Month: November 2009

Solving time : 25 minutes Standard Times fare, neither easy nor difficult. A touch of the Edwardian in places but no real obscurities other than an old Roman. Overseas solvers may struggle with the acronym … Read more “Times 24,385 Egad! Which Cinna was that?”

Solving time: 4:14, one mistake (‘flitter’ for GLITTER at 18dn). Another reasonable puzzle – not totally accurate but mostly explainable to beginners without requiring too many apologies for ‘crosswordese’ or poor clues. Just a little … Read more “ST 4354 (Sun 8 Nov) – Glitter bug”

Solving time: 24 minutes Music: Sibelius, Symphony #2, SchIppers/NYP This easy puzzle threatened to turn into the blogger’s nightmare, where you simply don’t know the last answers, and the cryptics are not particularly helpful. I … Read more “Times 24384 – How does your garden grow?”

Solving time: 16.59 Not expecting any medals for this time. I was held up in quite a few places by unfamiliar words or phrases and had to rely on wordplay, which was fortunately unambiguous. I … Read more “Times Crossword 24382”

Solving time: 5:54 A very fast time for me, and so I won’t be surprised if some others get well under 5 minutes. A pretty straightforward puzzle, though with lots of fun clues. I particularly … Read more “Times 24,381”

Solving time: 20:20 A fairly slow solve after three weeks away from cryptics apart from yesterday when I did about four of the Times puzzles I missed. While on the trip, which included some long … Read more “24380 – Back in harness …”

Time 17:24, so not headscratchingly tough, but not entirely straightforward either: in particular I noticed that whenever I was stuck for an answer, the checking letters were invariably unhelpful ‘R’s, or ‘E’s or ‘S’s, so … Read more “Times 24,379”