible ones provide a good challenge for solvers. The clues have beautiful surface readings as well.
•
DT 25928
Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 25928
Hints and tips by Gazza
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***
Nothing too obscure or contentious today – what we have is a straightforward puzzle which should not frustrate regular solvers for very long, but which contains some entertaining clues.