DNF, because I needed to look up one clue to finish things off. I found this challenging, and was stuck about halfway through, when thankfully Mr Biff came to my rescue. I’ll need to parse some of these as I write the blog.
| Across | |
| 1 | Grip metal joint with reversible faces (8) |
| HEADLOCK – LEAD (metal) HOCK (joint) with first letters switched (reversible faces)
This was my last in, biffed. I overlooked the possibility of this wordplay device, because the faces are not ‘reversible’ here, but rather ‘reversed’. |
|
| 5 | Sweet / nothing (6) |
| TRIFLE – double definition | |
| 8 | Part of cathedral day out ends in panic and patriarch in flap (4,6) |
| LADY CHAPEL – DAY anagrammed (out) last letters of (ends in) PANIC and PATRIARCH in LAPEL (flap) | |
| 9 | Too emotional, some cases (4) |
| ALSO – hidden in (cases) EMOTIONAL SOME | |
| 10 | Players indebted to closing season display (6-8) |
| WINDOW-DRESSING – WIND (players) OWING (indebted to) around (closing) DRESS (season) | |
| 11 | Mo, I should add muscle (7) |
| TRICEPS – TRICE (mo) PS (I should add) | |
| 13 | I’ll ask you to raise your glasses to Daisy’s relative (7) |
| TOASTER – TO + ASTER (daisy’s relative) | |
| 15 | Inordinately proud to leave school unqualified (4,3) |
| DROP OUT – anagram of (inordinately) PROUD TO | |
| 18 | State I entered in treatment for my own good (7) |
| WYOMING – I in (entered in) anagram of (treatment for) MY OWN + G (good) | |
| 21 | Routine studied in guest house, say (5-3-6) |
| BREAD-AND-BUTTER – READ (studied) in B AND B (guest house) UTTER (say)
This might be a chestnut, but darn it’s good! |
|
| 22 | Putin’s agreed to render part of wall (4) |
| DADO – DA (Putin’s ‘agreed’) DO (to render) | |
| 23 | Bankrupt rogue hosts balls (10) |
| IMPOVERISH – IMPISH (rogue) around (hosts) OVER (balls) | |
| 24 | Forget it — Ned’s no longer coming about pests (6) |
| VERMIN – NEVER MIND (forget it) without NED (Ned’s no longer coming about)
Wow, this is very good. |
|
| 25 | Drew small craft, back to front, alongside front of dock (8) |
| SKETCHED – KETCHES (small craft) with last letter put first (back to front) + (alongside) first letter (front) of DOCK | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Dope accompanying a large female on a cycle (7) |
| HALFWIT – WITH (accompanying) A L (large) F (female) with the letters cycled (on a cycle) | |
| 2 | Movement for music and not for drama (9) |
| ANDANTINO – AND + ANTI (not for) + NO (drama) | |
| 3 | According to recital, the Pobble does sugar! (7) |
| LACTOSE – homophone of (according to recital) LACK TOES (the Pobble does)
A reference to The Pobble Who Has No Toes, by Edward Lear. I had to look this up, because I couldn’t decide between various sugars, and had no good grasp (no pun intended) on 1 across. |
|
| 4 | What ladies mark at ball includes both the last and the first dance (7) |
| CZARDAS – CARDS (what ladies mark at ball) around both (includes separately) Z and A (the last and the first)
Did not really get the ladies marking cards business but there aren’t many dances with Z in them! |
|
| 5 | Stop circulating right-wing lie (4,5) |
| TALL STORY – STALL (stop) with letters cycled (circulating) TORY (right-wing) | |
| 6 | Terms at writing school may be stressed by them (7) |
| ITALICS – cryptic definition | |
| 7 | Way to eat Indian spinach dish (7) |
| LASAGNE – LANE (way) around (to eat) SAG (Indian spinach) | |
| 12 | I’m on key with 3, doing puns outrageously (5,4) |
| POUND SIGN – anagram of (outrageously) DOING PUNS | |
| 14 | I try this out on husband of a certain age (9) |
| THIRTYISH – anagram of (out) I TRY THIS + (on) H (husband) | |
| 16 | Ridicule “100-year-old” bones (7) |
| RIBCAGE – RIB (ridicule) C AGE (“100-year old”) | |
| 17 | Sooner make do with drop in energy (7) |
| PREFORM – PERFORM (do) with E lowered (drop in energy) | |
| 18 | Victoria’s one clip encapsulates beginning of loving marriage (7) |
| WEDLOCK – WE (Victoria’s one) DOCK (clip) around (encapsulates) first letter (beginning) of LOVING | |
| 19 | Luxuriant new houseplant has irregularly shaped leaves (7) |
| OPULENT – anagram of (irregularly shaped) HAS removed from (leaves) anagram of (new) HOUSEPLANT | |
| 20 | Set about arranging letters in the grid (7) |
| GIRTHED – anagram of (arranging letters in) THE GRID | |
Had 20d as RIGHTED for quite a while as my anagram for THE GRID, but it made 21a far from routine, and was reluctantly abandoned.
