Author: vinyl1

Solving time: 24 minutes Music: Sibelius, Symphony #2, SchIppers/NYP This easy puzzle threatened to turn into the blogger’s nightmare, where you simply don’t know the last answers, and the cryptics are not particularly helpful. I … Read more “Times 24384 – How does your garden grow?”

Solving time: 31 minutes Music: Vaughn Williams, Symphony #6, Boult/LPO. When I first looked at this one, I was afraid I was in for a long night, reading through the clues for 10 minutes before … Read more “Times 24372 – The airhead and the Dalmatian”

Solving time: 25 minutes Music: None, I was watching the golf playoff in Las Vegas. Congratulations to the first Scottish winner on the US PGA tour in quite a while – Martin Laird. Not terribly … Read more “Times 24360 – Getting hold of a baronet, I……”

Solving time: 28 minutes Music: Wagner Orchestral Excerpts, Furtwangler This one should have been easy, but I had two wrong entries for a while and mis-wrote a correct entry, causing considerable difficulties in getting the … Read more “Times 24348 – Live from the Kemble, it’s the Sardonic Rumpus!”

Solving time: 55 minutes Music: Chopin Mazurkas, Malcuzynski I had most of this done in 20 minutes, and then ran into a wall. There are some clues that I am not sure are entirely fair, … Read more “Times 24336 – OK, boys, time to go back to school!”

Solving time: 48 minutes Music: None, I’m in a remote part of Connecticut for the Labor Day holiday, no vinyl here. I found this a bit on the hard side, and was distracted by my … Read more “Times 24324: Hunting vocabulary, out in India!”

Solving time: 44 minutes Music: Schubert Piano Pieces, Wilhelm Kempff Well, I’d clamped the record to the turntable, poured myself an iced tea, selected a sharp pencil, and settled down….arrrrgh! This is a toughie! No … Read more “Times 24312 “Not worth a pitcher of warm…er…seepage…..”

Solving time: 32 minutes (one answer corrected while blogging) Music: Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot This one was a little trickier than the most of the previous Monday puzzles that have fallen my way. Some of … Read more “Times 24300: But is he below the Mendoza Line?”

Solving time: 16 minutes Music: Schubert, Drei Klavierstucke, Wilhelm Kempff Far from difficult, perhaps due to some clues and answers that have appeared recently in other Times puzzles. The editors should encourage the setters to … Read more “Times 24288”

Solving time: 18 minutes Music: Prokofiev, Symphony #5, Martinon/PCO A very moderate puzzle, but my time was not as good as it should have been, owing to a few unwarranted assumptions. I looked at 1 … Read more “Times 24276: there’s a vulgarrank growing in my garden!”