This is one of those puzzles that you make heavy weather of but can’t really see why. Some of the definitions are a bit left-field I suppose, e.g ‘payment’ for ‘punishment’, ‘way of communicating’ for ‘drawl’, but generally it all seems quite fair in hindsight. 8 minutes for me
| Across | |
| 1 | Ostentatiously perform maybe leading to boos — what? (8) |
| SHOWBOAT – anagram (‘maybe leading to’) of BOOS WHAT | |
| 5 | Advantage garnered by landed gentry (4) |
| EDGE – hidden word | |
| 8 | Encountered aluminium as example of this? (5) |
| METAL – MET + AL | |
| 9 | Choice era for feathers (7) |
| PLUMAGE – PLUM + AGE | |
| 11 | More than anything else, poet’s first plain lyric recollected (11) |
| PRINCIPALLY – anagram (‘recollected’) of P for poet + PLAIN LYRIC | |
| 13 | Not getting deserved praise, a French paper, good (6) |
| UNSUNG – UN (‘A’ in French) + SUN (paper) + G | |
| 14 | Great excitement in fairground game (6) |
| HOOPLA – double definition | |
| 17 | Friendly reception from this lot? I pay unfortunately (11) |
| HOSPITALITY – anagram (‘unfortunately’) of THIS LOT I PAY | |
| 20 | After musical work not completed, advanced money, being rich (7) |
| OPULENT – OPU[ |
|
| 21 | Current agreement, perfect (5) |
| IDEAL – I + DEAL. Chestnut | |
| 22 | Gosh! That’s not half a made-up story (4) |
| MYTH – MY (gosh!) + TH[ |
|
| 23 | Criminal in the end bringing worry, I hesitate to say (8) |
| GANGSTER – G (end of ‘bringing’) + ANGST + ER | |
| Down | |
| 1 | House in Home Counties, north of motorway (4) |
| SEMI – SE + MI | |
| 2 | Powerful organisation’s wretched cop-outs (7) |
| OCTOPUS – anagram (‘wretched’) of COP OUTS. I wasn’t aware of this meaning of the word but it’s in Chambers | |
| 3 | Invoice topping island anger — who could afford it? (11) |
| BILLIONAIRE – BILL (invoice) + IONA (island) + IRE | |
| 4 | Look — take steps to include supper regularly (6) |
| ASPECT – ACT including SPE (alternate letters of ‘supper’) | |
| 6 | Sketch — ultimately novel way of communicating (5) |
| DRAWL – DRAW + [ |
|
| 7 | Routine all week long? (8) |
| EVERYDAY – double definition, though the second should be two words | |
| 10 | Middle of June concert — I perform number with little hope of success (11) |
| UNPROMISING – [ |
|
| 12 | Greek character, quiet, with space to grow rapidly (8) |
| MUSHROOM – MU + SH + ROOM | |
| 15 | Vote for men to enter physical training as punishment (7) |
| PAYMENT – AY (a vote for) + MEN inside PT | |
| 16 | Part of Roman tradition that’s repeated often (6) |
| MANTRA – hidden word. Another chestnut | |
| 18 | Encouragement over time to move faster (5) |
| SPURT – SPUR + T | |
| 19 | Insulting remark, so low, upset rector initially (4) |
| SLUR – acronym | |
Under 10min – a decent end to the week – LOI 3D, COD 22A
11 minutes. I lost time having thought of SHOWBOAT early but missed the parsing so it didn’t go in until later in the proceedings. It would have helped a lot if I’d just gone with it right away.
One pink square, typo on a phone solve. Don’t know how anyone solves on a phone, I found this pretty easy going but most of my time was spent back tracking fat thumbs.
Autocorrect is great with regular prose like this, but of course doesn’t work when pecking letters in a crossword.
13 mins and one pink.
COD BILLIONAIRE, LOI GANGSTER
I feel your pain
I’ve had a lot more one letter errors since I started solving on the phone. I only print out barred puzzles like Azed and Mephisto, and the occasional Friday Times 15×15. Long anagrams are the main problem with phone solving.
I always solve on the phone. I think it’s just a case of what you get used to. On my blogging days I used to print it out & then enter the solution on the laptop: I ended up with far more typos that way than just doing it on the phone.
