A gentle Quick Cryptic for a Friday from Hurley today. It took me 4:14, hesitating over only the anagram at 16A. LOI SPEARHEAD. Thank-you Hurley. How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Sawbill’s turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword here. If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 144 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Alter past ethos as quickly as possible (9) |
| POSTHASTE – [Alter] (past ethos)*. | |
| 6 | Dad’s attempt (3) |
| POP – Double definition. | |
| 8 | Broadcast frightens cat terribly? Just a bit (7) |
| SCATTER – Hidden, [just a bit], in frightenS CAT TERribly. | |
| 9 | Load vehicle and leave (5) |
| CARGO – CAR (vehicle) + GO (leave). | |
| 10 | Make two and two five? Call it ace sum bizarrely! (12) |
| MISCALCULATE – (call it ace sum)* [bizarrely]. | |
| 12 | Regretting welcoming learner’s decision (6) |
| RULING – L (learner) in RUING (regretting). | |
| 13 | Smart agent writing paper after returning (6) |
| DAPPER – REP (agent) + PAD (writing paper) reversed, [after returning], -> DAPPER. | |
| 16 | Down, need this read — novel (12) |
| DISHEARTENED – (need this read)* [novel]. | |
| 19 | Confusion as cash out of order with nothing being accepted (5) |
| CHAOS – O (nothing) in (cash)* [out of order]. | |
| 20 | Most important I have place for keeping documents (7) |
| ARCHIVE – ARCH (most important) + I’VE (I have). | |
| 22 | Part of tree record (3) |
| LOG – Double definition, the first being part of a tree only after it has been felled. | |
| 23 | Leader in parade, he’s getting excited (9) |
| SPEARHEAD – (parade he’s)* [getting excited]. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Model right to abandon writing (4) |
| POSE – P{r}OSE (writing) without, [to abandon], the R (right). | |
| 2 | Dog’s range that is large (7) |
| SPANIEL – SPAN (range) + I.E. (id est; that is) + L (large). | |
| 3 | Dwelling — haunt on regular basis (3) |
| HUT – Alternate letters, [on a regular basis], of HaUnT. | |
| 4 | Put street on list for walk (6) |
| STROLL – ST (street) + ROLL (list). Unlike in an across clue, A on B in a down clue means A + B. | |
| 5 | Inspire group of followers giving up time for Conservative (9) |
| ENCOURAGE – EN{t}OURAGE (group of followers) replacing the T (time) with C (conservative) -> ENCOURAGE. | |
| 6 | Jacket of expected standard, okay essentially (5) |
| PARKA – PAR (expected standard) + middle letters, [essentially], of oKAy. | |
| 7 | Spacecraft, one in landing place (7) |
| PIONEER – ONE in PIER (landing place). The Pioneer spacecraft were a series of NASA probes, starting in 1958, that explored the Moon, Venus, the asteroid belt, and the outer planets, with Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 famously becoming the first human-made objects to head out of the solar system, carrying plaques with info about humanity. | |
| 11 | Agreement population count must include only necessary statistics at first (9) |
| CONSENSUS – Initial letters, [at first], of Only Necessary Statistics in CENSUS (population count). | |
| 12 | Seeking major changes in type of tyre, costs initially to be absorbed (7) |
| RADICAL – First letter of Costs [initially] in [absorbed] by RADIAL (type of tyre). | |
| 14 | Accurate summary, English (7) |
| PRECISE – PRECIS (summary) + E (English). | |
| 15 | Oil country, they say (6) |
| GREASE – Sounds like, [they say], GREECE (country). | |
| 17 | Informed about Left’s colloquial talk (5) |
| SLANG – SANG (informed) about L (Left). | |
| 18 | Take notice of which three were ahead in the end (4) |
| HEED – Final letters, [in the end], of whicH threE werE aheaD. | |
| 21 | Copper right — it is an unfriendly beast (3) |
| CUR – CU (chemical symbol for copper) + R (right). | |
I didn’t have any trouble with spearhead, but the grease/disheartened crossing proved difficult. Posthaste could have been tough without all easy down clues.
Time: 9:01
No problems except for initially thinking the anagrist for 23a was ‘he’s getting’ rather than ‘parade he’s’, but soon twigged after counting the letters. Liked the letter swap in ENCOURAGE. Also RADICAL and PIONEER although not a big fan of providing ‘one’ for ‘one’ in the clue, but, it’s a quickie. Also liked ARCHIVE.
