Time: 23:39
Music: Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers
This was pretty much an ordinary Monday puzzle, with a few clever constructions that are starting to creep in, along with one or two rather loose constructions. Skilled solvers should not have much difficulty. I did get into trouble by putting backhoe instead of bicycle, but I realized quickly that the long across clue had to start with first-class. I was also afraid I couldn’t get what turned out to be mess, as the crossing letters were very unhelpful, but I left it for later, and when I came back it was obvious.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | House instruction to make Cabot king (4-2-4) |
| BACK-TO-BACK – If you back TO BACK, you get K CABOT! I had not heard of this type of house, but the cryptic gives it to you. | |
| 6 | Type of glass from old China (4) |
| OPAL – O + PAL. A decorative type of glass first developed in the 19th century. | |
| 10 | Relative in one financial city area in northeast (5) |
| NIECE – N(I, E.C.)E, a compendium of cryptic cliches. | |
| 11 | Competition certain to involve zero sang-froid (9) |
| COMPOSURE – COMP (O) SURE. | |
| 12 | Mail used by top-rated fencer? (5-5,4) |
| FIRST-CLASS POST – FIRST-CLASS + POST, to be used by the kind of fencer who builds fences. | |
| 14 | Person no longer working on Scottish island (7) |
| RETIREE – RE + TIREE – unless, of course, you volunteer to run the crossword blog. | |
| 15 | Put pressure on Doctor Milligan? (7) |
| DRAGOON – DR + A GOON, which is what Spike Milligan was. | |
| 17 | Terribly shy in pictures which will include mechanics (7) |
| PHYSICS – P(anagram of SHY)ICS. Either Newtonian or quantum will do. | |
| 19 | Pet bird for example (7) |
| PATTERN – PAT + TERN. | |
| 20 | Small pub, possibly one worlds away from here (6,5,3) |
| LITTLE GREEN MAN – LITTLE + GREEN MAN, a likely enough name for a pub. | |
| 23 | Popular assembly holding society unfeeling (9) |
| INSENSATE – IN + SEN(S)ATE. | |
| 24 | Some cats showed excessive curiosity, it’s said (5) |
| PRIDE – Sounds like PRIED. | |
| 25 | Style and verve of some Romance languages (4) |
| ELAN – Hidden in [Romanc]E LAN[guages]. | |
| 26 | Court activity let a sinner off (4,6) |
| REAL TENNIS – Anagram of LET A SINNER. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Group not allowed on the radio (4) |
| BAND – Sounds like BANNED. | |
| 2 | Moan about hard times unravelling special relationship? (9) |
| CHEMISTRY – C(anagram of H TIMES)RY. | |
| 3 | Book something else on Crete? (8,6) |
| TREASURE ISLAND – TREASURE + CRETE, invoking the slang meanings of something else and treasure. | |
| 4 | Reported what harvester may have needed to do for vehicle (7) |
| BICYCLE – Sounds like BUY SICKLE. Backhoe nearly works, but doesn’t fit the crossers. | |
| 5 | Order of butterfly with tails of green and red (7) |
| COMMAND – COMMA + [gree]N, [re]D. The setter’s favorite butterfly. | |
| 7 | Hades! Plus two but losing both points (5) |
| PLUTO – PLU[s] T[w]O. | |
| 8 | Rank place getting on top of renter (10) |
| LIEUTENANT – LIEU + TENANT. This should be a chestnut, but is not. | |
| 9 | Work in line running underneath Eternal City (14) |
| CONSTANTINOPLE – CONSTANT + IN(OP)LE, i.e. an anagram of line. The setter is trying to trick you into using Rome or Roma at the top. | |
| 13 | Pushing previous LP spun (10) |
| PROPULSIVE – Anagram of PREVIOUS LP. According to my listening spreadsheet, it was Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. | |
| 16 | Medical procedure involved atropine and oxygen (9) |
| OPERATION – Anagram of ATROPINE + O. | |
| 18 | Perhaps hoarding autograph over a number of years (7) |
| SIGNAGE – SIGN + AGE – the trick here is the literal. | |
| 19 | Obtain early buyer of gift with lines for books (7) |
| PRESELL – PRESE(-nt,+LL), a clever letter replacement clue with an extended definition. | |
| 21 | A lot of rubbish about opera (5) |
| TOSCA – TOS[h] + CA. | |
| 22 | Awkward situation — he is out of nets (4) |
| MESS – MES[he]S. | |
14:47
DNK BACK-TO-BACK, OPAL glass (wondered if opal was a type of glass). I had the same sort of worry as Vinyl about MESS, but twigged as he did. V, you’ve got the underline in the wrong place at SIGNAGE; the def is ‘perhaps hoarding’.
