Quince provides our Thursday brain-teaser this week.
This was a serious challenge. Some of the clues were write-ins, giving us a good start, but there were quite a few that we struggled with. Sometimes this was because of a crafty or perhaps rather vague definition (eg 25ac), and sometimes it was ingenious wordplay. We had real difficulty parsing two clues.
22ac baffled us until we remembered from years back that quince is Spanish for ’15’ – we wonder how long Quince has been wanting to use that in a crossword.
24d – which we entered from the definition and crossing letters but could not parse. It was only when we came to write up the blog, with the computer keyboard in front of us that we tumbled to the ingenious and original wordplay.
Thanks to Quince for the challenge – we really enjoyed it!
A cryptic definition: A cryptic clue for ‘thing’ might be parsed as H IN TING
I (one) in (‘inspired by’) THY ROD (‘something comforting in a psalm’) – Bert vaguely remembered from his Sunday School days that there is a psalm with the words ‘Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me’ – an ‘investigoogle’ (thanks to rabbit Dave for the lovely word.) revealed that this is from psalm 23:4 in the Bible.
A homophone (‘broadcast’) of MARLEY (Bob Marley, ‘singer’)
C (first letter or ‘dab’ of cream) ART (‘works’) RIDGES (wrinkles)
HOME (in) PLANE (aircraft) T (first letter or ‘beginning’ of take)
hALL (‘posh gaff’) dropping the ‘h’, as it would supposedly be spoken by Eastenders in London
MAJOR (big) TOM (cat) – a reference to David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’
PAPA (P in the phonetic alphabet, a ‘successor’ to O – Oscar) W S (first or ‘primary’ letters of Wilde staging)
Hidden (‘some’) and reversed (‘around’) in mountAIN RANges
TEST (try) TUBE (‘piece of rigatoni’ – pasta tube)
A reversal (‘about’) of XV (‘fifteen’ in Roman numerals, or ‘quince’ in Spanish – ‘moved from Madrid to Rome’) round or ‘swallowing’ E (European)
B (bachelor) UTTER (say) BEgAN missing the middle letter or ‘heart bypass’
DO (party) after IN (trendy) + OR (other ranks – ‘men’) + a reversal (‘back’) of LOOP (ring)
A reversal (‘set to the west’) of STAR (sun)
S (first letter or ‘entrance’ to sacred) MASHED (ground)
An anagram (‘in order’) of ARRESTeD missing (‘getting rid of’) ‘e’ (ecstasy)
I (first letter or ‘head’ of ITV) + a reversal (‘rejected’) of A TAR (pitch) O (love) MAN (island)
T (time) + an anagram (‘reformed’) of KEIR
NECK (kiss) LET (permit)
Cryptic definition: An anagram (‘for a spin’) of PeTROlHeAD missing or ‘short of’ ‘l’, ‘e’ and ‘e’ (last or ‘final’ letters of fuel drove one)
An anagram (‘for a change’) of PRoCREATED missing (‘wanting’) ‘o’ (love)
Alternate or ‘occasional’ letters of mInD rEcAlLs
An anagram (‘cast’) of TARANTINO MUST
OB (old boy) with NO IOUS (debts) round (‘acquiring’) X (‘Twitter now’)
WokE missing the middle letters or ‘wanting content’ + an anagram (‘put out’) of MR BEAST
AUBERGinE (‘bit of moussaka’) missing or ‘spilling’ ‘in’
Harry, Ron and Hermione are characters at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter books – where they learn to cast spells – fancifully becoming SPELLERS
A reversal (‘about’) of ONE in or ‘feeding’ V (five in Roman numerals) M (thousand in Roman numerals)
This took some sorting! On a standard computer keyboard the keys for B, O, R, E and D are to the right of the keys for ‘v’, ‘i’, ‘e’,’w’ and ‘s’
Got stuck in the NE. Used a word fit to get CARTRIDGE but still failed to get THYROID & HARDTOP. I thought of the latter but couldn’t parse it.
Loved VEX & BORED once I’d figured them out. It’s funny that I needed to look at a keyboard to confirm my suspicion even though I don’t need to look to type them out.
I needed a few word searches to finish this. Some great clues including MAJOR TOM, PAWPAWS and THYROID.I was always confused by the 23rd Psalm as a boy. Why did he not want the Lord as his shepherd?
Some spectacular clues here. There was a similar trick as for VEX from Quince to do with crossing the Pyrenees, but even remembering that the clue took some figuring out.
RATS was funny.
