Category: Weekend Cryptic

This was full of wonderful clues. Many of them seem simple as I write the blog, but felt rewarding to solve. 28ac was my LOI, and took a little time to see the wordplay even … Read more “Times Saturday 26724 – May 13, 2017. A delight of a crossword!”

This, for me, was the most enjoyable Jeff Pearce puzzle that I can remember. Decidedly tricky in parts, several gorgeous surfaces, some very elegant cluing, plenty of wit and not much in the way of … Read more “Sunday Times 4745 by Jeff Pearce”

This crossword certainly had its quota of obscure answers! Strangely my first two in were 22dn and 25 across, although one I only vaguely remembered from past crosswords, and the other I didn’t know at … Read more “Times Saturday 26718 – May 6, 2017. Wailing wildly!”

The club timer shows 14:46 for this, but I lost my internet connection halfway through, so all the answers disappeared on submission and I had to type them in again. So about 11-12 minutes allowing … Read more “Sunday Times 4744 by David McLean”

This was heavy in historical references and obscure (to me, at least) foreign nouns, which may have slowed down those solvers who don’t already have a Master’s rating in useless information. The rest of us … Read more “Times Saturday 26712 – April 29, 2017. Frankly, I did it his way.”

I found this to be a particularly tough one from Dean, with several of the answers (or key parts of the wordplay) being unknown to me. In most cases I was able to get around … Read more “Sunday Times 4743 by Dean Mayer”

Lots of delightful cluing this week. Great breadth of answers, geographic, culinary, classical, arts and more. Some clever single and double nested answers, and some nice misdirection. Even the dreaded fauna item was something familiar … Read more “Times Saturday 26706 – April 22, 2017. Simply elegant.”

This took me a little under 10 minutes, so from my perspective at least it wasn’t a difficult puzzle. But that is no bad thing, and I really enjoyed solving this one. It’s mostly impeccably … Read more “Sunday Times 4742 by Jeff Pearce”

This crossword had a lot of delicious clues. 16dn was an absolute delight! The more obscure answers were all gettable from the wordplay. And happily, no flora, no fauna. A very satisfying crossword. Thanks to … Read more “Times Saturday 26700 – April 15, 2017. See you in Ibiza?”

I found this one to be at the easier end of the ST spectrum, and a quick glance at the Leaderboard reveals some extraordinarily fast times amongst the senior pros. That said, for me this … Read more “Sunday Times 4741 by David McLean”