Category: Daily Cryptic

 Time taken to solve? I’m not saying, but it was off the scale. I can’t say I enjoyed this much. After an hour I had completed little more than half so I resorted to books … Read more “23993 – Beast!”

Solving time : 29 minutes. I did myself in by initially getting 18 wrong (there’s a lot of 7-letter Republics that come close to fitting the wordplay). Nothing too too obscure for this puzzle, but … Read more “Times 23992 – beating the Plantagenets at the rat-race”

Solving time 15:12 Made pretty good progress with most of this, but was left with about three answers or pairs of answers, with 21/30 th last to fall. With TIFFIN, Indie, BLUEBOTTLE, CARDIFF, CHELSEA, shut-eye, … Read more “23991”

Solving time: 9:53 Firstly, thank you very much to sotira, dorosatt, jackkt and yfyap who have blogged the Sunday Times puzzles over the last few weeks in my absence. After a largely crosswordless month I’ve … Read more “ST 4288 (Sun 3 Aug) – Argy-bargy”

Solving time : 45 minutes I may be having an off day but I found this a difficult puzzle with a lot of intricate wordplay and a good deal of slang. It was difficult to … Read more “Times 23,990 Le Mur du Louvre Mate”

Solving time: 39 minutesGot off to a flyer. Held up with the NE corner – 8,10,11,15 the last to go in – then I worked out the long one at 7. I think I’ve mentioned … Read more “23989”

Solving time: 9.38 This all seemed to fall into place fairly easily, with two of the long answers round the border going in right away (1ac and 8d) and the other two yielding without too … Read more “Times Crossword 23987”

Solving time: 12:47 A fast start, then slowed up, particularly in the South West corner. This was partly because I put the wrong answer in for 25D. “Religious work the speaker does (4)” could almost … Read more “Times 23,986”

Solving time 13:47 Not too bad a time for this, though the NE corner felt rather slow – 6,8,10,12,18 in particular. Across 1 Algernon SWIN(BURN)E 6 MICAH – (1,C) in Ham rev. 9 SEAL OFF … Read more “23,985”

Solving time : 20 minutes, most of which was spent rounding up a small number of recalcitrant answers in 9 ac, 22 ac and 27 ac. I got off to a flying start down the … Read more “Times 23,984”