Category: Daily Cryptic

Solving time 9:25 The last two minutes or so were spent making sure of the answer for 11. A nice mixture of material, and some very smooth clue-writing. I see with some relief that the … Read more “23,518 – tip-top trap for the over-hasty!”

Solving time: 1:20 (hours not minutes) After a diet of Sunday Times, there’s no doubt that the Times is both more rigorous and more challenging. Lots to commend this puzzle – but I wonder if … Read more “23517/Cheeky revolutionary”

Solving time : 46 minutesI made a quick start on the SE corner and then pretty steady progress. they were quite a few straightforward clues to make this accessible to beginners. There were a couple … Read more “23,516 – a moment of cheeky brilliance”

Solving time : 6m05s – I have to say this felt like a very good time, given some brilliantly contrived clues, that featured many words not meaning what they appeared to at all (and often … Read more “23,514 – Keeping up with the Joneses”

Solving time : 13:54 Israelis, Czech, Latvian, Turkey and Anglais appear in answers. Not to mention the Nova Scotian (mis)described as an islander. I could complain that indicating “totty” as “attractive women” in 22A is … Read more “23513 – Mixed nationalities”

Solving time 6:28 I’m pretty sure this grid uses the smallest possible number of added black squares in an “odd rows and columns” lattice. There are just 8 of them. This puzzle used fairly original … Read more “23,512 – a classic grid”

Solving time: 5’04” I had a bad start, making a pig’s ear of the top left and working ‘up and left’ through the grid which is always much slower, so I expect others to have … Read more “23,511 – The name game”

Solving time: about 1 hour 20 minutes Enjoyable enough – decent wordplay (difficult in places) but quite a few smiles to be had. Apologies for today’s brevity (and lack of my usual hypertextuality) – a … Read more “23,510 – and all that jazz?”

Solving time : 9m04s – Feels like a fairly feeble time for a puzzle that didn’t in retrospect have anything monstrous (except perhaps GILLRAY, which was well-checked and well-clued), but I really got a bit … Read more “23,508 – Stupider and stupider”

Solving time : 15:24 A very enjoyable crossword. Clever surfaces (eg 1A, 1D, 14) and mainly economic cluing – by my counting only ten of the clues have linkwords. I don’t object to linkwords, but … Read more “23507 – parse mildly livid”