Author: piquet

A reasonably tough puzzle, I thought, with some ‘well that’s probably what he means’ type definitions, and more than the usual number of debatable homophones. 1a passes muster, but 22d less so, and 8d definitely … Read more “Times 27273 – now I’ve heard it all. Or have I?”

A pleasant if somewhat vanilla puzzle today, mostly straightforward wordplay and only one word and parsing at 19a which caused me any delay in my 20 minute solve. Hard to pick a special clue out … Read more “Times 27267 – nothing to complain about or shout about.”

This took me 33 minutes and a few more while blogging to decipher some of the more obscure parsing. I finished feeling slightly irritated rather than elated. If you read the below, you’ll get my … Read more “Times 27261 – a curate’s egg time.”

For some reason I found the LH side of this one easy while the RH side took me twice as long. In retrospect I can’t see why. There’s a marine mollusc you can guess from … Read more “Times 27255 – I’ll make a clean breast of this one”

This took me a leisurely 19 minutes, having started without delay with the long 1a and 1d to make it flow smoothly. I suspect there will be some single figure times as even I found … Read more “Times 27249 – One for the record?”

After last week’s toughie with the SNITCH at a high of 178, I was expecting even more pain with this. Maybe I was just lucky to be on a wavelength, because only 7 of 24 … Read more “Times 27243 – The final Final TCC puzzle from 2018. Nil desperandum.”

I had picked up the vibe from comments after the Competition that two of the three Final offerings were ‘a bit hard’. Well, this is one of them, because it sure was harder than last … Read more “Times 27237 – TCC Final, puzzle 2. Whoever set this should take a bow.”

Well, what a fine test, even if it required some obscure general knowledge or inspired guesswork if that knowledge was lacking; in my case, it was, at 12a. I knocked out the left hand side … Read more “Times 27231 – TCC Final, puzzle 1. Knocked out on Boxing Day.”

I began this with some trepidation, having read in previous weeks that it was harder than the other two in this heat. I was surprised to find, IMO, it was not so hard. Apart from … Read more “Times 27225 – TCC Heat 2 third puzzle. Climb every mountain…”

This restored (temporarily) my faint desire to enter the TCC if and when I find myself geographically suited to do so. I polished it off with a reasonable confidence level that it was correct, in … Read more “Times 27219 – TCC Heat 2 second puzzle of three. (Apparently the first in the booklet).”