Hi all. I liked this offering from Hurley. There’s nothing wrong with the across clues (unless you wish to throw your dictionary at 11a in protest) but my picks today are all in the downs. The breakdown of 2d may be common enough but I thought the execution, with the twist in the tail, was deftly done. I almost always lap up a reverse clue, so 3d made me happy, and I also appreciated the Uxbridge English Dictionary nature of 12d. Thanks Hurley!
Timewise, I’ve finally broken my run of squeaking in under 5 minutes on Mondays (it was getting embarrassing after declaring that to be a rare occurrence!), taking a slightly more normal 0615 for this one. After a good start I slowed down towards the bottom of the grid. My last in was 13a, just because I got fixated on the definition being at the wrong end.
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, quoted indicators are in italics, explicit [deletions] are in square brackets, and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER. For clarity, I omit most link words and some juxtaposition indicators.
| Across | |
| 1a | Formidable female needing attention, a little (8) |
| FEARSOME — F (female) + EAR (attention) + SOME (a little) | |
| 5a | Beat Manchester United, say (4) |
| CLUB — Two definitions, the second by example | |
| 8a | Confused situation — speak harshly (5) |
| SNARL — Another double definition | |
| 9a | Agent with old-fashioned hat: cold-blooded one (7) |
| REPTILE — REP (agent) + TILE (old fashioned hat). Tile as an old-fashioned slang term for a hat is one to remember, as it is still current usage in crosswordland | |
| 11a | Indifference of residents, it’s out of order (11) |
| DISINTEREST — RESIDENTS, IT is anagrammed (out of order). Disinterest meaning lack of interest rather than impartiality is in the dictionaries and, of the big three, only Collins has a usage note: “Many people consider that the use of disinterested to mean not interested is incorrect and that uninterested should be used” | |
| 13a | Regular payment covered by parent, a lifesaver (6) |
| RENTAL — The answer is inside (covered by) paRENT, A Lifesaver | |
| 14a | Government of right, for example, at times ignoring outsiders (6) |
| REGIME — R (right) + EG (for example) + tIMEs without outer letters (ignoring outsiders) | |
| 17a | Hens one’s let free to move after all (11) |
| NONETHELESS — HENS ONE‘S LET anagrammed (free to move) | |
| 20a | Drive to include Rhode Island put in danger (7) |
| IMPERIL — IMPEL (drive) containing (to include) RI (Rhode Island) | |
| 21a | Son, fast mover, finding allotment (5) |
| SHARE — S (son) + HARE (fast mover) | |
| 22a | Healthy hospital drink (4) |
| HALE — H (hospital) + ALE (drink) | |
| 23a | Lively priest I’d disturbed (8) |
| SPIRITED — PRIEST I‘D anagrammed (disturbed) | |
| Down | |
| 1d | Football Association’s time is secure (4) |
| FAST — FA’S (Football Association’s) + T (time) | |
| 2d | Leave a musical group, never to return? (7) |
| ABANDON — A + BAND (musical group) + NO (never) going backwards (to return) | |
| 3d | One working on own initiative, describing letter S maybe? (4-7) |
| SELF-STARTER — The letter S could be described cryptically as the starter of Self, or SELF-STARTER | |
| 4d | Mother and artist welcoming popular boating facility (6) |
| MARINA — MA (mother) and RA (Royal Academician, artist) containing (welcoming) IN (popular) | |
| 6d | Learning about island river (5) |
| LOIRE — LORE (learning) around (about) I (island) | |
| 7d | About to interrupt swimmer’s short rest (8) |
| BREATHER — RE (about, concerning) going inside (to interrupt) BATHER (swimmer) | |
| 10d | One from past who could make corps see red (11) |
| PREDECESSOR — The answer can be anagrammed to give (could make) CORPS SEE RED | |
| 12d | Flaunt trade name? Sort of (8) |
| BRANDISH — BRAND (trade name) –ISH (sort of) | |
| 15d | Quickly prepared in street by worker maybe (7) |
| INSTANT — IN + ST (street) + ANT (worker maybe) | |
| 16d | Fold of skin initially described expertly with love and patience (6) |
| DEWLAP — The first letters of (initially) Described Expertly With Love And Patience | |
| 18d | Northeastern colleague in Asian country (5) |
| NEPAL — NE (northeastern) + PAL (colleague). This meaning of pal is supported by the dictionaries | |
| 19d | Dispute in fee fund, every so often (4) |
| FEUD — The answer is found in alternate letters of (… every so often) FeE fUnD | |
First of all, I would like to point out that disinterested and uninterested swap meanings about once every two hundred years, like variable stars with very long periods. So perhaps we’re about due for another era of transition.
