Times 27,713: Guess Who’s Back, Friday’s Back

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well this was something of a beast, requiring as it did knowledge of sporting argot, classical AND rock music and various foreign tongues to negotiate its pangrammatic wynds. Marvellous stuff though I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t make it home inside of the quarter hour, due to having JUST AS IT IS in for 12ac and then somehow only being able to think of CROCODILE ROCK for the longest time. As Chuck D so rightly put it “Elvis was a hero to most, but…” Maybe when he went on “most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps” he meant that you could find their pseudonyms on puzzle pages of British broadsheets instead?

I did at least avoid the temptation to submit MUCH AS IT IS when the juzgado penny dropped… but there was only a split second in it.

Loads of treasurably brilliant clues in here, with surfaces to die for. I really really liked the double political jibing at 28dn and 8dn – how is Sir Keir Dave Starmer working out in these times of crisis, anyway? – so I’ll make them my joint COD, but there were any number of constructions I could have waxed lyrical about in this grid, I’ll let you all nominate your own faves. Bravo setter for this excellent introductory course to build stamina for tackling the Monthly Club Special, and please to keep the tough ones coming at the end of the week!

ACROSS
1 Start doing gags about Charlie being seen at Cheltenham? (4,6)
JUMP JOCKEY – JUMP [start] + JOKEY [doing gags] “about” C(harlie). I figured this was a fair bet to be something about racing but I hadn’t realised that Cheltenham Racecourse is The Home of Jump Racing. So of course you’ll find “jump jockeys” there!

6 He’s likely to be a Muslim? Most unlikely! (2,2)
AS IF – Asif is an Arabic-world masculine name; chances are that most Asifs are Muslim.

9 Foreign criminal having gone back, one had nick closed (7)
BANDITO – reverse I’D NAB [one had | nick], + TO [closed].

10 Game show from Oz, initially pushing IQ up, weirdly (3,4)
POP QUIZ – (OZ P{ushing} IQ UP*) [“weirdly”]

12 Say what many diseases end in: being no better? (4,2,2,2)
SUCH AS IT IS – SUCH AS [say] + -ITIS [what many diseases end in]

13 Release clutch like a pro? Hardly! (3)
LAY – Complicated double definition. I thought the first half was just about “letting go of something, putting it down” but it’s what a hen does; and the second contrasts being a professional with being a layperson.

15 Not the case guard used regularly to keep books in (6)
UNTRUE – {g}U{a}R{d} U{s}E{d}, to keep N(ew) T(estament) in

16 Irrational and I hesitate to say outsize note providing musical direction (3,5)
PIU MOSSO – PI [irrational] + UM [I hesitate to say] + O/S + SO [note]. I was not familiar with this direction to play “with more movement”, more quickly than before, so had to be very careful not to get the penultimate lesser wrong. MOSDO didn’t look very Italian fortunately.

18 Teary daughter, newly wed, hugging you repeatedly (4-4)
DEWY-EYED – D(aughter) + (WED*) [“newly”], “hugging” YE YE

20 Russian perhaps with trace of novichok avoiding check (6)
ANDREI – AND [with] + REI{n} [check, minus the first trace of N{ovichok}]

23 Chap writes off to the auditors (3)
REX – homophone of WRECKS [writes off]

24 Glaring as family Golf is going past (10)
OVERTAKING – OVERT AKIN G [glaring | as family | Golf]

26 Doubt short integrated circuit close to spark plugs is faster (7)
QUICKER – take QUER{y} [doubt, “short”] and then “plug” it with IC {spar}K. The type of clue that you need a degree (or equivalent experience) in crosswordology to untangle the workings of quickly!

27 Like a bargain? One not available continuously? (2,5)
ON OFFER – or, humorously, an ON-OFF-ER sounds like someone who oscillates between being on and off. Much like my blogging really.

28 Party for letting go of some left-leaning minority groups (4)
ORGY – hidden reversed (leaning right-to-left!) in {minorit}Y GRO{ups}

29 People similar to this feel ok, somehow (3,5,2)
THE LIKES OF – (THIS FEEL OK*) [“somehow”]

DOWN
1 Judge the writer’s ungrammatical sneer (4)
JIBE – J(udge) + I BE [an ungrammatical form of I AM, = “the writer is”]

2 Look for someone with height in football team, not lacking heart (7)
MANHUNT – H(eight) in MAN U [football team], + N{o}T

3 Single jug? That pitcher might do (9,4)
JAILHOUSE ROCK – JAILHOUSE [prison = jug] + ROCK [what a “pitch”er might do]

4 Pick toffees out of one’s mouth? (6)
CHOOSE – homophone of CHEWS. I was worried this might be a classic dodgy homophone but I just asked a Scot to say them both and they sounded the same, so that’s one of the usually most stringent tests passing.

