Category: Weekend Cryptic

Nothing very exotic here, though I wasn’t sure when working this that I’d ever seen, let alone eaten, a DRUPE (turns out this is a kind of fruit, not a specific variety). Some of the … Read more “Sunday Times Cryptic No 4911 by Robert Price — DIVERSIONARY tactics”

… and I too flew through this one, until I reached my LOI, 4dn, which took a bit of an alphabet hunt. I won’t be surprised to see reports of fast times, but everything was … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27714 – Saturday, 11 July 2020. All porkers watered and ready …”

12:13. A fun puzzle with a clue (12dn) that is pretty much identical to one that appeared in one of Dean’s puzzles that I blogged in March (4892), that was itself almost identical to a … Read more “Dean Mayer 4910 – déjà vu all over again”

Typical Saturday fare. Unusually rich in homophones, I thought, and in quaint double definitions (dd). No references as far as I could see to the birthday party across the Atlantic. Thanks to the setter for … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27708 – Saturday, 4 July 2020 … when the crossword doing’s dandy!”

This was an enjoyable way to pass a little time, though certainly not one of this setter’s most challenging. My biggest difficulty when I worked it last Saturday night was occasioned by an Internet outage … Read more “Sunday Times 4909, by David McLean — We are amused”

For me, this puzzle was in the Good Place. No clue I couldn’t (eventually) solve, few answers if any that could be written in and justified at first glance. There were answers beyond my vocabulary … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27702 – Saturday, 27 June 2020. The Good Place.”

DNF. I found this very tricky, and had spent a little over 20 minutes on it when I came to 18ac. I have somehow never come across the Roman name for Ireland (if anything I … Read more “Sunday Times 4908 by Robert Price – back to school”

This looked for a while like an opportunity for a personal best. I wrote in clue after clue … then, two-thirds of the way through, I hit the wall. How do you all go? My … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27696 – Saturday, 20 June 2020. Fast start.”

Take a deep breath… it’s really a BREEZE! For some reason, this puzzle seemed a lot harder at first (I didn’t even see the hidden word—what else could it have been?!) than it turned out … Read more “Sunday Times 4907, by Dean Mayer — Going Up ’T Country”

In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun? This crossword took us from sunup with the swelling sound of birdsong (kookaburras, for example) to sundown (time for supper), but it was a quick … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27690 – Saturday, 13 June 2020. In the meantime …”