5:07 – one of my fastest solves. BACK TO BACK is very clever, and there is a Green Man pub on the block that I live on, so all signs pointed to an easy process. Biffed CONSTANTINOPLE.
I struggled a lot more than others obviously did to get around in 23.46. Never figured out BACK TO BACK (oh thanks V, very clever), TOSCA, BICYCLE or the city, but enjoyed the solve. A bit tougher than the standard Monday fare I thought. My previous LP was Nebraska, played before seeing Bruce’s film.
From Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues:
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, and it’s Easter time too
And gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they really make a MESS outta you
I had “perhaps hoarding” which can be large boards of signs as the definition in 18 down. SIGNAGE is given by SOED as
“signage noun (N. Amer.) signs collectively, esp. commercial or public display signs L20.”
Needed the blog for lot of parsing.
Thanks V and setter
Didn’t have any real problems with this, knew the butterfly for COMMAND and also knew the Green Man is a common pub name. PRESELL was my LOI but finally saw the letter replacement trick, very good. Thought OPERATION was a bit weak. Liked BICYCLE. BACK-TO-BACK went in from the definition once a few checkers were in and saw the wordplay after a while staring at it. TREASURE ISLAND also went in from the checkers and assumed that ‘something else’ could mean treasure. Initially thought it was ‘bittern’ for PATTERN but it didn’t parse so waited for checkers. Nice to see Spike get a mention for DRAGOON. Fun Monday puzzle
Thanks V and setter.
I Nnever saw how BACK-TO-BACK worked, but that was the only kind of house that would fit. Took far too long to get DRAGOON since I was trying to find a way to get “spike” into it.PRESELL was clever once I saw how it worked.
15:37. Also took me too long to work out the PRESELL wordplay; I was thoroughly bamboozled into thinking ‘obtain early’ must be the definition. PATTERN was the other holdout; also wondered about BITTERN, but eventually realised PAT/PET could be synonyms – interesting bit of deception there, because usually words with a lot of overlap are not used as synonyms, but that’s typically due to sharing prefixes. In this case the two words just happen to be similar – Wiktionary has ‘pet’ as Gaelic in origin, but ‘pat’ as Germanic.
I had BACKHOE too, at first—though I didn’t like it, could tell you why—and I got a good laugh from BICYCLE.
Just remembered (it’s been a few hours), I’d never heard of a BACK-TO-BACK house.
Quick today, but quite a lot of biffing, so blog useful for getting the wordplay straight.
When I lived in the Wirral in the ’60s, Birkenhead still had a lot of back-to-back housing. All gone now, I expect.
21:09. Pretty standard for Monday though NHO OPAL, BACK TO BACK. I thought PRESELL was cleverly constructed and a bit more chewy than normal Monday fare.
25.10, mostly straightforward but with some hidden nuggets. I remember my grandparents’ BACK TO BACK in Hull in the 1960s, and a church visit is always better for spotting a GREEN MAN (little or large).
FOI OPAL
LOI PATTERN
COD BICYCLE
Thanks V and setter
Just under 13 minutes is certainly approaching a PB for me! NHO this definition of DRAGOON and BICYCLE was unparsed, but otherwise no problems. There was a time when things like ‘real tennis’ would have been unknown to me but I now see this for the perennial that it is. Why is the sport never quoits? Come on setters.
I really liked the surface for PRIDE – even more so if this has never been seen before but I’m guessing otherwise. Lovely Monday which means the rest of the week will be a series of stinkers I suppose 🙂
17 minutes with LOI PRESELL. COD to DRAGOON. “He entered the room with a military bearing which he tossed in the air and caught.” I liked the LITTLE GREEN MAN too, and. just wish the setter had found space for Maths alongside Physics and Chemistry. A friendly start to the week. Thank you V and setter.
