Category: Jumbo Cryptic

I found this Jumbo a little trickier than average, with plenty of clever wordplay that rewarded persistence when the pennies dropped. In all, it took me nearly an hour with the last handful of clues taking nearly 10 minutes of that. Thank-you setter. How did you all get on?

Hello once again.  I think we’re in average Jumbo territory here in terms of difficulty.  The usual smattering of GK needs and advanced vocab are here, along with trademark Times well-disguised definitions…

Hi everybody.  This didn’t seem hard at first, but proved to have some hidden teeth. 

Pretty much the best Jumbo I can recall in recent times, with loads of truly devious stuff intricately clued. I loved a lot of the hard-to-spot definition parts: takes orders from, fancy that’s wrong, drive … Read more “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1569: Zut Alors!”

Hello again. This Jumbo I thought was not too difficult, bar a couple of quite tricky clues and one I thought unfair. I solved it while watching our ladies’ football team, the Lionesses, beat Germany to win the European Championships, hurrah! so all in all I had a great evening. I thought a couple of the clues quite relevant to the occasion, too ..

I found this Jumbo quite a gentle giant without too many unknowns or wordplay that had me scratching my head, finishing in about 32 1/2 minutes. Several appreciative ticks on my copy. COD to 31A for the entertaining surface and definition, but I liked 36D too. How did you all get on?

This was a sub-30 minute breeze with no unknowns or anything else to scare the horses, but there were some very good clues, I thought…

Hello everyone.  I hope that you have been managing to stay cool.  I’ve just noticed that my last Jumbo blog was written in the last heatwave, which wasn’t as bad as this one has been.  I fervently hope that in five weeks’ time I won’t be saying the same thing!

Again, no time for this as I solved when it was still far too hot and took my time over a few sessions.  I didn’t have too many difficulties, but did have to trust to the wordplay in places.  It’s satisfying when you can do that but still have reasonable confidence in your answers.  Thanks setter!

No complaints from me about this excellent Jumbo, all of its clues being marvellously put together and quite funny to boot. Good job to the setter. My favourite things this week were: the “quartet each … Read more “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1564: Il Blogger e Mobile”

Hello again. This Jumbo I thought was harder than average, with four or five nhos, a couple of clues I thought unfair, and a number where pinning down the definition was rather difficult. What did you think?
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