Author: william_j_s

Some unusual vocabulary and phrases gave me a bit to think about here, but balanced with the clearly signposted anagrams and a couple of write-ins, culminated in an average time for me. COD to 12ac … Read more “Quick Cryptic 837 by Orpheus”

Middle of the road, difficulty wise. I enjoyed the humour in 20ac and 8dn, amongst others. I have no idea why Henry = H. Can anyone explain? Definitions underlined. Across 1 Cask she’d toppled — … Read more “Quick Cryptic 827 by Hurley”

Apologies for the sparse blog. I find myself without a computer this week, posting on an iPad and in plain text. Plenty of easy starters in all corners make the longer answers solvable; a great … Read more “Quick Cryptic 817 by Orpheus”

I was very quick out of the blocks with this one, but soon found the more difficult clues and ended up with an average time. Nothing too convoluted, although I’m curious to see how many … Read more “Quick Cryptic 807 by Pedro”

Thankfully the bottom half was straightforward, as the top (and particularly the NW corner) caused a bit more head scratching. My FOI was 15ac, which conveniently alerted me to the possibility of a pangram, borne … Read more “Quick Cryptic 797 by Tracy”

Just the harder side of average, for me, with a couple of nudges that I now regard as chestnuts (it certainly does get easier!). I refer to ‘I = one’, ‘C = cold’, and ‘mostly … Read more “Quick Cryptic 787 by Joker”

A very enjoyable scramble to the finishing line, which took just a bit longer than usual. I had to leave many unfilled squares along the way, especially on the left of the grid and including … Read more “Quick Cryptic 777 by Hurley”

Mine was a fairly uninspiring performance in solving what was a light and breezy puzzle. Nothing in particular held me up, just not in the groove, I suspect. I had to wait until blogging to … Read more “Quick Cryptic 767 by Mara”

A true quickie today, but not chock-full of double definitions, so still satisfying. I’m a little unfamiliar with 17ac; presumably the clue is referring to one who stares into space? And it took me a … Read more “Quick Cryptic 757 by Joker”

I would certainly have found this much harder were it not for the plentitude of double definitions, multi-word answers and anagrams (look out for the unusual indicator at 8dn) that helped me get a start … Read more “Quick Cryptic 747 by Mara”