I wondered if ALFALFA might be a slang term for ‘weed’, i.e. dope , in either the UK or USA, thus justifying a large female and another large female ( on a tandem cycle? ) in 1d. I felt sure Guy would know.
COD POUND SIGN, but on an American keyboard 3 has only # and no £.
Another chewy Friday ! 37minutes
Never heard ALFALFA for Mary Jane.
On my Mac keyboards, Option-3 is the £.
DNF
Didn’t get CZARDAS (a variant of csardas, ODE says), which I had no idea how to spell. A woman at a ball would have the names of her partners-to-be listed on a dance card.
That was quite a work-out, devious, difficult and delightful. It took me 49.25 but who’s counting? Thank you J for figuring out several, VERMIN and ANDANTINO (que?) foremost among them. Didn’t know the dance, didn’t know the Pobble, didn’t know much actually but got there in the end. FWIW, on my keyboard the # is on 3 and $ is on 4. I can’t see a pound sign but it was let go about 60 years ago.
From Rambler, Gambler:
When you get to WYOMING, a letter you’ll see
If you get into trouble just you write and tell me
# is a pound sign
Hello from another non-UKish person who uses a US keyboard. I believe the British use keyboards with an actual pound sign £ on them – I’ve worked over there and seen ’em – and can’t remember, but I’m guessing it’s above the 3 where the # (hash/number) should be.
The computer in front of me has £ on the same key as 3. My iPad has both £ and #.
Your computer has an American keyboard then, not a British one? Where did you buy it? I have a vague idea you live in France? No idea what keyboards they use there, but you can be almost certain they would not use British: “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.” 😉
They’re both UK keyboards. Just confirming that they do indeed have a £ on them!
The French of course have their own version of QWERTY (AZERTY), just to be annoying 😉
And it works too!
I’ve had to get used to it over the years. I’ve always worked a lot in France and when writing in French I used to find the inconvenience of the QWAZ placement outweighed by the ease of doing accents. Then I learned to use ALT codes for accents and stopped, but now when I write in French on my phone or iPad the keyboard switches so I still have to deal with it.
I thought a pound sign was £ (which I just C&Pd from the other guys)
66 minutes with aids used only to look up ‘the Pobble’ which if I ever knew, I had forgotten, and even before I opened the reference I saw mention of its having no toes, so I guess that counts as a full-blown cheat on my part. Several answers went in unparsed but I worked them all out after I’d called time. I knew Czárdás from Brahms and Liszt but got the ‘cards’ reference long before I thought of it as my LOI.
Very substantial puzzle today – LOsI HEADLOCK and VERMIN both going in unparsed. Smiled at HALFWIT. Constructed CZARDAS after trying mazurka. Many churches also have LADY CHAPELs. And I really liked LACTOSE when the penny dropped.
