Category: Jumbo Cryptic

I found most of this entertaining and reasonably straightforward. However, I did need to resort to aids for 47A and have reservations about 13A. I will be away from the computer from tonight until probably Monday morning, trying to … Read more “Jumbo 888”

The usual Jumbo rubric: as the solution is available alongside (or indeed before) the blog, comment is confined only to references that might remain obscure to overseas / inexperienced solvers even with the answer visible, … Read more “Times Jumbo 887”

This I found was quite an easy puzzle, maybe the quickest I’ve ever solved a Times Jumbo, 47 mins.* = anagramACROSS1 DOG-EAT-DOG Cryptic definition punning on ‘boxer’ , a type of dog6 DECONTAMINATE (I’d meant … Read more “Times Jumbo 886 – Sat 28 August 2010”

Sorry, forgot about this & just off for the w/e. Report will be added on Monday, but chat here first if you wish. Solving time: 19:03 A pretty speedy puzzle, so I’m surprised by the … Read more “Jumbo 885”

Yet again I get an excellent Jumbo to blog. At 45 minutes it took about half as long again as my average solve but all of the difficulty was down to clever clueing rather than obscure … Read more “Jumbo 884 – 14th August 2010 – O, what a prat !”

Several quite complex wordplays made this an enetertaining puzzle. Thank you to the setter. Across 1 JOACHIM – JIM (Callaghan) around O, CH(estnut), all around A 5 LINEAR B – BRAE=bank, NIL, all reversed 9 … Read more “Jumbo 883”

The usual Jumbo rubric: as the solution is available alongside (or indeed before) the blog, comment is confined only to references that might remain obscure to overseas / inexperienced solvers even with the answer visible, … Read more “Times Jumbo 882”

Solving time: Not recorded. It took several sessions over several days. Not because it was particularly difficult, rather that I’ve not picked up a crossword for a couple of weeks and I’m a little rusty. … Read more “Jumbo 881 – 24th July 2010”

Solving time: maybe 25 minutes first time around Apologies for the delay with this one – I had a very busy week last week, followed by the discovery that just about every blog I might … Read more “Jumbo 880”

The club site have repeated one of the old favourite cock-ups. The Jumbo cryptic currently has the clues for the Times 2 Jumbo. I guess the correct clues will be up some time on Monday. … Read more “Jumbo 882”