5 Very understanding chap, changing with time (8)
EMPATHIC – (CHAP + TIME*) [“changing”]

7 Cries as lumbang-oil emptied into vessel (7)
SQUALLS – QUA [as] + L{umbang-oi}L, into S.S.

8 The force of certain posturing involving Left in imprecise reasoning? (5,5)
FUZZY LOGIC – FUZZ [= coppers = the force] + YOGIC [of certain posturing] “involving” L(eft)

11 Child’s play, this innings from one used to handling deliveries? (8,5)
POSTMAN’S KNOCK – “knock” as in a spell of batting in cricket was unknown to me, but the crossers eventually got me to the children’s game.

14 Exchange money, being paid half of stated price (4,3,3)
QUID PRO QUO – QUID [money] + PRO [professional = being paid] + QUO{ted} [half of “stated price”]

17 Touching address finally by head of Europol leading investigation (8)
RESEARCH = RE [touching] + {addres}S + E{uropol} + ARCH [leading]

19 Singer in need of whiskey getting larger bottles (7)
WAXWING – WAXING [getting larger] “bottles” W(hiskey)

21 Series of low very low grades deciding contests (7)
RUNOFFS – RUN OF FS. Not sure if there mightn’t be at least one superfluous word in this clue, but it doesn’t actively hurt anything.

22 Way to get bread and piece of cake (6)
STROLL – S(tree)T + ROLL [bread] to make a walk in the park.

25 Composer’s optional direction to play louder? (4)
ORFF – OR… FF = FORTISSIMO!!!

77 comments on “Times 27,713: Guess Who’s Back, Friday’s Back”

  1. Yes, great stuff and all the more disappointing to have failed on just one – an unparsed ‘bandido’ for a now-I-see-it BANDITO. I liked the complicated parsing as in JUMP JOCKEY and QUICKER and surfaces such as for POSTMAN’S KNOCK.

    Favourite was the ‘Release clutch’ (of eggs) for the humble LAY.

    And a pangram – almost a double. Who could ask for anything more.

  2. Great crossword. But I wasted a lot of time at the end with ANDREI, my LOI. I had no idea what novichok was (apparently it’s a nerve agent) but if you take check (ch) out of it, you get just the right number of letters to rearrange to make Russian sounding names. Eventually I got RUNOFFS which put paid to that idea. I put ANDREI in as the only Russianish name I could fit but I didn’t see the wordplay. Spent a bit of time deciding if it was BANDITO or BANDIDO before seeing the closed=to bit. I spent a fair bit of time with JUST AS IT IS too. And with ON ORDER for something not available continuously. But I got there all correct in the end.
  3. Just couldn’t parse BANDIDO, the *obviously* correct spelling. Otherwise brilliant stuff, but needed a break in the middle to clear the mind, too hard first time round. Release clutch COD. Still not quite sure how a pitcher would rock… is it the sense of a boat pitching up and down? A few unknowns, but fairly (and diabolically) clued.
    1. Yes, just like that: if a boat is rocking, it’s pitching; if that boat is therefore a rocker, it’s therefore a pitcher. Crosswords, eh?
  4. Many wing-and-a-prayer entries here to secure a goodish time. I didn’t bother parsing the complex QUICKER given the checkers, not to mention a few of the downs.

    Musical accompaniment: Brahms 1st piano concerto (Brendel + Berlin Phil)

    1. I’m depressed that Nathan Panning managed this in a sub-Magoo and therefore clearly superhuman time of 7m16… where do these brilliant solvers keep turning up from?!
      1. That was a blistering time indeed…but what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

        Having said that, the champagne is broken out if I can beat Verlaine on all three dailies.

  6. Terrific puzzle, which would have been terrificer if I’d been able to parse AS IF, ANDREI, & QUID PRO QUO (not that I really tried with that last one, just flinging it in once I had the Q). DNK JUMP JOCKEY, ASIF, PIU MOSSO, or POSTMANS KNOCK, which also slowed me down. But I had long past stopped thinking of time, having done much of this over lunch, and submitted off leaderboard.

