Hello fellow pachydermatous cruciverbalists! Here is my first ever Jumbo crossword blog…. and quite a baptism of fire, I thought. A very juicy offering that had me head-scratching for the best part of two hours … Read more “Times Cryptic Jumbo No 1282 (Monday 30th August) – How do you blog a Jumbo?”
Month: September 2017
Times 26,831: The Italian Job
That’s Job as in “tribulations of”, by the way: I should NOT have attempted to stay up and do this one at 1 a.m., after a queasy night of wine and paracetamol. But you can’t … Read more “Times 26,831: The Italian Job”
Times Quick Cryptic No 919 – by Teazel
Welcome to my very first Times for the Times blog! I’m a great fan of the quickie and I’m delighted to have been invited to join the blogging team. Today’s is a fine example of … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic No 919 – by Teazel”
Times Quick Cryptic No 918 by Hawthorn
I found this quite tough today, finishing with little enough change from twenty minutes, which puts it on a close enough par with Monday’s and Wednesday’s main puzzles. I struggled in the North East, courtesy … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic No 918 by Hawthorn”
Times Cryptic No 26830, Thursday, 14 September 2017 Make mine several doubles.
A crossword full of random people, presumably to annoy people who don’t appreciate random people in crosswords. There’s a random note as well. There are pairs of sailors, plants, trees and insects, the latter being … Read more “Times Cryptic No 26830, Thursday, 14 September 2017 Make mine several doubles.”
Times 26829 – we like relevant surfaces
This didn’t seem much harder than Monday’s puzzle this week, it took me 19 or 20 minutes to decipher to my satisfaction; all the more enjoyable because many of the clues have clever surfaces which, … Read more “Times 26829 – we like relevant surfaces”
Quick Cryptic 917 by Pedro
I had most of this done very quickly and on first pass, but couldn’t see the wood for the trees at 15dn and a handful of other clues. Eventually reflecting on an average time, I … Read more “Quick Cryptic 917 by Pedro”
Times Cryptic 26828
I needed 43 minutes for this. There was quite a lot of biffing going on and in addition I bunged in a few words that fitted, hoping for the best and leaving the explanations for … Read more “Times Cryptic 26828”
Times Quick Cryptic 916 by Flamande
A good QC. 12 minutes of happy misdirection – a good example of which is LOI 15ac – I tried so hard to make up an item of clothing I’d never heard of only to … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic 916 by Flamande”
Quick Cryptic 915 by Tracy
Tracy’s offering today contains no uncommon words (apart from maybe the first definition in 22A) or complicated wordplay so I would wager solvers will find it at the straightforward end of the spectrum. However I … Read more “Quick Cryptic 915 by Tracy”