Author: piquet

A slightly avian theme to this fairly mild but pleasant puzzle, with birds featuring at 4d, 12a and 16a.

A middle of the road puzzle for the middle of the week, took me 21 minutes.

This was no disappointment for a milestone puzzle. No complaints; a hard but fair test I thought.

I thought this was quite hard, and caused my eyebrows to be in motion more times than I would have liked.

No major problems here, finishing in 20 minutes, although I can’t quite see how 11a works.

A terrific puzzle, I thought, a few easy clues but a few more which really made me think and then be chuffed when the light dawned.

A plethora of ‘leave out a letter or letters’ clues in this one, pleasant enough and rather Mondayish.

My PDF print out done early doors says this was set by a gentleman called Antony Lewis. A new thing, for me, to see a Times setter named, but now I see he has been expunged. Anyway, thank you, Mr Lewis, for a pleasant challenge today.

All you could wish for in this enjoyable offering, I thought; some clever wordplay, a bird and a plant we know, and a couple of things for me to bang on about with a bit of enthusiasm.

I enjoyed this, although there are a few dodgy clues I’d take issue with, and one I’d never heard of but had to guess from the wordplay.