    Edited at 2020-07-10 06:45 am (UTC)

  8. I found this puzzle unusual in that as I was solving I kept thinking how clever some clues were but at the same time none of them held me up for too long. My WITCH of 50 acknowledges that I was very much on the wavelength for this one.

    My biggest hold up was JAILHOUSE ROCK. Before I had all the crossers I spent some time thinking that it was something WORK with the first word being an anagram of single jug. I also could easily have gone with MUCH AS IT IS on another day so feel that there was a bit of luck on my side today.

      1. Thanks. It’s not gone unnoticed that I was sub-Verlaine today, which must be a first.
  9. After a brave battle lasting just under an hour with three missing answers in the SW I eventually ran out of steam and used aids to get the unheard of or forgotten WAXWING.

    That immediately gave me REX at 23ac but I was too quick to give up on 28ac where surely with both checkers now in place and just a little more patience I would have seen the reverse hidden ORGY. Incidentally, I note that solvers on-line and those with the tree-ware edition would have had an advantage over me on that one as ‘minority groups’ appears on the same line instead of being split between two as they are on my printout, making it harder for me to spot.

    I had two answers not fully parsed, namely ON OFFER and QUID PRO QUO (the last bit) and two wrong answers which I share with several others, BANDIDO and JUST AS IT IS.

  10. 64 minutes, so my slowest of the week, but also by far the most enjoyable. I even had the unusual joy of a pangram actually helping, as I was still looking for a B while trying to figure out 1d JIBE.

    Lots of stuff I didn’t know here, from JUMP JOCKEY to PIU MOSSO via lumbang-oil and WAXWING, but all very fair. Glad I spent the extra time to parse 9a BANDITO as “bandido” was my first thought, too…

    Enjoyed 20a ANDREI (great surface) and 27a ON OFFER the most, I think. Great stuff.

  11. Way over an hour, but had much as it is, and couldn’t get LOI andrei.

    COD fuzzy logic or manhunt.

  12. Absolutely loved that – a real challenge but fair – and an admirable consistency in clue difficulty – BRILLIANT JOB of mighty Setter.
  14. 32 minutes, with LOI SUCH AS IT IS. I thought that MUCH AS IT IS fitted the literal meaning better, but couldn’t parse that so settled eventually for the right answer. As a three year old, I chose the name REX for the fantastic dog that entered my life and shared it with me for the next sixteen years. So, that’s my COD even if it was the easiest. I was proud of constructing the unknown PIU MOSSO and remembering ORFF. Terrific puzzle.Thank you V and setter.
    1. Joke from childhood:
      What do you call a dinosaur hiding behind a tree?
      – D’youthinkhesaurus
      What do you call a dinosaur hiding behind a tree with his pet dog?
      – D’youthinkhesaurus Rex
  15. Quite pleased with that time, but was a BANDIDO sufferer like several others, thinking I’d was one had, in DO. I feel there’s a bit more to the grid than a pangram but not quite sure what – 17 letters appear twice in individual answers (all except a, b, c, g, h, m, t, v and x). 21dn does appear to have a stray ‘low’ in it. The reference to Cheltenham suggests to me Richard Rogan may have set this one.

    COD: OVERTAKING, lovely surface.

    Yesterday’s answer: the fifth protected malt whisky area is Campbeltown, which was down to one distillery (Springbank, my favourite malt) at one point but currently has three.

    Today’s question: where was the only place Elvis Presley set foot in the UK (I’m not counting an alleged but disputed earlier visit)?

    Edited at 2020-07-10 07:55 am (UTC)

  16. 45 mins with yoghurt, granola, banana, etc.
    Absolutely brilliant, as others have said. Mostly, among many to like, I liked: Lay, Dewy-Eyed, Rex, On Offer, Waxwing, Runoffs, Stroll. but maybe COD to the 29ac anagram, the likes of which we don’t see every day.
    I knew Meno Mosso, so that helped.
    Thanks setter and V.
  17. Best crossword for a while. I put in MUCH AS IT IS.
    Somehow MUCHAS meant ‘many’ to me en passant. How to pick a COD? ASIF? LAY? ANDREI? ON OFFER? It’s long list.
  18. Crikey, found this very hard so I knew the Maestro would be delighted. Like Flashman I never saw ANDREI and gave up to come here at 1hr10 mins. Had no idea about FUZZY LOGIC, JIBE, and another who started with SUCH. COD to JAILHOUSE ROCK,took an age to see. Thank you V for the explanations and the setter for testing my mental agility to the extreme-and winning!
  19. I was in much trouble. Such a mistake. Great crossword.

