Author: Verlaine

Not excessively hard but rather fun. I was much taken with 26a and its possible back-construction from the fact of the existence of something called the Zoot Suit Riots, and 22dn where “last bit of … Read more “Times 28,271: God Loves A 11ac”

This didn’t take me particularly long but I had a whale of a time nonetheless, enjoying the high grade GK-ish vocab and coherent surfaces. The two reverse cryptics at 13dn and 20dn stole the show … Read more “Times 28,259: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Crossword Forum”

This was good! I finished it in ~8 minutes, closing out a fairly nippy week, but I felt like I needed to stay on my toes throughout this worthy challenge. My favourite clue was 5dn, … Read more “Times 28,253: Dougal Where’s Your Troosers”

Okay this was sufficiently Fridaylicious for me – remorsely pangrammatic and with multiple clues pulling no particular punches on the difficulty level front. 11ac got me my in and I was soon being led by … Read more “Times 28,247: ✂✪❥❿➹➰❡”

I found this “quirky” with some rather unusual vocabulary and cluing but not too hard for all that: I clocked in at 6.5 minutes. COD to 5ac for pure “what the heck?”-ness. Apparently there’s a … Read more “Times 28,241: Nothing Quite Like It For Cooling The Blog”

Sometimes I dread Fridays with their ever-present threat of *shudder* a merely Tuesdayish or Wednesdayish offering to spoil the entire week of this blogger, but I needn’t have worried today, this puzzle was a cracker. … Read more “Times 28,235: Kansas, I Don’t Think We’re 21dn Any More”

I liked the first row of this very much, with the interesting device at 1ac and “details of damage on label” being a classic sneaky definition part. But a lot of the rest was relatively … Read more “Times 28,229: A Good Blog Spoiled”