Guardian Cryptic 28,765 by Pasquale

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28765.

As expected from the Don, a few less-than-common words, but also a few more bits of general knowledge than usual.

ACROSS
1 BENISON
Stokes is bowling? That’s a blessing! (7)
BEN IS ON (‘Stokes is bowling’), a reference to Ben Stokes, the bowler and captain of the England Test Cricket team.
5 REFUSAL
Dissent shown by American gangster meeting official (7)
A charade of REF (eg. football ‘official’) plus US (‘American’) plus AL (Capone, ‘gangster’).
9 MEATH
Substance (heroin) found in part of Ireland (5)
A charade of MEAT (‘substance’) plus H (‘heroin’).
10 CLASSIEST
Most elegant dog’s seen in court (9)
An envelope (‘seen in’) of LASSIE’S (‘dog’s’) in CT (‘court’).
11 CUCKOO SPIT
Frothy stuff in bird’s hole in the ground (6,4)
A charade of CUCKOO’S (‘bird’s’) plus PIT (‘hole in the ground’). For the definition, see here.
12 STUN
Mad turns creating shock (4)
A reversal (‘turns’) of NUTS (‘mad’).
14 DAISY-WHEELS
They had characters arranged in circles in old offices (5-6)
A cryptic definition, referring to the all but obsolete printing and typewriting technology.
18 MAX BYGRAVES
Late entertainer, greatest in the cemetery? (3,8)
MAX BY GRAVES.
21 LAME
Uninspiring game (4)
Double definition.
22 EGO-TRIPPER
One self-boosting drug obtained, something really good (3-7)
A charade of E (‘drug’) plus GOT (‘obtained’) plus RIPPER (‘something really good’).
25 CENTRALLY
Currency to recover, most importantly? (9)
A charade of CENT (‘currency’) plus RALLY (‘recover’).
26 ILIAD
Parliament, one about to give a long account (5)
A reversal (‘about’) of DAIL (Irish ‘Parliament’) plus I (‘one’), with as definition a reference to Homer’s detailed account of a short period in the siege of Troy.
27 TWEETER
Bird, one leaving a message? (7)
Double definition.
28 DOG STAR
See shiner among Democrats go dangerously leftward (3,4)
A hidden (‘see … among’) reversed (‘leftward’) answer in ‘DemocRATS GO Dangerously’.
DOWN
1 BEMOCK
Show contempt for doctor, conveyed by digital signal (6)
An envelope (‘conveyed by’) of MO (‘doctor’) in BECK (‘digital signal’ with a crooked finger).
2 NUANCE
Refinement of holy woman going round a church (6)
A charade of NUAN, an envelope (going round’) of ‘a’ in NUN (‘holy woman’); plus CE (‘Church’ of England).
3 SCHOOLDAYS
Choosy lads spoilt in time at Rugby, say (10)
An anagram (‘spoilt’) of ‘choosy lads’, with reference to Rugby, the prominent Public School.
4 NICKS
What sounds like zero marks (5)
‘Sounds like’ NIX (‘zero’).
5 REALITY TV
New combination of art and levity in screen entertainment (7,2)
An anagram (‘new combination’) of ‘art’ plus ‘levity’.
6 FESS
Tell all this band is ordinary (4)
Double definition; the first is a colloquial abbreviation for confess, the second refers to a fess band, a basic heraldic form – ‘ordinary – on an escutcheon.
7 SWEATIER
It’s more damp — being changeable, as it were (8)
An anagram (‘being changeable’) of ‘as it were’.
8 LUTENIST
Musician with superior number appearing in catalogue (8)
An envelope (‘appearing in’) of U (‘superior’) plus TEN (‘number’) in LIST (‘catalogue’).
13 CHASTISING
Little child is involved in a deception — gets punishment (10)
A charade of CH (‘little child’) plus ASTISING, an envelope (‘involved in’) of ‘is’ in A STING (‘a deception’).
15 IRREGULAR
The English do is not normal (9)
The English verb ‘do’ (did, done) is irregular.
16 IMPLICIT
Absolute straightforwardness putting outsiders off (8)
[s]IMPLICIT[y] (‘straightforwardness’) minus its outer letters (‘putting outsiders off’).
17 EXAMINEE
One’s scrutinised an explosive device in river (8)
An envelope (‘in’) of A MINE (‘an explosive device’) in EXE (‘river’).
19 SPRINT
Dash employed by various printers (6)
A hidden answer (’employed by’) in ‘variouS PRINTers’.
20 TRADER
Ship‘s engineers rush up (6)
A reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of RE (Royal ‘engineers’) plus DART (‘rush’).
23 TOYED
Endless commotion outside? Inside you once played (5)
An envelope (‘outside, inside’) of YE (‘you once’) in TO-D[o] (‘commotion’) minus its last letter (‘endless’)
24 TROT
Red in revolutionary wrongdoing (4)
A reversal (‘revolutionary’) of TORT (‘wrongdoing’).