12:48 Straightforward but entertaining. I liked BACK TO BACK, CONSTANTINOPLE and LITTLE GREEN MAN.
Thanks to Vinyl and the setter. Oddly enough, my previous LP ( on Spotify) was Kind of Blue.
Back-to-backs in Birmingham were well known. It is not rocket science to realise that such dwellings were unhealthy, lacking ventilation.
I liked this puzzle, particularly the gk required. COD to BICYCLE.
11’25”, thanks vinyl and setter.
19:58. Sub-20 is always good for me but it felt like a missed opportunity for a really fast one.
Fun though. Like boltonwanderer I was looking for Maths to complete my A-Level experience. Read alot of the Milligan around that time too.
Also enjoyed vinyl’s blog entry for NIECE. Thanks both, Happy Mondays.
About 25′, which should have been quicker. I didn’t see the definition (nor the parsing, obviously) for BACK TO BACK, which I finally biffed even though though I do know the house style. LITTLE GREEN MAN felt a bit loose, I do know a few pubs using the Green Man name but didn’t think there’s enough to warrant a mention here. And yes, spent too long trying to fit the obvious “rome”.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
I agree about the LITTLE GREEN MAN: a loose clue, although not strictly offside.
A quick bit of research on pubsgalore.co.uk (a site I’d never heard of until two minutes ago) reveals that there are 69 pubs by this name in England, making it the 56th most common name. So not really all that common, I’d say, bearing in mind that the Ordnance Survey reckons there were about 45,000 pubs in the UK (still) in 2024. By comparison, there are about 500 Red Lions.
thanks, interesting website that might come in useful!!
16.29 after a slow start.
Generally quite approachable, hindered by inability (unwillingness) to use ‘compo’ for competition or to equate PHYSICS with mechanics. Puzzled over the reference to Hades until I remembered that PLUTO is not only a (dwarf, nowadays) planet or a Disney canine character.
COD DRAGOON. LOI MESS
Thanks to setter and vinyl1.
Just realised that my reservations about COMPO were unnecessary, I had simply overlooked the zero.
Half an hour, but with a huge chunk of that inexplicably taken up with MESS. I never thought of ‘meshes’ for ‘nets’ so I couldn’t see how it would parse, and I went on an extensive alphabet trawl before giving up and putting it in anyway. Ho hum.
– Didn’t really understand TREASURE ISLAND as ‘treasure’=’something else’ would never have occurred to me
– Completely failed to parse TOSCA as I separated ‘a’ from ‘lot’ so was wondering how ‘csot’ could mean ‘lot of rubbish’
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Band
LOI Mess
COD Pride (nice to have ‘some’ in a clue not indicating a hidden)
25 minutes. No real problems except for spending far too long, in vain, trying to see what was going on with BACK-TO-BACK. Favourites were BICYCLE and DRAGOON.
18:26 slowed down a bit by expecting biology to appear as an answer.
I used to live in a BACK-TO-BACK house during my student days so it was my first thought from the enumeration. Spotted the parsing afterwards but thought it was very clever.
Didn’t even think about BICYCLE and CONSTANTINOPLE, parsing them after hitting submit.
Bit of a pause for LOI MESS. I had a few candidates (including MESS) but took a while for MESHES to come to mind trying to work backwards from them all.
COD the simple LITTLE GREEN MAN which gave me a chuckle.
Thanks blogger and setter
37:42
A bit slow, but I drifted through this okay. Decent puzzle.
Thanks, v.
32 minutes suggests I am at last getting to grips with online solving as it’s only 2 minutes over my target time. MER at ‘something else / TREASURE’ (is it actually in a dictionary?) but the answer to the clue wasn’t in doubt so I moved on.
The opening titles to Coronation Street used to feature rows and rows of BACK-TO-BACK housing and may still do so for all I know as it’s many decades since I last watched it.