Ah, the puzzle. I found it a bit hard, and only got three or four across clues on my first go-round. Fortunately the down clues were easier, but I still had to write down the anagram letters for predecessor and spirited.
Time: 10:02, about the same as the main puzzle. I thought that one was pretty easy, but those with less experience might not find it so.
22:41 I put MAUL in early for 5 Ac for no discernible reason( Ma and U? Beat could mean maul?) Anyways I was stuck in that corner with no LOIRE or BREATHER possible till I revisited maul , wondering who put that in? Once CLUB came the two down followed quickly. COD to SELF-STARTER. Thanks for explaining tile as hat and rest of blog.
I don’t know about swapping meanings, but the ‘incorrect’ use of disinterested predates the ‘correct’ use. Currently about 20% of instances of the word are ‘incorrect’. (I’ve never come across ‘uninterested’ meaning ‘impartial’.) I was slowed down a bit by having to do the anagrams of SPIRITED & PREDECESSOR in my head. 5:10.
I had problems too. I had all but three answers in 8 minutes but then hit a wall. Eventually I deduced SNARL at 8ac where I put my difficulty down to knowing the ‘confused situation’ meaning only as ‘snarl-up’.
The other two problems were CLUB and BREATHER . I’m afraid as soon as a clue mentions football, or even even worse, a football team I immediately assume it’s going to involve knowledge that everyone else (at least in the UK) has, but I don’t. After 10 minutes trawling the alphabet for words to fit ?L?? and with 22 minutes on the clock I gave up and resorted to aids, only to kick myself for not spotting something so simple. The B-checker then gave me BREATHER immediately where my mistake had been trying to fit the name of a fish around RE. And there had been two possibilities for the placing of RE, which didn’t exactly help.
I was on the 16:15 from Old Trafford to Nepal. Not exactly 1dn!
FOI 1dn FAST
LOI 19dn FEUD
COD 12dn BRANDISH (Allbran)
WOD 16dn DEWLAP
As a ManU supporter I was not amused by the sentiment of 5ac.
As a ManC supporter it was clearly my COD!
Mr. MikWak, I note that Jesus has deserted you!
Insert laughing face emoji here.
Sorry about the above comment. My work firewall blocked me from logging in or commenting but it seemed to have worked and now I can’t delete it.
I finished in 27.28!
FOI: NEPAL
LOI: SELF STARTER
COD: ABANDON. What a lovely surface.
I nho Dewalp and Tile for hat. I had Space for Share for a moment. Loire is a river I actually do know, and I went through my list of fish for Breather only to find it wasn’t a fish at all.
I found Snarl also very difficult. Bah double definitions.
I am getting much much better at anagrams too!
I have deleted your test.
Thank you!
If you click on ‘edit’, ‘delete’ is one option offered you.
Yeah I know, but I wasn’t logged in when I wrote the comment, so there was no edit option.
I’ve had to delete many a comment because I tend to accidentally reply to people’s comments instead of the main post
Tile
Old music hall song Any Old Iron starts
Where did you get that hat where did you get that tile …..
15 minutes but with one wrong.
FOI: FAST
LOI: SPACE I questioned this as I wrote it in and should have reconsidered as PACE simply doesn’t work.
Favourite BREATHER.
15 minutes to a technical DNF today, as I only got my LOI Snarl by resorting to aids. Having done so, I do query whether it is really a synonym for a confused state – snarl up, certainly, but snarl on its own? We’ll be having “get” meaning to rise from bed and “make” meaning cosmetics next.
That apart, a pleasant puzzle but not one I found entirely straightforward, as my time shows. Nonetheless was the main other hold-up (or “hold”, in the spirit of the word up being redundant) – the anagram refused to come for ages. Sometimes it goes like that …
Many thanks to Kitty for the very informative blog
Cedric
Re DISINTERESTED, having available two words meaning two distinct things facilitates communication more than erasing the distinction between them. Usage will prevail, of course. Meanwhile, I continue to use them differently.
