A Friday debut two weeks in a row
I found this generally straightforward, with clear cluing and some old favourites intermingled with some more ingenious devices. My main hold-up in writing the blog was the number of references and links I needed to find – some less familiar GK, some of it American. (Is that a clue?)
Some nice clues – I had ticks for 13ac ORINOCO, 15ac SQUEALS, 18ac MAD, 26ac BRAVO, 2dn EMBODIED, 6dn DIMINUENDO, 14dn OCCASIONED and 19dn DREDGE UP.
We have DEVIL DOG in the top row, GODSPEED at the bottom and SECRET GARDEN in rows 7 and 9 but any significance is lost on me. Any suggestions? My thanks in advance.
Thanks to Ix for an enjoyable puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
9 Strange bachelor’s dance (5)
RUMBA
RUM (strange) + BA (Bachelor of Arts)
10 Subject in short dress getting turn (9)
CHEMISTRY
CHEMIS[e] (dress) + TRY (turn)
11 Chip for scrambling scores (9)
PROCESSOR
PRO (for) + an anagram (scrambling) of SCORES
12 Angry judge’s claim? (5)
IRATE
A judge might claim ‘I RATE’
13 Gold icon roughly treated by old recycling team member (7)
ORINOCO
OR (gold) + an anagram (roughly treated) of ICON + O (old) – just last month, there were complaints that I didn’t explain ORINOCO and the lovable recycling team, the Wombles – I’m more than happy to make amends – see here
15 Queen captured by US navy forces wails (7)
SQUEALS
QU (queen) in SEALS (US navy forces)
17 Early sub detector regularly seen near us in Dominica (5)
ASDIC
Not sure about this: I think it’s neAr uS in DomIniCa?
18 State of mind about the boy, from Ella Fitzgerald ultimately (3)
MAD
froM ellA fitzgeralD
I can’t find a reference to Ella Fitzgerald singing this song – a pity: it would have added more to a great clue
20 Shearer’s fancy manor (5)
NORMA
An anagram (fancy) of MANOR – the actress makes a welcome change from Bellini’s opera
22 Gushed and swore about American (7)
EFFUSED
EFFED (swore) round US (American)
25 First woman abruptly cracked without starting to be transformed (7)
EVOLVED
EV[e] (first woman) + [s]OLVED (cracked)
26 Tips of bacon rashers are very overcooked or well done (5)
BRAVO
Bacon Rashers Are Very Overcooked
27 Start pleading to swap pub for one grand (9)
BEGINNING
BEG[G]ING (pleading) with one G (grand) replaced by INN (pub)
30 Opulent European place for French cardinal (9)
RICHELIEU
RICH (opulent) + E (European) + LIEU (place)
31 Lucky Liechtensteiner keeps throwing stick (5)
KYLIE
Hidden in lucKY LIEchtensteiner – a kind of boomerang
Down
1 Release tiny amount (4)
DROP
Double definition
2 Personified Space Boy briefly, then kicked the bucket (8)
EMBODIED
EM (space in printing) + BO[y] + DIED (kicked the bucket)
3 Farewell, depression! (4)
VALE
Double definition
4 Tom cries pathetically in severe weather (3,5)
ICE STORM
An anagram (pathetically) of TOM CRIES
5 Discovers artist reflected in piece of curved glass (6)
LEARNS
A reversal (reflected) of RA (artist) in LENS (piece of curved glass)
6 Stupid suggestive remark a knight emitted with decreasing loudness (10)
DIMINUENDO
DIM (stupid) + IN[n]UENDO (suggestive remark) minus n (knight)
7 Capital of Texas initially thanks Washington (6)
OTTAWA
Of Texas + TA (thanks) + WA (Washington)
8 Vortex emptied gully and ravine (4)
GYRE
G[ul]Y + R[avin]E
13 Ring Herb in Oklahoma’s largest county (5)
OSAGE
O (ring) + SAGE (herb)
14 Caused pit viper to shed skin one day (10)
OCCASIONED
[m]OCCASI[n] (pit viper) minus its ‘skin’ + ONE D (day)
16 Holy person with bear
STAND
ST (saint, holy person) + AND (with)