picture of the completed grid

76 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,765 by Pasquale”

  1. Oh yeah, digital as in beck[on]; remembering that would have hastened bemock (erk!). And my heraldry isn’t up to much, so fess was another shrug. Max Bygraves (groan) rang an old bell, which is odd because no visual or aural trace emerges with the name. Otoh, the image of the lettered sphere came first, then daisy eventually. Wondered about implicit for absolute (via fundamental, sort of?). Anyway, not a lot of fizz, but ok, thanks Don n Peter.

  2. Other than FESS (I usually use/hear “fess up”) the only one I had real trouble with was 21a, trying to decide between LAME and limp. Chose right in the end, thankfully. Have no idea how I got MAX BYGRAVES since I don’t think I’ve run across a mention of him for nearly 50 years – must have been an impressionable youth. En route to MEATH I was toying with Neath, but it didn’t fit, and besides, wrong country. All that said, I think it was a fine puzzle.

  3. Not as many obscurities as we sometimes get from Pasquale, but even so I’d only ever heard of BECK in the saying “… beck and call” and don’t remember having seen or heard of the old-fashioned sounding BEMOCK. I didn’t know about CUCKOO SPIT and couldn’t parse DAISY WHEELS – thanks for the links. I too TOYED with “limp” for LAME. I was chuffed to spot the heraldic references in FESS.

    Best for me was the at first sight mystifying surface for IRREGULAR.

    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO

  4. Although I’ve always struggled with Pasquale’s puzzles, he is one of my favourite setters and I get a great satisfaction from completing them even if it takes a couple of days.

    Early on I learnt to ‘trust the Don’ because his clueing style is to my taste. Even when the word is unknown to me, he rarely lets me down. Meath being a case in point. NHO but it couldn’t be anything else.

    Thank you, Pasquale and PeterO. Lovely puzzle, well blogged.

  5. Agree with gratinfreo@1 about the def for IMPLICIT but I imagine someone will say it’s in Chambers.
    Liked the wordplay in MAX BYGRAVES, old enough to remember.
    Let down by UnKnown General Knowledge in MEATH and FESS, but enjoyed the webucation and thanks PeterO.
    Favourites were IRREGULAR, and DAISY-WHEELS.

  6. Struggled with FESS, DAISY WHEELS (which brought to mind typing my thesis one ‘holiday’ on an IBM “golf ball” electric typewriter which was a predecessor to the daisy wheel) and LAME (didn’t know the second definition for game in Chambers).
    My favourites were MAX BYGRAVES and EGO-TRIPPING

  7. Ah yes, Tim C @6, it was the golf ball I was remembering, which somehow triggered daisy wheel.

  8. Ah yes, MAX BYGRAVES. Anyone remember this? Sorry.
    The heraldic meaning of FESS passed me by entirely.
    There seemed to be other things from the past too – DAISY WHEEL, LUTENIST, and even ILIAD.
    I suppose TWEETER and REALITY TV brought us back to the present.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

  9. Yes, paddymelon @5, Chambers has 3. Absolute, relying entirely, unquestioning. I’d raised an eyebrow at that one, too.
    I guessed wrong with LIMP, which is a bit annoying. And having no problems with DAISY WHEELS (noisy brutes, weren’t they?) and MAX BYGRAVES reminded me how ancient I am.
    I don’t really think my life has been improved by encountering BEMOCK.
    But particularly liked DOG STAR (a remarkably well-hidden one) and TOYED (an elegant clue for a short word is always attractive).
    Thanks, both.

  10. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
    I found this easier than most Pasquales, though I didn’t parse IRREGULAR and had to look up the second definition for FESS.
    I knew “game leg”, though “gammy leg” is more common, I think.
    I wonder what US solvers will make of BENISON; it shouldn’t give much of a problem to Aussies, though writing it in might be accompanied by a shudder!
    Lots of nice clues. CLASSIEST tickled me.

