Author: piquet

I swam or 20a quickly through this one, 15 or 16 minutes, pausing only to think about 22a and my LOI 27a in terms of parsing. Nothing else very scary or exciting. A few obvious … Read more “Times 27405 – sink or swim”

I’ll be interested to learn how others got on with this puzzle. I found it a game of two halves, as the cliché goes. I stared for a while at the early clues before finding … Read more “Times 27393 – What’s up, Doc? I can see a planet or two.”

This wasn’t the hardest crossword I’ve blogged in the last five years, but it’s close to being the most fun to do; in 24 minutes I had it finished and was parsing a final couple … Read more “Times 27387 – fun and games today. Who said that?”

Another fine crossword of medium difficulty, with a couple of somewhat obscure answers at 7d and 3d which were gettable from wordplay if you weren’t a topologist or a bullfight enthusiast. The rest was good … Read more “Times 27381 – footwear fine, trousers needed redressing.”

When I’d finished this, a really fun puzzle I thought, it felt like I’d been given one of those exercises where you have to write a short story using as many of the answer words … Read more “Times 27375 – Am I on the yellow brick road?”

Another faiirly easy puzzle for midweek, I thought, with some pleasant touches and no less than five straight anagrams to make life even easier. And the species of ungulate was one we’ve all heard of! … Read more “Times 27369 – French bread and anagrams”

A fair, middle of the road puzzle today, with some straightforward wordplay and parsing, nothing especially witty or memorable, but nothing to complain about either. 20 minutes with DENOUNCER my LOI. I did remember the … Read more “Times 272363”

An odd mixture of clues I thought in this one, some easy, some eyebrow-raising and some downright hard unless you had served your time in the British Raj. I couldn’t find any link to May … Read more “Times 27357 – back to the North West Frontier, or the Great Lakes?”

16 minutes for this light hearted offering, which for the first time in my 5 years of blogging regularity, does not (as far as I can see) have a ‘hidden word’ clue. Apart from the … Read more “Times 27351 – Does a German Dogger Bight?”

This was the kind of puzzle we might use as a perfect example of The Times genre, having an antelope, a plant, a mineral, a couple of literary references, and some wit. Hats off to … Read more “Times 27345 – that’s more like it.”