Time taken: 6:36. I found this one on the easy side, but a look at the early times shows that I compare pretty favorably to two solvers that are usually faster than me, so maybe I got lucky.
There is a Jewish term that is pretty common in the USA but might trip a few solvers up, and some unusual terms where I had to trust the wordplay, but nothing really held me up here.
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Run racket with agent from the other side (7) |
| SCAMPER – SCAM(racket) and REP(agent) reversed | |
| 5 | Expend power during strike (7) |
| DEPLETE – P(power) inside DELETE(strike) | |
| 9 | Two leaders in Spanish gang always behind loud seasonal unrest (6,5) |
| SPRING FEVER – the first two letters in SPanish, then RING(gang), and EVER(always) after F(loud) | |
| 10 | Shoot crow, missing rook (3) |
| BAG – BRAG(crow) minus R(rook). Think shooting game | |
| 11 | Some flash or éclat on the beach (6) |
| ASHORE – hidden inside flASH OR Eclat | |
| 12 | Breaking norm to be music producer (8) |
| TROMBONE – anagram of NORM,TO,BE | |
| 14 | Significantly, soldiers intervening with authority (13) |
| MAGISTERIALLY – MATERIALLY(significantly) containing GIS(soldiers) | |
| 17 | Domino effect set off in new chaotic era (5,8) |
| CHAIN REACTION – anagram of IN, N(new), CHAOTIC, ERA | |
| 21 | Crustaceans fail to nip provided you initially retreated (8) |
| CRAYFISH – CRASH(fail) containing IF(provided) and the first letter of You | |
| 23 | Latin quarter pub introduces port (6) |
| BARRIO – BAR(pub) and RIO(port) | |
| 25 | Taking turns, both sides avoided goal (3) |
| END – BENDY(taking turns) minus the external letters | |
| 26 | Pure blue denim knit mum wears (11) |
| UNBLEMISHED – anagram of BLUE,DENIM surrounding SH(mum) | |
| 27 | A start on course after fellow swimmer (7) |
| MANATEE – A, TEE(start on course) after MAN(fellow) | |
| 28 | Lit class was first to go (7) |
| KINDLED – KIND(class), LED(was first to go) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Band abruptly vacated parade (6) |
| SASHAY – SASH(band) and the external letters of AbruptlY | |
| 2 | Patriarch advanced with supporter on poor player (7) |
| ABRAHAM – A(advanced), then BRA(supporter) on HAM(poor player) | |
| 3 | Ancient royal author to seem boring? (9) |
| PENDRAGON – PEN(author) and DRAG ON(seem boring) | |
| 4 | Vessel floating right back (4) |
| RAFT – R(right), AFT(back) | |
| 5 | Varying info these days to support one taking the plunge? (10) |
| DIVERGENCE – GEN(info) and CE(Common Era) after DIVER(one taking the plunge) | |
| 6 | Overly proper round university religious festival (5) |
| PURIM – PRIM(overly proper) surrounding U(university) | |
| 7 | Implicate sibling cutting tree up (7) |
| EMBROIL – BRO(sibling) inside LIME(tree) reversed | |
| 8 | Ability to notice each delight before you (5,3) |
| EAGLE EYE – EA(each), GLEE(delight), then YE(you) | |
| 13 | Seeming old and wise, acquiring Tesla (10) |
| OSTENSIBLE – O(old) and SENSIBLE(wise) containing T(Tesla) | |
| 15 | Mock restraint after blowing top (9) |
| IMITATION – LIMITATION(restraint) minus the first letter | |
| 16 | Sweet rice came curried (3,5) |
| ICE CREAM – anagram of RICE,CAME | |
| 18 | Desert wildness (7) |
| ABANDON – double definition | |
| 19 | Tusker charged over wife? Well, almost (7) |
| NARWHAL – RAN(charged) over W(wife) then HALE(well) minus the last letter | |
| 20 | Unsavoury type tailed and carried out (6) |
| SORDID – SORT(type) minus the last letter, then DID(carried out) | |
| 22 | American appearing in substantial opera role (5) |
| FAUST – US(American) inside FAT(substantial) | |
| 24 | Look one’s best for hearing (4) |
| PEEK – homophone of PEAK(one’s best) | |
Quite surprised that I managed to finish this as I always find a couple of NHO’s or can’t fathoms in Thursday’s puzzles. But as G says, this was on the easier side. DEPLETE was my LOI as I couldn’t get ‘strike/hit’ out of my head. NHO PURIM but followed the wordplay. MAGISTERIALLY took some figuring out but eventually saw that GIS had to go inside something which gave me the answer. OSTENSIBLE had to wait for all the checkers to be in place. Liked ABRAHAM for the Patriarch. COD to DIVERGENCE.