SNARL in (British) Collins: ‘a complicated or confused state or situation’ (whereas ‘snarl up’ sounds to me like a verb, rather).
Ditto for ‘infer’ and ‘imply’; where, I see, as with ‘disinterested = uninterested’, the British National Corpus also shows 20% of the citations for ‘infer’ meaning ‘imply’.
I’m no longer irked by disinterested = uninterested as it seems to be common parlance, but infer=imply or deduce still rankles as I still almost remember using both forward-chaining (inference) and backward-chaining (deduction) rule engines when working in AI in the 1980s.
I don’t know about AI, but deduction is inference.
‘Snarl-up’ is a valid noun but I omitted the hyphen in my original comment making it a verb that’s also valid but not in the context of the clue. I have corrected it now.
A ‘snarl-up’ is both noun and verb over in Blighty.
Lawyers hope for a judge who is disinterested, not uninterested. Often they are both, however.
FOI FAST, LOI REGIME, COD BRANDISH (Uxbridge indeed!), time 08:57 for 1.8K and a Decent Day.
Many thanks Kitty and Hurley.
Templar
15mins held up by SNARL for which I needed all others in place and RENTAL which, like Kitty, I was over thinking … ‘renmat’? ‘Renpat’? … before the common ‘Aha!’ moment.
I didn’t overthink DISINTEREST knowing that if I did I’d tie myself in knots with UN vs DIS and quietly predicted it would the centre of some discussion
Decent start to the week.
Thanks Hurley and Kitty.
A good test for a Monday morning and I needed to dust off a few crosswording cobwebs for some of the clues. CLUB took far too long to get, especially as I had the B from BREATHER to help me, the hidden RENTAL had me looking for words with a DD (direct debit) between a word for parents until ABANDON presented itself and LOI SNARL required an alphabet trawl.
With that in mind I was pleased to sneak in under target in 9.34 and particularly enjoyed BRANDISH and SELF-STARTER.
Thanks to Kitty
I liked this one too, and not just the excellent “never to return” and SELF-STARTING in the downs, but the hidden RENTAL with it’s bank of Mum&Dad surface… yes that’s me for the next year or so. I liked SHARE too. Thanks Hurley and Kitty. 4:21.
Found this a tricky start to the week.
Came-in just short of 35 minutes in a couple of sittings.
NHO DEWLAP but no problem getting it from the clue.
3D clever – but had me stuck for 5 mins. Obvious, I suppose, once you see it. For some reason, this type of clue always gives me most difficulty.
8A was my LOI due to the hold up with 3D.
I need a few early nights to get the old grey-matter back in order. Three late ones in a row… thanks to too much Glastonbury… on TV that is!
Thanks Kitty and Hurley
Lots of good stuff here.
ABANDON, NONETHELESS, SPIRITED, CLUB were all good, though BRANDISH was my favourite.
SNARL required an alphabet trawl though, and like others, I’m more familiar with snarl-up than snarl, for a confused situation.
5:59
Hesitated over SNARL, took a while to see CLUB, SELF-STARTER and BREATHER. Good to see DISINTEREST used in the sense of indifferent, although I prefer impartial, as a referee should be. A good challenge today.
I’m loving dark mode – thanks. My time was inside 15 minutes, but I submitted with the unparsable (disparsable?) SPACE instead of SHARE to be shown an error. Fixing that was also completed inside my target, but it’s a DNF for me. I thought SNARL weak, loved BRANDISH and enjoyed the rest of the puzzle – thanks Kitty and Hurley.
CTRL-ALT-D
I prefer CTRL-ALT-P for the ‘pink mode’
30 mins…
Bang on my cut off, although 8ac “Snarl” was a bit of a punt. I can understand the “snarl up” connotation, but with regards to speaking harshly I thought it was more of a facial expression.
Unfortunately, I caught COVID for the first time over the weekend so I’m going to use that as an excuse for being a little weary and slow. Was incredibly tempted to put “crap” for 5ac, but the first definition wouldn’t work.