26’03”, thanks jeremy and setter
Thats the best i ever did on a friday being 16 mins. Are they really harder than early in the week? I think i take five or ten mins
Longer on Friday. Biff on nho czardass
Really enjoyed battling slowly through this one. I needed help with CZARDAS so submitted off leaderboard. Just as well; my personal nitch was about 250. I still can’t make much sense of ITALICS, but it went in from the crossers and “stressed” in the clue. HEADLOCK and WEDLOCK? I liked POUND SIGN and LACTOSE (I knew what I needed to know about the Pobble)
25.40
I need a lie down after that one! I’ve never been a fan of ‘cycling’ (still less of ‘circulating’) clues, but the two here were just about reachable.
The musical version of ‘Young Frankenstein’ has the song ‘He Vas My Boyfriend’ with the line “When I mentioned WEDLOCK, he put me in a HEADLOCK”.
LOI LADY CHAPEL, a Hail Mary throw.
CsOD LACTOSE, RIBCAGE, WYOMING.
Three off today. Couldn’t get the dance, I constructed something but it was such nonsense I can’t even remember it (apart from it did have a Z and A in it). Also no such thing as a DATO or ANDANTIDO. Just needed to swap the endings.
Didn’t know what the Pobble was but thought it more likely ‘lacked toes’ than it would ‘suck rose’.
This was a good puzzle though so a bit more disappointing for it to be a wide win to the setter. Hard to pick a favourite but let’s go with LASAGNE.
Cheers blogger for explaining a few where I was either unsure or only half parsed.
DNF. Being ignorant of Pobbles I had SUCROSE which blocked HEADLOCK though not sure I’d have got HOCK and fairly certain I would never have got CZARDAS.
All in all I’m glad I conceded after 45 mins of entertaining challenge rather than wasting another 20 on the remaining few.
Thanks to setter and to plusjeremy for going the extra mile.
A DNF after the hour with the musical term and the dance unknown. LOI that I did get was IMPOVERISH. By then I was knackered and I couldn’t see OVER from BALLS, despite watching the cricket highlights last night. That was like pulling teeth. Well done Jeremy and a thank you to the setter for the torture.
24:05 with over 6 minutes on my last two – HEADLOCK and CZARDAS. That was tough. COD to WINDOW-DRESSING. Thanks Jeremy for parsing those I couldn’t and setter for the great puzzle.
DNF. Gave up at 75 mins with four in the NE unanswered. HALFWIT, HEADLOCK, ANDANTINO and the NHO CZARDAS which I was never going to get in a month of Sundays.
Very tough, even for a Friday, and a number unparsed so ta to our blogger for them.
Thanks pj and setter.
31.02 with a couple of minutes interruption, so obviously not a doddle. We have two cycling clues today, both of which I threw in before working out how they cycled, and VERMIN where I defy anyone to get the answer via the wordplay. Thanks to PJ for demonstrating that BREAD AND BUTTER was a much better clue than the feeble CD I took it for, with me perusing a very limited guest house menu. The actual CD in the grid, ITALICS I thought was rather dodgy, the setter’s determination to mislead eclipsing the setter’s responsibility to lead. I’m not wholly convinced by DRESS for season, but hey ho. And is GIRTHED a word? Pray do show how you’ve used it in conversation!
More hard graft than entertainment, a bit like Spurs in the Europa final, but I got there unscathed.
It’s better to dress the salad at the table; if you do it in the kitchen the lettuce gets soggy.
Not perfect, but it got me over the hump.
DNF with three to spare. Saw the ladies’ cards for the dance and thought about bunging Z and A somewhere but surely not… LACTOSE only after the L from HEADLOCK, never heard of Pobble. PREFORM/VERMIN nexus also not solved. Typical Friday for me (and also having problems with the club site, which didn’t help my mood!). Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Problems? with the club site?
probably my phone tbh. letters disappearing on the grid in the crossword club site. the cryptic on the times page worked OK.
