Times Quick Cryptic No 638 by Flamande
A really enjoyable puzzle from Flamande. I came in around 15 mins, so maybe a bit harder than average. I came a bit of a cropper at 21ac, happily bunging in "resort" for "reorganise religious education...
View ArticleTLS Crossword 1136 by – erm – let me think about it – ah yes, Talos - July...
40 minutes for this one, a pleasant piece of work with the happy knack of making you believe you actually knew stuff by providing accessible wordplay to answers on the fringe of memory. The crossword...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 639 by Teazel
Morning all, hope you enjoyed this Quickie, which I think was of average difficulty.I usually rely on anagrams to get a foothold, and there are only two in this puzzle. On the other hand there are no...
View ArticleTimes 26,495: William Blake's 7
Very decent puzzle to round out the week I thought; once again not the hardest of the week, and I didn't have much trouble getting it done inside my 10 minute target, but there were things to think...
View ArticleJumbo 1220
I found this one a little bit harder than average at the time, though looking over the vocab there was nothing completely unknown. I much prefer difficulty caused by wordplay rather than heaps of...
View ArticleSaturday Times 26490 (13th August)
Solving time 12:06, which I was quite pleased with as this looked pretty tricky in places - a trap for the unwary at 15D, a few obscure words here and there, a bit of GK required. And of course the...
View ArticleSunday Times 4707 by Dean Mayer
Another super puzzle from Dean this week, showcasing the trademark economy of cluing, witty oddball definitions and sheer inventiveness of our tormentor. Several top notch clues, with 3A, 20A, 25A and...
View ArticleMephisto 2920 by Tim Moorey
Standard middle of the road puzzle with no queries or hold-ups or (amazingly) Scottish wordsAcross1CHAMB - CH-A-MB; check=CH (chess); abbreviation of Chamberlain; 5FI,DONC - FI-DON-C; cocaine=C; Latin...
View ArticleTimes Quick Cryptic 640 by Mara
9 minutes for this pleasant puzzle that seems fairly mainstream to me but there may be hidden difficulties that haven't occurred to me and I look forward to reading others' comment. Here's my blog...As...
View ArticleTimes 26497 – We’re Not All Rob Roys
Not a personal best, but my 26’59” sees me on the first page of the leaderboard, ahead of certain luminaries, who shall remain nameless. It would appear that it is not the Zika virus, or indeed the...
View ArticleTimes Cryptic 26498
I found this one quite hard but resolved it eventually without resorting to aids in 50 minutes parsing as I went. Here's my blog... As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 641 by Felix
What an excellent QUICK cryptic. It was quick - 7.47 which may be a record but also full of humour. Several stand out - my favourites being 10dn and 21ac.Thanks for a great start to the day...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 642 by Joker
An elegant puzzle today from Joker, a delightful man I had the pleasure of meeting at the TfTT anniversary shindig last November. A couple of bits of GK required (nothing too taxing, I'd have thought)...
View ArticleTimes 26499 - no wise fish would go anywhere without one...
Tranquillity reigns this morning in the household, having dispatched the little ones on to EasyJet yesterday (including over half an hour queuing in 37 degrees of blistering sun waiting to get inside...
View ArticleTimes 26500 - feeling like a 5 down
Solving time : 21:05 - for a moment I didn't think I was going to finish this one, then got a flash of inspiration that solved 10 across which helped the last few fall all of a sudden. I suspect the...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic No 643 by Tracy
This started quickly and finished slow for me, with the left-hand side of the grid being completed before any significant incursion into the right-hand side.It took about 15 minutes, so for some reason...
View ArticleClub Monthly 20191 - August 2016
Quite straightforward this month, with fewer unknown words than usual and some clues that wouldn't be out of place in the daily cryptic, such as 10ac or 4dn.. took me about 40 minutes in all, quicker...
View ArticleTimes Quick Cryptic No 644 by Hawthorn Friday, 26 August 2016
This is a fine Friday QC offering from our esteemed Puzzles editor, an excellent start to the Bank Holiday weekend. Although finished in just under eleven minutes, I found more and more to comment on...
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Times 26,501: Llamrei or Hengroen
Hello, I'm back, did I miss anything, did you miss me? The better part of a week in Amsterdam, mostly crossword-free, has blunted my abilities rather, and so I took a whole ten minutes over this...
View ArticleTLS Report today
Some of you may have seen a TLS report earlier, that's no longer visible. It was about TLS crossword 1138 (mistakenly "1139" in the header), and was a week too early. As I'm the owner of this LJ...
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