Fairly reasonable in terms of difficulty. I exceeded my target partly because of some schoolboy errors and partly because I woke up with severe case of anagram blindness. Some days they just jump out at you, some days they just sit there refusing to rearrange themselves. 7 minutes for me.
Across |
1 |
Regularly admits shutdown a revelation (10) |
|
DISCLOSURE – Alternate letters of aDmItS + CLOSURE |
8 |
Susceptible to strong emotion in past maybe (7) |
|
INTENSE – IN + (e.g. past) TENSE |
9 |
Bird, unknown, in valley (5) |
|
GULLY – GULL + Y |
10 |
Job behind time โ enquire (4) |
|
TASK – T + ASK |
11 |
Angry at local feature of football pitch (8) |
|
CROSSBAR – CROSS + BAR |
13 |
Bluish-grey fruit, large (5) |
|
PEARL – PEAR + L |
14 |
Chances of winning toss in event โ not entirely small (5) |
|
EVENS – EVEN[T] + S. Gets me every time. Looking for a synonym for ‘event’ before realising this is a QC and you can just use the word in the clue. |
16 |
Minor planet, it soared extraordinarily (8) |
|
ASTEROID – anagram (‘extraordinarily’) of IT SOARED |
17 |
Surrounded by leaders of angry mob in demonstration (4) |
|
AMID – acronym |
20 |
Classifies leisure activities, without payment at first (5) |
|
SORTS – SPORTS minus P for payment |
21 |
Floor covering from Paris thatโs included in part (7) |
|
PARQUET – QUE is ‘that’ in French, inserted into PART. And another one! I’m thinking ‘role’? ‘bit’? ‘piece’..? No – ‘part’. Durr. |
22 |
Arranged free hat for one from the past? (10) |
|
FOREFATHER – anagram (‘arranged’) of FREE HAT FOR |
Down |
1 |
Ultimately sad break in relations leads to indecisive state (5) |
|
DRIFT – [SA]D + RIFT |
2 |
Elite force, itโs brought up inside workplace โ all right (12) |
|
SATISFACTORY – SAS with IT backwards inside + FACTORY |
3 |
Single advance of funds, we hear (4) |
|
LONE – sounds like LOAN |
4 |
In South Africa I make mistake identifying range of mountains (6) |
|
SIERRA – SA with I + ERR inside (edited – thanks, Kevin) |
5 |
Regrets changes involving Indiaโs official list (8) |
|
REGISTER – anagram (‘changes’) of REGRETS with I for India inserted |
6 |
One saying too much, a bumbler? Both, oddly (12) |
|
BLABBERMOUTH – anagram (‘oddly’) of A BUMBLER BOTH |
7 |
Mediterranean island tree, reportedly (6) |
|
CYPRUS – sounds like CYPRESS |
12 |
A learner painting in the open air (8) |
|
ALFRESCO – A + L + FRESCO |
13 |
Quietly advance in status getting compliment (6) |
|
PRAISE – P + RAISE |
15 |
Plant having medicinal properties โ easy to understand (6) |
|
SIMPLE – double definition. I did not know the former. |
18 |
Discourage the German bringing in note (5) |
|
DETER – DER (‘The’ in German) with TE (note of the Sol-Fa scale) inside. |
19 |
Region is part of Far East (4) |
|
AREA – hidden word |
14 minutes, so apart from yesterday’s 10 minute puzzle by Mara I’ve been on 14 minutes all this week. I didn’t find anything hard but was generally a bit slow around the grid. The two answers I recall that I needed to return to were PARQUET and SIMPLE where I knew I knew a word that fitted both definitions but it didn’t spring immediately to mind.
Nice fast solve down the right hand side and bottom then utterly blocked in NW where we spent about 20 minutes looking for drift and intense. Eventually Mrs RH saw drift just as I saw intense at the 32 minute mark.
Also for the second time in recent days we recited the list of every know fruit apart from pear, until the p dropped in.