15.23, with a slow start engendered by the clever BACK-TO-BACK which might have been quicker if I’d spotted the hyphens. If I were a setter coming up with that clue, I’d be tempted to put it first in the grid to showcase it.
Otherwise, held up, like most people, by MESS and TOSCA, even when I had the checkers for both.
For those of you missing Maths from the Sciences, I give you the tiny but apposite “plus two” from 7d as a makeweight.
Finally, normal service has been resumed, phew. A very pleasant romp in 32 mins. FOI BAND & LOI MESS. I thought the TREASURE=something else was a bit of a stretch though.
I liked BACK-TO-BACK especially when I saw how the tricky wp worked. The LITTLE GREEN MAN was fun too.
Thanks V and setter.
I needed the crossers to get BACK TO BACK, although they were a feature of the mining village I grew up in. BAND was FOI. Struggled to equate TREASURE with something else, so didn’t enter the fairly obvious TREASURE ISLAND until I had the crossers. I missed the parsing of BICYCLE and BACK TO BACK. Clever! Lots to like in this puzzle, including LITTLE GREEN MAN, DRAGOON and FIRST CLASS POST. CONSTANTINOPLE was LOI with only passing nod to ROME before waiting for the crossers. 15:08. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
My thanks to vinyl1 and setter.
Not terribly hard except I had problems justifying 19a and 3d.
1a Back to back; I missed the point of this, and struggled to remember Jean Cabot’s given name (not needed) and wondering what kind of boat was the answer. I learned about Cabotage when I was a Customs Officer, and that knowledge was unhelpful.
12a First Class post, I put it straight in without engaging brain and missed the post/fence feature.
15a Dragoon. I like to remember Spike, but needed only “goon”, and I wasted time here trying to remember which goon was which.
19a Pattern. Not a bittern then. I didn’t get pat=pet. Doh.
3d Treasure Island biffed.
4d Bicycle gets a special prize for a bad homophone.
7:19, but with a silly typo that I failed to notice when I checked. Not for the first time I wonder why I bother.
Small point but in 1ac you have to separate ‘instruction to make Cabot’ (BACK TOBAC) and ‘king’ (K), because BACK TO BACK is an instruction to make ‘king Cabot’, not ‘Cabot king’.
Like Rosé above it was a relief to get a non-harrowing puzzle. Reasonably quick, nothing unparsed although Tosca – with all 3 crossers in – was the hardest. Had to parse BACK-TO-BACK, a NHO, and very much liked it (especially for an NHO). Unlike Vinyl I got the POST bit immediately – fencer/mail – but took a while to get FIRST-CLASS. Would have said I knew The Green Man from a Father Brown story, never known an actual pub of that name. But “The Green Man” didn’t involve a pub… can’t imagine where I knew it from. Spike a favourite so I liked DRAGOON.
Note to self : “mail” is not necessarily a form of body protection, hence “first class coat” is not only wrong, but utterly ludicrous.
Great choice of music Vinyl. The two Goffin/King songs, “Wasn’t Born to Follow” and “Goin’ Back” are the highlights of the album for me.
9:01 expended in vain. LOI and COD DRAGOON.
Then I expect you might understand the reference in the blog title.
Indeed I did.
37 minutes after stumbling occasionally, although most of it seemed straightforward enough. PRESELL was my LOI, for some reason not seeing the definition and also expecting the books to be BB, forgetting the obvious books = NT. TREASURE ISLAND and INSENSATE not understood until coming here (ensate?). Pet = pat a mystery until I reluctantly accepted it here.
21.49
Bit sluggish here including mentally staring at but not seeing how HE into MESS makes something to do with nets. Bunged it in anyway after a couple of alpha searches. Also struggled with INSENSATE thinking that I was looking for something more familiar. And didn’t really understand the TREASURE thing. No complaints though and well done to everyone who had a quick time.
Thanks Vinyl and setter.
27:31 needed the blog to parse PRESELL and TOSCA which seems to be the go-to opera in crossword land.
NORMA, with only the A in place, very common as well
I’d say setters go to ‘Norma’ first.