On the phone is our normal MO. Sadly, practice has not ameliorated my fat finger problems.
I solve on all four of phone, iPad, PC and paper. I cannot honestly detect which is fastest or slowest, but I do find the phone most prone to fat finger errors. I tend not to count those as DNFs though – it’s entirely my own statistics for my own use so I will make the rules!
10.35, all good except I don’t really get how payment and punishment align. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
You will pay for your bad behaviour?
Collins sense 3: “something given in return; punishment or reward”
Hmm
I took a while to locate the access points to this one, but got there in the end.
23A had me go down a rabbit hole as I couldn’t get LANGUISH out of my head, until I conceded it had to be wrong, and re-emerged from said burrow to see GANGSTER staring at me.
Pi
I biffed SHOWBOAT, and ASPECT parsing post-submission. OCTOPUS dates back at least to Frank Norris’s 1901 novel of that name, where it referred to the Southern Pacific Railway. 7:03.
Steady going and no hold ups for a routine solve.
Started with EDGE and finished with MANTRA in 7.30 with COD to BILLIONAIRE.
Thanks to Curarist
12 minutes. A good mix of the straightforward with some less common words and original defs. SHOWBOAT and OCTOPUS weren’t exactly write-ins and held me up for a few minutes at the start. The ‘way of communicating’ def for DRAWL and just being thick for HOOPLA also slowed me down near the end. I liked the IKEA-like construction for BILLIONAIRE.
Thanks to Hurley and Curarist
7.28
The HOSPITALITY anagram crosser with SPURT and PAYMENT held me up at the end. Know what Curarist means but a good one I think. Thanks to him and Hurley
13:17
I needed pen and paper for the HOSPITALITY anagram.
MYTH and GANGSTER my last two in.
Thanks Curarist and Hurley
Gave up after 7 minutes. Around 2 of those minutes were spent on PAYMENT, but I was breezeblocked by GANGSTER.
Hard luck, Busman! GANGSTER was also my LOI, but I could only think of the unparsable lAuGhTER and dAuGhTER for a while.
I also made heavy weather of this, especially my L2I PAYMENT and GANGSTER, which pushed me out to 13 minutes. AY MEN for “vote for men” simply didn’t come, not helped by the fact that I spell it AYE and was trying all sorts of men such as OR before I realised it was, er, “men”. Even when the penny dropped, I had to squint hard to reconcile payment and punishment. And GANGSTER is one of those clues where I found any number of wrong trees to bark up before finally finding the right one – I even wondered briefly whether Laughter or Daughter could be the answer (they fit the checkers but that is all …).
I did not know the original “powerful organisation” meaning for OCTOPUS but as it happens, here in the UK Octopus is our fastest growing and now largest domestic power company, so it is indeed a power-full organisation. I had a suspicion that that wasn’t really what Hurley meant though!
So a slow solve, but got there in the end. Thank you Curarist for the blog.
Cedric
🐙😅
I would think of octopus in the sense of a crime syndicate where their long tentacles are reaching into many different areas, wrapping around and getting an unshakeable grip on what they want.
Sounds exactly like the power supply company to which Cedric referred.
I think I am the first of the devout SCC clan to post today, and this took me out to 30 mins or so. Just enough clues that would go in – hiddens weren’t very hidden, a few simpler shorts and the two long downs, to give me enough to grind through.
Just when you think you have seen every anagrind, along comes “maybe leading to” which didn’t register until rather later, delaying 1A.
Similar comments as others on PAYMENT (MER) and GANGSTER ( ok, clever). Bottom half slower than the slow top half. As Curarist says, not so hard in retrospect, but I haven’t yet found the trick to retrospective solving, so I’ll have to continue with the old fashioned banging head on wall approach.
I love the diversity shown in this blog, where I was pleased to have managed my first few in 7 minutes, by which time Busman has done all but 1 and concluded that was as far as he was going. He’d probably done the 15 and a few more before I finished, but the QC was enough for me for one day!
Retrospective solving! Let’s get to work on that research 🤣
6:20
Bishbashboshed my way around the grid here, picking up a decent number of acrosses on the first pass – got SHOWBOAT from definition once the first three downs were in. Left at the end with PRINCIPALLY, GANGSTER, PAYMENT and EVERYDAY solved in that order. Not too keen on PAYMENT = punishment but guess it works.