19 Raise great fear comedian Miles must be broadcast (6,2)
DREDGE UP
Sounds like ‘dread’ (great fear) + Jupp (comedian Miles)
21 Bugle call distorted in live reel (8)
REVEILLE
An anagram (distorted) of LIVE REEL
23 Motorsport firm admitting mid-season cock-up (6)
FIASCO
FI (motorsport) + CO (firm) round seAson
24 Recollected bride’s scattered stuff (6)
DEBRIS
An anagram (recollected) of BRIDE’S
26 Food tossed over fortified town (4)
BURG
A reversal (tossed over) of GRUB (food)
28 The King conceals ascendant spirit of victory (4)
NIKE
Hidden reversal (ascendant) in thE KINg
29 Encouraged U2’s guitarist to split and join up with New Order (4)
GEED
(the) EDGE (U2’s guitarist) with each pair of letters split and rearranged – GEE is usually followed by ‘up’ in this sense
Thanks Ix and Eileen
At first sight this lookd very difficult, but in fact it came out fairly easily. A lot of GK, but I only had to resort to a list of OKlahoma counties for OSAGE. I was thrown by the Space Boy in 2d, though – I thought it was a cartoon character I hadn’t heard of.
Interesting debut.
The words in the top and bottom rows are all reversible: GOD LIVED DEEPS DOG. But I don’t see any more significance.
I parsed ASDIC the same way as the blog.
Thanks to Ix and Eileen
9 out of 10 for this delightful debut
Top ticks for OCCASIONED, MAD for the earworm and GEED
Cheers E&I
New for me: GYRE = vortex; KYLIE = boomerang; comedian Miles Jupp (for 19d) – this seems to be overly niche GK in my humble opinion; ditto OSAGE = Oklahoma’s largest county; moccasin = pit viper (for 14d); ASDIC.
13ac – I could parse my answer but I did not understand why does ORINOCO = team member. Oh, I see, a ref to Wombles which is something I know nothing about!
Also I could not parse 17ac ASDIC.
Favourites: STAND, EFFUSED, EMBODIED.
Could there be any relevance in the choice of setter’s name for puzzle 29989? I +X (or IX reversed) before 30000.
michelle @ 4 – it’s ”recycling team member’ – please see the link I’ve provided this time. 😉
I started in the south east, and it seemed so easy that it would be over in ten minutes (nb. that has never happened!). The resistance increased elsewhere until I was left floundering to find ASDIC as LOI.
Could 1D also be DRIP? Like a PR firm dripping/releasing information to the media?
Although it was mostly gentle, the clues were neat and I liked it.
Favourite clues include EFFUSED, RICHELIEU, DREDGE UP and OSAGE.
The only thing I had to look up was ASDIC, I tried everything. I think Eileen has parsed it correctly.
I imagine our overseas friends will once again be baffled by a womble reference although we had the same one weeks ago (I see this was confirmed by Michelle while I was typing) and by Miles Jupp.
Welcome, Ix, and thanks as ever, Eileen.
Agree with yo on ASDIC, I do remember this trick being more common in crosswords of the past.
MAD… here is a snippet of the song in a Levis advert I worked on many years ago.
GEED was a neat trick, and a smooth surface.
Thanks Eileen and Whoever is Ix
Tring to do the link again, it worked this time, every days a school day!
Thank you for the blog, Eileen: I simply assumed that an Ella Fitzgerald cover of that song was the reason for 18A’s wording. (I’m not very knowledgeable about her work.)
I had the same parsing for ASDIC as you did, and was also far from certain about it. Hey ho.
Like muffin, I had to bung “Oklahoma counties” into DuckDuckGo – and it took a moment or two to recall that there was another actress called Shearer, as well as Moira.
