Guardian 23961

[mikebau]

19 down From soak, pungent-leaved plant's emerged in nursery. -R-C-E

I've seen the two plausible answers but to decide between them I need to have the whole clue explained 'cos it's beyond me. Please?

[JMR27]

one answer's creche - what's the other?

[gen2]

I think orache is the other (a pungent leaved plant) but I cannot give a satisfactory explanation for either

[netkey]

Creche is the answer.
I believe the explanation to be as follows:
Soak refers to a drunk and pungent-leved plant is cress.
From a drunk the word for cress would emerge as creche.

[JMR27]

that sounds good netkey - well done

[gen2]

That sounds good to me netkey

[netkey]

Can't take full credit for the explanation. In an earlier posting I came up with the idea of cress for the pungent-leaved plant and Telberts42 came up with drunk for soak - so a joint effort.

[mikebau]

Thanks to all.

I'll go along with Netkey. And if that's not the explanation and the answer, well, it deserves to be! Gen2 and I seem to have been led halfway up the garden (nursery garden....?) path towards "orache" as a possible alternative but are now confident with "creche".

Grudging credit to Enigmatist for a real puzzler and for the pretty play with his aitches.

[FleurdeLys]

Not sure that I go along with the congratulations bit - when the cryptic part of the clues are so obscure it just reduces it to a glorified "Quick Crossword". Surely when you've got the correct answer it should be fairly obvious that you've done so? I still don't get the cryptic part of many of them eg GOSSAMER, HIFI etc; and "BR" as an abbreviation of bedroom!