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Hello everyone. First time here so please be gentle.

I've flirted with The Times crossword occasionally over many years. I find that I am either able to quickly solve a large portion of it or get almost nothing even after hours of staring at it.

I found last Saturday's very difficult indeed. How would you experienced people rate this puzzle in terms of difficulty and what advice would you give me in order to improve?

My main difficulty tends to be understanding the construction part of the clue. This forum looks like an excellent place to come for help. :) Hopefully someone will be able to explain these for me.

4d. God's own judge holding oligarch's case up (7)

I think the solution is JEHOVAH but I'm not sure of the derivation. Is it J from judge, HAVE for holding and OH for oligarch's case then EHOVAH up?

6d. Castle here? King's in blooming check!

I think the solution is HARLECH but why?

Welcome, ianb.
You have come to the right place - lots of helpful people here.

I'm not sure about your first one, though "oligarch's case" might just be the O and H of OligarcH.

The other is R for King (rex) in HALE for "blooming", then CH for "check" (chess abbreviation(

4d - you are all correct
6d R(rex- king) is in HALE (blooming) CH (check)

Yes, I think you are right on JEHOVAH
J - judge
HAVE - "own"
OH as above

6 D. 'Blooming' gives Hale
'King' gives R (from Rex)
'Check' is Ch, in chess (the notation used when reporting/analysing a match).
Ha r le ch - Harlech, where there's a castle.

I can't work Jehovah out any better than you did.

J=judge OH =oligarch case OWN= have THE WHOLE THING BACKWARDS ON J

Don't have crossword so cannot help with rating.
Hale - blooming + R - King ("king's in blooming") + CH = check in chess.gives Harlech?

Dear IanB,

welcome to this network, which has a lot of very helpful people on it who are much cleverer than me.

I thought last Saturday's was a difficult one, and I sneaked on to this net to see how everyone else was getting on. As far as doing the Times crossword generally is concerned my own experience has been just to try and learn all the technical tricks, which are often repeated , eg 'see' is often 'Ely' for some reason. I have been at it for years and still get stuck all the time. Good luck.

Thank you all very much for responding so quickly. Despite ticking the box, I didn't get notifications for replies.

Golly, I would never have got HARLECH but hopefully R for King and CH for check will stick in my mind from now on. :)

Welcome to the forum Ianb and thank you for posting so clearly. I looked in too late to help. That's my excuse anyway!
Toffer.
A see can be a diocese.