Author: jackkt

 Is this one of the new grids? It doesn’t look familiar and I don’t remember one being so dominated by 8-letter answers , 8 of them across and another 8 down. And even the one … Read more “Times 24352 – Pieces of Eight”

I made rather heavy weather of this one and must have spent over an hour on it. I printed it just past midnight in case the site was down again for maintenance and as it … Read more “24340 – Murder!”

Time taken to solve: Off the scale again with this one. Certainly well over the hour and I still have one unexplained. I think my difficulty was the lack of answers containing more than one … Read more “24328 – No relief”

Time taken to solve: Off the scale, but something like 90 minutes to complete the grid and at least another 30 working on the explanations, so about 2 hours of anguish for me this morning. … Read more “Times 24316 – Off for a lie-down now!”

Time taken to solve: 32 minutes again. A fairly straightforward puzzle to solve which required a bit more thinking about in order to write it up with a degree of confidence, however after all that … Read more “Times 24304 – OOH ER!”

Time taken to solve: 45 minutes. After yesterday’s predictions about being due a stinker today I approached this with a degree of apprehension and on failing to solve 1a which should have been easy, I … Read more “Times 24292 – Not a stinker!”

I read through all the clues without solving one today. At first I put this down to apprehension knowing it was my turn to write the blog at the end of a difficult week, but having … Read more “Times – 24280 – They’ve had it in for us this week”

Time taken to solve: 30 minutes for all but the 14s and 27across. These added another 15 minutes to my time. The RH I found more straightforward than the LH and in particular the SW … Read more “Times 24268”

This puzzle had some cracking surfaces but in other respects it was a fairly routine offering that delayed me longer than it should have. I felt sure that I was going to finish well within my personal … Read more “Times 24256 – Not A Stinker”

This took me the best part of an hour using aids to get me started again after about 15 minutes in the doldrums with only half the puzzle completed. There are no difficult words or particularly … Read more “Times 24244”