BY BRIAN GREER

CROSSWORD fans who are skimming the news before returning to a particularly tricky clue should look away now for fear of suffering serious demotivation.

Just 8½ minutes was the average time taken for the winner of this weekend's Times Crossword Championship to complete a puzzle.

Mark Goodliffe, a finance director from West London, won the annual competition at the Mind Sports Olympiad at Kensington Olympia.

It was his first appearance in a championship final, up against 21 wordsmiths, of whom 17 had made no mistakes in their semi-final.

Mr Goodliffe finished just ahead of two former champions, Bill Pilkington, 51, head of finance at Middlesbrough Borough Council, and Alastair Sutherland, 63, a genealogist from Glasgow. Two clues caused particular problems. While most contestants realised that "woman who posed an enigma (2-8)" referred to the Mona Lisa, many misspelt her real name, La Gioconda.

In another puzzle, "jazz pianist playing after note on horn (6)" proved to be a big hurdle due to a lack of familiarity with Jelly-Roll Morton and the meaning of "mort" as the sounding of a huntsman's horn on the death of the quarry.