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26a Courts have the queen meeting fifth of judges (5) ?EHME
answer must be Vehme (or possibly fehme) I can see where the last 3 letters come from but the "VE" ...is it just short for "have"?

I took it that 've' was just from 'have' - and I couldn't see a way to make Fehme work properly.

As i thought then... thanks malone for confirmation! And a Happy New Year!

Have solved all the clues. I think that 35A, 25A and 16A (in that order) combine to give the relevant activity and 11A is the relevant name, so the activity is clear (it takes place at a particular time and the puzzle's title is "Timely II"). Am baffled by the unclued lights around the perimeter ("three trios (...) each trio combining to suggest the same word"). The first trio is S??L??G, MA?E, ?N??E?, which has lots of possibilites. The second trio is S?I?E, ?TTE??A?T, ?ES. There are 38 (!) possibilities for S?I?E. The last two words could be ATTENDANT, YES, but this doesn't help much. The third trio starts with M?U?D: there are three possibilities, of which MOULD seems the most likely. The second word is ??P?O?E?, for which there are 68 (!!) possibilities and the last word is E?ER, and is therefore probably EVER.

Think the word is Hogmanay.
In the first trio, the first word (which I'm still trying to figure out) =Hog + ma?e (male) = man + third word =at
Second trio : swine=hog +attendant=man + yes=at
Third trio: m?u?d= hog + ??p?o?e?=man + ever=ay

Spelling error at end of the first and second trios - at should read ay

First: shilling=hog + male=man+ indeed=ay
Second as previously stated
Third: Mound=hog + employee =man + ever=ay

Not totally happy with employee

All ok with blue -ice's answers .... i just looked up hog, man and ay in Chambers and all the required words were there.

Blueice, man = employee is in Chambers, I think it's fine.