For once, I spotted the ninas (well, the top and bottom ones, anyway) after having finished those areas, and tbh, spent almost as long puzzling over their significance as I did on the remaining unsolved clues.
As muffin put it, an interesting debut.
A few curly ones, but most went in smoothly, so an addition to my list of “good” compilers.
Wonder if moccasin is the only word on earth that is both a snake and a shoe (elsewhere today it’s in a clue for occasion as ‘slipper’).
Rose Garden was a secret US Marines op in the Vietnam War. But that doesn’t help with God Speed, ( Devil Dogs is a nickname for the Marines) And there are also stiletto snakes in Africa
Welcome to Ix. Unusual to see a third-letters “regular” solution that doesn’t start with the first letter of the fodder, either – if you weren’t aware of ASDIC it would be pretty tricky. I didn’t know KYLIE=boomerang or that a moccasin was a pit viper (the one I’ve heard of is a water moccasin so I did know it was some kind of snake). No idea what the various Ninas ( which I missed) are about.
Shouldn’t the knight in DIMINUENDO be omitted rather than emitted?
gladys @14 – ‘omitted’ would make nonsense of the surface, whereas ’emit’ means ‘utter’ or ‘throw out’ (both Chambers definitions) which seemed to me spot on for both surface and wordplay – which is why it got a tick.
Relatively benign for a Friday but most enjoyable nonetheless.
One querie, though, in the DREDGE UP clue, if the homophone indicator broadcast applies to Miles Jupp, that leaves only “dre” not dread”.
Hmmm…
I was hoping the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor might have done a track called “Devil Dog”, but if they have I can’t find it and I do have a pretty comprehensive collection of their music
Wow x 2!!
1. I completed it myself!! I always start and usually get about 2/3 done, get stuck and then my wife finishes it.
2. I am on here at No 18. On the rare occasions I comment I am usually about No 97!!
Obviously therefore I liked this and am pleased to have a puzzle that’s an accessible challenge for those of us who are not super fast experts. I had to check OSAGE County and ASDIC (after getting them.) Never heard of ASDIC but it’s like SCUBA and a COBRA meeting.
Thanks and welcome to Ix and particular thanks to Eileen, and all other bloggers, whose efforts I really appreciate..
William@16: I think you have to apply the “broadcast” to the whole phrase “Dread Jupp” – smear it together and you get “Dredge Up” – at least that’s how I read it.
An impressive debut with some clever tricks but I definitely got the feeling the setter is familiar with Americanisms as well as Britishisms – I don’t think many herpetologists would reach for the term “moccasin” here. Luckily “asdic” and “Osage” were dredged up from memory but the U2 guitarist was GK well outside my wheelhouse(s).
Thanks Ix and Eileen – lucky again with her blogging!
Nice puzzle. Did like the Space Boy. Very misleading.
Asked Copilot what links the Ninas. It said they were Marine terms, possibly related to UK / US relations.
Devil Dog =Nickname for US Marines
Godspeed = Traditional naval farewell
Secret Garden = Famous Royal Marines location in Lympstone, Devon, the officers’ garden at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM).
May be a coincidence.
I remembered the OSAGE nation Indians who were canny enough not to give up the headrights to the oil there.
DROP reminds me of the use by (largely US?) companies of dropping (releasing) a product which I always initially read as it being discontinued.
Referring to a particular county in Oklahoma might seem somewhat obscure here on the right-hand side of the pond, unless of course you’ve seen Scorsese’s recentish film Killers of the Flower Moon, set among the Osage people of that state. All in all, a very nice offering from the mysterious Ix, to whom many thanks, as well as to Eileen, of course.
Enjoyable debut which I almost completed and parsed. (17a had to be ASDIC but I couldn’t work out why so needed Eileen to come to my rescue.)
