Finished this one in bang on my median time, and that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. Thank you Hurley for producing the goods yet again.
What about the rest of you lot? Let us know how you went in the comments.
(In the clues, definitions are underlined and anagram indicators are in bold italics. In the explanations (ABC)* indicates an anagram of abc. Deletions and other devices are indicated accordingly, I hope).
| Across | |
| 1 | European film, major work (4) |
| EPIC – E (European) + PIC (film) | |
| 4 | Hero‘s receding US hairstyle – Yank at heart (8) |
| SUPERMAN – SU (US “receding”) + PERM (hairstyle) + AN [middle letters (at heart) of yANk] | |
| 8 | Distribute everything on cue at the event, to begin with (8) |
| ALLOCATE – ALL (everything) + OCATE [first letters (to begin with) of On Cue At The Event] | |
| 9 | Press for outrigger to be used regularly (4) |
| URGE – alternate letters (to be used regularly) of oUtRiGgEr | |
| 10 | Reportedly plant again and withdraw (6) |
| RECEDE – Homophone (reportedly) of RE-SEED (plant again) | |
| 11 | Waterlogged turf beside lair (6) |
| SODDEN – SOD (turf) + DEN (lair) | |
| 12 | Easy to see they’re chess players (5-3-5) |
| BLACK-AND-WHITE – Double definition
“Easy to see” as in clearly distinguishable. |
|
| 16 | Sign fellow’s abandoning thesaurus (6) |
| TAURUS – HES (fellow’s) “abandoning” T |
|
| 17 | Blame Bill, copper? Snide, beginning and end (6) |
| ACCUSE – AC (bill) + CU (copper) + SE (beginning and end of SnidE) | |
| 19 | Second person, old, lodged in guest house (4) |
| THOU – Hidden (lodged) in guesT HOUse
Liked the definition, the archaic version of you (second person). |
|
| 20 | Element of intro wrong: information to follow (8) |
| NITROGEN – (INTRO)* + GEN (information) | |
| 21 | At back, chap, snake, one not worth listening to (8) |
| PRATTLER – P [last letter (at back) of chaP] + RATTLER (snake) | |
| 22 | Was familiar with novel, by the sound of it (4) |
| KNEW – Homophone (by the sound of it) of NEW (novel) | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Beat or bean perhaps (5) |
| PULSE – Double definition | |
| 3 | Type of TV studio cleric condemned, following Conservative’s lead (6-7) |
| CLOSED-CIRCUIT – C (Conservative’s lead) + (STUDIO CLERIC)* | |
| 4 | Maybe halve quiet area, the last to go (5) |
| SHARE – SH (quiet) + ARE (ARE |
|
| 5 | Delighted, extremely proud about legal agreement (7) |
| PLEASED – PD [first and last letters of (extremely) ProuD] “about” LEASE (legal agreement) | |
| 6 | Outrageous neck – hold court without interruption (5-3-5) |
| ROUND-THE-CLOCK – (NECK HOLD COURT)* | |
| 7 | Female relative welcoming exotic gem’s boost (7) |
| AUGMENT – AUNT (female relative) “welcoming” (GEM)* | |
| 10 | Section of memoir I briefly make fun of (3) |
| RIB – Hidden in (section of) memoiR I Briefly | |
| 13 | Fuss about English skin product? (7) |
| LEATHER – LATHER (fuss) “about” E (English)
Not a product for skin, a product of skin. Very good. |
|
| 14 | Football team, first-class, learns afresh (7) |
| ARSENAL – A (first-class) + (LEARNS)* | |
| 15 | Observer I picked up (3) |
| EYE – Homophone (picked up) of I. | |
| 17 | Player seen in factory (5) |
| ACTOR – Hidden (seen in) fACTORy | |
| 18 | Military action, for example, close to castle is set up (5) |
| SIEGE -[EG (for example) + E (“close” to castlE) + IS] all reversed (set up) | |
Bit of a cursory blog today. Frankly the constant Error 500 messages sapped my energy. Might flesh it out later if my mood improves!
So it’s not just me being five hundreded
Indeed. I’m keeping my blogs and comments short.
