Category: Quick Cryptic

A fun mix of clues today that took me just over the 10 minute mark, thanks to two minutes at the end spent trying to think of homophones of reptiles at 11d – there was some elusive (or perhaps illusive) caiman type creature that remained on the tip of my tongue. Good stuff – many thanks to Breadman!

A little tricky, possibly because I did not solve 1ac on first glance, I don’t know Kent geography well enough, and had never heard of the tribe.

Some tough clues at 1ac, 5dn and LOI  16ac held me up and I ended up taking 12 minutes. I suspect that newer solvers may struggle – but I hope to be proved wrong. 

Hi all.  Tracy is a setter who can be relied upon to produce entertaining and perfectly sound easier-end puzzles.  If I say that there is nothing to complain about and that the clues read smoothly it might sound like damning with faint praise.  But, rest assured, I am praising.

One for the anagram fans, this was pretty straightforward and workmanlike.

Today’s puzzle from Orpheus took me just under 11 minutes to solve, my quickest this week.  However, a gap in my GK meant that I needed some more time to properly parse 13d when I came to write the blog.  The answer was obvious, if not the means of getting there.  There was also a surprising lack of anagrams, with only one partial anagram to be found, although homophone clues seemed to make up the difference.

Greetings all!  I’m delighted to contribute my first blog post on the new site.  My time for this puzzle was 6:35, and it was hard-won.

Quite a few missing first letters, a couple of upside downs and a couple of interesting clues (23ac, 12dn) pushed me to within one second of my 10 minute target. Highly satisfying all round. Thanks Pedro.

I solved all but one answer in 8 minutes but then suffered a complete brain freeze.

Today’s Quick Cryptic from Teazel is typically teazing with one or two tricky bits, including a couple of clever cryptic definitions. It helps to know your card games, operetta composers and South American geography, which I do – finishing in 5:08. I had a rare (for me) MER at 4D – was I right to twitch the eyebrows? Whatever, it was good fun. Thank-you Teazel. How did you all get on?