linxit

I wondered if there might be a thematic puzzle today, and when I saw it was by Araucaria I pretty much knew I was right. The preamble stated that any E’s in the … Read more >>

Solving time 14:43 I raced through the top half in a couple of minutes, but then struggled with the bottom half and really struggled with the SE corner. Nothing particularly difficult and all … Read more >>

Solving time 9:09 A pretty straightforward puzzle from Chifonie today – I don’t often finish non-Rufus Guardian puzzles in under 10 minutes. Still, there were some good clues and a few less familiar … Read more >>

Solving time about 16 minutes either side of a phone call. First thing I thought was “What’s going on there with 9 down?” I got 3 and 25 quite quickly, but wasn’t thinking … Read more >>

Solving time 22:30 A bit of a mix of good and bad clues, easy and hard, and one made-up word at 5D (not in any of my dictionaries anyway, which include the latest … Read more >>

Solving time 16:22 Another feast of libertarianism from Paul, but I thought the long answer starting at 17 was just brilliant. Some rather whimsical answers too today – 21D had me scratching my … Read more >>

One of Rufus’s easier offerings for the most part, with some real beginners’ clues. Look at the first 4 across clues – you have easy examples of the 4 basic clue types: anagram, … Read more >>

Solving time – 17:05 This started out fairly straightforward and I made good progress, thinking I was going to finish inside 10 minutes for a while. Then I got stuck in two places, … Read more >>

Blimey, that was tough! It didn’t help that I’m nursing a hangover from last night (beer tasting event) but I think I’d have struggled anyway. Took about 45 minutes, but I had to … Read more >>

Quite a lot of general knowledge required to complete this one, although the trickier answers all had friendly wordplay so it can’t be accused of unfairness. Across 1 NICODEMUS (I,consumed)* – Nicodemus was … Read more >>

Sorry this is so late – I wrote it up at lunchtime but the site’s been down for most of the afternoon with an “Unable to connect to database” error. I seem to … Read more >>

This was tough, and certainly I wouldn’t have been able to solve it on the train! However, I’m between jobs at the moment so I was able to attack it with Chambers and … Read more >>

Solving time 8:12 I haven’t done a Rover puzzle for a long time, so I looked on the Setters page here to see what I’d be in for, and he’s described as “Hard”. … Read more >>