TLS Crossword 1156 by Talos - December 23, 2016
Judging from a well-populated stat board and the comments on the Club site, this seems to have been a deservedly popular puzzle. The two quotations at 1A and D gave a friendly foothold and there was...
View ArticleTimes Quick cryptic 744 by Orpheus: Triskaidekaphobia
Times Quick cryptic 744 by Orpheus Friday 13th January 2017This puzzle has everything: lots of musical references, as befits Orpheus; Shakespeare; geography; mathematics; an obscure new word or two;...
View ArticleTimes 26,621: IT Support
Another superbly well-crafted puzzle about which, tragically, I have left myself not enough time to wax properly lyrical about this morning! So it's going to have to be an "over to you lot in the...
View ArticleJumbo 1243
Happy New Year to all(?) my readersThis one was published on New Year's Eve in that strange time between the bank holidays which may explain why it did not feel particularly exciting at the time....
View ArticleTimes Cryptic Jumbo 1244
Happy New Year, everyone.Hard on the heels of 1243, here's 1244, which was published on the 2 January Bank Holiday Monday. I didn't think this one was too difficult either, but I did note a slightly...
View ArticleSaturday Times 26616 (7th Jan) - the Importance of Knowing One's Wilde and Doyle
Sorry it's late today, nearly done by 9am but then an emergency Skype from work meant I had to drop everything and attend to that (especially as it was indirectly my fault last night!). Back to it now,...
View ArticleMephisto 2941 - Don Manley
Filled this one in without too much fuss, though looking over at the end I'm impressed by the larger blocks in this grid - there's two 4x3 fully-checked regions of the grid and four 4x2 regions, while...
View ArticleSunday Times 4728 by Dean Mayer
DNF. I found this generally quite tricky, but had all but two clues solved in something like fifteen minutes. I then spent another ten or fifteen staring in increasing desperation at 12dn and 19dn. I...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 745 by Flamande
This is the first time that Flamande has cropped up in my Monday slot, holiday swaps notwithstanding, which is a pleasant surprise given that I've been a fan of his puzzles in other places for several...
View ArticleTimes 26623 - William Bradford needed one!
Solving time: 32 minutesMusic: Bach, Cello Suite #3, HarnoncourtAt first I thought this was going to be easy, as my first few answers were write-ins. Then I got stuck for a while, and it started to...
View ArticleTimes 26624
This took me 36 minutes but I ended with one careless error at 4ac. I also lost time along the way having biffed wrong answers at 1dn and 17dn which gave me incorrect checkers for their adjoining...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 746 by Hurley
Longer to solve than yesterday's at 11.11 as there were plenty of good clues to get the teeth into. The SW became my final tussle - I wasn't sure of 15dn but the cluing allowed for nothing else. For...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 747 by Mara
I would certainly have found this much harder were it not for the plentitude of double definitions, multi-word answers and anagrams (look out for the unusual indicator at 8dn) that helped me get a...
View ArticleTimes 26625 - middle of the road, on the road
I don't have a solving time for this one, as I did it in three bursts in transit from very cold and windy France to nearly as cold and windier Spain, where in theory Winter has less teeth. For no...
View ArticleTimes Cryptic 26626 - January 19, 2017 Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs
There were early signs that our setter was about to demonstrate his grasp of the entire alphabet, though I don’t think the assumption made any difference to my speed of solving, which produced a par...
View ArticleTimes Quick Cryptic No 748 by Joker
A bit north of tipsy when doing this, I gave up after 16 minutes. In retrospect, I would have been a while getting 12d, but I really should have got 13ac without... well, it's not cheating looking at...
View ArticleTLS Crossword 1156½ by Nemo - December 30, 2016 "...and answer came there none"
It falls to my lot to blog this brilliant piece of work which was published on the day the TLS takes a holiday. The subtle theme taken from Diary of a Nobody took a long time to get established,...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 749 by Teazel
Morning all. This offering from Teazel took me nine and a half minutes to complete. That means either it was quite tough or I was being a bit thick, so I'll be interested to hear how others fared.Not...
View ArticleTimes 26,627: Inauguration Day
It's possible that not every word in a Times puzzle is carefully chosen in advance to be enormously topical on the date of publication, but I couldn't help but see this one as a sly dig against a man...
View ArticleSaturday Times 26622 (14th Jan)
Solved in 14:00 exactly on the clock, so pretty standard fare for a Saturday. I have a quibble about 5ac, but really enjoyed 26ac and 20dn - extra marks for originality.Across1Vehicle getting parked...
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