Thanks John and setter.
Quickie or not, providing ‘one’ for ‘one’ caused me no end of problems, assuming I had to insert a letter I.
12:36 here, made quick progress for the first ¾ then got bogged down in the SE corner with GREASE, SPEARHEAD, ARCHIVE and HEED all proving tricky until the first one yielded.
Thanks to Hurley and John.
8:57, with last in PIONEER, unknown as a space adventure. Not surprising really, as I have no interest in human journeys into the infinity of the heavens.
Never felt lost but I didn’t find this easy. A regulation six on the first pass of acrosses followed by quite a lot of hopping around and revisiting before finishing with SCATTER in 11.57. Annoying to have to leave a hidden until the end but not as annoying as correctly parsing GREASE but writing Greece anyway – that made ARCHIVE much harder. Good one.
All done in about 9, not helped by spelling CONSENSUS with a second C for about the millionth time in my life. All up a nice QC challenge, thanks to Hurley and to John who obviously found this a lot easier than many of us.
😂Me, too… with many more of us, there will be consensus on concensus
11 minutes, so no solves within my old target of 10 this week unless I can redeem myself tomorrow.
15:44 I took too long to log. the radical slang innit.
Ta JAH
16.54 held up by PIONEER and POP (NHO POP = attempt?)
Slow on ARCH of ARCHIVE and SPEARHEAD
Only 2 on first across trawl, then lurched into action with downs (not action at speed of most, however, okay for us).
Would like sub 15, however, we’re humming.
Thank you Hurley and JohnInterred.
I found this fairly gentle but unfortunately I have the same issue as LindsayO with regard to the spelling of CONSENSUS – another reminder to pay more attention to the wordplay. I wasn’t familiar with my LOI, the pioneering spacecraft, but it was kindly clued.
Thanks to Hurley and John.
11:04. Pretty straightforward today, and nothing wrong with that. LOI PIONEER still tricky with all the checkers.
Thanks to Hurley and John
11:51 but with one pink square – another CONCENSUS.
I took a long time to see my LOI PIONEER, since I had put PAS for 6a, and only revisited it when an alphabet trawl failed to find any spacecraft matching S-ONE-R.
Thanks John and Hurley
9:54 for the solve. Slowed at the end by the DISHEARTENED/ENCOURAGE pair. Thirty seconds mid-puzzle spent figuring out the parsing of CONSENSUS to spell it correctly. With yesterday’s QC fresh in the mind, I resisted the temptation to bung in PAS and POP came to me on second readthrough. Very much enjoyed it as felt there was a nice level of misdirection without being too obscure. COD to MISCALCULATE.
This week’s puzzles done in 1hr08 which was considerably slowed by Wednesday’s 23-min’er from Heron but scraping two sub-10s.
Have a good weekend everybody and thanks to JohnI and Hurley
Edit: thanks also to Sawbill – 7:27 for the weekender
I always remember that CONSENSUS is not a CENSUS so can’t be a C.
Got off to a good start and then slowed down as usual towards the bottom but lots of checkers pointed me in there right direction to finish in 22 minutes which is good going for me on a Friday. Would have been quicker if I had spotted GREASE. Nice one.
Thanks John and Hurley
An enjoyable puzzle – a very quick start but this was more testing towards the end.
17.58 on the clock but, as with others, I managed one error with CONSENSUS. I parsed as I went along but should have taken more care checking the spelling. I was too busy with PIONEER and GREASE. I enjoyed the anagrams (and I didn’t use pen and paper).
Thanks to Hurley and JohnI.
14 total I identified a couple of the anagrams I was missing but I couldn’t get started with just the three E crossers in 16a.
Accuracy and precision are not the same thing. Ask your friendly AI for the dart board analogy of accuracy and precision.
A rapid solve for me today with the exception of my LOI HEED. Not sure why something so easy wasn’t obvious, while I had no trouble with some of the trickier clues. Thanks Hurley and John.
Like vinyl1, I am another one who got stuck on the DISHEARTENED/GREASE crossing. They were my LOsI. 7:14 so not too much of a delay. Thanks John
24:08 – a slow time for me today. I struggled with the across clues, but found the down ones easier until the SE corner which it took me a while to disentangle. Obviously I wasn’t quite on Hurley’s wavelength today.
