Solving time 7:00 Quite a few unusual words and meanings here. Satisfied with the time considering a poor start – neither of 1 or 6 across fell on first look, and a slight delay for … Read more “23,554 – quite tricky”
Author: petebiddlecombe
23,548 – Nutcracker rides again
Solving time 6:30 Quite a few novel words as answers or used in wordplay, but clued so that I didn’t have any big hold-ups. Possibly fairly quick because there’s no significant general or literary knowledge … Read more “23,548 – Nutcracker rides again”
23542 – Swift? Yes and No – I took a knock
Solving time 11:08 – with one crass error I started out with hopes of a third sub-5 on the trot, but these soon evaporated. Eventually I was left with 2 and 9. I gradually found … Read more “23542 – Swift? Yes and No – I took a knock”
23,536 – reprises
Solving time 8:20 I suspect I’m relatively slow on this one – 11D took quite a while to work out, and the anag at 27 kept me fooled for a while. Across 9 PERM,AFRO,St. “Curly … Read more “23,536 – reprises”
23,534 – very easy
Solving time 4:25 Good start with 1A,2,3,4 straight away though 4 showed up one of my occasional spelling idiocies – “theif”. Quite a few wordplay details worked out in full afterwards, but there was enough … Read more “23,534 – very easy”
23,530 – U?M? !
Solving time 10:50 Inevitably, after someone said something nice about sub-10 solvers yesterday, I dropped out of that category today, so I wonder whether Tony will emerge from the pampas grass to beat me again … Read more “23,530 – U?M? !”
23,524 – nothing on St Valentine’s day
Solving time 4:49 Probably the easiest puzzle I’ve written about since we changed to a team blog. Got 1A and 4 straight off and never really looked back except for a silly initial guess at … Read more “23,524 – nothing on St Valentine’s day”
Mephisto 2422 – fairly tough
Solving time: 50 mins without Chambers, followed by one look-up (7D). Maybe I wasn’t in quite the right mood, but this seemed like one of those times when the setter’s odyssey through the further reaches … Read more “Mephisto 2422 – fairly tough”
23,518 – tip-top trap for the over-hasty!
Solving time 9:25 The last two minutes or so were spent making sure of the answer for 11. A nice mixture of material, and some very smooth clue-writing. I see with some relief that the … Read more “23,518 – tip-top trap for the over-hasty!”
23,512 – a classic grid
Solving time 6:28 I’m pretty sure this grid uses the smallest possible number of added black squares in an “odd rows and columns” lattice. There are just 8 of them. This puzzle used fairly original … Read more “23,512 – a classic grid”