Category: Weekend Cryptic

Not a typo in sight and nary a bad clue. One new word that had me guessing and quite a few doubled-letters (SSx4, BB, DDx2, EE, TT, RR, LL). Across 1 D[own],RIBBLE – “River” Ribble … Read more “Sunday Times 4206/Carnauba”

Solving time 16:36 Luckily it was all literature and authors I’m familiar with, so I didn’t have to look anything up – although I did need a bit of help from PB for the explanation … Read more “Times Saturday 23491 – a very literary puzzle”

A brilliant anag &lit at 4D to end the year and a Scots celebration to usher in the new at 16D. Not a bad puzzle overall but marred yet again by a missing S in … Read more “Sunday Times 4205/Dec 31: New Years Resolution”

A Christmas Eve Sunday Jumbo – which was a bit hard to find online. Xmas eve puzzle with a Xmas-lite theme (pantos, reindeer, santa…) which even I didn’t find very hard. A couple of new … Read more “Sunday Times Jumbo 4204/still Christmas”

Solving time 11:30 A welcome relief after the previous Saturday’s really hard puzzle! No obscure vocabulary, and some very well-constructed clues with excellent surface reading. I expect the faster solvers here will have halved my … Read more “Times Saturday 23480”

No sour grapes this time. Nice selection of clues with not much to complain about. Some surprisingly well-hidden wordplay (20A, 21D) and some good &lits (16D). Across 1 SUNGLASSES – cryptic definition. 7 BASS – … Read more “Sunday Times 4203/no sour grapes this time”

Solving time – I dread to think. Certainly over an hour, in three sessions. After a few weeks of fairly straightforward Saturday puzzles they’ve come up with an absolute stinker. For a while I was … Read more “Times Saturday 23474 – a real stinker!”

Not a bad puzzle. A couple of clever wordplays. Actually I’m finding it hard to remember what I thought about this puzzle since I wrote these notes a week ago. Perhaps there’s a theme here … Read more “Sunday Times 4202 – etaerio”

Solving time 12:35 In retrospect that seems like a fairly indifferent time, as there don’t seem to be too many tricky clues, although there are a few interesting answers. I remember taking a while to … Read more “Times Saturday 23468 – the Persians are coming!”

Apparently this puzzle was published online with more than a couple of mistakes. I think I’ve been able to identify them… Across 1 BLUESTOC+KINGS – (close but)* followed by KINGS for “top blokes”, I suppose … Read more “Sunday Times 4201/mistakes”