    COD: if I have to pick one single clue it has to be Jailhouse Rock.

  20. What a cracker! I spent an age finding ANDREI, my LOI but to no avail… 1 wrong with MUCH AS IT IS for 12A after “correcting” from JUST AS IT IS when I eventually saw the single at 3D. Grr. Those last 3 took about 12 of my 36 minutes. I failed to parse SUCH AS IT IS, obviously, and ANDREI and ORGY, so thanks for explaining it all V.
  21. A proper brain-stretcher in which the pangramatic flavour certainly helped.

    Down in the SW I was struggling until I realised the Qs weren’t in yet, and one of the reasons I plumped for SUCH AS… was because we already had Js and Ms.

    I wonder at what point the setter decided to quit trying to squeeze in the extra B, V and X for the double? (You can tell I’m in no hurry this morning)

    I’m pleased with my 28 minutes, though I can’t claim I had everything sorted: I somehow failed to spot the reverse hidden wordplay for ORGY and contented myself with the cute definition. Only when it didn’t work did I give up on PUB QUIZ, which I had construed as a nod in the direction of our blogger du jour.

    Bravo everyone – the setter for setting, V for unravelling it all with such obvious delight, and the rest of us for giving it a go.

  22. Very difficult puzzle with much biffing of answers that I couldn’t immediately parse from checkers and definition. Derived unknown to me PIU MOSSO from cryptic but guessed FUZZY LOGIC straight from definition, having once worked with it. Well done setter and well blogged V
    1. Interesting that in its narrow, technical mathematical, definition Fuzzy Logic is actually a very precise way to deal with difficult questions.
      1. We were part of an investigation into the use of IT to detect fraud. We had some success with FL and imagine it has improved since back then
  23. That was a really difficult puzzle for me but excellent nonetheless.
    I had a total of 10 biffed solutions I needed Verlaine’s decodes for. I also started with JUST AS IT IS. I also started with JEER instead of JIBE, neither of which helped.
    Now that V has explained it, LAY is my COD.
    The Russian I took to be ANDREI Sakharov.

    Edited at 2020-07-10 08:46 am (UTC)

  24. Would have loved to finish but couldn’t get JAILHOUSE ROCK, as had ‘just as it is’.

    Excellent puzzle – LAY was FOI, we have chickens.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

  26. A fine puzzle, even though I too fell into the MUCH AS IT IS trap/pit. One of those puzzles to make you feel cleverer than you are.

    COD FUZZY LOGIC

  27. Agree about the superfluity in 21d. A typesetting error, I’d imagine, rather than a mistake from such a setter.
  28. Brilliant, just what Friday puzzles should be. Tricky without being obscure, so that even unknowns like PIU MOSSO can be unravelled with some certainty you’ve found the right answer. Like others, I was slightly puzzled by the extra low, thinking at first there must perhaps be a MOO in there somewhere, but one suspects that’s down to editing, not setting.
  29. A superb puzzle, and I found myself very much on the wavelength today – 9m 04s, which was within a minute of Magoo, almost certainly a first for me.

    Plenty of biffing, so some of the subtleties of the clues were lost on me at the time – QUID PRO QUO is very nice, but I didn’t think about anything beyond the definition and ‘money’ when solving – and in fact my COD goes to JAILHOUSE ROCK, which I biffed at the time. Lovely surface.

    I’m not sure I’d come across SQUALLS to mean cries, and that was my LOI.

    All in all a very satisfying end to the week – thanks to the setter!

  30. You missed that one, myrtilus. (Nabokov.) Really enjoyed this and glad to cross the line after losing the will to live for a moment or two here and there. Failed to parse two or three, where in fact the parsing turned out to be a delight in itself (fuzzy logic, orgy). Last in piu mosso. 34’57.
  31. ….”if you’re stuck on 4 or less clues for longer than you spent getting the rest of the puzzle, take the DNF and use aids”. So I gave up at 22 minutes. Definitely a Championship standard puzzle, and that’s why I’m no longer competitive.

    The problem turned out to be “just as it is”, so JAILHOUSE ROCK was beyond me. I also failed to get JIBE and BANDITO.

    NHO PIU MOSSO but the parsing was clear.

