Author: mctext

Solving time: see below. Not at my best this morning having found myself in atypical solving circumstances with the mother and father of all head-colds, the continual interruption of my 24-hour blood-pressure monitor going off … Read more “Times 24936: No 14s today”

Solving time: 19 minutes. So not at all difficult at this end. Which is surprising as the quack has me off the caffeine and I can’t usually do anything in the morning (let alone a … Read more “Times 24930: A Cambodian, a Lao, a Vietnamese and a Burmese try to get into a nightclub …”

Unknown solving time. Liked this puzzle but couldn’t time it for personal reasons. I’d say about 20-25 minutes would be OK on a regular day. Be interested to see how the rest of the T4T … Read more “Times 24924: Stranger on the typo”

Solving time: 18 minutes. So not too difficult. Romped through most of it then ended up in the SE corner with not much to go on. Not knowing KIGALI didn’t help at all; and OUTWEAR … Read more “Times 24918: Bottom,s up”

Solving time: 42 minutes. Struggled a bit with this one, with the top left and bottom right corners going in last. Also apologies to Jim: couldn’t post yesterday as Live Journal was Dead.   Across … Read more “Times 24912: Gig 51 Revisited”

Solving time: 72 minutes. Much gen. knowledge required today, most of which I failed on the first pass. But once the awful 12dn clicked, so did the rest. Lots of question-marks in the clues … … Read more “Times 24906 … There once was a fellow from Dorset”

Solving time: 17 minutes. And that’s a pretty good time for me, so there will be many faster than that. All quite straightforward except, possibly, the 5ac/8dn pair (my last two in, in that order) … Read more “Times 24900: Put your left foot in”

Solving time: 24 minutes. Might have been a bit faster if I hadn’t stayed up last night for that triumph of British cinema: Carry On Abroad and been woken several times by something ‘natural’ scratching … Read more “Times 24894: Two for Tea”

Solving time: 54 minutes. After the half hour, with two of the 15s still not in, I was contemplating a DNF on a blogging day. And, apart from a recurrent one involving Woody Allen’s creature … Read more “Times 24888: Wot no Hold Kent Road?”

Solving time: 26m My downfall is always the cryptic defs. — bugger them all! — and there were two together in the long across clues. Otherwise, I might have been just a bit quicker. Shaky … Read more “Times 24882: The bawdy hand of the dial …”