Hi everybody. Once again Alex hits the brief – this was my smoothest solve since the last Alex. Thanks!
Month: December 2024
Times 29095 – In my beginning is my end…..
This did not feel like an easy Monday at first, as I struggled to get started in the grid. After five minutes, I only had a few answers here and there. But once I had a sufficient quorum of crossing letters, I started to speed up dramatically.
Mephisto 3353 – John Grimshaw
Greetings, barred-grid fans
Sunday Times 5140 by Robert Price – if you can keep it
8:21. Not a difficult puzzle, but a model of elegance
Quick Cryptic 2853 by Hurley
A Quickie from Hurley…
Times Cryptic Jumbo 1703 – 23 November 2024
Hello again. This Jumbo was a steady solve. It had some good clues but seemed to have an extraordinary number of clues where alternate letters are removed, and similar. What did you think? Please, do … Read more “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1703 – 23 November 2024”
Times Cryptic 29088 – Saturday, 30 November 2024. Plodder’s paradise.
It’s fair to say that I ground through this. That’s not to say it was hard, but there were no leaps of inspiration for me.
Quick Cryptic 2852 by Trelawney
Lots of nice surfaces and pretty straightforward for the most part.
Times Cryptic No 29093 — A marathon, not a sprint?
43:39. Well, that’s how I felt solving this puzzle anyway. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of absolutely delightful clues here (meaning surface reading, wordplay, word choice, etc), but I felt that a fair amount of the difficulty for me stemmed from using very uncommon synonyms or abbreviations. But let me parse the clues and I’ll get back to you.
Times 29092 – not so Tricky Thursday
Time taken: 7:32