Category: Daily Cryptic

I found this quite easy – two well-known London references, both long words, solved first time round, no devilishly tricky wordplay, initial slow progress with the acrosses being compensated for with fast solving of the … Read more “Times 23,532 – Quite easy”

Solving time : 7:00 A quick time for me. I felt lucky to know “proa” and “ophicleide” without thinking. And the Hittite is probably the second Uriah one would think of. But otherwise I didn’t … Read more “23531 – another easy Thursday”

Solving time 10:50 Inevitably, after someone said something nice about sub-10 solvers yesterday, I dropped out of that category today, so I wonder whether Tony will emerge from the pampas grass to beat me again … Read more “23,530 – U?M? !”

Solving time: 45’ Maybe it was my mood or maybe the setter’s, but there seemed to be a lot of anxiety and worry in this puzzle: engineers feeling uncertain in a nation gripped by fear, … Read more “Times 23529/Fear and loathing”

[I’m posting this on behalf of David Hogg…]My first go at blogging a Times crossword. A certain amount of literary knowledge was required to complete the puzzle – two across clues required you to know … Read more “Times 23528”

Solving time : 7m15s – At first I thought this was really hard – but then a minute later one or two answers came and I calmed down, and proceeded OK. I think it may … Read more “23,526 – Maybe together the total group can advance afar”

Enjoyable puzzle, with some good misdirection. Easy to break into, but tricky enough to finish, especially the NE quadrant. Solving time: 29 mins (about average for me for the Times) * = anagram ACROSS5 ERE … Read more “Times 23525 – Not too hard”

Solving time 4:49 Probably the easiest puzzle I’ve written about since we changed to a team blog. Got 1A and 4 straight off and never really looked back except for a silly initial guess at … Read more “23,524 – nothing on St Valentine’s day”

Solving time: 55’ Made pretty good time on this at first since I guessed the long anagram at 10A quickly but really slowed down at the end: struggled with 1D, 13A, 20A, 27A (still not … Read more “Times 23523/not opera again”

Solving time : about 90 minutes – in three sittings Some nice symmetry with the first and last answers being Indian cities – one that I’ve seen before in crosswords and one that I haven’t. … Read more “23522 – Obs and Sols”