Quick Cryptic No 431 by Izetti
This is the first wifi challenge on my travels - but when you've got views over Lake Macquarie you don't really need wifi - well, except to fulfil the duties of a QC blogger. Fortunately the very...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic No 432 by Dazzler
A fairly straightforward puzzle today, I thought, which included several "hidden" type clues - one of which I found to be particularly well disguised at 10ac.The parsing of 18ac might hold people up...
View ArticleTimes Championship 2015: Prelim one, puzzle one... a gentle enough beginning
I tackled this on a sunny afternoon under "exam conditions" and was surprised to find I had finished it just with the 20 minutes, with all parsed, although 4d and 6d were from wordplay alone until I...
View ArticleTimes 26248 - a self-referential pangram
Solving time : 10:32, but a lazy typo is keeping me off the leaderboard. Interesting puzzle this one, it is not too difficult, and I expect a lot of the longer answers will be susceptible to biffing....
View ArticleTimes Quick Cryptic No 433 by Grumpy - Quote Unquote....
Morning allThanks to jacktt for stepping last week in at the last minute when I was longer at the hospital than I should have been. Back today with Grumpy and a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle that I think...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 424 by Joker
Another Friday quickie which left me going through the alphabet to get the last one after everything else had gone in fairly easily. Even after deciding that it had to be ATOM, it took a while for the...
View ArticleTimes 26,249: A Nod's As Good As A Wink To A Blind Horse
Very quickly this morning as I've got to catch a lift up to Derbyshire where I'm partaking in a weekend of murder mystery play readthroughs including the title role in Oedipus Rex, you know, because I...
View ArticleSaturday Times 26244 (31st Oct)
Solved online in 11:57, so fairly easy despite the high GK content. I suppose it's one where you either know the words or you don't, as there was also some tricky vocab (KABADDI, SERAI, BDELLIUM), what...
View ArticleT4TT 10th Anniversary
As I mentioned a while ago, this blog was first started by Pete Biddlecombe on 3rd December 2005, so we're going to try to have a party in London on Saturday 5th December to celebrate (I don't think a...
View ArticleTimes Jumbo 1174
Apologies for the somewhat late posting - I've been travelling today.As always, * indicates an anagram.Across1ZEBEDEE - ZEE around BEDE5DOTCOMMER - sounds like dot + comma, which together form a...
View ArticleMephisto 2879 - Paul McKenna
It was pointed out last week that there had been three rather straightforward Mephistos in a row. I think this one breaks the run, and I can see two reasons why. - the grid construction is intriguing,...
View ArticleSunday Times 4666 by Tim Moorey - elementary my dear
15:37. I remember finding this mostly easy, but then getting quite seriously held up by a few at the end. However I can’t now remember which ones! The unknown 13dn was one of them.I thought there might...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 435 by Flamande
I thought this puzzle contained a good selection of surface readings, with the difficulty level on the easy side.The crossword can be found here if the usual channels are unavailable:...
View ArticleTimes 26251 - Slippery in places
Solving time: 41 minutesMusic: Schubert, Piano Sonatas, KempffI spent most of the day, on and off, trying to solve Saturday's rather difficult offering. So I was hoping for a nice easy Monday puzzle,...
View ArticleTimes Cryptic 26252
I completed all but 27ac, 28ac and 26dn in 25 minutes but then took nearly as long again to crack the remainder. And after that I didn’t really know what the problem had been apart from my usual brain...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic No 436 by Teazel
Let me know if anyone was on Teazel's wavelength today - because I was a long way from it. Possibly my own fault as I've been walking around Brisbane all day and have an hour slot to solve/blog before...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic Number 437 by Tracy
Well, nowhere near as difficult as yesterday’s but Tracy had me stumbling over several clues. Unknowns (golf clubs, plants) aside, even the charades, where all I had to do was put words and synonyms in...
View ArticleChampionship 2015, Preliminary One, Puzzle two: don't panic yet.
Thus far, I am on target to survive the prelims (had I been in London to enter and not been fazed by the presence of 88 other hopefuls and Magoo, all eyes-down). This one seemed on much the same level...
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26254 (thanks sawbill) Walter Mitty meets Jo McCarthy in "What's My Lie?"
Not a particularly difficult one - 15 minutes and 1 second for me, including the usual search for typos and justification of wordplay just to be sure. Plenty of wit to go around, which, together with...
View ArticleQuick Cryptic 438 by Hurley
It's nearly 1PM and there's no sign of the Quickie. If there's no news of it by 1:30 I shall post an emergency blog. I have disabled comments so if it appears in the meantime I can just delete this...
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