Category: Weekend Cryptic

23:36. A classic Dean Mayer puzzle this, with lots of clever and witty clues and some nice original touches. Also quite tough, for me at least, which is by no means unusual for this setter. … Read more “Sunday Times 4806 by Dean Mayer”

This took me longer than usual: about 50 minutes. I don’t think it was too hard. Just a well-clued Saturday puzzle. My LOI was 1ac, which took me ages to see, so I’ll call it … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27084 – Saturday, 07 July 2018. Too much football is barely enough?”

I enoyed this a lot more than the last Pearce entry it was my duty to blog. No complaints this time about any of the double definitions (or anything else). Nothing too far out, but … Read more “Sunday Times 4805, by Jeff Pearce — He lives!”

I started quickly on this one and after about 30 minutes had done all bar two. 3dn was just a blind spot for me, but 4dn is definitely my clue of the day. A very … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27078 – Saturday, 30 June 2018. Don’t raise my hopes.”

13m. Nothing too taxing from Harry this week, but the usual high standard and some nice witty clues. I don’t have much more to add, and am a bit short of time this week, so … Read more “Sunday Times 4804 by David McLean”

Another typically challenging Saturday puzzle, I thought. I had to do it in bits and pieces because I was otherwise engaged all that day, so I don’t have a time, but it rates as another … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27072 – Saturday, 23 June 2018. Thar she blows!”

In this batch of succinct, often witty clues, we have four excellent examples of double definitions, two that use disparate senses of the same word (23a and 6d) and two that involve homonyms (17 and … Read more “Sunday Times Cryptic 4803, by Dean Mayer — No escheating!”

This took me just over 17 minutes – a new PB, I’m sure, even though I still had several clues to parse for this blog. In fact the blog caused me to reconsider 17ac, so … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27066 – Saturday, 16 June 2018. Fast but unsure.”

9:21. This was what I have come to think of as the typical Jeff Pearce puzzle: quite straightforward, but all very neatly clued and fun to solve. I would recommend Jeff’s puzzles for beginners, but … Read more “Sunday Times 4802 by Jeff Pearce”

I am blogging this in beautiful Goa, India. A wonderful place, but since the monsoon arrived yesterday what else to do but crosswords? This was a challenging puzzle, but never impossible. My time was probably … Read more “Times Cryptic No 27060 – Saturday, 09 June 2018. Beautiful one day, monsoon the next.”