Category: Weekend Cryptic

16:50 for this one, which had a lot of challenging wordplay in it. There seemed to be an awful lot of removing middle letters or outside letters going on, but it got easier towards the … Read more “Saturday Times 24837 (30th April)”

Solving time: About 40 minutes, with the last 10 minutes spent on three clues – 7/11/12. One unknown word for me today – NAIRA, but a few others were unfamiliar – TATAMI, PLENIPOTENTIARY and PO … Read more “Sunday Times 4430 (24 Apr 2011)”

Solving time 16:50. A bit of a curate’s egg of a puzzle – brilliant in places but spoilt by a few loose ones and fillers. I hope someone can help me out with 18D, as … Read more “Saturday Times 24831 (April 23rd)”

Solving time: Just over half an hour. I finished it during my son’s swimming lesson, but I think it was a couple of minutes late finishing. I didn’t think I was going to make it, … Read more “Sunday Times 4429 (17 Apr 2011) – Toilet humour”

Solving time 14:04 – not a particularly difficult puzzle, but great fun to solve. My one complaint is that there were too many double/cryptic definitions. Some of the others more than made up for that … Read more “Saturday Times 24825 (16th April)”

Solving time: About 24 minutes, albeit with one mistake. Pretty standard fare. There were three words I didn’t know, but all went in confidently enough from the wordplay alone. They were PINON, NISEI & ANIMADVERSION. … Read more “Sunday Times 4428 (10 Apr 2011)”

Solving time 16:53. Mostly straightforward but memorable for a couple of real gems – the gallows humour in 16ac raised a chuckle, but 28ac was just brilliant! Across 1 COSMIC DUST – CO’S (Commander’s) + … Read more “Saturday Times 24819 (April 9th)”

Solving time: Exactly 30 minutes. I thought of the final answer just as my son finished his swimming lesson. After Ernest Rutherford got a mention in the grid that pre-dated this one by two days, … Read more “Sunday Times 4427 (3 Apr 2011) – A scientist no one thought of”

Solving time 14:02. Not a particularly difficult puzzle, but the surface readings were very smooth throughout, which occasionally made parsing the cryptic elements harder. COD to 24ac, but 1ac and 26ac also deserve a mention. … Read more “Saturday Times 24813 (2nd April)”

Solving time: Hard to judge. I did this in bits and pieces in five or ten minute sections. But I would guess well over an hour and a half. This was certainly much harder than … Read more “Sunday Times 4426 (27 Mar 2011) – Normal Sunday service has been resumed?”