Thanks G and setter.
I had SCARPER for 1a via the rather tortuous reasoning: SCALPER – agent in a racket- changing sides , i.e. R becoming L, with the definition being to run. I didn’t think of SCAMPER as a better alternative.
Enjoyed the maritime theme with manatee, crayfish and narwhal all coming ashore.
22mins marred by a pink
12:59 which is good for me, so a boostful start to the day. No complaints and the only real hold-ups were wanting SPRING CHEER for the NHO SPRING FEVER, and (as always) being slow to twig that an ‘-ing’ word (varying) might be a noun ending in ency/ance/ence/etc.
Pretty easy for a Thursday—still pretty clever!
11:14. Like corymbia my first thought for 1A was SCARPER but I hesitated and later on SCAMPER came to me thankfully. I was slightly hesitant about SASHAY as I’ve always thought of it as to mince rather than to parade but Chambers confirms that sashaying is more showy than mincing!
39 minutes. PURIM unknown but easy to work out. Delays finishing off in the SE corner.
Not too hard today (hurrah!) .. wrote crawfish instead of crayfish for some reason, but corrected it when it didn’t parse. No unknowns. Uther Pendragon remembered from the TV series Merlin… I thought he was played by Rutger Hauer but it was someone else, Hauer was Vortigern.
Crayfish was one of the items used in Bert Vaux’s much-loved American Dialect Survey a while back. Varies a lot from region to region, apparently. Can’t find a good link now; this one is paywalled sadly.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/06/pecan-caramel-crawfish-food-dialect-maps/276603/
Anthony Head, great actor, underrated because he got his big break from the Gold Blend commercial.
And then Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
Mark Jax, in the Sam Neill/Rutger Hauer version I was thinking of ..
Brother of Murray (singer)
Looking at those heat maps I’m guessing crayfish in USA are tiny little shrimpy things like the crawfish/crawdads from Texas and Louisiana. I never heard the word crayfish while in America.
Here in Perth we export heaps of crayfish, especially to Japan. Lobster-sized and shaped, but no claws. But google tells me they’re actually “Rock Lobsters”. Who knew? (Hint: B52s.)
I prefer prawns, more tender. And even better are Moreton Bay bugs, exquisite, but hideously expensive hereabouts.
13’05”, good after a couple of poor showings.
PURIM I knew from recent studies of the book of Esther.
Thanks george and setter.
50 mins with a DNF right at the bottom. Either of PEEK or KINDLED would probably have led to the other, both parsed but thought that “lit” meant I should be looking for one of the many words for drunk.
Also had SCARPER for SCAMPER, racket=scar seemed possible.
Spent some time worrying that FUST containing A(Merican) didn’t make sense.
Well, at least I managed to finish on 52 mins. Pretty fair today. Last three in were CRAYFISH, ABANDON & END. Probably would have been quicker as I had read wildness as wilderness! END biffed without parsing.
Thanks G and setter.
31 minutes with LOI KINDLED, having slowly spotted the relevant marine creatures as I moved south. BARRIO was dredged up from the depths of my mind rather than the sea.
COD to MAGISTERIALLY. Thank you George and setter.
15:15. The long ones took me a while to see. Similarly to the QC, there is an answer here that is also in today’s Concise. I don’t know how they got there but we have a lot of invasive American crayfish in the local River Lark. Thanks George and setter.
About 15 minutes.
– Biffed CHAIN REACTION from the enumeration without seeing exactly what the anagrist was
– Thought 21a was going to start with ‘crab’ for ages until the checkers pointed me towards CRAYFISH
– Didn’t work out which word needed its first and last letter removed to get END
– Couldn’t parse UNBLEMISHED as I missed that ‘knit’ was the anagrind
Thanks glh and setter.
FOI Ashore
LOI Crayfish
COD Sashay
Pleasant solve in 22 minutes. LOI OSTENSIBLE preceded by UNBLEMISHED when I finally saw the anagram part. BARRIO entered with fingers crossed. Thanks to setter and blogger.
9:48 with no unknowns or particular delays.
22 mins. Most enjoyable, thank you setter and editor.
NHO PURIM, didn’t parse MAGISTERIALLY, didn’t care in the joy of solving. Enjoyed all the animals and even the opera was within GK.
Thanks glh too.
32 minutes. All pretty straightforward for me, just the usual delays which are of no interest to anyone — just cleverness from the setter and general slowness from me; I have to go out but managed to get everything done before doing so.