Very easy by Hurley’s standard I thought, reflected in my finishing time of 7.16. That including the best part of a minute on my LOI GREASE.
I don’t know whether it’s just on my screen, but nearly all the avatars have disappeared, leaving only a very select few, namely vinyl1, ulaca and Merlin. Checking back on this weeks entries, they have disappeared also.
My total time for the week was 49.36, giving me a daily average of 9.55, just within target.
Same here. Didn’t notice until you mentioned it but yes, the avatars are no more.
I believe work is being done on the site to address a number of issues such as the “Too many requests” message, and this has caused the avatars to disappear – we all hope temporarily.
Touch wood, but the site has been up for a few hours now. There are still some connectivity issues which is why, among other things, gravatar hosted avatars are not currently being displayed.
I got stuck in the NE, being fixated on “pas”. PIONEER was very slow to come as a result (especially with a rather tricky definition). The other two late entries were DAPPER and LOI ENCOURAGE.
Very good puzzle, finally solved in 08:45 for a Sluggish Day. Many thanks Hurley and John.
Ditto with “pas”.
From POSTHASTE to HEED in 6:54. No dramas. Thanks Hurley and John.
A somewhat stuttering solve, never quite got into Hurley’s rhythm. All done in 12:04 in the end, but HEED not parsed in flight. Minor grumble at SPEARHEAD, a vastly overused word which means a lot more than leader. I confess it is something of a pet hate of mine – it was the favourite word of a former boss of mine and when he announced that so-and-so was going to be “spearheading our office amenities team” (translation: responsible for seeing that the bins were emptied and the coffee mugs washed up), even he could not fail to notice the general derision at his pomposity.
Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to Sawbill’s Sunday Special.
Phil Harris sang “Woodman, Spare That Tree” back in the year of my birth. Only by ignoring that instruction would we get a LOG. There endeth today’s pedantry.
Two straight passes, and then my LOI.
FOI POSTHASTE
LOI DISHEARTENED
COD MISCALCULATE
TIME 3:51
7:46
Mostly OK but slowed at the end by DAPPER, PRECISE and LOI DISHEARTENED after having looked and re-looked at it several times throughout the puzzle. Didn’t resolve HEED whilst in flight.
Thanks John and Hurley
14:19, and a welcome relief after a tricky week. The only one which really caused me problems was PIONEER, because I was too ready with the substitution and couldn’t figure out what a PONEER was.
Thank you for the blog!
19:33
Mostly done in 15 but then stuck on GREASE which in hindsight was easy and LOI PIONEER which I had to come here to understand. I guess I’m so used to “one in” meaning add an I that it didn’t occur to me to simply add ONE!
I came back to this page earlier in Safari on my iPad (after half an hour’s inactivity) and tried to refresh it. All I got was:
‘429
Too Many Requests
The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time.’
I had to wait for an hour before I could access TftT again to post this. The avatars are all missing again on this page.
This happened yesterday but I thought nothing of it. Has anybody else had this problem?
Yes, same problem both yesterday and today.
Good to know it’s not just me.
Thanks, both. Not just me, then….. I see others have the avatar problem again, too.
Sorry to be so slow in replying but I had to wait for over an hour before I could access TffT again…….
I hope one of our esteemed ‘blog monitors’ will pick up on this.
I got kicked out after posting my comment on the QC – only just got back in now.
Interesting avatars for vinyl1, ulaca, Wombat and david1 are visible – but nobody else’s are?
Lots of “too many requests “ for me.
I had “Too Many Requests” Wednesday and ultimately gave up. Also avatars missing today.
Thanks, all. It is clearly a general problem.
I sent a report via the contact site and hope something can be done.
Just 9 minutes needed today. LOI GREASE after I moved away from the Middle East.
I thought SCATTER was COD; a clever misdirection for most solvers probably.
David
Yes, could not login for a while.
Enjoyable puzzle, not that quick, LOI SPEARHEAD.
Liked ARCHIVE, SCATTER, PARKA, & ENCOURAGE, among others.
Solved PIONEER. By the way, I thought it was a mistake to include a golden disk about the whereabouts of planet Earth on the two Voyager spacecraft. Who knows who or what might find us. But they might not have a record player, I guess.
Thanks vm, John.