Author: Zabadak

I’d venture todays setter is more than usually generous providing extra bits of information to make sure we abbreviate where necessary and avoid spelling mistakes. It helped me to a respectable (from a certain point … Read more “Times 26422 A kindness of setters”

My 17’ 22” demonstrates the care with which I approached this pleasant little number, checking every clue for proper and satisfactory wordplay and checking for typos at the end. It’s not every day I outpace … Read more “26410 Caesar adsum iam forte: Latin for speakers of other languages.”

Aren’t I lucky? I get Myrtilus again to unravel, and as before there are plenty of delights along the way and no errors either in arty facts or artefacts to complain about. There are more … Read more “TLS Crossword 1121 by Myrtilus, April 15, 2016 Can you ‘&lit?”

This could well pass for a TLS with all the arty stuff in it, together with a couple of rather lame cryptics. I’ve thrown in a few extra arty bits in the course of interpretation: … Read more “26398 Tie me Knagaroo down, sport.”

Feeling a bit laboured, this one, with two that I couldn’t see until all the checkers were in, and even then it took a time, pushing me to 23.48. The short ones tuned out to … Read more “26386 Ecdysiasts in the 18th Century. Oiled chests, shapely legs, but no drawers.”

There are, in my opinion, a couple of nasty little traps in this one, one of which I fell headlong into to continue a run of sub-600 scores. In the process of producing this report, … Read more “26374 If only I’d remembered who talked to the animals”

A tough one, this, which took me past the 30 minute mark by 2.22, but hey, at least I was error free. At the time of writing, everyone else on a small sample has a … Read more “26362 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels….”

I kept feeling there was some sort of message in this thing, what with two unlikely Presidents of the US of A (one past and strangely rather fondly remembered), and one yet to be. The … Read more “26350 And I believe that the devil is ready to repent! But..”

A respectable 18.11 derailed by a rather spectacular mondegreen (even if I do say so myself). Up to that point of discovery, on something like the third or fourth careful check, I rather enjoyed this … Read more “26338 Cutting through the red tape.”