Category: Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 18:28 Started well, then after three minutes a friend sat down beside me on the Tube. And when I picked it up again, I realised that there were lots of tricky ones. Also … Read more “Times 24,022”

Solving time 17:45 Very slow start to this – got all the way to TOPI at 21A before getting started. Then a couple more of the bottom acrosses and several bottom half downs went in. … Read more “24021 – a rum do?”

Solving time : 45 minutes, making this the trickiest Tuesday I’ve come across in a while, though obviously your mileage may vary. More to do with some well-disguised definitions in the clues than obscure vocabulary … Read more “Times 24,020”

Solving time: 26 minutes I thought this was going to be a real difficult one on first read through. I got only two of the across clues straight away (SUPERIOR and LONESOME). Fortunately the down … Read more “Times 24019”

Solving time: 3:34 A real mixture this week: some very good clues, much better than average, and a few that are a bit questionable. There seems to be a mistake in the clue for 14ac … Read more “ST 4293 (Sun 7 Sep) – Pergola alarm”

Time taken to solve: Don’t ask! I got off to a flying start in the NW corner and thought it was going to be an enjoyable if quirky ride; just the sort of puzzle I … Read more “24017 – Quirky”

Solving time : 16 minutes. Got a fast start on this and filled in a lot of the grid, then got held up on some very silly spelling mistakes – a pheromonic application and an … Read more “Times 24016 – so how’s your spelling?”

… which you could say about many Times xwds, but here we’ve got Mr. Punch and Dick Turpin, books and TV, farming, music, hats, football and skiing, and much else. I enjoyed this puzzle with … Read more “24015 – all human life is here …”

Solving time : 50 minutes including some fruitless research to try to explain 2 down I thought this a difficult puzzle which I had to work hard at, often reverse engineering the word play from … Read more “Times 24014 The Glossy Omath”

I had trouble logging onto the club site today, but found the crossword here:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/crosswords/printOnly/1,,,00.html?linkName=&linkType=&crosswordID=&day=8&month=9&year=2008&type=1 Time: Not sure, but over an hour.I found this particularly hard to get into. The bottom half wasn’t too bad but … Read more “Times Crossword 24013”