24:09 for a puzzle with some delightful words, many unknown to me. Some of the wordplay will have to be figured out in medias blog, as I confess to having biffed several answers.
With this, my brief stint as a substitute blogger comes to a close. It’s been a pleasure to serve you.
| Across | |
| 1 | High-risk entertaining the queen’s court (8) |
| CHANCERY – CHANCY around ER | |
| 5 | Nag with repeated notes read aloud (3-3) |
| GEE-GEE – homophone of G G
I hadn’t known this but thankfully the crossing letters and the hint ‘repeated’ made it impossible to get wrong! |
|
| 10 | Cheap pub to bring in wicked blokes ahead of time (7-8) |
| BARGAIN-BASEMENT – BAR + GAIN + BASE MEN + T | |
| 11 | Mixing up Torah and Bible creates a bewildering situation (6,4) |
| RABBIT HOLE – anagram of TORAH BIBLE
Didn’t know this one, either. Found it in Collins, but not in Chambers. |
|
| 13 | About to get brief details (4) |
| INFO – IN FO{r} (“about to get”)
The definition was much easier to see than the (lovely) wordplay! |
|
| 15 | Ran with Del Boy, perhaps, almost getting diamonds (7) |
| TROTTED – TROTTE{r} + D
Derek “Del Boy” Trotter is a character from Only Fools and Horses. Sadly, I did not know this helpful bit of info! |
|
| 17 | Room in northern Surrey to wander (7) |
| NURSERY – anagram of N SURREY | |
| 18 | Unhelpful instruction for conserving something? (7) |
| USELESS – “USE LESS!” | |
| 19 | Paper with unfinished petition, for instance (7) |
| EXAMPLE – EXAM + PLE{a} | |
| 21 | Unlimited wine for chap in Cologne? (4) |
| HERR – {s}HERR{y}
Definition by example (“Cologne, for instance”) indicated by ‘?’. |
|
| 22 | Half-heartedly holding back cool old city (10) |
| STALINGRAD – STAL{l}ING + RAD | |
| 25 | Rewritten epistle torn open — you won’t like what it says! (6-3,6) |
| POISON-PEN LETTER – anagram of EPISTLE TORN OPEN
Hadn’t heard of this before. Collins defines it as “an unpleasant unsigned letter which is sent in order to upset someone or to cause trouble”. Sounds like a definition of ‘the internet’. |
|
| 27 | Drink knocked back before working is a spirit (6) |
| DAEMON – MEAD reversed + ON | |
| 28 | Witches put a strain on city (8) |
| COVENTRY – COVEN + TRY (“put a strain on”) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Tom, say, catches nude show (7) |
| CABARET – CAT around BARE | |
| 2 | Scottish town‘s broadcast on the radio (3) |
| AYR – homophone of AIR | |
| 3 | Rider‘s shout of joy suppressing a scream (10) |
| CHARIOTEER – CHEER around A + RIOT | |
| 4 | Farm sector loses leader (5) |
| RANCH – {b}RANCH | |
| 6 | Need to change prime minister (4) |
| EDEN – anagram of NEED | |
| 7 | Rookie footballer is an employee of course! (11) |
| GREENKEEPER – GREEN + KEEPER
Somehow I feel like we’d call this a GREENSKEEPER or GROUNDSKEEPER here. I tried to outdo the puzzle by trying to think of restaurant employees! |
|
| 8 | Treaty port nearly covering up chaos (7) |
| ENTROPY – hidden reversed in {trea}TY PORT NE{arly} | |
| 9 | Music style picked up pop jargon (8) |
| PARLANCE – RAP reversed + LANCE | |
| 12 | Vocally expresses disapproval of sailors’ drunken voyage (5,6) |
| BOOZE CRUISE – BOOS CREWS
Very funny. |
|
| 14 | Awfully energetic around a relative (5-5) |
| GREAT-NIECE – anagram of ENERGETIC around A | |
| 16 | Computers from the French, a thousand at most (8) |
| DESKTOPS – DES (“from the” in French) + K + TOPS | |
| 18 | Employed to secure luck, like a horseshoe (1-6) |
| U-SHAPED – USED around HAP | |
| 20 | Old wood put on walls of library (7) |
| ELDERLY – ELDER + L{ibrar}Y | |
| 23 | Slowly advanced over top of obstacle (5) |
| LENTO – LENT + O{bstacle} | |
| 24 | Charm — it’s missing from cocktail (4) |
| MOJO – MOJ{it}O | |
| 26 | Rubbish / bit of needlework? (3) |
| TAT – double definition
This one and EDEN felt like they belonged to a rather different puzzle. |
|
25 minutes — about three minutes of which were convincing myself that ‘Dadlingo’ (ie, pop jargon) was a style of music, probably from Brazil or somewhere. Nice Monday puzzle.
21:30
Fairly plain sailing – just held up a bit at the end by CHARIOTEER/CHANCERY and by PARLANCE which took a while to justify the parsing!
I hate answers like ENTROPY. I don’t know the word and I suspect the vast majority of solvers didn’t either.
There’s no disputing taste, but really? I wouldn’t consider ENTROPY to be an uncommon word compared to some of the stuff that’s in here.
In any case it always amuses me when people think that their personal opinions are likely those held by the vast majority.
I’m familiar with the word from previous crosswords 😉.
Interesting take on it there – it’s a word I’m familiar with, and think many will be too (though I’ve never used) but it takes a crossword to nail the definition for me! I think it’s because it’s close to ‘atrophy’ and so I always assume it has a related meaning. Of course it doesn’t!!!