    COD ON OFFER

  32. The song Italian Salad should be learned by all crossword solvers – it comprises 7 minutes of Italian musical directions.In another life, with the London Welsh Male Voice Choir, we learned it to sing at the Albert Hall. Any Italian present would have squirmed at our pronunciation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a_a-MjPwls
    1. Unspammed. I’m sure the diction is faultless, but most of the words get lost in the echo of the building along with the point of it. I’d love to hear it again with subtitles.

      Edited at 2020-07-10 12:50 pm (UTC)

      1. Piano, piano, dolce, soave ed amabile
        Forte, piano, pianissimo
        Venite gua
        Forte, fortissimo, forte, piano,
        Crescendo, stringendo, più mosso
        Rinforzando, diminuendo
        Decrescendo, morendo, smorzando.
        Recitativo, O Dio, O cielo,
        Coloratura, lo tremo.
        A piacere, colla parte, fermata.
        Lento, con espressione,
        larghetto, sostenuto, ritenuto
        Espressivo, ben marcato,
        Pizzicato, arco, arco,
        Precipitato, sospirando,
        ritardando, arco.
        Tra ta ta ta, suona la tromba
        Tra ta ta ta, a la vedetta
        Con fuoco, staccato
        Assai scandaloso,
        non più lamentoso.
        Bravo, bravissimo,
        sono contento!
        Volti subito
        L’accompagnamento
        Con rabbia, con furia
        In tempo di polacca,
        con impeto, con scandalo,
        con grazia, con anima.
        Agitata ta ta ta ta,
        Più mosso stretto
        Fine dell’opera.
        Felicità, felicità.
        Fine dell’opera.
        1. Brilliant! But do you realise that setters read these pages? Don’t encourage them.
          May I ask, are you one of the welsh diaspora in South America???
          1. Well, I live in Esquel, one of the two Welsh towns in the Southern Andes, and am on the board of the Welsh association in Trevelin, another Welsh town by the next mountain along! And we have just opened a new Welsh school but, sadly, get no financial assistance from the Argentine government. http://www.ysgolycwm.com
        2. Many thanks. I shall endeavour to put the two together. My musical education was not entirely wasted as the only expression I didn’t recognise (as a non Italian speaker) was ‘Venite gua’ which Google translates as ‘Come on!’. It doesn’t seem to be recognised as a genuine musical direction though, as the relevant hits when googling it all lead back to the song lyric.

          Edited at 2020-07-10 02:00 pm (UTC)

  33. Bearing in mind what everyone has said about the difficulty of this, I’m feeling quite pleased to have got as far as I did! I only had about four answers in after 10+ minutes and was preparing to abandon ship there and then, when I got a little run in the sw corner which boosted morale somewhat, so I decided to keep going. In the end I had four uncompleted – 12a (couldn’t find the correct first word), 13a, 20a and 7d – I couldn’t decide between squeals, squeaks or squalls! There was quite a bit of biffing, but I was pleased to get a good amount from wordplay too. I twigged it was a pangram quite early on, which is rare for me.

    I’m going to have a lie-down now.

    FOI Asif
    COD On offer
    Time A large part of the morning (on and off) to DNF


  34. Over an hour with BANDIDO ( er…) last one in. Happy to have finished, even with the mistake.

    Didn’t help, biffing RACE COURSE and then RACE HORSES for 1 ac. In fact, on reflection, it wasn’t even biffing; more like sticking in something with a tenuous connection to the clue.

    Chapeau to anyone who finished this in under 30 minutes.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

    Dave.

  35. 23:56. What everyone else said: very tough, thoroughly enjoyable. First class stuff.
    It looks like someone decided to replace ‘low’ with ‘very low’ (or vice versa) in 21d and just forgot to remove the unwanted version.
    Like a few others I had JUST AS IT IS at 12a which caused me no end of trouble in the NW corner.