Sorry, I was being facetious; the club site is an endless source of problems. (Re letters disappearing, you might try clearing cache before going to the site.)
haha, yes I sort of thought so though to be fair I’m not usually affected. I had to get out early today so reverted to the main page which worked. I’ll see what dodgy stuff I find in my cache later. cheers
DNF after 36:58, eventually giving in and looking up the dance at the end.
Nothing in the comments so far to suggest it wasn’t a totally legitimate clue, so I guess it must have been ok.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
It’s a very tough clue if you don’t know the dance or the practice of marking cards, both of which are quite specialised knowledge in 2025. I eventually got to ‘cards’ via the phrase ‘mark one’s card’, which turns out to be a separate phrase altogether. Once I’d actually written the letters in, I had a vague memory of encountering the dance before, but only in a crossword. At what point ‘very tough, but accurate’ tips into ‘unfair’ is a tricky one, and I can’t quite settle on my view in this case.
I saw CARDS pretty much straight away, but was at a loss from there. Thought of A and Z being part of the mix but couldn’t make a plausible (to me) word out of them.
I’ll get it next time.
I agree. « last and first » of what? If it’s DANCE, it’s E and D, which is what I played with for ages without success. You have to divine that it’s the alphabet.
I went through all those dead ends and finally twigged the A-Z thing which we should all remember but probably won’t…
Well, thanks to plusjeremy here. And to the setter.
I found this v hard, and with some vocab well out of the usual range, and I cheated throughout. There were some good clues but this was above my pay grade.
8a Lady-Ch Biffed. Thanks +j.
10a Window-Dr ditto.
13a Toaster. Clever. Looked up to check that asters and daisies are related.
21a B&B I enjoyed this one.
23a Impoverish, biffed, thanks +j. I should have been able to parse this but I think I had run out of steam by then.
24a Vermin. Biffed, thanks +j.
3d Lactose, brilliant.
NHO 4d Czardas. Cheated of course. Abstruse GK. I thought of marking card instantly but didn’t pluralise that and couldn’t find 3 more letters. Was misled into thinking first and last meant DancE, but no. Overall a nasty clue IMHO. Was surprised to get it by cheating.
7d Lasagne, NHO saag dish. Usually has 2 As in the saag according to wiktionary.
12d £, foreign keyboards usually have their own currency sign on the 3 key, so they will be struggling.
17d Preform=sooner make? Umm.
18d Wedlock, clever.
COD candidates 13a, 21a, 2d, 3d, 19d.
If one looks up Czardas by V Monti on the Internet, I think many here will recognise this Czardas.
Here is just one interpretation
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHO6KOPWXtc&pp=ygUHY3phcmRhcw%3D%3D
A brilliant piece, which is how I know the word – I was going to post a link myself but you beat me to it. I solved all but 5 here (CZARDAS was one of the answers I failed to get) and took well over 30 mins to do so, so it was a tricky one. Perhaps POUND SIGN could be interpreted as the American term for ‘#’ rather than ‘£’ if people object to it being defined as on the same key as ‘3’? It did seem to be perhaps the weakest clue though.
That’s how I got to CZARDAS too. I sometimes try to scrape it out on my violin, but it’s nearly as tricky as this puzzle was!
To begin with it seemed easy enough and I suspected a break from the usual Fridays that we have had recently, but no. It soon showed its teeth and my list of words to parse was as long as it has ever been. After coming here they were all satisfactorily explained, in some cases very nice but in others OK but such a stretch that I would probably never have got them: Victoria’s one = we; dress = season; sooner make = preform. 63 minutes with plenty of aids.
48 – terrific and about as tough as they get, I think. CZARDAS was the only NHO, but each one was a tussle.
DNF
Czardas. Riiiight …
Thanks, pj.
36:19* (another typo)
The unknown CZARDAS took an absolute age, as did PREFORM (I fell hook line and sinker for “make do”), and VERMIN. I also admit to not knowing what the heck was going on with HEADLOCK.
I thoroughly enjoyed that from start to finish though so thanks to the setter and to Jeremy for putting me straight with a couple of head scratchers.