Very enjoyable and all done in about 30 minutes. LOI PARLANCE after DAEMON. I too DNK RAD =Cool.
CsOD to DESKTOPS and GREENKEEPER.
David
As befits the weather, a slow and steady plod, finally pulling up short with just Parlance outstanding. Wrong end of the clue issues – one day I’ll realise why I always get stuck like this. I also spent an entertaining few minutes along the way trying to parse Stalingrad, starting with the premise that Al + In were there as half hearted and cool. That only left the St Grad bit to work out. . . Invariant
Hep or Hip(50’s) (This was intended as a reply to Merlin’s list but I see it miraculously appears down here!)
All correct although ENTROPY took an embarrassing long time to emerge and PARLANCE LOI
Pleasant solve
Thanks setter and blogger
“Let me hold your hand, be your lovin’ man” (‘Everything’s Alright’ by the MOJOS).
Of course, their spelling wasn’t all right; Frank Millard docked 3 points off my mark for using ‘alright’ in an essay. If he could see the crimes committed against the English Language 60 years on….
I found this a little patchy to be honest, and biffed STALINGRAD (which I couldn’t parse at all), and my LOI, which I knew was a word, but hadn’t a clue as to what it meant.
FOI GEE-GEE
LOI ENTROPY
COD BOOZE CRUISE
TIME 7:24
Normally just a QC-er but thought I’d give this a go as I understand Mondays’ are usually on the gentler side. Battled away for around an hour and managed to complete my first ever biggie! Some answers were biffed, including PARLANCE, U SHAPED and STALINGRAD. ‘Hap’ now makes sense but ‘rad’ is new to me. No problems with the Trotter reference. LOI MOJO, FOI CHANCERY. Really liked INFO. Very happy to celebrate what is likely to be a one-off for me (for a while). Thanks all.
Congrats!!
Well done!
Nice work – it’s such a great feeling when you crack the big one, isn’t it? I’m a regular QC completer and a far too frequent Biggie DNFer but, like you, enjoyed success today and am still chuffed about it 🥂
That’s great news – congrats 😊🍾
Well done!
No real unknowns in the answers, though GREENKEEPER seemed new, and I biffed TROTTED (“Del Roy”?!).
Del Boy. Del is an abbreviation for Derek. Boy is a familiar term as in that’s my boy.
Typo! Or, anyway, I read it right earlier.
BOOZE CRUISE one of my favourite homophone clues for a while. Was a bit flummoxed by PARLANCE but it all went in.
Looks like I’m the only person who managed to put in sHIRAz instead of sHERRy. Oh dear! Apart from that all ok.
Around Chester we are told that the term Gee Gees for racehorses dates back to the mayor of Chester, Henry Gee (1539) who inaugurated an annual horse race on the Roodee- Chester racecourse. His love of race horses was said to be so great that his name became synonymous with race horses. Probably apocryphal but makes a nice story. Enjoyed crossword. Thanks to setter and blogger
Just under 4 hours for a rare complete solve 😂😂 but including 3 work meetings and 2 shopping trips. Needed the breaks though as INFO, CHARIOTEER, PARLANCE & STALINGRAD all took maximum brainpower.
It’s definitely GREENKEEPER here in the UK (may have been commented on before – I have read ALL 70+ comments!)
Thought RABBIT HOLE to be a brilliant anagram/clue – wonderful. It was certainly a bewildering situation for Alice and I am often going down metaphorical versions in researching tech solutions for home PC and tablet issues!
Thanks Jeremy
Similar to sltrach’s experience I battled away for around 75 minutes before finally finishing with DESKTOP. I kept going over le, la, les or du and couldn’t think of des. Needed blog to fully understand many-GEE-GEE, INFO, TROTTED, PARLANCE and CHARIOTEER plus probably others. COD to ENTROPY. There was a movie based on a cartoon character(late 60’s?), Howard the Duck, who would wander around muttering “Entropy, entropy, all systems fail.” I believe that was my first introduction to the word.
Never heard of Del Boy? On which planet have you been living on?
The United States of America.
With best of respect to our blogger and to the many posters who have mentioned it here, I’m sorry, but I still have no idea how we get to PARLANCE. Doubtless I am missing something blindingly obvious, but please can someone spell this one out for me? Thanks in advance.
Music style = rap
Picked up = reversed
Pop = lance
“Lance” is “pop” in the sense of what you might do to a boil.
Ick.
I think this is the last thing I parsed.
Thank you. Got it at last. As you say, ‘Ick!’.
18’09” Heading for an under-tenner, then hit by parlance, charioteer and info. Totally lost stride. Entropy I know from the various popular science books I buy from time to time then pretend to understand. I know it’s terribly important, but couldn’t for the life of me say why. Thought the Bible Torah anagram was inspired. Like others, I bunged in parlance without understanding the parsing. Many thanks.
Thank you so much for your delightful blogging spell, Jeremy. It’s unfortunate that you seem to have struck a particularly UK-centric puzzle for your last. This was a reasonably easy Monday-ish one for me, as I knew all the vocab and references, though I was trying to parse STALINGRAD as something around ‘in’ for cool, so was barking up the wrong tree until Mr Ego suggested Stalling without an L.
18.38. A little bit of effort required to polish this one off but nothing too troublesome.
Made a much better fist of this one, (nearly) finishing in about 25 minutes – apart from the second half of BOOZE -, and the now-so-obvious MOJO! So pretty chuffed to very nearly get there. (PARLANCE biffed , I have to admit, as I thought the Pop translated to PA, and wouldn’t let that go!)