  11. Another golf baller here: I managed to leave one page out of my thesis, but they didn’t notice.

    Nothing much too obscure today, though I was reduced to limping near the end.

    I thought 21ac was 21ac – the q and a only differ by one letter.

    Thanks PeteO and Pasquale

  12. Four-letter trouble today. Oh, that kind of game! Took me a long time to see it. And that sort of digital signal, which I likewise didn’t get. I had TORT/TROT the wrong way round. But I did eventually remember what kind of band a FESS was.

    I don’t think DAISY WHEELS is even a cryptic definition: just a plain description of a (now) unfamiliar object. I tried DAILY PRAYERS for the “old offices” at first…

    Thanks, Pasquale – except for reminding me of MAX BYGRAVES, never my favourite singer.

  13. I think the Rugby reference in 3d is a little more specific; I took it as referring to Tom Brown’s Schooldays, set at Rugby School.

  15. NeilH @9 I’m rather fond of all BE…. words, though admittedly I don’t think I’ve encountered BEMOCK before. I like the way you can stick “be” on the front of lots of verbs … commonly befriend, bedevil, bestir, bemoan etc but the unusual ones are best.

  16. Crossbar @15 your post made me try to see what else be could prefix and found it’s odd what doesn’t work. Besolve for example, which led me to try resolve, which is slightly different, and re-solve is completely different. English really is peculiar.

  17. Tough puzzle but got there in the end. Solved only 3 down clues on my first pass, and only one across clue.

    New: BENISON, CUCKOO SPIT; BECK = signal with the finger or head (for 1d).

    Did not parse 6d FESS (def = tell all); 21ac LAME (def = uninspiring but game? Never heard of game = lame before).

    Liked: EGO TRIPPER, IMPLICIT, EXAMINEE, CENTRALLY, TOYED (loi).

    Thanks, both.

  18. Some head scratching today especially in the SE corner but got there in the end. I remember Max Bygraves as one of those ‘cozy’ Saturday night TV entertainers who don’t seem to exist anymore (thank god!) Except perhaps for Jane McDonald. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.
    (There’s a wonderful, albeit short, podcast series called Now Where Were We with the much missed Barry Cryer swapping stories/jokes in the pub with various funny people. Max B gets a few mentions. )

  19. A bung of DAILY SHEETS due to lack of GK and no other aids to a solution. Pretty typical for this irritating setter. It surprises me that others hold him in such high regard when it seems to me there is something contentious in almost every puzzle.

  20. A slow start, but got there in the end. Many thanks to the Don for a fine puzzle, and to Peter for clearing up my dodgy parsing.

    [My only memory of the ‘entertainer’ is of him telling an amusing story in a Parkinson interview about a radio announcer in the 50s (?) introducing the forthcoming number as “one for all the Sophie Tucker fans”, only with a dash of Rev Spooner thrown in. First time I’d heard that on the beeb. Shocking.]

  21. Got there, but with a bit of guesswork. Every day is a school day. Thank you for the puzzle and the parsing which I hope to reapply in the future.

  22. Crossbar @15 – Yes, I guess you are right. Now I think of it, I recall someone 50+ years ago declaring of a particular youth hostel that it was “Foully Bewardened”.
    Yet BETONY is a herb, rather than a verb meaning to make the Labour Party just like the other lot…

  24. My favourite sort of solve – only a few on the first pass, then some more give in, then go away, and come back to it and finish. Hurray!

    For those worrying about IMPLICIT = Absolute, how about having Implicit Faith in someone/thing.

    Needed a bit of google help to check LUTENIST = Lute Player, and to get the heraldic meaning of FESS. I thought TRADER = Ship was a bit vague, but perhaps someone out there can help.

  26. Must have been on the same wavelength today as these fairly raced in over a cuppa just now. Some nice clueing – IMPLICIT, EGO TRIPPER, ILIAD, CHASTISING. Probably the first time I’ve said BEMOCK out loud though!

  27. 18a – I’m now imagining a contest between Max B and the usual greatest in crossword world …

  28. I had to get daisy chain out of my head and couldn’t parse IMPLICIT. I particularly liked ILIAD

  29. My LIMP answer to 21ac and lack of heraldry gk were the blots on my escutcheon this morning. Thanls to Pasquale and PeterO.