This site can be very annoying. Do people still say website? I met Tim Berners-Lee when he worked at CERN. I remember him telling me and a colleague about the PDF format and talking about domain name servers. I should have done far better given I was in at the start of the internet. We were still using telnet and ftp.
I notice FifteenSquared is having problems as well. It can’t just be because they’re both crossword websites but I wonder if there is something hitting the world of WordPress which I think lies behind both and many other sites.
I’ve got a handful of WordPress sites which have no problems. Perhaps it’s a dodgy plugin?
6:21
Pretty straightforward. Biffed the two long downs.
I came a cropper by biffing opus for 1 across, and failing to note it as a wild guess. As a result, I got stuck on closed circuit, my LOI. Other than that, quite easy – that fellow abandoning the thesaurus is getting old.
Time: 10:03
Back on an even keel after yesterday’s jet-lagged disaster with a pleasant 10:47 solve. “Skin product” in 13d nicely misled me into thinking of creams and mousses before the penny dropped. Otherwise no real holdups for a smooth run.
Many thanks Galspray for the blog and a good weekend to all.
5:15, felt like quite a few hiddens. Like vinyl1, didn’t see closed-circuit until the end. I always wonder if CCTV (China Central Television) chose that acronym (sorry, initialism!) on purpose.
12 minutes, a bit on the slow side from me but no issues with the puzzle.
14:24. Way off the pace today. I had trouble with both the long down ones. I did see the RIB EYE steak but nothing to go with it, no chips or peppercorn sauce. Thank you Hurley and special thanks to our blogger as usual in these troubled times. Thank you galspray
28:05 (average: 37, target: 31)
One pink square today. I’d put SPARE instead of SHARE. Couldn’t pull my mind away from P for quiet or SPARE for “last one to go” despite the fact I couldn’t make sense of S for “maybe halve” and the definition would have had to be reused in the wordplay. Needed to be a bit more flexible on the wordplay and more strict on the rule that if it doesn’t parse it’s liable to be wrong.
I enjoyed LEATHER too. My COD.
Thanks Galspray and Hurley.
8:35 for the solve – held up for a couple of mins by SUPERMAN and SHARE. Ten of thirteen Across clues flew in and I had dreams of a pb but then crashed on the Downs. Even so pleased with that – I like it when it feels quick!
Thanks to Galspray and Hurley.
Edit: parksolve coming in at 31:13
Great time 👍
Nice one ND. Had some niggling health issues recently and I miss my ungainly shuffle around the lake each week.
Appointment with a specialist tomorrow should be the turning point and I’ll be posting ParkSolve times again shortly!
Hope you get the answers you need from the specialist. We run round a lake too!
10:14. Not too demanding but enjoyable Saturday morning fare. Glad I’m not the only one who had difficulty spotting CLOSED-CIRCUIT, in my case because I failed to separate the ‘Type of TV’ and ‘studio’. SIEGE and PRATTLER also didn’t come straight away and relied on crossing letters.
The ‘Second person, old’ def for THOU was the pick of the crop for me.
Thanks to Hurley and galspray
I had to wrestle with a few of these but it took me 14.53 to finish – quicker than it felt.
Pi ❤️
Held myself up a little by thinking that the type of TV would start COLOUR, and held myself up a lot by being exceptionally bad at phone typing today, having to make corrections to about half the clues! Even then when I first hit “submit” it turned out the puzzle was only 99% complete, because I’d managed to type KNW.
So I was really expecting a DPS today but no, all green in 08:12 for 1.3K and a Sluggish Day. LOI SHARE (lingered long over “shave”), COD SUPERMAN.
Many thanks Hurley and gallers. The Error 500 is very annoying.
A bit of a change of pace from Hurley, who I ususally find to be one of the tougher setters, resulted in a top to bottom solve with no hold ups.
Started with EPIC and finished with PRATTLER in 5.14 with CsOD to LEATHER and SUPERMAN.
Thanks to Galspray and Hurley
👏🏻
11:23
I do like a Hurley almost as epic as rib eye which black and white beats a pulse.
Ta GAH
Oh dear, I too put Spare instead of SHARE. Otherwise OK.
Enjoyable if tricky. A few write-ins, and a few needing much thought, as far as I was concerned.
