Month: September 2009

Solving time: 8:14 This feels like a better bit of speed-solving than a few recent attempts. Answers written in without full wordplay understanding were: 1A, 14, 15, 17, 5, 20. There’s some quite fiendish wordplay … Read more “Times 24338”

Solving time : 15 minutes Whilst this is easy it is also entertaining with a smattering of good surfaces and some good clues. There is only one slight obscurity, a mammal from the animal kingdom. … Read more “Times 24,337 A Stroll in Hyde Park”

Solving time: 55 minutes Music: Chopin Mazurkas, Malcuzynski I had most of this done in 20 minutes, and then ran into a wall. There are some clues that I am not sure are entirely fair, … Read more “Times 24336 – OK, boys, time to go back to school!”

Solving time: 9:15, plenty of which on the erroneous clue. An abysmal error at 22ac (‘about oil’ intended as an anagram of ABUTILON) was the nadir of this pretty awful puzzle. * = anagram, “X” … Read more “ST 4346 (Sun 13 Sep) – Oil disaster”

Solving time: Something like 35 minutes; I completely forgot to stop the clock after grasping what was going on. This was no ordinary puzzle; after 25 minutes I was still totally baffled by apparently senseless … Read more “Times Crossword 24334 – A Reticulated Network”

Solving time: 9:24 I don’t feel I whooshed through this, but I went through pretty steadily with no long hold-ups. Some of the constructions or allusions were tricky, but there is nothing obscure in this. … Read more “Times 24,333”

7 a.m.: 13:00 for this. At 1D I saw “PI=holy inside something”, and made this into POPISH, thinking it was an offensive version of “catholic”, and hoped the rest worked. On writing up, I got … Read more “Times 24332 – Another fine mess!”

Thank you to Peter for taking the register, I am here now, courtesy of a coffee shop in Skipton, having a break from walking up hill and down dale. Glad to find that today’s puzzle … Read more “Times 24331 – Another Fine Mess”