  30. I had no trouble with IMPLICIT, as the synonym for ‘straightforwardness’ came to me very straightforwardly. And for the definition I just thought of the PM arriving at a party and believing implicitly that it was absolutely a work event.

    I spent longer on FESS than most of the rest – should have devoted more time to 21a, as I was another whose answer was a bit LIMP.

    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.

  31. A strange experience. Sat down to this just after mid-night last night (not my usual habit by any means) and filled it in from the top as far as MAX BYGRAVES without pause. With a shrug I decided to leave the rest until this morning. And there I sat and sat. Hard to explain in retrospect other than that the synapses must be sparking well at midnight – something I’ve always supected.

    I agree with gladys@12 that DAISY WHEEL is hardly cryptic but no complaints with DOG STAR (a wild guess) getting best in show (but why ‘see’? – for distraction?).

    Thanks both.

  32. Crossbar@15, totally agree about be- words, they are many and varied and have a good solid feel to them. I also love the ones that begin with a, like aheap, abeam, adeem, adoze, agaze, akimbo and many others not in common use.( And many that are)

  33. Well, you know what to expect with Pasquale. The combinations of BENISON, BEMOCK, MEATH and beck (although I had, of course, heard of beck and call) proved difficult to entangle; I only really made substantial progress once I started to use word searches.

    I did like MAX BYGRAVES, EGO-TRIPPER and DOG STAR (nicely hidden).

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

  34. Didn’t know the heraldic meaning of fess at 6d but was reminded of the American actor Fess Parker who played Davy Crocket. Since the French word “fesse” means buttocks , in France he was renamed Fier Parker – Proud Parker.

  35. Crossbar@8. Many thanks (not) for the earworm….
    Apart from that, BOOMED stayed in light pencil at 1d for far too long, delaying completion in the NW.
    And apart from that, a thoroughly enjoyable solve.
    Thanks, The Don&PeterO

  36. Did anyone else try – as we did – JIM MORRISON for 18a on first pass? No? I thought not. Thanks, Pasquale and PeterO.

  37. [Panthes@32. I’ll look out for a-words now. They sound like fun.
    Apologies DP@35, and anyone else who follows my link. I should have issued a (dental) health warning.]

  38. In common with many thus far struggled with BEMOCK, FESS (didn’t know heraldic meaning), and LAME (lame game???) Did not put them in until after I looked them up. Apparently Pokemon Go is a lame game…. That said, I enjoyed this. Many thanks Pasquale and Peter O.

  39. Typically professional offering from the Don.

    Favourites were IRREGULAR, IMPLICIT (both clever clues), SWEATIER (unexpected anagram) and FESS (I’ve never seen a double def from two such widely divergent registers).

    Can you get any more archaic than MAX BYGRAVES? 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

  40. Thanks for the blog, game to mean gammy is often used because the word game has so many other meanings for distraction.
    Alphalpha@31 the SEE is needed for DOG STAR or we would have GOES in the sentence spoiling the reverse hidden, I really liked this one.
    DOG STAR is Sirius A , the brightest in our night sky, although the intrinsic luminosity is not that high, it is just fairly close to us.

  41. Defeated by FESS, which seems rather more specialised than GK, and DAISY WHEELS, which I have NHO in my 60 years.

  42. Surprisingly straightforward for Pasquale. The big decision was lame or limp for 21a.

    Agree with Gervase @39 – Max Bygraves is archaic. My worry is that crosswords are becoming the preserve of old people.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

  43. I’m old enough to remember the Melody Maker publishing several letters from Max B in the early Seventies after they’d slighted another of his “Singalonga” opuses (opi?). He was a good sport about it, as I recall.

  44. Too much use of the check button by yours truly.
    Parsings to check and blog to read.
    Thanks both.

  46. Pencilled in LIVE initially at 24d thinking of wiring up plugs once upon a time. Crossers eventually put me right.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

  47. Thanks Pasquale for the challenge. I found this a bit heavy on the oddities for my tastes — it was only through lucky guessing and then confirming with the check button that I was able to complete this. Not a lot of fun really. Thanks PeterO for explaining it all.