Fun crossword, though I was beaten by HARDTOP.
Thanks to Quince and B&J.
Petert@2 I never had any trouble with the 23rd psalm, but I did wonder about the cross-eyed bear named Willingly.
I’ll get me coat…
Peter T #2. That’s the problem with reading old versions of the Bible. “Not want” means “not to be in want.” Some versions today read “lack nothing” or words to that effect
More of a wince than a Quince, for me, I struggled with quite a few, and guessed at 2 or 3.
“The Spanish for 15” is pushing it, in my opinion.
Is HARDTOP adequately defined in 6 down?
Why is a TRIKE, “accessible”? (3d).
Does “ON Eastenders” really hack it as a Cockney device, and isn’t it actually “EastEnders” ? (13ac)
Even “wrinkles = ridges” jars with me, 11(ac): they’re the furrows/creases between ridges, though I’ll have £50 with Ladbrokes that Chambers says ridges! Describing cartridges as “articles” is a bit limp.
Some nice touches, HOME PLANET for one, but just not up my Coronation Street.
Nice blog, BJ
Thanks both. Plenty to admire, for me including CARTRIDGES, and the more-straightforward-than-it-looked MAJOR TOM, though the parsing of VEX was asking too much, and I’ve no real idea still about HARDTOP and petrolhead, but once ‘short of fuel’ didn’t mean removing ‘petrol’ my patience was also disappearing to zero.
Tough but fun. I sort-of got what was happening with VEX but was looking for ‘lies’ to be more than a connecting word. I was utterly defeated by BORED though it was obviously the correct answer. THYROID I thought was delightful. Like Petert#2 I was reminded of incomprehensible hymns at school. A green field without a city wall??
Thanks to Quince and B&J
I found this on the tough side. THYROID went in unparsed (my Sunday school education has long lapsed) as well as HARDTOP. Also an erroneous WEBSTREAM slowed me down. It sounded like something those TikTok influencers would do.
Liked CARTRIDGES, MAJOR TOM and PAPAWS
Thanks B&J and Quince
Thanks Quince for a stiff challenge. I managed to arrive at all of the correct solutions but a fair number were guesses from the definitions and crossers. I could not fully parse THYROID, MALI, VEX, TRADERS, and HARDTOP. MAJOR TOM (COTD) made it all worthwhile, however, along with CARTRIDGES, HOME PLANET, PAPAWS, and INDOOR POOL. Thanks B&J for the blog.
Hmmm. I really struggled with this. Some great clues but the requirement to know obscure religious mumbo jumbo is up there with cricket-based clues for me. OBNOXIOUS was my favourite. Thanks BaJ for the explainers.
All I could do not to interpret “THY ROD” as “something comforting” in a decidedly crude way. Technically unfinished as I had “SMUSHED” for 27a, and wouldn’t in a month of Sundays have got it without “check all”. I still think it’s valid. Have to grit my teeth every time there’s a Harry Potter clue as well. Did like (and parse!) BORED and VEX. Thanks to Quince and Bert and Joyce.
Thanks Bertandjoyce for demystifying VEX, for me the star of the show. I have no problem with the wordplay in THYROID, based as it is on perhaps the single most well-known passage in the KJV, a source of quotes rivaling in richness the other free handout on Desert Island Discs. Bravo Quince.
Similar experience to others with some friendly clues to get started, one or two I could solve but not parse (BORED – I think my keyboard is different) and then a roadblock in the NE. Biblical knowlege always a challenge for me as were CARTRIDGES (although now I see it’s a nice clue) and the intricate HARDTOP. C’est la vie. Kudos to Quince whose puzzles I always enjoy and thanks for the blog, B&J.
I entered HARDTOP but could not parse it (tried subtracting PETROL as the fuel), so thanks for that.
THYROID and BUTTERBEAN (two words, in my kitchen) were last in and definitely type first, parse after. My school reflections of staff with rods not particularly comforting.
I was sure BORED was playing that trick but couldn’t spot it!
VEX was a great ‘aha’ moment, thanks to Spanish evening classes long ago.
Many thanks to Quince for the workout and to B&J for the blog.
Tricky stuff… not sure that, medically speaking, THYROID is an organ, more of a gland… had to wait for crossers and guesswork… VEX was never going to happen either, without lobbing in random vowels…
Thanks Quince and Bertandjoyce
A very good puzzle. I was beaten by THYROID (which is definitely an organ, as opposed to a tissue) and am grateful to the blog to see how to parse BORED.