Thanks Hurley and Curarist
Snap!
Just over 11 min – I didn’t know the plant meaning of SIMPLE either.
6.34
Ditto re plant. Thanks Curarist and Hurley
Straightforward, although I was a bit surprised to see SIMPLE, and not surprised to see the NHOs: ODE marks it as ‘chiefly historical’. I evidently biffed PARQUET. Curarist, you forgot the I in SIERRA. 5:18.
I was really slow to get started today and thought this was going to be a bit of a slog until my brain clicked into gear about half way down the grid. I then sped through the rest until my last couple – DRIFT, where I tried very hard to make ‘doubt’ work, and INTENSE.
Finished in 7.51.
Thanks to Curarist
A tough one for me. Almost nothing solved bar TASK on first pass. Ultimately beaten by DRIFT and INTENSE.
Thanks Hurley and Curarist
My Friday morning brain refused to see DRIFT and INTENSE but otherwise nothing too difficult. Didn’t realise an asteroid was considered a planet?
Itโs not. Poor old Pluto discovered that astronomers have a strict definition of a planet.
“when I was in school I got a C because I forgot to put Pluto when naming planets, turns out I should have been teaching the class”
It’s quite carefully clued as a minor planet, and I think this covers both Pluto and the asteroids, though Pluto is also referred to as a dwarf planet. The main distinction between a minor planet and a moon (some of which are larger than full planets) is that a minor planet goes round the sun whereas a moon goes round a planet or minor planet. (There is some debate whether Charon, the companion of Pluto, should be considered a moon, or whether the two together should be classified as a binary minor planet – like a binary star).
The definition is โMinor planetโ which an asteroid is.
Thanks, re minor planet I have learnt something not in Wiki. However I wasn’t worried by the def at all, at all.
7.56, no major probs but slow to get going for some reason. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Average at 11:23.
LOI was SIMPLE. Unsatisfactory, since the definition of a plant is surely too obscure for a QC. Like most, I biffed on half the clue and came here to see what I had missed about the other half. I still donโt understand it.
COD INTENSE
The clue is straightforward enough if you know the relevant meaning of ‘simple’ (see Collins, for instance, or ODE). But there’s no reason to think a solver, at least a QC solver would know that meaning, as it’s archaic. I bet if you ask your doctor what a simple is, he won’t know; I don’t know how I knew it. Chaucer, maybe.
I felt it was “old”, but Wiktionary doesn’t seem to think it is archaic. It has 7 defs of which this is the first:
Noun
simple (plural simples)
(pharmacology) A herbal preparation made from one plant, as opposed to something made from more than one plant.
Shakespeare in fact! At Cambridge I directed The Merry Wives of Windsor and in an early scene Peter Simple hides in a closet to evade the irascible Dr Caius, who has the immortal line (leading to discovery) โnow, I have some simples in my closetโ. Collapse of Mistress Quickly! Never forgotten that meaning of simple!
Some hold ups – INTENSE, PRAISE, PEARL, DRIFT and LOI SORTS.
Nevertheless, only a little over average time, though slower than should have been for the difficulty.
6:37
12:50
A nice quick puzzle. Held up for a couple of minutes at the end putting together the pieces for SATISFACTORY before LOI INTENSE.
First time I’ve seen SIMPLE meaning a medicinal plant but it couldn’t be anything else. Found this a very straightforward QC, with a MER at 13A as the only pearls I’ve seen are a creamy colour, not bluish-grey. Thanks Curarist and Hurley.
I agreed on pearl BUT:
13a DNK Pearl=bluish-grey. Not in Wiktionary nor Chambers but my 1979 Collins has “a pale greyish-white colour, often with a bluish tinge” so I let Hurley off!
10:40
Held up for last 2+ mins by the DRIFT/INTENSE pair. Didn’t know the plant meaning of SIMPLE. Minor panic when asked to identify colours like PEARL. SATISFACTORY almost went in as satisfaction but made myself unravel its parsing.