  48. Ark Lark @42. Crosswords the preserve of old people? Maybe. I know that I didn’t often have the time to spare when I was working. But that’s partly because I’m not a very fluid solver – meaning I have to go away and do something else and then come back. Perhaps commenters should be obliged to state their age (I’m 67, but not for much longer).

  49. Thanks Pasquale, exemplary crossword which I found very enjoyable to solve. And thanks PeterO for the exemplary blog to go with it.

    Gervase @39 – FESS (12th century) is somewhat more archaic than MAX BYGRAVES. But the ILIAD beats heraldic terminology by about 2000 years. And as for the DOG STAR, it predates all of us by several hundred million years!

    Unfortunately, much as I’d like Max Bygraves to be consigned to history, he lives on as a staple on compilations of children’s songs – not just the one mentioned by Crossbar earlier, but this one too, which featured on a CD my son had as a child, and which I had to endure hearing countless times.

  50. [Widdersbel@49 My daughter had a similar children’s compilation, but on a vinyl LP, before CDs. It had your example and mine. Says something about the longevity of these things. ]

  51. Am I the only one on 11a who wondered about what stuff would be in a bird’s hole in the ground when the crossers for the second word gave me S_I_ ? Then I remembered it is not Paul today . . .

  52. Enjoyed this a lot in the end, but was starting to despair as I got through all the across clues without so much as a sniff. Finally got a foothold with schooldays and reality tv, and then unpicked the rest in a very pleasing fashion, although I’d forgotten the heraldic fess, so didn’t parse that along with a couple of others. What made it more enjoyable is that Pasquale is one of the setters I’m just not quite on the same wavelength as, so this was a rare completion for me.

    sheffield hatter @ 48: FWIW, I’m 50, but started solving 30-odd years ago at university – first with the puzzles in long-defunct paper Today, which I seem to remember were fairly accessible. I moved on to the Independent, before gravitating toward the Guardian when I found the puzzles were available online. I’m old enough to know Max Bygraves, but someone aged 20 now would likely not have the first clue. If famous old folk are going to be used they should at least be mentioned once in a while. So no to Max Bygraves, but yes to Bing Crosby (even though I know very little of his work, it is at least still relevant).

  53. sheffield hatter @48 I am not yet 60, desperately clinging to the term late middle aged rather than old, still working, but still manage to find time most days. Since the advent of WFH, I have found that there is always one conference call per day long enough and pointless enough that I can tune out and get it done 🙂

    I have enjoyed them since I was in 6th form, but I do seem to complete them a lot more frequently now than then. It helps to have the internet these days to check out names of Greek Muses or whatever, but, as my boys love pointing out, I have also had many more years than them to acquire otherwise useless pieces of knowledge which only come in handy for crosswords.

  54. MarkN @ 52: hear hear to your last point. My eldest was complaining today in another context that he was not old enough to have heard of Bob Dylan. Max Bygraves I would have had a lot of sympathy, but even though I am not a fan of Dylan, come on!

  55. Everyone is being very hard on Max Bygraves. I had free tickets to see him in the 1970s at ITV studios, and he was absolutely brilliant. So funny. He obviously enjoyed playing to a live audience and carried on entertaining us for a good half hour after the recording ended. I won’t hear a word against him, a real trouper.
    I didn’t like bemock though-what sort of word is that?

  56. Oh, it’s not Monday any more, is it? This one took me quite a while, and with more than a little thesaural inspiration. Came here to decipher some clues that I completed without really parsing. By the way, I’m a 70s child and MAX BYGRAVES was one of my first in the grid, I remember him from Family Fortunes.

    New to me: BENISON, CUCKOO SPIT, LUTENIST, BEMOCK and the secondary meanings of FESS and LAME. So at least I came away feeling educated!

  57. [Chardonneret@55 I’m not bemocking MAX. As you say, he was a trouper, and very popular. Very much of his time, of course. He lived in the same part of the country as I do, before he moved to Oz, and was well known and liked.]

  58. With regards to MAX BYGRAVES, I’m 40 and have no idea where I dragged the answer out from, and I’ve certainly no idea what his act consisted of. I’d also only dimly heard of a daisy wheel printer, though oddly golf ball print heads pop up often on some areas of the internet as fascinating objects in their own right.

    It’s interesting others have picked up on the exclusionary nature of some answers – I think it was exacerbated in this case by neither Max nor DAISYWHEELS having any other way into the solution – you either recognised the pun or (weak) description or you were stuffed. That’s a very different situation to the slightly obscure BENISON, or even the contemporary FESS.