Really enjoyed this one, possibly because marking cards no problem for us Heyerites, and I knew the dance anyway. Some very nice clues today, 15 and 18ac very elegant. Never quite parsed 1ac, but hey.
Off the wavelength and found that vaguely annoying. Too many cycling/circulating clues nowadays. Too many multiple letters removed – I’m looking at you, halfwit, opulent, vermin and tall story. Otherwise slow but got there, with a couple unparsed. NHO CZARDAS, it fell with a couple of checkers, LACTOSE entered without checkers even having no idea what Pobbles meant or if it was a misprint. Biggest problem was SKETCHED, seeing S = small, ketch = craft, D, and wondering where the E came from.
Heard of czardas (spellcheck hasn’t) but didn’t know it was spelled that way. A bit of cheating to complete. Thanks for the answers and parsing.
DNF, defeated by the unknown CZARDAS. I vaguly remembered ladies marking cards, and of A and Z, but wouldn’t have known that putting them together like that would produce the answer.
– Didn’t parse SKETCHED – I thought of ketch, but forgot that ‘craft’ can be plural
– Never heard of the Pobble so LACTOSE went in on trust
– “Got” several answers before I was able to parse them: HEADLOCK (nice to see a Spoonerism not using that term), WINDOW-DRESSING, TOASTER, VERMIN, POUND SIGN (took a while to see it wasn’t a cross-reference) and WEDLOCK (I saw ‘Victoria’s one’ and thought “Station!”) were all in that category
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
CODs Impoverish / Vermin
58:31. Tricky! I enjoyed CZARDAS, though like others i saw the CARD well before being able to fill it in. VERMIN was the LOI, a very tricky clue indeed! Bravo to setter and blogger!
I suspect I’m being a bit dim here, but could someone tell me how ‘NO’ equates to ‘DRAMA’ in 2 down?
‘The stylized classic drama of Japan’ (Collins), also spelled ‘Noh’. Remember it, it appears reasonably regularly.
A belter of a puzzle, about 35 minutes but only with liberal use of cheats so a DNF. At the start I was completely stumped for about five minutes before entering DADO with relief. In a very crowded field joint COD to VERMIN and LACTOSE. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Well what a work out that was – need a lie down after that. 47 minutes for a very chewy puzzle that went in from the bottom up. Felt that I was trying to nail blancmange to a wall throughout. Thanks for the parsing Jeremy because many of these baffled me in solving and went in on trust. I hate spoonerisms but at least that would have pointed me in the right direction at 1a.
Brilliant puzzle – thx Jeremy and setter
22:32. I dislike ‘cycling’ clues (have I mentioned that before?) so two in one puzzle was a bit much. But I enjoyed the struggle with this one.
I had no idea what was going on with 3dn until I put the answer in from checkers and the definition. And then I immediately remembered The Pobble who Has No Toes. Funny thing, memory.
CZARDAS unknown and constructed from wordplay. ‘The last and the first’ without any other indication for Z and A is a bit naughty if you ask me. When are those letters ever actually used like that? However the resulting word looked perfectly feasible as a Hungarian or possibly Romany dance so I felt reasonably confident about it.
DNF. I didn’t know PREFORM was a word!
DNF after 60
Struggled with WINDOW DRESSING as DRESS for season and WIND for players were tough when there are so many other synonyms. But would have still struggled with 1A the sugar and the dance even though I do recognise the latter. I like a toughie but the reference to Pobble really is pretty specialist knowledge. It’s one thing to have w/p leading to a NHO but when the w/p is NHO – that is (for me) just a little bit annoying. But guessable from the definition maybe.
Too hard for me. Gave up on the hour with HEADLOCK, LACTOSE and the NHO CZARDAS missing. I even knew it must be ‘card’ wrapped around other letters, but for me that was too unusual a word to guess at with any confidence. NHO the Pobble, and agree with previous comment that it was asking a lot of the solver to see the answer.
9.09!
