Category: Weekend Cryptic

I think this was about 25 minutes. I solved it on the train on Monday morning, but my mobile phone was dead so I didn’t have a stopwatch. Brilliant puzzle, and I attracted a few … Read more “Saturday Times 24747 (15th Jan)”

This is my first offering so please be gentle! I am sure this was a fairly straightforward jumbo, however knowing that I had to blog it and making sure there were no howlers dragged it … Read more “Times Jumbo 906 – Saturday January 8th.”

Solving time: 23 minutes This was easily finished during my son’s swimming lesson, and I was left twiddling my thumbs for a few minutes at the end. I hadn’t heard of CUCKOOPINT, but I knew … Read more “Sunday Times 4415 (9 Jan 2011)”

Solving time 15:10 – apologies for the lateness and brevity of this report, but it’s ‘er indoors’s birthday today, and I was lucky to grab 20 minutes to throw this together! Normal service will hopefully … Read more “Saturday Times 24741 (8th Jan)”

Solving time 21:28, but I can plead overindulgence the night before for the slowish time. Even so, this was quite a tricky one to put before us on the biggest “morning after” of the year! … Read more “Saturday Times 24735 – New Year hangover!”

Not too hard, solved in 13:02. The setter’s a bit of an egotist, as you can see FAB ME spelt out in the unches down column 6! Mind you, some of the wordplay deserves the … Read more “Times 24729 Saturday-on-a-Friday (Christmas Eve)”

Solving time 15:35, so about just-above-average difficulty. Actually, having read some of last week’s comments I was expecting a real toughie, but I flew through the top half in about 3 minutes flat. The bottom … Read more “Saturday Times 24724 (18th Dec)”

Solving time 12:50, considerably easier than the one in the paper, but still a pretty good puzzle. Across 1 TRIP – R(iver) inside TIP. 3 FORM LETTER – FORM (class) + LETTER (character) 10 IN-CROWD … Read more “Saturday Times 24718b (11th Dec – online)”

Solving time 17:17 (one wrong, as it turned out). A double treat for us last Saturday (or a cock-up, depending on how you want to spin it). Two different crosswords were published: one in the … Read more “Saturday Times 24718a (11th Dec – paper)”

Quite tricky, around 20 minutes I think, solved in a couple of sessions as I was interrupted half-way through. Three of the perimeter entries went in quickly, but 10D took longer as I thought the … Read more “Saturday Times 24712 (4th Dec)”