Enjoyed this very much, despite spending ages on the ‘Rome’ deception until I had the checkers. LOI and COD for PRESELL – clever stuff! 25:11.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
A straightforward Monday, except for LOI MESS, which I couldn’t parse and was sure there was something obvious I was missing – it’s so annoying to fail at the last 4-letter clue, which doesn’t appear to parse, because it’s wrong! So a sigh of relief on checking the blog. I approached TOSCA by thinking of 5-letter operas and post-parsing – it was the second up after Norma. CONSTANTINOPLE was bifd as being the longest city I could think of, and TREASURE ISLAND bifd from checkers – I still can’t see how treasure = something else… Some lovely clues: BACK-TO-BACK, which was bifd and post-parsed, PATTERN, once I’d rejected the obvious ‘bittern’, PRIDE (ho-ho), BICYCLE, DRAGOON. NHO PRESELL, but clear from directions.
A welcome relief after the travails of last week. All done over a lunchtime pinta in 23 minutes. No issues.
FOI – OPAL
LOI – SIGNAGE
COD – DRAGOON
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
Never heard of PRESELL, but sussed it from the clue and crossers. Nice Monday puzzle. Liked physics and chemistry.
Never noticed that – 50 years ago I like physics and chemistry in school. Also mathematics, which probably puts me in the 0.01% of people who enjoyed mathematics at school.
10:58
I would have broken the 10 minute barrier if I hadn’t put in PRIED for PRIDE
COD: CHEMISTRY
I managed 33 minutes for this, much of that taken up with distractions.
I’m still not sure about TREASURE and SOMETHING ELSE – is this “she’s a treasure”, “he’s something else” ? But as others have said, it couldn’t be anything else.
I managed to parse 1ac as a reverse cryptic but without understanding why “house instruction” was BACK TO BACK (obviously failed to separate in the correct place in the clue). What makes this worse is that I have heard about this type of house. When I was an undergraduate at Manchester in the early 90s, we went to my friend’s home town, Todmorden and his family lived in a back to back house. I remember being extremely confused as to why some of the rooms had no windows.
Thankfully, there have not been loads of comments to say how easy this was. Yes, it was not one of the most difficult ones I have ever completed but after that awful Wed- Fri run last week, I for one was grateful.
Loved the reference to Spike !
I liked BACK TO BACK and, after a minute or two staring at it, MESS as well. Nothing too strenuous for a Monday, which, given my recent loss of form, was something of a relief. A shade over 21 mins.
Mostly Mondayish with the only hold up being the PATTERN/PRESELL crossing. Took a couple of minutes for the penny to drop with the latter, after which PATTERN became obvious.
Knew Back-to-back but couldn’t parse it. Saw the TERN bit of PATTERN but needed PRESELL to realise it couldn’t start with cat. Technically a DNF through a typo as not used to completing on phone and hit Y for U.
A bumbling 35-minute solve. With all the mistakes I made, it has to be a very forgiving puzzle for me to come in so far under my usual time. I will only fess up to having repeatedly looked at FIRST for the first word of 12a, and saying, no, it doesn’t fit, until I realized for some reason I was trying to mentally put T as the fourth letter! The sort of thing that frightens an old person.
Enjoyed it a lot though. I was so enchanted by seeing the wordplay for BACK TO BACK that I didn’t bother about not knowing it was a term for a house.
Thanks setter and vinyl.
27:16
COD to LITTLE GREEN MAN. I took a while to see this, despite living in a village where one of the four pubs is the Green Man. I was also slow to see PHYSICS, despite being a physicist.
LOI was PATTERN.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
28.04 I looked at 1a and immediately thought BACK TO BACK but never did parse it, and finished with a half-parsed PRESELL. I liked BICYCLE. Thanks vinyl1.
A rare attempt at the 15×15 for me and rewarded with a good solve completion (for me). Chemistry, Constantinople, Pride & Real Tennis being the missing answers not helped by Present in Lieu of Presell. Thanks all
Spike Milligan was also a bombardier in WW2. They’d done away with dragoons by then and I don’t think he was dragooned in to doing it.
Is Hades a synonym for Pluto?
Yes.. The latter Roman, the former Greek. They both married Persephone …
All straightforward today. 18 minutes, while watching tv.