Category: Daily Cryptic

After last week’s BRALESS, we have more ribaldry today, as well as a mild expletive – the less often heard cherubic younger brother of a more meaty expression.

Nothing too scary in here, with the long across answers holding out satisfyingly until the end. The stone monument was a half-guess for me; the tea and glasses I know only from this blog.

  Not my quickest ever solve at 27 minutes, and all done in rather a patchy fashion as the well-crafted clues gave up their secrets. The plant early on may not be in everyone’s meadow, … Read more “28786 Mr Flibble’s very merry”

As promised, this was the first semi-final puzzle from the TCC on 21st October this year.

Not at all easy. My solving time was 58 minutes.

This was not a terribly difficult puzzle, although some of the cryptics were obscure.    Since I had decided to solve the puzzle as fast as possible, and then blog it as fast as possible, I pushed ahead.    Obvious answers were entered without parsing, so I had quite a few biffs by the end of my solve – these are noted in italic type. 

15:09. Every once in awhile, a puzzle comes along that is so good that you almost can’t believe somebody created it. Like a great piece of music you can listen to over and over again, or a gripping novel you can’t put down. For me, this was one of those puzzles. I would solve one clue and marvel at the witty wordplay — only to find the setter outdid themselves on the very next clue. All I can say is, bravo.

Time taken: 11:07 From the times of the first few people to finish, I suspect this is on the more difficult end of things.  In my first run through the across clues I only got … Read more “Times 28780 – a hidden pearl”

I took far too long to do this one, almost an hour, but now I’m writing it up I wonder if it wasn’t that hard.

I did not find this particularly easy but it was an enjoyable solve.