Author: Zabadak

Time: 27:09 What a fantastic set of clues! If you’ve whizzed through biffing and blindly guessing, please go back through and appreciate the fine craftsmanship of ultra smooth surfaces and devious interplay of nouns and … Read more “29470 A smooth operator”

I can’t really give a time for this, as I made the mistake of doing it on the newspaper site rather than the club, on a notebook computer, wrestling with manoeuvring around the grid and … Read more “29458 The hare and the tortilla.”

Time: 26:31, a little more than the additional minute I’ve scored over each of the first three this week. In several entries, working out how the wordplay worked was a stiffer challenge than sticking in … Read more “29446, feeling a bit under par.”

Time: 12:36, by some distance my quickest of the week though it may be the clues just fell nicely for me. The artsy bits should be reasonably well known to regular solvers, though you may … Read more “29434 Keeping it clean”

Time: 35:31. I don’t think I know how to explain that time, which makes the puzzle look harder than I think it was, but let’s put it down to the excitement of Christmas, an incipient … Read more “29422 A Yule Blog”

Time: 17:20. It seems to me that the puzzles are getting easier this week, so perhaps we can expect some record-breaking tomorrow. I still took my time over this, wanting to be sure I understood … Read more “29410 Intermediate”

Time: 22:22 I’ve heard tell that our editor and chums want to include more yoof friendly answers in the grids, though the two examples in this one may be well be into their adulthood by … Read more “Times Cryptic 29398 Rollin’ down the river.”

Time: 25:52, which seems like a long time , but I think, for me at least, the complexities of this one demanded much head scratching and careful pondering. One curiosity, which you’ll see often enough … Read more “29386 Your train (of thought) may be delayed”

Time: 25:21, so a challenging piece as far as I’m concerned, though full of delights and flashes of sudden realisation. I’d like to say, as a proper blogger, that I worked everything out as I … Read more “Times Cryptic 29374 A chorus of approval.”

  13.10, though I thought it was going to be quicker. After the chastening challenge of the first Competition grid yesterday this felt like a generous helping of light relief, and in the early stages … Read more “29362 ….and breathe.”