You know you’re in for a rough time when 1a and 1d leave you completely at a loss.
Yes, appropriately enough I was 1d’ed in the NW by this not so easy offering from Hurley. Had to look elsewhere to get a toehold after staring at the first few clues with an ever-increasing sense of hopelessness for several minutes. Eventually worked my way back but still I took a while to get 1a and 1d, my last two in. Interesting that there were no double or cryptic defs on show.
A good QC with a win for the setter today. At least I avoided the SCC after finishing in 17:20.
Thanks to Hurley
Definitions underlined in bold, deletions or letters in the wordplay not appearing in the answer, shown by strikethrough.
| Across | |
| 1 | Bargain, much-liked — small piece (7) |
| SNIPPET – SNIP (‘Bargain’) PET (‘much-liked’)
Pet here as an adjective, as in a “pet project”. |
|
| 5 | Recalling some cognac, rice, not exactly (5) |
| CIRCA – Reverse hidden (‘Recalling some’) in cognAC RICe | |
| 8 | Dictatorial writer from Italy changing sides (13) |
| AUTHORITARIAN – AUTHOR (‘writer’) ITA |
|
| 9 | Serious merit is from France (7) |
| EARNEST – EARN (‘merit’) EST (‘is from France’) | |
| 10 | Part of prefab beyond religious building (5) |
| ABBEY – Hidden (‘part of’) in prefAB BEYond | |
| 11 | Motive to get fresh start in spring, say (6) |
| SEASON – |
|
| 13 | Brought up, prepared but never quiet (6) |
| REARED – Two P’s deleted: P for “piano”, quiet or soft in musical terminology. |
|
| 15 | Tree, old as it happens (5) |
| OLIVE – O (‘old’) LIVE (‘as it happens’)
As in a live broadcast of a sporting event. |
|
| 16 | Very old, battered tin can pierced by end of knife (7) |
| ANCIENT – Anagram (‘battered’) of TIN CAN containing (‘pierced by’) |
|
| 19 | Language and impertinence encapsulates fashionable type of humour (6-2-5) |
| TONGUE-IN-CHEEK – TONGUE (‘Language’) CHEEK (‘impertinence’) contains (‘encapsulates’) IN (‘fashionable’) | |
| 20 | Intensively research added levies on a regular basis (5) |
| DELVE – |
|
| 21 | Try pair of notes, cheer up (7) |
| HEARTEN – HEAR (‘Try’) TE and N (‘pair of notes’) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Ultimately fails in plea about trap (5) |
| SNARE – I just about did ‘Ultimately fail(s)’; my last by a long shot. |
|
| 2 | Relation at inn recollected sporting contest (13) |
| INTERNATIONAL – Anagram (‘recollected’) of RELATION AT INN
INTERNATIONAL here as a noun. |
|
| 3 | Favouring North East? That’s lying! (5) |
| PRONE – PRO (‘Favouring’) NE (‘North East’)
No lying today; I quite happily favoured the NE over the NW. |
|
| 4 | Number needing drink, not small (6) |
| THIRTY – THIR This took me far longer than it should have. |
|
| 5 | A card he played that’s absurd (7) |
| CHARADE – Anagram (‘played’) of A CARD HE
A CHARADE is “an absurd act; travesty” (Collins) but I can’t square CHARADE, a noun, with ‘absurd’, an adjective. For ‘absurd’ to be a noun, it should be preceded by ‘the’. |
|
| 6 | Remember units must be changed for refund (13) |
| REIMBURSEMENT – Anagram (‘must be changed’) of REMEMBER UNITS | |
| 7 | Irritated by some journalist penning denial (7) |
| ANNOYED – ANY (‘some’) ED (‘journalist’) containing (‘penning’) NO (‘denial’) | |
| 11 | Saw son had successful snooker shot (7) |
| SPOTTED – S (‘son’) POTTED (‘had successful snooker shot’)
A welcome change for crossword land – not a proverb in sight. |
|
| 12 | Too much employment of past American English (7) |
| OVERUSE – OVER (‘past’) US (‘American’) E (‘English’) | |
| 14 | Extravagant place to go, to some extent? (6) |
| LAVISH – LAV (‘place to go’) ISH (‘to some extent?’)