11:34
No particular hold ups. DRIFT and INTENSE were my last two in.
Asteroid came quickly to mind, since I am currently reading Le Petit Prince, where the โplanetโ inhabited by the title character is โ l’astรฉroรฏde B 612โ.
Thanks Hurley and Curarist
Apart from the nho plant, I also found this quite a bit of a struggle in the NW, where I had a very dubious Doubt and ‘Uptense’ for a long time. Finally managed to see Drift and hence Intense (susceptible to ?), and was so pleased that I completely forgot to finish with 20ac, Sorts, extant. So a genuine DNF after about 30mins. CoD to 2d, Satisfactory, for the pdm. Invariant
I am aware of sports as leisure activities so I’ve no idea why that took me over a minute at the end. All green in a still pacy 10.51.
I too didn’t get the derivation of “Simple” and Googling didn’t offer a solution until I found this.
‘A โSimpleโ in Colonial times was an herbal plant grown on its own as a medicine. โSimpleโ being a term from the melding of two Latin words, Singula plica: a single purpose. This was the most elementary way to use medicinal plants. No fancy recipes or scientific acumen was needed.’
Seems pretty obscure. The only medicinal simple I could recall was ‘Simple linctus’ and that doesn’t contain herbs.
My second sub-7 minutes solve in a row, but add me to the long list of those who had NHO that meaning of SIMPLE. There is unusual, there is obscure, there is archaic – and this was beyond all of those. But fortunately it was a DD and the other half of the clue plus the checkers left one little alternative.
Otherwise a pleasant and stress-free solve. Many thanks Curarist for the blog and a good weekend to all.
Cedric
Like plett (as always my Crossword Bro) I tried very hard to justify “doubt”, except I tried for longer than he did so I ended up with 09:18. In fact that trio in the NE corner (DISCLOSURE, DRIFT and INTENSE) were my downfall, because I spent too long trying to crack them at the start and so it was a couple of minutes before my first one went in (PEARL).
A “simpler” rang a faint bell as an old word for an apothecary so that was OK.
Many thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Another relatively straightforward one – 8.12 for me having started slowly and been held up at the end by the INTENSE DRIFT crosser.
Never really given it much thought as to how to spell it but ALFRESCO looks weird as one word.
I am interested to follow the debates on Pearl colour and simple, herb/potion. I contributed above.
3d paused between Loan and Lone.
6d Blabbermouth, WOD.
Otherwise I thought it fairly easy.
I appreciate you weren’t asking for help but just in case (and as it may be helpful to any newbies reading)
“Single advance of funds, we hear ” = LONE, LOAN, indicator
The soundalike indicator is next to LOAN, so that is what we’re searching for the homophone of, therefore we want to put in LONE.
Thank you, Hurley, for another friendly and enjoyable puzzle. Especially liked BLABBERMOUTH with its clever anagram. LOI CROSSBAR though had to come back to parse a few; left with just the medicine plant unparsed – NHO SIMPLE (thank you, Curarist – glad I’m not the only one!).
Were this 1976, nobody would be even slightly twitching an eyebrow at SIMPLE. It was an absolute 24 carat chestnut way back then, and my old brain saw it immediately – but on considering it later I doubt I’ve seen it since the 1990’s.
I missed half a dozen Across clues on the first pass, but wiped out the Downs, and the second pass then posed no difficulty.
FOI INTENSE
LOI PARQUET
COD CROSSBAR
TIME 3:19
a 24-carat chestnut sounds like that metal conker that caused such trouble at the recent World Conker Championships.
13 minutes today spending time trying to justify SIMPLE ( had to come here for the answer) and the parsing of LOI SORTS ( had jotted it in early but it felt right to check it).
Enjoyed it.
Another COD to CROSSBAR.