Thanks Curarist and Hurley
Harder than usual for a Hurley; struggled and had to throw in the towel with three to the bad.
1) Did think it might be HOOPLA but why? NHO the first definition. 2) Ach, ANGST, natürlich.
3) of course AY, but can’t quite swallow punishment = PAYMENT. Yes “you will pay” = “you will be punished”, but one is active, the other is passive.
But many to like even if CNP SHOWBOAT (NHO definition), SEMI (you mean SE is “in” Home Counties”? well, only if you go north, but north has a different function, no?) or OCTOPUS.
Thank you, Curarist.
The home counties (those around London) are in the South East of England, and hence are just SE in crossword land.
Of course! Thank you so much for reminding me.
Fuzzy head this morning having caroused with various legal eagles in EC4 last night so happy to take 13:12 and more importantly no careless pink squares on submission. Slightly derailed by entering MULTIPLY ahead of MUSHROOM the former clearly not being capable of the most tenuous parse.
Enjoyed this puzzle a lot, I think this was a good example of a QC as a training ground for the longer form of the game – so thank you Hurley.
FOI was SEMI
LOI: GANGSTER
COD: UNPROMISING – on the basis that it is a good example of a cryptic crossword clue with the answer constructed from multiple parts without resorting to NHO stuff.
Thank you for your blog Curarist.
Cheers
Horners
SEMI FOI, but SHOWBOAT LOI – just couldn’t see it!
Very enjoyable, smooth puzzle. COD to MUSHROOM, not least for giving poor old MU a run out instead of PI, ETA and CHI.
Home and hosed in 07:09 for 1.001K and an Excellent Day. Many thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Forgive me for asking, Templar, but I think you’re the only one who uses this K unit of measurement – what does it mean and how does it work?
K = Kevin = Kevin’s time. He usually comments early and is consistently quick. Check out the link to the Glossary on the RHS of the page.
OK I think I get it – so Kevin took 7’03” and Templar took 7’09”. But 709 divided by 703 = 1.008 (not 1.001). Maybe Templar meant “roughly”?
I confess that the calculation takes place in my head and is not intended to be scientifically accurate. Very proud that I got so close today, I might have an extra coffee.
Actually, 429 seconds cf 423. The ratio is 1.014.
So sorry! You are of course absolutely right that 7’03” is not at all the same thing as 7.03 minutes. Apologies for oversight.
A K is a reference to Kevin Gregg’s completion time as you’ll find if you check out the Glossary.🙂
Some one beat me to it.
D’s reply landed while mine was uploading.😲
Ha ha. D + 1 minute.
No, I ‘m still struggling; if D is Desdeeloeste, and he took 7’11”, how is that 1 minute longer than anything? Sorry I’m so slow ….
NHO other definitions of SHOWBOAT and OCTOPUS, and biffed ASPECT and PAYMENT, parsing afterwards. Not the easiest of QCs, but fair. COD UNPROMISING. Thanks Hurley, and Curarist for great blog.
PS think you have a typo for 19D
18:10 for a subdued solve. Halve that time spent on SEMI, GANGSTER and SHOWBOAT. No excuse for not being able to put SEMI together and so much of this just went straight in off the word play e.g. UNPROMISING and MUSHROOM. But had to parse the last two postsolve.
Overall a good Mon-Fri coming in at 1hr10 – are these getting easier?!?
Have a good weekend everyone who’s not coming back 👍
It’s the usual behavior of things – reversion to the mean. Science!
(And if you think I understand why QCs are the way they are, I have something to sell you….)
If science says reversion to the mean is the usual behaviour … how does that gel with the second law of thermodynamics which says entropy is always increasing in a closed system?
Too deep for me I’m afraid. Anyone?
Just the right level for me, not too simple but got there after some deliberation. LOI GANGSTER, COD PLUMAGE. Surely 15 would read better if ‘punishment’ was changed to ‘reward’, or am I missing something?
I was fine with PAYMENT like paying for one’s sins etc.
FOI (SEMI) and LOI (SHOWBOAT-I missed the anagram) as per Templar but 2 secs slower. OCTOPUS was my penultimate solve…I had forgotten the definition but I think we have seen it before in the dim and distant past (Times Quick Cryptic No 2339, also by Hurley, in February 2023). 7:11
8.52.
