Category: Daily Cryptic

A bit of an extended Quick Crossword, this one, so hopefully a few Quickieites will be over to have a stab at this one.

I think this is as hard as I’ve had it for a while, but found myself on the wavelength for a change. Enough unusual words, plenty of witty constructions (my favourite: 13dn), and a few gimmies.

  I have absolutely know idea why this took me 25.23, as there’s only one word I didn’t know, the cheese, and everything else is pretty straightforward, if occasionally requiring rather more elaborate construction work. … Read more “28810 Spot the X”

Another pleasant but not very demanding puzzle; even if you didn’t have the GK required, the wordplay was clear.

I struggled a bit with this one.

This should have been a very easy puzzle, and I did race through most of it.  Most of the across clues went in on the first go-round, and I had plenty of crossing letters for the downs. 

21:31. Often a puzzle will be obviously easy or hard. This was not one of those puzzles for me. It started very easy and I thought it might be one of my fastest solves yet. But then things got more difficult, and I don’t know if that reflects my fatigue or the true nature of the puzzle. In any case, I finished in a decent time, although some clues I didn’t fully parse while solving.

Time taken: 13:23 Looking at the early times, I made a bit of a meal of this, and I’m glad for the unusual grid with the generous checking in a few areas. The wordplay is … Read more “Times 28804 – un de les six?”

After the TCC semi-final puzzles which appeared on recent Wednesdays, I found this one had nice relevant surfaces but had nothing to slow me down.

I was rather surprised to run through this in only 22 minutes.