Author: Zabadak

I scattered clues around the grid with compete abandon, ignoring any semblance of systematic solving and rather moving on from clues I couldn’t resolve without the kind of relentless concentration that leads to a proper … Read more “27802 Thursday, 22 October 2020 Nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach yer..”

A mid range puzzle for me with the top section, especially the NW, giving most trouble with 1ac for a long time being the wrong but possible REPOST partly because I read changes as charges. … Read more “27790 Thursday, 8 October 2020 Dinner dinner dinner dinner”

Not much more demanding than yesterday’s, and as far as I can tell lacking the extraordinary NINA in the first letters of the across clues. I polished this off in 13.37. It helps if you … Read more “27778 Thursday, 24 September 2020 It’s time to crack open the Bolly”

Another in my series of Puzzles That Took Longer Than Perhaps They Should, occupying me for almost 30 minutes, but I liked it a lot. Throughout the surfaces are clean and plausible, and the wordplay … Read more “27766 Thursday, 10 September 2020 Questa o quella per me pari sono”

My time shows up on the board as 18.48, but that’s only because I had to sort out an internet fubar which delayed the submission of my pink square blemished grid by some 4 minutes. … Read more “27754 Thursday, 27 August 2020 “David and Solomon lived very merry lives””

No too taxing, completed by your blogger du jour in a smidge under 21 minutes. Almost all of the vocab would be accessible to people doing the Times 50 years ago, and I applaud the … Read more “27742 Thursday, 13 August 2020 A beast by any other number”

A rather entertaining number which kept me scrabbling around for almost 26 minutes and sent me hunting more often than usual for the J key. In the end, there are only (only!) 5 in the … Read more “27730 Thursday, 30 July 2020 …is brought to you today by the letter J and the number 8”

I found this rather stiff going, particularly as the NW corner was pretty unyielding, though in retrospect I’m not quite sure why. The vocab is occasionally from the further reaches of the dictionary, particularly the … Read more “27718 Thursday, 16 July 2020 In my end is my beginning”

Another Thursday puzzle which put up some stiff resistance, at least for your humble correspondent. Perhaps it’s the pressure of having to justify everything as I worked through, but then I didn’t manage that until … Read more “27706 Thursday, 2 July 2020 As sung by the random ladies of Camptown”

I took nearly 30 minutes over this, which is odd because that suggests I found it hard, and I’m not convinced it is. I was not helped by failing with the top left corner, and … Read more “27694 Thursday, 18 June 2020 You simply have nothing to fear”