10:32. This was not as hard as it seemed to me: I felt like I was grinding it out but it all happened more quickly than I expected.
39 minutes at anchor in the caldera of Santorini.
LOI PEEK as I inexplicably struggled to relate KIND to class. Otherwise, in retrospect, difficult to see why it took so long in the absence of any NHOs and with mostly helpful cluing. I’m putting it down to a lax and leisurely state of mind.
My money is on a DNF Friday.
Thanks to setter and glh.
15.14, slow to get the last two, especially PEEK which had some alternatives, like SEEK and PEER, to disconcert. I forgot to parse END, since it couldn’t be anything else: I see from Chambers there’s only two words which comply, the other one being fendy, which apparently means thrifty in Scots. Add me to the list of those narrowly avoiding CRAWFISH, and equally narrowly correcting OSTENSIBLY when I notice MANATEY was not a thing.
PURIM is fun: it’s the one festival when the kids in Stamford Hill get to dress up, possibly because it’s celebrating the one book in the Tanakh which doesn’t mention G-d.
Cheers George – nice to have a gentler Thursday!
30′ mostly straightforward for me. For some reason had “prium” in my head but crossers came quickly enough to correct it. Struggled with last 2 in SE corner, spending a while trying to solve for lit=drunk, which seems the usual usage in crosswordland! Didn’t parse CRAYFISH.
Thanks George and setter.
Surprisingly quick for a Thursday, 14 minutes with an interruption, NHO PURIM but wordplay was clear, the rest flowed nicely.
25 mins. Didn’t know the festival (I think) or BARRIO, but nothing here was unfair and it felt like steady going all the way. COD to MAGISTERIALLY for tricking me for so long.
24 mins – third stinker in a row for me – or I am just off form – but at least I finished this one on the same day I started it.
A gentle Thursday for a change. From SASHAY to OSTENSIBLE in 14:44. Liked SPRiNG FEVER. Thanks setter and George.
22:56, and feeling a bit sluggish after a few sprightlier days. Quite a lot of the bottom half was unyielding, and having RANKLED tentatively entered for 28ac didn’t help matters (especially as it gave an unparsable but tempting LEER or PEER for PEEK). LIT is one of those words, isn’t it? I thought it could very well mean FIRED UP, in the sense of ANGRY, which it doesn’t seem to, other than having a (hopefully) loose association with DRUNK.
34:27. NHO PURIM or BARRIO but felt happy to risk them both. LOI OSTENSIBLE. I liked CRAYFISH and UNBLEMISHED
Enjoyable. No NHOs, PURIM vaguely remembered. Couldn’t parse end so it was LOI with a shrug, never would have guesses bendy. Otherwise only holdups were PEEK and the SORDID BARRIO crossers. Tempted by SCARPER, but it didn’t parse and SCAMPER popped the neurons microseconds later. Especially liked the two long across answers.
Enjoyed and was chuffed to finish in 18 mins only to find i had peak and sorded whatever that is, blast! Thanks for a good puzzle.
I didn’t have time to solve last night, so I tackled this one after breakfast. Slow at first, but I picked up speed, biffing chain reaction and magisterially. I was wondering why spring riot didn’t fit, but that may not be a UK thing. Deplete was the most difficult, but it became obvious with the checkers.
Time: 21:17
Spring riot?
I confidently entered PRIUM, only to erase it once SPRING FEVER went in. At which point I remembered PURIM, a festival that I did know! This was easy for a Thursday, with no unknowns. MAGISTERIALLY gave me some delay at the end, but once I’d worked out ‘materially’ it came to me, with the correct spelling indicated; that led to the excellent PENDRAGON and leaving just SORDID, not difficult once I’d separated unsavoury from ‘type’, and PEEK, which required an alphabet trawl to get the correct meaning. I didn’t parse END either, so thanks to George for that and to setter for a pleasant workout.
Factoring in the difficulty levels of the 15×15 compared to the QC, I found this a lot easier to solve than the latter today. My time of 25.33 was by some way slower than the QC, but the answers seemed to come much more readily. I finished up with ABRAHAM closely followed by MAGISTERIALLY, but for the life of me couldn’t parse END although I was totally happy it was correct. Having seen our glh’s explanation, I’m pretty sure I would never have thought of bENDy for ‘taking turns’. The only indifferent clue in an otherwise excellent puzzle for me.
30 mins. Didn’t know CE for common era, nor BARRIO which I got right without help – Rio is such a useful port.
Loi SORDID
My thanks to glh & setter.
Not hard, deffo not Tricky Thursday. Not a PB. Some interesting bits.
