Category: Weekend Cryptic

Another fairly straightforward Saturday puzzle for New Year’s Eve, for which I stopped the clock at 15:01. I almost misspelt 19D, but saw the cryptic and knew the alternative spelling. Reading through the forum posts, … Read more “Saturday Times 25047 (31st Dec) – back to normal”

The Christmas Eve puzzle was given an extended deadline, so I couldn’t post the blog until today. 13:22 here, so not too hard with two 15- and two 14-letter entries which went in pretty quickly … Read more “Saturday Times 25041 (24th Dec)”

Well, here it is at last! I forgot to note down my time when solving it over two weeks ago, but I remember it being on the tricky side. An unknown poet and two abbreviations … Read more “Saturday Times 25035 (Dec 17th)”

Solving time: 1:29:12 I hadn’t realised this was going to be a Jumbo until I opened it, but by then I was committed. I had just solved the previous week’s Jumbo for blogging purposes, so … Read more “Sunday Times 4464 (18 Dec 2011) – Christmas Special”

Solving time: About 48 mins with 1 mistake. Many thanks, first of all, to PB for letting me have an advance copy of this puzzle so I didn’t have to spend too much of my … Read more “Sunday Times 4465 (25 Dec 2011) – Merry Christmas”

(announcement made today on Times Crossword Club site) For the first time in the history of the Sunday Times, there will be an edition on Christmas Day this year. This will be available free to … Read more “Sunday Times Crosswords on Christmas Day”

Solving time: 26:30 Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. Several weak clues – 7 & 14 being the worst of the bunch. Plus a couple of obscure Spanish artists and a French town planner. … Read more “Sunday Times 4463 (11 Dec 2011) – Know your Europeans”

17:34 for this one – mostly not too hard but I got into difficulties with 17D/29A, as I had 17 ending in D which left 29 as an unlikely-looking set of checking letters ?D?N?N?E?E. Worked … Read more “Saturday Times 25029 (Dec 10th)”

Solving time: 42:35 A tough, but entertaining crossword, but with some fairly obscure words like ASTARTE & BILK made up for by some clever wordplay. Pretty standard Tim Moorey fare, in other words. cd = … Read more “Sunday Times 4462 (4 Dec 2011)”

Solving time 13:20 – a bit of a relief to have an easier one after the previous two monsters. There was a bit of tricky vocabulary and some GK required for this one, but the … Read more “Saturday Times 25023 (Dec 3rd)”