Author: Zabadak

Time: 28:58 Something of a struggle for me, this one, with entries scattered randomly round the grid, rather than steadily solving from 1ac onwards. There’s quite a bit of food and drink in here, but … Read more “29542 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance (Pope)”

Time: 22:10. A relatively gentle Thursday puzzle in which my main delays were created by the two long across clues, both of which I read badly and fluffed the definitions. Secondary holdups came from the … Read more “29530 A spelling test”

Time: 18:27. I regret not taking more time to properly savour this one, because as I wrote up the blog, it became increasingly apparent that this was a delicious set of clues, for which the … Read more “29518 Rocking all over the world.”

Time: 14:58 This didn’t feel much like a Tricky Thursday with most of my answers suggesting themselves readily from some kind and economical cluing, never more than two lines of print. There’s really only one … Read more “29506 True, I talk of dreams”

Time: 23:56 Not especially difficult, though younger viewers might be challenged by the featured entertainers and some rather odd vocabulary. Our setter seems to be particularly fond of things going backwards – I’ve counted 8 … Read more “29494 Bottles on the doorstep.”

Time: 19:09. Most of this was pretty standard fair, a mix of well signalled anagrams and a lot of first, last, containing and contents letters, plus a couple of soundalikes. The placenames aren’t too outrageous … Read more “29482 Sounds of the stars”

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”