9a NHO Spring Fever, but I have because it’s in Cheating Machine and only I have entered the multi-words.
10a Bag delayed me a bit because BI(r)D doesn’t mean shoot. BUD might but burd is not crow.
17a Chain Reaction biffed, then saw the anagram.
23a Barrio NHO AFAIK.But I have been to Venezuela and seen some. I have no idea why the owners of the second biggest oil reserve after Saudi have slums on the outskirts of Caracas which show every intention of sliding down the hill onto the Hilton.
27a Manatee LOI.
1d Sashay, WOD.
4d MER Raft isn’t a vessel, it floats because it is made of light materials or is buoyed by empty sealed ones.
19a Narwhal, missed the HALE bit.
6d NHO Purim but the wordplay was kind. Capitalised in CM. The imported entries in CM are all lower case for a reason I shan’t bother to explain, and had I seen purim before I would have capitalised it.
Damn and blast it, 24d not Peek but PEaK lazy twit! DNF.
??? PEEK is right and PEAK is the homophone pointing to the answer. Or have I misunderstood you?
Yes, I entered PEAK, so it is wrong.
Just couldn’t get LOI SORDID, but otherwise pleased to finish all parsed. Best outing for a while. Still struggling with inclusion devices – in CRAYFISH I thought that ‘crash’ was ‘nipping’ (or biting) ‘if’ and ‘y’ (reversed), not the other way round. Apart from that I seemed to get everything else. Many thanks all.
Was pleased with myself for finishing a Thursday ..then everyone says how easy it was !
WOE – another SCARPER
33.10. Is it just me or are the Monday puzzles getting much harder?
Never really got going but at least managed to avoid some silly mistakes- craWfish, ostensiblY . The latter allowing me to get my LOI manatee.
Sorry- bit jet lagged after late landing last night, which I did know was Wednesday!
Really enjoyed this one. Plenty of thinking to do and the piecing together of PURIM, but no major blocks. Very satisfying. I particularly liked OSTENSIBLY as I’d been trying for a while to fit STAGE into the answer (Tesla inside sage) until I SENSIBLY changed tack.
21 mins but one typo – despite checking! Drat.
COD: DEPLETE. Clever misdirection with strike.
A pleasant problem, all done in 31 minutes. Parsed all except END, which had to be right even if BENDY did not come to mind. Agree the MER about RAFT = vessel, but it did not delay me too long, unlike the SE corner which took a while to unravel.
FOI – SPRING FEVER
LOI – SORDID
COD – PENDRAGON
Thanks to george and other contributors.
47 minute DNF with SCARPER. The pink square made the answer obvious. I was slow everywhere and finished up in the SE with KINDLED and PEEK. Thanks glh.
Never parsed END, and I’m not sure it’s a very good clue. BENDY? Wasted time with SCARPER and wondering whether BARROW (in-Furness) was a port. Is it? No pen to hand meant the anagrams dragged a bit too. So all in all, not proud of my 23’00”. I expect a disappointing WITCH. One good result: imagining a bra and a ham side by side as pictogram for the patriarch.
7:30. Seemed to do the clues in the wrong order and MAGISTERIALLY held me up for a while seeing where the soldiers slotted in. Not so tricky Thursday.
40 minutes and I rather liked this (unlike other recent puzzles, there wasn’t the one unsolvable clue left over at the end, but I also thought many of the clues were very good). It wasn’t too hard, but the clues had a good number of surprises and didn’t work the way I was expecting them to at first, so that was fun. ABANDON, KINDLED and OSTENSIBLE were ones I particularly liked, but there were many more.
43 minutes .PURIM was NHO and hence LOI. I struggled with UNBLEMISHED because I was trying to anagram MA instead of SH for MUM. Schoolboy error. But you’ve all gone to bed by now so I doubt anyone will read this.
Oh and A thony Head was of course Mr Gently Benevolent in the wonderful Bleak Expectations
FYI, I often take a look at the previous day’s blog if I’ve posted earlier on an interesting puzzle, so do read later comments. And ‘easy for a Thursday’ doesn’t mean easy, so no need to be disheartened!
Entered RANKLED instead of KINDLED which made PEEK impossible. Thought there might be a link between the tipsy sense of lit and some form of annoyance. 30 mins with those two errors. Enjoyable puzzle. SORDID fooled me for a while as I was expecting a —-DED ending. Thanks All
Did better than expected after a long delay getting started. But SPRING FEVER got me underway (perhaps literally!) and answers came steadily after.
Especially liked MAGISTERIALLY and SCAMPER, but many other good clues