I did wonder whether Devil Dog, Godspeed and Secret Garden might be music references but I think MCourtney’s @20 explanation more likely. It’s just that Devil Dog rang a faint bell so I asked my friends (Dr Doogle and Ms Wiki) and discovered that The Devil Dogs were (are?) an American garage-punk band. Further research revealed a Montreal band called Godspeed and Secret Garden, an Irish-Norwegian band specialising in new-age music. (The only problem with all this being that almost any phrase one can think-of is the name of a band somewhere!)
Thanks to Ix and Eileen!
Liked this a lot apart from a couple of bits of GK that had passed me by. Nho OSAGE but it had to be. I also didn’t know the U2 guitarist. I guessed ASDIC but like others I couldn’t parse it. I should have remembered that moccasin is a snake as well as a shoe.
Thanks to Ix and Eileen for her usual immaculate blog.
Wikipedia didn’t tell me that moccasin was a name for the pit viper, so I didn’t finish parsing OCCASIONED, though I did just assume that ?occasi? was a name I hadn’t found. Agree with the general estimation of the puzzle and good to have another setter in the roster. For once I spotted the ninas, and Google revealed the meaning of ‘DEVIL DOG’, so I assume the 3 together are some historical reference (rather than contemporary with the disastrous events in the Gulf). Learnt that KYLIE wasn’t just an Australian pop singer. Liked EFFUSED and FIASCO. Thanks to Ix and Eileen.
Does nobody remember the film August: Osage County with Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Benedict Cumberbatch, etc? That’s why I didn’t feel the need to Google anything. I haven’t actually seen the film, but I remember the publicity around its release.
Unlike almost everyone else here, I do know of ASDIC, as my father was an ASDIC operator in the Royal Australian Navy during WWII. Also, I inherited an Ella Fitzgerald compilation from him called Mad About the Boy. Thanks, Dad! I worked out OSAGE from the wordplay then checked. EFFUSED and OTTAWA were my favourites. Thanks, Ix and Eileen.
I loved this crossword apart from one quibble (and I have asked this question more than once before without being convinced by the answers, so if anyone can help me with it I’d be grateful).
Why is 29d GEED not an indirect anagram? – find out who the guitarist is and then rearrange rhe letters (‘new order’.
Very enjoyable debut from Ix. LOI was the elegant 7d Ottawa where spotting the Nina gave me a helping hand.
Thanks to Eileen for the great blog and for enlightening me to the parsing of 14d Occasioned.
Thanks to Ed. for the opportunity, my test solver, Eileen for the splendid blog (17a as you say, yes) and everyone for the comments/welcome.
When setting, I checked if Ella had sung the song and found she had, so your comment puzzled me, Eileen. Checking again now, I see that what I found was the title of one of her albums – which doesn’t actually contain the song. Close? [Edit: TT@27 has it too!]
This Spaceboy doesn’t have a space, but a web comic does.
“Ford was humming something.”
Very pleased to have made my debut. Hope to return sometime…
Sourdough @28 GEED is indirect but the wordplay is ‘split/join’ not ‘jumble’ so very limited, you can make DGEE, EEGD or GEED and only one is a word.
Thanks Ix and Eileen. I enjoyed this, always fun to have a new setter’s wavelength to discover. I was wondering if the Ninas were a personal message of some sort —perhaps Ix @30 will let us in on the mystery?
Tassie Tim @27: My dad was an ASDIC operator in the Royal Navy in WW2, so the answer was obvious for me too. My problem was the parsing. Thanks to Eileen and others for that.
There’s also SECRET GARDEN! If you can see it in the middle
Rich@31 Thank you, but it does say ‘split and join up in new order’ and, to me, ‘new order’ = anagram. The fact that the anagram only has one viable solution also does not mean it isn’t an anagram.
You seem to be saying (as I think others have before) that it is excused because it is a simple / obvious anagram.
Maybe I’m just going to have to live with the fact that some indirect anagrams are permitted based largely on how easy the anagram itself is to solve.