    Edited at 2020-07-10 12:07 pm (UTC)

  36. Ooh my. Loved this, and would have loved it better had I not been a bandido. I agree about the ‘low very low’ containing a superfluous ‘low’. Smacks of an unfinished correction. I also had ‘just as it is’ for far too long, but something told me it was not right, so I kept the down-checker empty. I was going to say that Asif might also be a Christian Arab name, but in fact it’s from the Quran (10:22). The basic meaning is ‘stormy’ hence strong.
  37. DNF. 30 minutes got me needing JIBE/BANDITO and ANDREI/RUNOFFS, and after 15 more minutes of pondering I gave up. Thanks to Verlaine for clarifying and edifying!
  38. many thanks to the setter for this toughie, and thanks to Verlaine for parsing BANDITO (gambling correctly against BANDIDO for this) & ANDREI. Went for MUCH AS IT IS ( gambling on the 50-50 chance wrongly this time!).I still think, as Sawbill does, that Much is Much better as a definition of no better than such is. But such is life, as Ned Kelly is supposed to have said.
  39. I was a little miffed to struggle with this for nearly 20 minutes, hit submit and find that MUCH AS IT IS was not correct. SUCH AS IT IS can be found in Collins, so mea culpa.
  40. Coming very late to the comments (busy morning) but I must give a chapeau to the setter. I submitted at 26.29 which I was quite pleased with, having realized early on that this was going to be a toughie. I had some unparsed (ANDREI, BANDITO and RUNOFFS thanks Verlaine) and AS IF mis-parsed. I concluded that the “Sif” must be a branch of Islam (perhaps influenced by the Sith in Star Wars, as if).

    Eons ago I took part in a survey to determine which Elvis should go on the US postage stamp – the early JAILHOUSE ROCK Elvis or the gold lame suit Elvis https://www.wetpaintprinting.com/image/cache/catalog/incoming/image/data/incoming/scott/AG407-500×500.webp. Can’t remember how it came out. QUID PRO QUO was a write-in because the term featured in what now seems the distant past – the impeachment of the current POTUS.

    1. Can your chums have another pop at impeaching, on the grounds that he paid someone else to sit his uni entrance exam? And deported to Cloud Cuckoo Land.
    2. I set a quiz question about this not very long ago, while browsing wiki in search of interesting snippets like that – pretty sure Young Elvis won, so I hope that agreed with your choice. Also, the story goes that loads of people deliberately sent mail with those stamps on to undeliverable addresses, in the hope of them coming back marked “Return to Sender”, but I couldn’t find a reputable enough source to get that one past the quiz verifier 🙁 Uh-huh-huh.
      1. Oh that’s a great story Tim. I’m sure you guessed (boringly predictable) that I chose the Jailhouse Rock Elvis.
        1. Having visited Graceland last year, we have a postcard of Elvis on our fridge right now – and yes, of course it’s a young incarnation.
  41. Had a first pass at this after a frustrating golf game, and only saw two clues. Left it for a while watching cricket, then looked again; suddenly it unravelled and I had it polished off in 20 minutes with the SW corner last to yield. A great puzzle, true Friday fare, more like this please!
    Hard to pick a best clue from so many, the 4 short ones were all especially clever. LAY gets it.
  42. Agreed MOSDO doesn’t sound Italian. In case you’re interested, ‘mosdó’ is Hungarian for ‘lavatory’: meaning ‘washplace’, it’s the same euphemism as English.
    1. I would like to see what a Hungarian orchestra makes of a direction to play “more lavatorially”!
  43. Much harder than a Mephisto this one. Gave up at less than 50%. The stated price is the quote though. Mr Grumpy
  44. DNF in 37 something minutes. A very tough but very rewarding solve of a high quality puzzle. I was bamboozled by almost every clue seeing no way in until they each revealed their secrets at the last. I’d spent so long not seeing POI jailhouse rock that my brain was jelly by the time I finally got it and I had nothing left to usefully ponder my LOI 12ac so went for much rather than such somewhat in desperation.
  45. Very late solve today, LOI ANDREI which I had no idea about. Was very pleased with the rest of my effort. Yes, great fun, this is what we do these for.
  46. 90 minutes, but I finished! (despite not really understanding half of it). Certainly not the most difficult clue, but I particularly enjoyed ON OFFER.
  47. 24 hours late again – too busy!

    FOI 1ac JUMP JOCKEY

    LOI 16ac PIU MESSO!!

    COD 19dn WAXWING

    WOD 14dn QID PRO QUO

    12ac JUST AS IT IS so no JAILHOUSE ROCK hereabouts.

    Talking of which I see Roger Stone is out!

    DNF

  48. Didn’t get round to this yesterday as I was out golfing. Turns out to have been a blessing as I struggled for 76:18 to 106 on the leaderboard this morning. Started with AS IF, finished with MANHUNT. JAILHOUSE ROCK and most of the NW held me up longest. Did manage to parse everything though! What a beast! Thanks setter and V.
  49. The last five or so took an age to fall, and there was plenty I didn’t understand.

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