I thought this was a step up in difficulty from yesterday. Like Jackkt, I was convinced 1ac was Showboat but couldn’t parse it, so started in the NE for a clockwise solve. Payment wasn’t a problem, but I took a long time to work out what was going on with CoD Gangster. Mushroom and Myth were also slow to come to mind. Pulled stumps at 25mins with just 1ac annoyingly unparsed, only to come here and find it was a simple anagram 🙄 Invariant
24 mins. FOI SHOWBOAT. LOI UNPROMISING.
Enjoyed this. NHO octopus in this context. Did wonder what was going on, as I thought the energy firm Octopus was unlikely to be the intended answer.
Thanks to both Hurley and Curarist.
I found this tricky too. Managed to come in under my target though. SEMI was FOI, with BILL anticipated as the first part of 3d, so SHOWBOAT went in unparsed on probabilities. It remained unparsed until I read the blog. Doh! GANGSTER was LOI. 9:20. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Held up by ASPECT for way too long 🙄 The rest seemed fairly straightforward and I plugged away to a finish in my usual leisurely manner. Very enjoyable. Thanks Hurley and C.
I made a bit of a mess of this one having inexplicably put in HOME for 1dn even though Home is mentioned in the clue! This made 1ac rather tricky as it hadn’t occurred to me to bother to check 1dn was correct. It was unfortunate that the crosser of METAL fitted in nicely with HOME, and that there was an H in the nailed on anagram for 1ac. I eventually solved SHOWBOAT followed by the Doh realisation for 1dn.
I eventually staggered home in 15.23, my only time this week over my ten minute target. My total time for the week was 47.55 giving me a daily average of 9.35. Not too bad considering todays shocker.
DNF, simply couldn’t get PAYMENT the definition really threw me… still an enjoyable puzzle.
COD: MUSHROOM for the ‘ahhh’ moment after trying to shove various Greek characters as the definition. Thanks setter and Curarist
Breeze blocked by GANGSTER. Struggled through the rest in 2o minutes or so but couldn’t see past laughter and daughter at 23ac, and they were clearly wrong. I was slow on SHOWBOAT thinking that boos what was unpromising as anagram fodder. I was also slow with BILLIONAIRE, needing all the crossers.
FOI – 5ac EDGE
LOI – DNF
COD – 8ac METAL
Thanks to Hurley and Curarist
Finished correctly in 40 minutes. Hard going. Answers just did not seem to chime well.
Octopus – correct answer but just seems wrong.
Hated the reference to the Sun as a newspaper. Better just to invoke it as a synonym for rag or comic.
Drawl= “way of communicating” ? Just seems wrong to me. Just as an accent is not a way of communicating .
12 mins…
I can see where Curarist is coming from with regards to 15dn “Payment” and 6dn “Drawl”, but I didn’t think this was too difficult. 2dn “Octopus” has come up a number of times in relation to a shady organisation, but it’s one of those clues that a few years back I would have been stuck on if it wasn’t for it coming up previously.
FOI – 1dn “Semi”
LOI – 23ac “Gangster”
COD – 10dn “Unpromising”
Thanks as usual!
15:04 with no errors. Luckily for me, OCTOPUS rang the faintest of bells when I decided the anagram couldn’t be anything else. Unlike most, PAYMENT went in as soon as I realised that I could use AY instead of AYE. I find Hurley’s puzzles seem to vary from fairly straightforward to quite challenging, which is a good mix as one never knows what to expect at the outset.
FOI – EDGE, LOI – SHOWBOAT (I missed the anagram as well), COD – PRINCIPALLY. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
I stopped timing my attempts a few weeks ago, but I’m sure I escaped the tentacles of the OCTOPUS that is the SCC today. A fast solve (for me) all of the way down to UNPROMISING and GANGSTER, both of which were biffed and then parsed. Overall, a genuine QC and a very enjoyable solve.
I wonder if we have weathered the worst of the ‘almost impossibly difficult QC’ storm.
Many thanks to Hurley and Curarist.
11:49 All clear eventually with MER at DRAWL.