David
A well constructed puzzle from Hurley as usual, and one that stretched me just beyond my target at 10.47. I found SIMPLE simple knowing of the medicinal definition, but PRAISE my LOI took me far longer than it should have.
A tough week when I had only one solve under target with a total time of 55.45, giving me a daily average of 11.09.
Started with DRIFT, LONE and SIERRA. The penny dropped for DISCLOSURE a while later. SIMPLE struck the vaguest of bells from the plant side of things. With AREA, BLABBERMOUTH and DETER in place, PARQUET was biffed. 7:23. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Solved steadily in 20′ 57″ – good for me!! Guessed SIMPLE – NHO as plant. LOI PARQUET.
SIMPLE went in with a shrug but, without many checkers, I bunged in THEREAFTER at 22ac – it fitted at the time but caused all sorts of problems erโฆ thereafter. It was PEARL that kept me staring at the screen in the end though – couldnโt see it for some time. Iโm sure pearl is bluish-grey but it wasnโt in my palette. 14 minutes.
Fun and relatively straightforward with lois being DRIFT and INTENSE. My first attempt at 1d was DOUBT and I spent a while thinking how an oub could be a break in relations! SIMPLE was simple if youโve encountered it before. Enjoyed I ERR inside SA – fun clue! All done in 17 minutes – thanks Hurley and Jack!
7:53
Didn’t feel particularly slow, but did note that I took far too long to think that a minor planet would be simply ASTEROID – not sure I would have equated the two. PARQUET also had me foxed until the U checker went in, and I immediately thought ‘Q before U’. Another here too that has NHO SIMPLE as a plant, but I’m hardly surprised.
Thanks Curarist and Hurley
17 minsโฆ
Nice end to the week. Like many above, dnk the medicinal plant definition for 15dn โSimpleโ.
FOI – 10ac โTaskโ
LOI – 1dn โDriftโ
COD – 6dn โBlabbermouthโ
Thanks as usual!
6.36 A quick one after a poor couple of days. The anagrams went straight in. SIMPLE was biffed. TASK, DRIFT and INTENSE were the last three. Thanks Curarist and Hurley.
Fairly easy, steady solve, once I got going. But then stuck temporarily at LOsI INTENSE and DRIFT, so obvious in hindsight.
Liked SATISFACTORY, CROSSBAR, BLABBERMOUTH, PARQUET.
Like others, had to biff SIMPLE.
I donโt think Prof Brian Cox would approve of ASTEROID = minor planet
(have been watching him on TV).
Thanks vm, Curarist.
I started well by writing in disclosure, but fell off a bit from there. It does look like I’m one of the few who knew the appropriate meaning of simple, but I got stuck on the should-be-easy Cyprus and gully.
Time: 8:03
12:30. When Laertes and Claudius are plotting to kill Hamlet they decide to increase their chances by putting poison on Laertes’ sword blade.
“I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all SIMPLEs that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death.”
You’d have been done in 6mins if you didn’t have to wade through Shakespeare ๐
Luckily I started with Hamlet instead of going through all the plays alphabetically (or chronologically)! Just kidding, I consulted my trusty Shakespeare Concordance. I came across this meaning of SIMPLE as medicinal herb in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merry Wives of Windsor too.
You know your way round the Shakespeare Concordance like I knew my way round a Playfair Football annual as a teenager!
Spent a long time on DRIFT/INTENSE, having first tried to justify โdoubtโ. A biffed blathermouth made CROSSBAR tricky until I saw the error of my ways. That type of SIMPLE was VHO. Fairly standard โone coffeeโ time for me. Thanks C and Hurley.
Apart from the Drift/Intense cross this was fairly approachable. Not really convinced by Drift, and agree Doubt a better answer (only it isn’t), or even Daunt – if only to include a relation!
FOI 9a Gully
LOI 8a Intense
COD 11a Crossbar – for the PDM
Enjoyed the blog today!