Enjoyed and completed this, parsing most. I didn’t know ASDIC or KYLIE but having worked out the answers and used the check button, I knew they were right. I rarely Google words I don’t know. I have enough trivial information in my brain already and I have a job sometimes holding on to that! I’ve never before seen ‘regularly’ indicating you should take every third letter (17a).
Ix@30, thanks for commenting, always interesting to hear from the compiler. And now we have a hint to your name – presumably you don’t know what a Hrung is.
Lots of GK to look up but also lots of enjoyable clues. After yesterday’s Brockwell, which was nightmarish since I don’t know bugger all about sheep, I’m very thankful for a gentle solve.
I wonder in the setter is able to satisfactorily explain what a Hrung is, or why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven…
Aah, well-spotted, DuncT@37 and ysc@38, I had forgotten…
Sourdough@35: I think that the instructions here are to ‘split’ EDGE, giving ED and GE, and then ‘join up in new order’, i.e. put the two particles in the other order, giving GE and ED. So the instructions are completely explicit as to how to rearrange the letters, rather than allowing just any rearrangement.
Other indirect anagrams I have seen in the Grauniad seem to be equally explicit, e.g. moving one letter from the beginning to the end, but are typically more allusive about the word to be altered than the definition “U2’s guitarist”, which can only lead to one answer. Those seem more borderline to me.
NHO ASDIC, Norma Shearer (but got there via internet search), nor KYLIE, but the rest of the GK was in my locker. MAD about the boy made me smile, even though I didn’t know about the secondary reference to Ella, which makes the clue very clever indeed.
Welcome to Ix and thank you to Eileen.
Welcome, Ix, and congratulations on becoming the 4th setter to make their Daily Cryptic debut this year, the 8th since July 2025, the 96th named Daily Cryptic setter all-time and the 123rd over all formats!
Welcome to a new setter; a pleasant solve with DuncT @37 explaining the origin of Ix. I liked ASDIC for the regular use of every third letter, which I haven’t seen for a while, the DREDGE UP homophone, and the FIASCO of the racing teams.
Thanks Ix and Eileen.
A very long time ago I read ‘The Cruel Sea’ where the crew use Asdic to track German u-boats. Why that detail stuck in my head, I have no idea, given that I remember almost nothing else from the book, but I’ll take whatever comes if it helps.
Thank you Ace@40. I can see what you mean and it makes sense. I’ll let it mull for a while, but I think that has straightened it out for me.
Ix @30 – apologies for the delay: had to go out for a short while. Thanks for dropping in – setters are always very welcome – and confirming the parsing of 17ac. (Amma @36 – I nearly added in the blog “I don’t think ‘regularly’ necessarily implies taking alternate letters”.)
Thanks to Ace for your help in explaining EDGE – and to the indefatigable Mitz @42 for the prompt updating of your statistics!
Now, would someone like to explain comments 37 and 38, please? 😉
Thanks Ix for popping in @30, any explanations for the NINAS please??
@Eileen
Thank you – I’ll take indefatigable any day!
Regarding #37 and #38, all is explained (!) here.
I felt this was rather mild despite a number of things outside my GK – they were all guessable from the clueing, which was straightforward. My favourites were RICHELIEU, SQUEALS and VALE (LOI). I initially had PARODIED instead of EMBODIED (with no idea about the space boy), which held up RUMBA. Thanks Ix (&welcome) and Eileen!
PS Four out of five this week (granted, a relatively mild one), with only one word short yesterday – not too bad
Eileen@46
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Collapsing_Hrung_Disaster
Many thanks, Mitz @48 and Red Tin Dave @50 – I really don’t know how I never read that book!
Welcoming the new setter, of course, but the pseudonym brought back memories of a setter (also Ix) of years past, sadly no longer with us. He set “advanced” puzzles eg Listener, and in the Crossword Club (started by Brian Head) and maybe elsewhere. Was quite an influence on a number of setters, I think.