Category: Quick Cryptic

Right. Hmmm. Difficulty: high, I would say. Took me 11min. Some distinctly postgraduate wordplay mixed in with some very obvious write-ins, like the setter wanted to compensate for the harder clues. 19dn has given long … Read more “Quick Cryptic 924 by Tracy”

I know that we bloggers say this a lot, but there really are some elegant surfaces here if you look for them.  In the across clues, 8, 16, 17 and 23, and in the down … Read more “Quick cryptic No 923 by Joker”

I thought this was a fairly gentle offering from Des, although for some reason it took me quite a while to spot the frequent traveller in 9d. 19d brings into play a rather unusual usage, … Read more “Quick Cryptic 922 by Des”

Looking through jackkt’s excellent difficulty scale, Mara’s ‘last time’ (6.5) seems to indicate a generally medium difficultly level when compared to the other setters. This proved to be the case today as I found this … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic 921 by Mara”

I needed 8 minutes for this one which contains a couple of slightly unusual words and meanings along with an unusual clue or two. I was a bit late last week in adding my latest … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic 920 by Orpheus”

Welcome to my very first Times for the Times blog! I’m a great fan of the quickie and I’m delighted to have been invited to join the blogging team. Today’s is a fine example of … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic No 919 – by Teazel”

I found this quite tough today, finishing with little enough change from twenty minutes, which puts it on a close enough par with Monday’s and Wednesday’s main puzzles. I struggled in the North East, courtesy … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic No 918 by Hawthorn”

I had most of this done very quickly and on first pass, but couldn’t see the wood for the trees at 15dn and a handful of other clues. Eventually reflecting on an average time, I … Read more “Quick Cryptic 917 by Pedro”

A good QC. 12 minutes of happy misdirection – a good example of which is LOI 15ac – I tried so hard to make up an item of clothing I’d never heard of only to … Read more “Times Quick Cryptic 916 by Flamande”

Tracy’s offering today contains no uncommon words (apart from maybe the first definition in 22A) or complicated wordplay so I would wager solvers will find it at the straightforward end of the spectrum. However I … Read more “Quick Cryptic 915 by Tracy”