Back in the Club with a 22:10 solve that was a classic, classic case of “wow this is going so fast” and then 10 minutes of brain freeze staring at the last two clues. Finally took a break and rethought everything to get DRIFT and INTENSE. Whew!
I had anagram blindness too and had to use paper and pencil. SATISFACTORY was itself.
Points to you Hurley, and thanks to Curarist for the blog.
7:53
Same as those above, especially Plett11 (except 2โ slower than Plett).
Nice puzzle and blog, thanks Hurley and Curarist.
We joined those who had problems with drift and intense. Simple was a guess. Otherwise a pleasant solve.
Around average for me. Didn’t remember it, but having got it, I thought I’d come across SIMPLE in one of these before (or maybe a 15×15). Made me think of the soap without colours or perfumes so I guessed that might have something to do with it. 16:00 on the nose for me anyway. Thanks all.
11:21 with no errors. I’m one of the many that wasn’t aware of the definition of simple as a plant having medicinal properties, but the other half of the double definition and the checkers
made it a confident write-in. FOI -DISCLOSURE, LOI – DRIFT, COD – BLABBERMOUTH. Thanks Hurley and Curarist
.20 mins. Quite a lot of that was because I had doubt, not drift.
A nice crossword. Thanks for blog.
23:49, brain clearly hasnโt started yet today. I did know the medicinal meaning of โsimpleโ, but donโt know why I know.
Thanks to Hurley and Curarist.
A bit off the pace here with 13:52. The chief culprit was 8a where we stared for some time before Mrs T asked me whether I was sure about LOAN. When you go back to it the correct choice seems pretty clear. LOI was SIMPLE which we’d left because neither of us knew, or at least could recall, the plant meaning. I may, in retrospect, have come across it previously but in reality it went in with tightly crossed fingers. Thanks to Hurley and Curarist.
DNF because I didn’t find SIMPLE that easy! No idea why – I couldn’t be bothered with an alpha-trawl and just didn’t see the obvious ๐ I’ll use the fact that it is a significant birthday tomorrow and I am feeling very traumatised! Where did those decades go? Also, I’ve been very busy today getting ready for the celebrations (better than drowning my sorrows!).
Actually, the clue annoyed me because, as Curarist says, event and part were there in plain sight in 14a and 21a, which were no challenge, followed by such an obscurity at the first part of 15d.
Stopped the clock at around 15 minutes
I doubt I’ll see you tomorrow, so have a good weekend everyone!
Thanks Hurley and Curarist
Happy birthday for tomorrow PB. Hope the King’s telegram arrives on time ๐
Tee hee! Many thanks ND. Glad to say that I’ve 3 decades before that one, but the big 7-0 doesn’t seem feasible. I’m sure I only started work a few years ago ๐
I’m sixty-nine and a half, with very similar amazement that all those decades of work and life have happened and that the big 70 is imminent.
Unnerving isn’t it, Pam? Nothing we can do but celebrate!
Congratulations on the special birthday. I have one coming up next month but I expect it’s a bit older than yours!
Well, whatever it is, I hope yours will be fun too ๐๐๐ฅ Thanks for the kind message!
Happy birthday!
Many thanks ๐
Happy birthday! All the best people were born in October. Well, nearly all, so you others, don’t take offense!
These days I generally ease into the birthday by starting to think of myself as being the upcoming age a few months before. That way it’s not such a shock.
No, you’re right – mine was earlier this week ๐
And belated birthday greetings to you too, Invariant – here’s a toast to all October birthdays ๐ป๐ฅ
’54 was a great year ๐
It does seem like a good month – MrB’s is on Tuesday! I’m guessing you’ve had yours? Belated birthday greetings SC – I hope you had fun ๐
Another awful day.
Solved at midnight after sitting through 3 hours of Shakespeare!
Time around 25 mins, rounding off a lousy week. One DNF and only one SCC escape.
Iโm never going to get the hang of this.
โน๏ธโน๏ธโน๏ธ