    I don’t think crosswords are necessarily the preserve of older solvers, though it would be interesting to see the furious reaction to one themed on, say, west coast rappers. Examples like this where the GK assumed really hasn’t travelled down to a younger generation at all are fortunately rare, and stick out all the more for it.

    Someone mentioned Bing Crosby above, who definitely is famous to a younger generation if only for the joke about his Christmas duet with David Bowie and his rubber bum pump.

    “Rubber bum pump?”
    “Rubber bum pump.”

  60. Chardonneret @55 – “what sort of word is that?[bemock]” Shakespearean, is one answer, although you may regard that as a poor excuse. This from Ariel’s (“like a harpy)” speech in The Tempest act III scene 3

    You fools! I and my fellows
    Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
    Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well
    Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs
    Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
    One dowle that’s in my plume: my fellow-ministers
    Are like invulnerable.

  61. Thanks to MarkN & Fiery Jack for FESSing! It’s really interesting to see the difference in the impact across the generations of Max Bygraves and the Magic Roundabout. (Though I must conFESS that Petula Clark was never my cup of tea.)

  64. MartinD @63
    Baffled by your comment. What’s wrong with “chastising”. Max Bygraves, on the other hand…could it be significant that Chardonneret had a free ticket?

  65. Apologies to Ben+T @58 for not acknowledging your excellent point about the “exclusionary nature” of some of the clues/answers. I started doing the Guardian crossword when I was 18 or so, and there was no help from the internet or fifteen squared then. 🙂

    (Luckily, perhaps, I don’t recognise your David Bowie/Bing Crosby reference. Hope it doesn’t get picked up by Pasquale for a future crossword!)

    I’m not unsympathetic, at least I hope not, but it’s not meant to be easy!

  66. SH @65
    Unfortunately I do recognise the Bing Crosby/David Bowie reference – it’s cringingly embarrassing.

  68. [muffin – “cringingly embarrassing'” is no surprise for me. I can never get my head around how popular those two are.]

  69. [SH @68
    My daughter was impressed that I owned the seminal Bowie Berlin albums (Low, Heroes, Lodger) on vinyl before she had even heard of him. (I also had a 45 of Space oddity.) On the other hand, when I bought the final album, Blackstar, she described as sounding like “giraffes fighting”!]

  70. Always enjoy the comments here – almost as much as the puzzle itself. Dog Star was a favourite as it was one of the first my Dad taught me to identify. Youngest generation have all been amazed when Granny showed them the little green bug at the centre of 11.

  71. [muffin @69. This is so far off topic that I would deserve a reprimand if MarkOnCan @70 hadn’t said that the comments are better than the puzzle, or something.

    But I just have to mention Nick Lowe’s Bowi EP – a riposte to Bowie’s album Low – geddit? He also channelled Bowie in his only hit single I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (it’s so like Sound & Vision that I’m surprised he wasn’t sued) – and refused to perform it live because “it’s not really a song”. Miaow!!!

    Perhaps I deserve a reprimand anyway.]

  72. Sheffield Hatter @ 65 – I suspect it was ever thus! GK must be the hardest thing for setters to judge – as most people here will recognise, it’s only obscure if you don’t know it. It has its compensations though – there’s been a few interesting conversations with my eldest off the back of solutions in the Quiptic, which they occasionally sit and solve with me.

  73. I look forward to the day that Pasquale clues BEMOCK’D-AT, SCF@60! It has the Shakespearean seal of approval, after all.

  74. A slightly unsatisfactory solve, as I was completely unable to parse FESS, IRREGULAR and IMPLICIT. Thanks for the explanation, PeterO.

    Does anyone remember this Two Ronnies’ news item?:

    A daring thief broke into a local police station and stole a drawerful of criminal records, including Max Bygraves’ “Deck of cards”.

  75. Surely the fact that limp and lame fit both the definition and the grid suggests that this isn’t a v good clue.

    I’m never on Pasquale ‘s wavelength but can usually get to the answer by the clue but like others I think you either knew ‘daisy wheels’ or you didn’t.

  76. Big ol’ DNF today, but I had to come here for the delightful BENISON, and I loved MAX BYGRAVES (‘I wanna tell you a story …’).

    New: FESS, BEMOCK, LUTENIST.

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