12.47 Heavy weather indeed. I was slow on the long ones (is BILLMANRAGE a thing?) and took a while to convince myself that LOI PAYMENT was correct. Thanks Curarist and Hurley.
If it isn’t, it jolly well should be 😅
All correct. Easier than yesterday, but got stuck on the HOSPITALITY and SPURT intersection for quite a while.
I wasn’t familiar with the OCTOPUS definition, but thought of the energy company instead!
No doubt being stupid…..why is “I” current in 21 across. the answer was obvious but the parsing less so to me
In equations in physics I is frequently used as the symbol for current like in V=IR, voltage = current × resistance.
I just learned that this derives from the French intensité du courant.
Seems that is in context since it is eponymously measured in Ampères.
14:18
Over a third of that on LOI GANGSTER, but I was already pretty slow up to there.
Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
I was on Hurley’s wavelength today and almost complete in 9 minutes: but 11a held me up while I fussed with primarily and primordially until PRINCIPALLY (obvious) went in and that gave me ASPECT and loi DRAWL. I suppose a drawl is a way of communicating, and the clueing was very clear – sketch = draw and ultimately novel. I liked HOOPLA! And BILL plus IONA plus IRE was inspired! About 12 minutes, ideal Friday fare, thanks setter and blogger
With all those long words, I thought I would struggle but I completed this in under half an hour, good for me. Very enjoyable, particularly the way billionaire, gangster, unpromising and mushroom were built up. Thank you Hurley and blogger. (And thank you to the person who has just explained the I in ideal which I hadn’t understood. )
No big hold-ups and done in my average time.
LOI GANGSTER and took a moment to parse PAYMENT- I thought it worked.
COD to GANGSTER.
David
14:35, with the two long anagrams holding me up for a while. COD to BILLIONAIRE.
Thanks to Hurley and Curarist.
18ish min Finish. I’m getting better at this and spotted quickly what evil device the word play was. V enjoyable. Thanks Hurley and Cuarist.
Held up by GANGSTER and LOI SHOWBOAT, otherwise it would have been a pretty quick time for me. As it was, an average 17:43. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Heavy weather sums it up for us even if we did come in a little faster than par at 11:45. LOI GANGSTER took us a while to see. We also join others in a MER at PAYMENT / punishment though concluded that it was within bounds + the wordplay was clear. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.
Odd definitions for OCTOPUS and HOOPLA , but solved in 24 minutes, which seemed very unlikely at one stage. A few biffed and then parsed. A pleasant end to the week. Hopefully the storm is not too bad tomorrow!
Yes, made heavy weather of this and took ages. All correct….. eventually.
LOI SHOWBOAT – NHO in this sense, and too dim at first to recognise it was an anagram. Equally, NHO OCTOPUS in this sense.
Also slow on GANGSTER (COD), PAYMENT (doubts about meaning again) and numerous others. DNK why HOOPLA is great excitement.
Liked MUSHROOM, BILLIONAIRE.
Thanks for much needed blog, Curarist.
13:05 for an unaccountably chewy solve, as our blogger says. I had trouble seeing “leading to” as an anagrind. As a singer myself, I greatly enjoyed UNPROMISING, such a good surface. A SEMI in Americanese is a truck/lorry, not a house, so PLUMing myself on seeing it.
Thanks to Hurley and curarist!
Semi is short for semi-detached which is a marketer’s way of saying it’s semi-attached!
A quick look at Wikipedia suggests you would call it a “duplex” in the States.
Yes, or possibly a row house. I’ve managed to establish a tenuous hold on the British sense of SEMI over years of reading novels and newspapers.
Wasn’t sure if you knew. FWIW we would call a “row house” a terrace and distinguish it as either being “mid-terrace” or “end of terrace”.
Thanks!
Thankfully I managed to get my SEMI in straight away, but it got quite a lot harder after that and I had to keep going for an hour before I was finished.
Yes I struggled with some of the definitions but I finished in 13:18 and parsed everything. The biggie didn’t take much longer – just over 7 minutes more!
I’ve only come across OCTOPUS as a powerful organisation in the last couple of years – here, of course. Now when I see it, that’s my first thought. Same with number, flower and banker – the original meanings have long gone 😅
FOI Edge LOI Showboat
Thanks Hurley and Curarist