A bit on the tricky side.
I only managed four on a first pass of the acrosses (8, 10,19, 20), but the two long anagrams did help things along, and the downs did provide a few gentler entry points into the grid. Still, answers were generally quite slow to materialise, despite all seeming very gettable in hindsight: a sign of good setting. I came home in 8:27, significantly slower than the last few days.
Much enjoyed – many thanks to Alex!
| Across | |
| 1 | Individual gathering hot gravel (7) |
| SHINGLE – SINGLE (individual) gathering H(ot) | |
| 5 | Paddy harbours revolutionary (5) |
| STROP – PORTS (harbours) “revolutionary”. To be “in a paddy” is to be in a “fit of temper”. The OED provides a 1933 quote: “Both Irish and the colloquial Paddy are used for anger.” Irish = “fieriness of temper” came first and was originally US, as in the phrase “to get one’s Irish up.” Paddy is now “potentially offensive” (OED) or “sometimes offensive” (Collins). | |
| 8 | Arrangement of rations Hector distributed (13) |
| ORCHESTRATION – anagram (distributed) of RATIONS HECTOR | |
| 9 | Title of man going around new church (7) |
| MINSTER – MISTER (title of man) going around N(ew) | |
| 10 | Hulu creditors hiding money (5) |
| LUCRE – hidden in huLU CREditors | |
| 11 | Come out and come together after finale of Pride (6) |
| EMERGE – MERGE (come together) after E (“finale” of pridE) | |
| 13 | Plots to remove current depositories (6) |
| STORES – STORIES to remove I (SI unit for current) | |
| 15 | Filth from unpleasant European (5) |
| GRIME – GRIM (unpleasant) E(uropean) | |
| 16 | Stop next to snake for paving material (7) |
| ASPHALT – HALT (stop) next to ASP (snake) | |
| 19 | Acolytes going crazy for doctor (13) |
| GYNAECOLOGIST – anagram (crazy) of ACOLYTES GOING | |
| 20 | Prepare clothes (5) |
| DRESS – double definition | |
| 21 | Thanks leaders for turnover (7) |
| TAKINGS – TA (thanks) KINGS (leaders) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Random rot seen partly rising in tumult (5) |
| STORM – randoM ROT Seen “partly rising” | |
| 2 | Something annoying in toilet (13) |
| INCONVENIENCE – IN and CONVENIENCE (toilet) | |
| 3 | Visitor suspected we hear (5) |
| GUEST – we hear the same as GUESSED (suspected) | |
| 4 | Complete part of shipment I received (6) |
| ENTIRE – “part of” shipmENT I REceived | |
| 5 | Vegetable will go extinct ultimately (7) |
| SHALLOT – SHALL (will) gO extincT “ultimately”. | |
| 6 | Check flower’s appearance in new form (13) |
| REINCARNATION -REIN (check) CARNATION (flower) | |
| 7 | Caters first of parties with 50 per cent off ciders (7) |
| PANDERS – P (“first” of Parties) AND (with) “50% off” |
|
| 11 | Busy engineer getting on (7) |
| ENGAGED – ENG. (engineer) AGED (getting on) | |
| 12 | Horses for example upset flying geese (3-4) |
| GEE-GEES – E.G. (for example) “upset”, and an anagram (flying) of GEESE | |
| 14 | Five love to board wagon and frolic (6) |
| CAVORT – V (five) O (love) to board CART (wagon) | |
| 17 | Put down cheap wine (5) |
| PLONK – double definition. PLONK for cheap wine comes from a jocular pronunciation of vin blanc. | |
| 18 | Carries infant with ease we hear (5) |
| TOTES – TOT (infant) and EASE sounds the same as E’S | |
Tricky for me, providing 18 minutes of head-scratching and light bulbs coming on. It didn’t help that I couldn’t understand why 5a should be STROP, despite seeing it immediately. Other posers were SHINGLE = gravel, the British A in GYNAECOLOGIST, TAKINGS = turnover, and the NHO GEE-GEES; is that baby talk?
Lots of nifty cluing, especially EMERGE, very neat.
Thanks to Alex and rolytoly.
Yes, gee-gee is baby talk, but you’ll also hear people talking about putting money on the gee-gees at horse races. It may be a bit dated now, I’m not sure. And maybe it makes betting sound a bit more innocuous!
Thanks! The betting thing sounds very weird to my ears.
Funny, isn’t it? It’s just slang to me and not odd at all!
But I’ve just done a bit of digging and it seems it did start at racecourses, and was in use from at least the Victorian days. The internet wormhole comes up with quite a lot of mixed info about its derivation, so it’s hard to work out what’s true.
Nice puzzle. The blog illuminated the rising storm which I guess I must have biffed, I did not see rein = check, or where the “and” came from in panders. I do not automatically associate pandering as synonymous with catering. I saw a port of S Trop in strop so I thought that was it – did not look further, so missed the ports the other way. Thanks, Rolytoly and Alex. 13.26.
23:15
Back in the SCC after my quickest ever two finishes.
Echo exactly what rolgtoly said re the QC but did enjoy it.
Particularly liked INCONVENIENCE and REINCARNATION.
Thanks to Alex and rolgtoly
Very hard, IMO. Only eight clues written in as I was ushered into the SCC. Fortunately, ORCHESTRATION and INCONVENIENCE appeared out of nowhere shortly afterwards and I finally had some checkers to work with.
GRIME required an extensive alphabet trawl, but led me to ENGAGED and DRESS. STROP also required an alphabet trawl and was my LOI. Time ~40 minutes.
Thanks to Roly and Alex.
A little trickier than previous Alex offerings I thought, but a really neat puzzle with some cracking surfaces. I particularly liked the big anagrams.
9:05 FOI Lucre LOI Grime COD Orchestration WOD Cavort AOD Gynaecologist
Thanks Alex and Roly – another interesting selection of facts to add to the blog 😊
On edit:
(I was determined to finish the biggie today, as it was RR’s last one. Not especially easy, but all done in 55 minutes. Maybe worth having a go for old times’ sake, even if you don’t finish!)
Just realised that today is Thursday! Tomorrow is RR’s last 15×15. I didn’t need to struggle so much on the biggie after all 🤣🤣🤣
No parsing problems for today’s nice QC. Only hitch was looking up cart for wagon to get cavort. Thanks to Rolytoly for expanding on the strop, panders and plonk heritage.
Slow solve around 45 mins. None of the long ones came easily this evening. I may never be so pleased to see a gynaecologist appear again.
FOI plonk
LOI takings
COD cavort because it is such a lovely word
thanks all
Enjoyed this puzzle. GEE GEES was my LOI, and took me a while to figure out the word play. INCONVENIENCE was my favourite, did make me smile. Thank you for the blog 😁
Enjoyed this. I did NW, then SW, SE, NE corners in sequence.
Liked the paddy and GYNAECOLOGIST clues.
Thanks to blogger and setter
Another faster than average 10:52 and another one here very familiar with the paddy / strop equivalence without understanding its origin. I shall be more careful with it in future. Thanks, all.
PADDY and SHALLOT took some teasing out at the end. Clock said 69 mins but that included a good snooze 😴 so not sure really. Crossword completed with 40 winks along the way – nice end to the day!
19 minutes. Ok-ish.
American who has never heard gee-gee. Or strop. Now I have! Botanist however, so nailed carnation.