FOI – 1dn “Fast”
LOI – 8ac “Snarl”
COD – 7dn “Breather”
One quick question, and I probably should know this, does the apostrophe in “it’s” for 11ac exclude the “s” from the anagrist?
Thanks as usual!
Yes, the apostrophe ‘s’ is excluded from the anagrist, it’s short for ‘is’. So ‘residents it’ is out of order.
Wishing you well – hope you get better soon 😊
Thanks Penny. I seemed to have turned a corner (hopefully).
However, upon re-reading my comment, it may have come across as being a little crass in light of what some people have gone through. Not my intention I can assure you (and anyone else for that matter).
Quite a mixture of times today with some finding it easy and other seasoned solvers like Jack and Meldrew clearly finding it tougher. I’m with them on this one as my slowest time in years of 19.57 for the QC confirms. It was the top left hand corner that was the problem, and it was sheer bloody mindedness that had me persisting with SNARL until I finally got it. No complaints though Hurley, I just wasn’t with it today. Hoping for better on the 15 x 15!
Got snarled up with disinterested/breather, self starter, and LOI snarl.
Crawled home in 17 mins. Also found the 15×15 hard even though the snitch is on 70.
Maybe it was the huge sunday roast and donningtons ales yesterday.
COD Self starter.
thanks
A curate’s egg from Hurley. I started slowly, reached the bottom of the grid and moved back up erratically, finishing with SELF STARTER and SNARL (which came into my head early on but didn’t convince). I wasted time by missing the first E out of NONETHELESS. CLUB only emerged when I got BREATHER (nice clue). Most of my other MERs have been mentioned above, as has my COD – BRANDISH (although ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’ was too close to my situation today).
Not a good start to the week for me (into the SCC) but thanks to both, anyway. John M.
Needed two sittings to crack what I thought was an unusually difficult puzzle from Hurley, but then DDs are never my favourite type of clue. Brandish and Breather were my last two, by which time I had lost the will to revisit the unparsed 21ac Space, so a DNF to boot. Not a good start to the week. Invariant
A green letter day where I finally managed to synchronise my brain and fingers and eliminate typos. FAST was FOI. Most of the puzzle was straightforward, but the NE kept me busy for a while. CLUB and BREATHER were last 2 in. 8:48. Thanks Hurley and Kitty.
A straightforward start to the week for me, with the exception of SNARL. I missed out on a rare escape from the SCC because of a 7-minute alphabet trawl on this clue. To my mind, SNARL without -UP does not = confused situation, and nor does it involve any speech. In the end, however, I did write it in – somewhat reluctantly – and put down my pencil in 26 minutes.
Mrs Random, on the other hand, had no such qualms and was pleased to finish all correct in 16 minutes. She is recovering today from opening our garden for the first time, yesterday. Her skill and hard work was on show to maybe 200 or so of our fellow local residents – a rewarding, but also quite stressful experience.
Many thanks to Hurley and Kitty.
Well done on the garden front. Not done for many years here but I do remember the hard work!
SNARL and TILE as others have mentioned held me up, as did not getting to CLUB very quickly. Needed all the checkers before FEARSOME made itself know. Generally the left went in faster than the right. All green in 18 and quite a stiff test I thought.
I finished this in reasonable time but SNARL was very much LOI; several looks en route and a long last look with a question mark re Snarl-Up. Does it work without Up?
If that’s been mentioned already ,apologies.
In a rush today.
COD to SELF STARTER.
David
I biffed fullsome for 1ac which I now know has one L. So 3 clues off a finish.
Basically a fearsome snarl in the NW leading me to abandon. 🙄
I didn’t notice any problem with disinterest but then it was an anagram and I had quite a few checkers in place when I solved it. I DNK TILE so that was a guess. I thought about putting in SpAcE for SHARE but it didn’t quite work. My LOI which required an alphabet trawl was SNARL. 9:06 for an OK day.
Pleased to finish within our modest target of 30m. Loi 8a snarl. Needed crossers to get 17a not he less. No real holdups. Thanks Hurley for a good start to the week.
The shift in meanings for disinterested always makes me think of the complete reversal of meaning for “stake-holder” which always meant a disinterested party (to hold the bets), but now means someone with a significant interest. Strange the way they both shifted in meaning, perhaps there is a modern view that nobody is impartial?