Liked TAURUS, ACCUSE, EPIC, SIEGE (LOI). COD SUPERMAN.
FOI PULSE.
Many thanks, Galspray.
A sluggish Saturday. Should not have been misled by CLOSED CIRCUIT but my mind was fixated on the TV that sits in your living room. LOI RECEDE after going through just about every other 6 letter word beginning RE without somehow alighting on a homophone for seed. 13:31.
I was all over the grid, yet it all seems BLACK-AND-WHITE now I’ve scraped inside my target by a miserable 3 seconds.
I only parsed my LOI afterwards, and then went “Duh!”
FOI URGE
LOI THO
COD SUPERMAN
TIME 5:57
That should, of course, read THOU, but the edit feature won’t let me scroll down the page to correct it.
I was immersed in this one and thought I was going well but ended (all parsed) in 19.12.
Ah well, it could have been worse.
Some very nice clues. I enjoyed the anagrams.
Thanks to Hurley and Galspray.
From EPIC to PRATTLER in 7:57. Was slow to see some of the definitions and had to write out the anagrist for 3d at which point CIRCUIT jumped out at me. Thanks Hurley and Galspray.
9 mins…
Could be my fastest Saturday since they started, but I’ll have to check. Either way, an enjoyable start to the weekend. I might even watch the Arsenal game at 12.30pm.
FOI – 5dn “Pleased”
LOI -9ac “Urge”
COD – 13dn “Leather”
Thanks as usual!
Oh, dear. Yet again I have had problems with one of Hurley’s QCs.
Reading the blog it seems relatively straightforward. (Apart from lather which I find nebulous – could be product of just shaking soap and water. )
Still, no excuse for my DNF by 3 clues. It didn’t help that I miscounted letters in STUDIO CLERIC and was adamant that TV had to be part of the anagram…
COD BLACK AND WHITE
Thanks Hurley and galspray.
Very enjoyable and all done in a very decent 15.33. Spotted anagram fodder early on so knew we had to separate to and studio. Lots to like, skin product was a great misdirection , we also were looking for a lotion for a while
LOI sodden, thanks Hurley and Galspray – I know how frustrating those errors are but I also feel for whoever is trying find the cause!
14:26
Half the time spent on the final two SUPERMAN/SHAVE. Lost time with P=quiet, and hairstyles of AFRO, FRO.
Weird one this – was thinking this is pretty basic but in the end took me just over ten minutes to solve which included getting out a pen and paper for the TV anagram.
Cheers galspray.
13 again today. At least I’m getting most of the easier ones
Squeezed a sub-20, but I should really have been a lot quicker. Recede and Closed Circuit were the hold outs, with the latter the first to yield, but only after wondering how on earth we were expected to know the intricacies of TV broadcasting 🙄 . . .those whom etc. Rattler also took longer than it should have, but then Superman was a decent early biff, so swings and roundabouts. CoD to the simple Knew. Invariant
7.58 On the wavelength today. Held up a little at the end by SUPERMAN and SHARE. Thanks galspray and Hurley.
No idea on time, but too slow… at the airport – flight delayed creating apparent need for regular sustenance and much up and down from table.
So – LEATHER clever we thought. Totally taken in by misdirection.
V slow on SHARE and SUPERMAN. Tried and dismissed ‘Around the clock’ …as around too long.. duh.. a little embarrassed about that. While slightly red faced, NEW as novel took too long as well, thinking book, tome, fiction… on we went, until the PDM.
Enjoyed this –
Thank you Hurley and Galspray – good luck with the blogging minefield -hope all is sorted soon.
My first sub-10 in a while, at 9:25, so maybe wrassling with yesterday’s 15×15 did something for me. It could have been quicker but somehow I needed a lot of crossers to see the two long down clues. Is TV an Americanism? I guess you wouldn’t say “closed-circuit telly”. Liked the slightly gruesome LEATHER best.
Thanks Hurley and galspray. May the blogging get easier; may the reading and commenting get easier too!
7:57
Mellow solve with much the same comments as others – CLOSED CIRCUIT was difficult to spot, I was another that failed to lift and separate TV and studio. Liked AUGMENT – LOI was ALLOCATE.
Thanks Galspray and Hurley