Happy Birthday Laura

It was Laura's birthday today so we went through to Bedford to meet her and Laurence and take them out for a meal.

The Three Dragons Walk

I led this walk for the group when Joyce was away in September (see here). She was sorry to have missed it suggested it might be nice to do again in the spring as there might be a some nice displays of bluebells in Argers Wood. 

Hadleigh and Kersey Walk

Today we joined Joyce on another risk assessment walk for one of her walks in the Suffolk Walking Festival. This one is  called "Is Kersey the most picturesque village in Suffolk?" and is on Thursday the 19th May. 

Mephisto Crossword Prize

I'm a winner again! This time a runner-up for the barred puzzle Mephisto 3215 from Sunday 10th April. You can see the explanation of the answers here. I haven't spent my £20 Waterstones voucher from my previous one yet so, when it arrives, I'll have £40 to spend. Yippee!

Tassel Croquet Tournament

This week we turned our back garden into a croquet lawn.

Hawkedon Walk

Today we joined Joyce on a risk assessment walk for one of her walks in the Suffolk Walking Festival. This one, called "Hawkedon  Horizons"on Friday the 20th May and is already sold out.

A Dickens of a Quick Cryptic

Times Quick Cryptic 2119 by Felix

Today we are treated to a Quick Cryptic from Felix, with plenty of his characteristically entertaining definitions, wordplay and surfaces. As always with this setter, I was looking out for a theme, but what did I find? See below. At the harder end of the QC spectrum, this took me a couple of minutes over my average of 5 1/2 minutes, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Thank-you Felix. How did you all get on?

Click here to see what I think I found

I suspect there may be a theme related to the answer to 4D, an Irish series, of course, but never having watched it I don't know if we've got any references elsewhere. One for the commenters to help me out with, this time! Of course, as jackkt points out, there may not be a theme at all. Sawbill got it... It's Dombey and Sons (No I've not read it). Thank-you Sawbill. See his comment below.

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Sawbill's turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find his latest crossword, and a date for the diary here. Enjoy! If anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index to all 49 here.

( Read all about it... )

Weekend Quick Cryptic 49 - by Sawbill

Click here to read about the origin of this series of crosswords.

A brief history of the origins of these crosswords for those who are new to them. As a blogger of the Times Quick Cryptic Crossword on Times for The Times every other Friday, I often had comments on the blog bemoaning that The Times provides a Quick Cryptic only on Mondays to Fridays. When I finally gave up work at the end of February 2020, I decided that I would try my hand at compiling crosswords. It was with some trepidation that I published, in May that year, the first of these Weekend Quick Cryptics to fill the gap. Well it seemed to go down well so I did another. And then my fellow crossword solver and commenter on Times for the Times, Phil Jordan, volunteered to produce some too. And then, more recently, so did Sawbill. So now the three of us take turns, publishing each new crossword via my Friday Quick Crossword blog. You can find an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

This time it is Sawbill's turn to provide the fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic crossword. 

Cavenham Heath Walk

Just a short walk this morning, but there was lots to see. We decided to visit Cavenham Heath. 

Bradfield Woods Spring Flowers

Now is a great time to visit Bradfield Woods, a perennial favourite of ours. Dawn and I had a walk their this morning in the lovely spring sunshine. 

Stifado

Laura bought me The Spicery's How to be a Mezze Legend cookbook for my birthday.

Mildenhall Walk and The Ark

Today we had, for a change, a linear walk... well some of us did, anyway and others returned to the start on foot. We started at Mildenhall Hub and walked to Isleham and the amazing new church, The Ark.

Great Livermere Walk

It was a lovely sunny morning and everyone was up early so we went for a morning walk. I decided to use the Discover Suffolk Great Livermere Walks - Two Mere Strolls leaflet I had picked up when we did our Ingham walk in February, which turned out to be a great choice.

A Great Jumbo Cryptic Crossword

Times Cryptic Jumbo 1547 - 25th March

This was a lovely entertaining Cryptic Jumbo. Just how they should be. A lot of fun with plenty of inventive cluing and witty definitions and wordplay, yet not too difficult, although I see my last handful of answers took about 10 of my 41 minutes solve. Ticks of appreciation and exclamation marks of surprise all over my copy so it's hard to single out any favourite clues, but maybe the "sun follower" tickled me most. Or maybe the one who "sits on throne". Thank-you clever setter and more like this please, editor! How did you all get on?

( Read all about it... )

Alfie and his Crossword Tricks

Times Quick Cryptic No 2109 by Alfie

Oo! I've got an Alfie crossword to blog. As we all know by now (I hope) that should mean we have something alphabetical in the solution... and indeed we do. Click on the link below to see what I spotted. As for the crossword, well, as always with Alfie, it is not too easy and there are few clues that might cause some head scratching for a lot of us, I think. It certainly did for me, taking me over 1 1/2 times my average time at over 9 minutes. It is, incidentally a lipogram, containing every letter of the alphabet in the answers except a V. But that is not the alphabetical trick...

Click to see what I found

Each of the Across answers and each of the Down answers is in alphabetical order. Quite a feat of grid filling - try it for yourself if you don't believe me.

Great stuff. Thank-you Alfie! How did you all get on?

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Phil's turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find his latest crossword, and a date for the diary here. Enjoy! If anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index to all 48 here.

( Read all about it... )

Weekend Quick Cryptic 48 - by Phil Jordan

Click here to read about the origin of this series of crosswords.

A brief history of the origins of these crosswords for those who are new to them. As a blogger of the Times Quick Cryptic Crossword on Times for The Times every other Friday, I have often had comments on the blog bemoaning that The Times only provides a Quick Cryptic on Mondays to Fridays. When I finally gave up work at the end of February 2020, I decided that I would try my hand at compiling crosswords. It was with some trepidation that I published, in May 2020, the first of these Weekend Quick Cryptics to fill the gap. Well it seemed to go down well so I did another. And then my fellow crossword solver and commenter on Times for the Times, Phil Jordan, volunteered to produce some too. And then, more recently, so did Sawbill. So now the three of us take turns, publishing each new crossword via my Friday Quick Crossword blog. You can find an index to the complete series of crosswords here.

This time it is Phil's turn to provide the fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic crossword. 

U3A Newbourne Walk

It was the first Thursday of the month today, so time for a walk with the Bury St. Edmunds U3A Longer Walks Group. This time it was Dave's turn to lead.... and he set a fine example to follow. 

Hadleigh and the Layhams Walk

Today we did a walk from Hadleigh out to Upper and Lower Layham taking in some of the sights of Hadleigh along the way.

Thames Path Walking Holiday

We had a lovely 4 day walking holiday on the Thames Path.

Fordham Abbey Open Day

Today we had a little Japanese trip out... to Fordham Abbey just north of Newmarket.