Category: Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 1h 1m 46s I had a bad day at work today and looked forward to a relaxing solve to unwind. Always nice to get off to a flyer – and I got 1A,1D,9A,12A … Read more “Times 23708 – some easy, some hard, all good”

Solving time: 7:58 Straightforward clues with several difficult answer words; 18dn and 20dn were new to me. * = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’. Across 1 BECHAMEL; (ME BLEACH)* 6 AMAZ(O for I)N’ 9 … Read more “ST 4241 (Sun 9 Sep) – Acadian rhythms”

Fairly straightforward puzzle that I probably would have solved a minute quicker had I not been thinking about how I’d blog some of the clues as I went along. No difficult words, or complicated wordplay … Read more “23,706 – shortest blog ever?”

Solving time: 14:52 Fast start, including the big central down. Then struggled a bit, especially in the South East corner. Although it took me a long time to see, I was amused by the audacity … Read more “23,705 – school lesson”

Solving time 6:52 Fairly easy for me after some slow puzzles in the last few days. One of those puzzles where the grid contains words that make me wonder whether there’s some overall theme that … Read more “23,704 – pairs?”

Solving time: 1h10 I seem to have got myself into a series of hard Tuesdays. Had to resort to online help for a couple here – partly because I made a couple of bad initial … Read more “Times 23703/if it’s Tuesday, it must be hard”

Solving time 41:50 Quite enjoyable, some fun clues and interesting wordplay. A few new words for me: I had to look up beech mast and twenty-fourmo, but they were quite gettable from the wordplay. And … Read more “23702 – red is blue”

A relatively quick solve – and I learned a new word – Newfie. Solving time – 7m32s ACROSS 3 CARPET MOTH – Axminster was a giveaway, making this an easy first answer to enter into … Read more “23,700 – The Cat’s Pyjamas”

Solving time: 15:36 Two more composers, Charpentier and Barber, whose names I know, but I would have difficulty telling you any more about them beyond reasonably confident stabs at their nationalities. Still, knowing names is … Read more “23,699 – talking points”

After yesterday’s fairly difficult vocabulary and music and lit. references, a puzzle where there’s little knowledge needed except for some food and drink and one bit of gardening. Not as easy as Monday’s, but there … Read more “23698 – prickly flowers”