Not really. I got up at 5 and did half of it, but when I resumed at 9.30 my answers had disappeared, so starting at 0.0 I wrote in all the answers I’d already got. Then I biffed like mad to finish it. 20 mins probably nearer the mark. Thanks Jeremy for the parsing – some great work there.
Edward Lear wrote 2 brilliant nonsense poems- the Jumblies and the Owl and the P, but the rest of his stuff was pretty awful. Including the Pobble.
DNF after an hour , Czardas did for me, and I biffed several others, so today’s blog was exceptional. thanks Jeremy, great job of parsing today’s knotty puzzle whose NW corner I found very challenging apart from the very amusing lactose.
Carillons of Dis, that was tough! Could have done with something a bit less taxing after driving home from Skipton and unpacking, but got there eventually. Knew CZARDAS as I sometimes try to scrape out the piece by Vittorio Monti, which my Dad introduced me to, on my violin. I once saw Max Jaffa, on a TV programme, play it and then plunge his bowing hand into a bucket of water. Might have been the Des O’Connor show, but I’m not sure 🙂 Anyway, that was one of the easier clues for me as I knew the dance card reference too. I saw VERMIN from the definition once I had —M-N, and managed to reverse engineer it. Didn’t know the Pobble, but with LADY CHAPEL in place it had to be SUCROSE or LACTOSE and only the latter made sense. DROP OUT, PREFORM and LOI, RIBCAGE, took an age to solve. Don’t really get ITALICS. 42:50. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Gave up after 40 with the top left unsolved. Seems I wasn’t alone there.
Enjoyed the 40 mins getting to that point though!
DNF
A DNF for some of the reasons listed above.
I will point out that: ELSE, the cases of EmotionaL SomE, can also, sort of, mean “too”. I admit it’s definition 5.c. under usage II, but OED does have “only too” = “nothing else than”.
Got all the way to the end and then failed on the final fence, the dance that I NHO. I even got the dance-card thing but didn’t realize I had to insert Z and A too. But a wonderful crossword, and a true battle. I just watched Simon solve it on Cracking the Cryptic and he got the dance as like the second clue in, but struggled with other things I wrote straight in. Interesting how different people find different things hard.
I thought ‘bread and butter’ means the money the staple income you can rely on before extras, not ‘routine’?
I’d say the expression ‘meat and drink’ is the equivalent of routine.
As a hyphenated adjective, it means routine. Any thoughts on the rest of the puzzle?
Very difficult, and I gave up with NW unsolved. This setter really does seem to enjoy himself on a Friday, but I found it heavy going. I liked the IMPOVERISH clue.
I think I’d have been better off reading a book today.
No time today because I left the timer running by mistake, but I think about 50 minutes in three shifts.
I worked out Czardas from the clue and then googled it and it existed! My LOI was VERMIN which I had no clue how it worked, Ne-ver min-d clever!!
Many thanks setter and blogger, great puzzle for the end of the week
DNF. I thought the Pobble might sue crows as some kind of avian lawyer. Sucrose meant that I didn’t get Headlock. Also didn’t know Andantino. Didn’t know Lactose was a sugar. I did manage to get Czardas (despite being an NHO) but that still didn’t help. Didn’t parse Vermin – very esoteric clue.
I did like Triceps and Bread and Butter.
NW corner too tough for me today.
38 minutes to complete but not v proud of myself as quite a few solutions were biffed (eg VERMIN). Got CZARDAS, but this only known because of the marvellous version composed by Monti (listen to the Nigel Kennedy performance – a real treat)
Nice challenge completed in 41’28” on Sunday evening. Some great clues. Many thanks.
These cycling clues are not my favourites, when the penny dropped for 1d I could solve the oddly indicated spoonerism at 1a, and correct the sugar.
NHO the Pobble or its deformity.
Czardas was an early write-in, knowing of dance cards lead to recalling the romantic novel by D Pearson 1975.
Biffed vermin. It had to be pound sign because sing made no sense. ( I didn’t learn to touch type the number keys back in pre-decimal days. Here a dollar sign is above the 4.)
So thanks for both explanations.