Author: jackkt

As expected I found this the most difficult one of the week. It took me 55 minutes which doesn’t seem too bad now, considering I read every clue and most of them more than once … Read more “Times 24400 – Double Trouble”

This was a very lively puzzle that gave me some real problems most of which were of my own making. In several places (1 dn second word for example) I thought of the right answer … Read more “Times 24388 – Don’t Knock It”

Time taken to solve – 30 minutes which would have been 10 minutes less but for a delay at the end trying to work out 1ac, 1dn and 15ac. Friday’s puzzle is often difficult so … Read more “Times 24376”

A very lively puzzle that took me far longer than it should have done, around 70 minutes. I’m not sure whether the nursery rhyme references are known universally, nor the bit of slang that’s been … Read more “Times 24364 – Nursery Games”

 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!”