This was not terribly difficult, as is often the case with Paul McKenna puzzles, and I didn’t even need the pun to help me solve. The answer words are mostly well-known, although perhaps the meanings used here are a bit obscure.
Author: vinyl1
Times 29275 – Playing bridge?
While I did solve this puzzle fairly promptly, there were some rather tricky cryptics. Fortunately, regular solvers don’t have to dive in the parsing for every clue – that task is reserved for the blogger.
Mephisto 3382 – Get you a copper kettle….
I have to admit, this wasn’t easy. I spent all week, as time was available, adding an answer or two. Even when I finished, there were many questions, and I had to do a fair amount of research to write the blog.
Mephisto 3380 – Land of the Navajo!
I solved this one more by instinct than by analyzing the clues; experienced solvers just get a feel for what the answers are going to be. A half-remembered fragment of a Greek or Germanic root is often enough to point the mind in the right direction.
Times 29245 – Fun with Dick and Jane
This puzzle should not have been that hard, but I was slowed down by clues that should have been write-ins. Sure, there were some things I didn’t know, but I might have been a bit quicker to guess.
Mephisto 3378 – Puzzle, yes, pun, no!
This was not very difficult, although I had a hard time getting started, and had to open up operations in the southeast corner of the grid. But as usually happens in Mephisto, once you have a few crossing letters, more answers become obvious and you can expand around the grid.
Times 29239 – Here come the Tornados!
These grids with many longer words are often associated with the difficult Friday puzzles, but this is definitely a Monday one. After getting a few answers, I started to work from the literals and got most of it done very quickly.
Times 29233 – “…and the Spiders from Mars!”
I found the puzzle a bit strange, as it is an admixture of clues suitable for the Quickie with a few that are very convoluted. If you just put in the obvious answers, you’ll finish, but you may want to know why the answers are the answers.
Mephisto 3376 – “To ourselves…..new paganism…..”
I found this surprisingly easy for a Robert Teuton, but I was still left with a few to finish up the next day. For one, there were a surprising number of answers that I had heard of, which is always helpful.
Times 29227 – An Other Monday?
This was not quite a standard Monday puzzle, although the highly skilled solvers p0lished it off easily enough. The answers were not obscure, but some of the cryptics required specific knowledge that not everyone might have.