Category: Daily Cryptic

A very unusual solve which suggests I should find my own icon with a dunce’s cap or similar – about 15 minutes for all bar the last one and a half solutions. Then 10 minutes … Read more “Times 24,558 – mental block”

Solving time: 43 minutes Music: Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante, Grumiaux/Davis/LSO First, let me thank my colleague Russel John for filling in last week. I had a most enjoyable trip, but my access to the internet was … Read more “Times 24557 – Heathcliff again”

Solving time: 11 mins, one mistake (17dn) Not my finest hour: a hasty wrong answer at 1ac cost me a lot of time, but this all felt very sluggish. I ended up stuck on 17dn … Read more “ST 4383 (Sun 30 May) – Shank’s ‘mare”

Solving time: 18:42 (1 wrong) I made a slowish start, but then picked up speed a little and had all but four answers filled in by around 10 minutes – and one of those (FEMME) … Read more “TLS 832 (14 May)”

I found this one quite easy and solved it without aids in 40 minutes having paid more attention to wordplay than I might have done if I were not blogging the puzzle. The abundance of … Read more “Times 24555 – Jimbo’s in that park again!”

Solving time : 15 minutes. Thought I was going to be stuck for a while, but the last few rushed out. There were a number that I got from the definition alone and am still … Read more “Times 24554: as the 24 is to 22, so is 2 to funky cold 6”

Solving time: 9:03 A puzzle with some interesting clues, though with quite a lot of old-fashioned looking vocabulary and some fairly gentle literary references. Thanks to the people at the Times who decided to invite … Read more “24553”

Solving time 12 minutes A very easy puzzle with few talking points. Even where there are possible quibbles the thing is so simple that they make no difference. The setter appears to prefer hot mustard … Read more “Times 24,552 – A doddle for ze little grey cells”

Solving Time: 45 minutes No, I’m not getting ahead of myself. I’m standing in for vinyl1 this week. There was a goodly helping of anagrams to save my bacon in this one, followed by lashings … Read more “Times 24551 – Fete sounds like… like…”

Solving time: 7 mins A little harder to get into than many Sunday Times puzzles, partly because of the awkward grid with four corners connected only by four under-checked seven letter answers, but not too … Read more “ST 4382 (Sun 23 May) – Cabriole eh?”