Very similar to the definition for LAVISH in The Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary. Maybe not sophisticated humour, but still one of my favourites. |
|
| 17 | Firm repeated a drink (5) |
| COCOA – CO CO (‘Firm repeated’) A (‘a’)
Can you make COCOA with chestnuts? You can in crossword land. |
|
| 18 | X introducing sanction of no real value (5) |
| TOKEN – TEN (‘X’) containing (‘introducing’) OK (‘sanction’)
I imagine the surface refers to the app and is a comment on the influence of its owner. ‘Sanction’ is a contranym and for some reason I always think first of the “ban or penalty” meaning rather than this “approval or permission” one. |
|
15 minutes! Loved it. I decided to do the four full width/full length clues to give myself plenty of crossers and it definitely helped. Enjoyed THIRTY/THIRSTY and SNIP/PET. Once latter went in it had to be SNARE but I failed to parse it. LOI EARNEST. Highly enjoyable quart d’heure (as Hurley would add, from France). Thanks Hurley and Bletchleyreject.
A rough tussle indeed and it took me over 30 minutes. My fault for getting stuck on AUTHORITARIAN, as I fixated on a likely ending of ION, implying a noun rather than an adjective, and kept looking for the definition at the wrong end of the clue. It would have been tough anyway, never figured out ITArIAN from ITALIAN, NHO SNIP for “bargain”, only parsed REARED afterward, didn’t understand TE and N as “pair of notes” (TE yes, N?), could not parse SNARE, did not understand how INTERNATIONAL is a sporting contest (lots of things can be international, surely?), and was not up to the bathroom humor of LAVISH (though I did think of LADIES). So many fails.
Like ANNOYED. Guess why haha. Liked TOKEN although I had to parse it after. Liked COCOA because I always like cocoa, maybe I’ll have some now.
What a day.
Thank you Hurley and Bletch.
International is just what a lot of matches involving the national team get called, I suppose “international matches” differentiates them from domestic league or cup fixtures. Might be a very British thing with players getting caps for “internationals”. Bear in mind, cricket and rugby also call their international matches – “tests” which comes up from time to time.
Thanks! I did add “test” for international match to my knowledge stock early on.
15:50 for me today, which came as a relief after a very slow start. Needed help to parse SNARE and LAVISH (despite correctly guessing what “going” was likely to mean).
Thank you for the blog!
17:53. Gosh that was slow with LAVISH (LOL) and HEARTEN taking forever. Great puzzle otherwise, and good to have a trickier one thrown into the mix.
Found this one hard work but satisfying. DNF due to Lavish and Hearten and required BRs blog to parse many I did get. Thanks BR and Hurley
Rereading the clues, I think this was quite a difficult crossword, so am surprised that I was on track for quite a reasonable time, until I got well and truly breezeblocked. I am absolutely baffled why it took me so long to ‘spot’ my LOI, but I was snookered by it – I made it much more complicated than required, and tried to include an S, the word WON and something to do with snooker – dear oh dear 😅 So with that, SNARE and LAVISH, an extra 3-4 minutes were added to my final time. I never got to grips with SNARE, which was a shot in the dark, until I came here, so thanks BR.
About 11 minutes FOI Circa LOI Spotted COD Tongue-in-cheek 😉
I haven’t had time to read the blog and comments yet, so hope I’m not just repeating what others have said. Will return and pay full attention after supper!
Thanks Hurley and BR
Perfect difficulty for me, a struggle but still managed to finish.
How are TE and N a pair of notes? I don’t see how this relates to music, money or otherwise!
There are lots of comments above about why and how note=N. TE is a note from the ‘do, re, me, fa, so, la, te’ scale.
A mixed bag – some very easy and some that I just had to biff.
I still don’t understand the parsing of some – try= hear, note=n
Finished the top corner the next day after much biffing.
So not a good QC for me.
Very,very difficult to complete.Managed to do ~75% with few reveals;1A,8A,11A,21A and 14D were just ridiculous to figure out!