Times 29056 – Tricky Thursday is finding the thing!

89 comments on “Times 29056 – Tricky Thursday is finding the thing!”

1. I imagine it will be several hours before anything is done to deal with the 404 message; I doubt there’s any staff there now.
   I went to the Times site and did this one. Biffed all over the place: DELILAH, BACCALAUREATE, ISAAC, UP-AND-UNDER (DNK), BRISKET, TRIMMINGS (DNK MING), RETESTS. Took a long time to realize who William and Harry were; I don’t follow the royals. I was stumped on 1ac; positive the first word was D_A, and finally Googled DUA.

2. I managed to get the puzzle readily enough, but solving it was another matter. I had never heard of Dua Lipa, and I spelled Gandhi incorrectly, among other things. I also imagined there was a famous woman I didn’t know named Delilah Shearer! When I finally got to my LOI, I wasn’t sure if it was demarara or demerara, but seeing lower case solved that dilemma.

   Time: 64:10

3. Had never heard of the garryowen (of course), but that wasn’t my last one, which was the rum. Right before that came DELILAH. I enjoyed this, and went thru it leisurely while watching the CNN town hall with our only sane presidential candidate.

   1. You’ve heard of Garryowen; he’s The Citizen’s dog in Ulysses.

      1. Ha. Sure, knew the dog. But not the cricket!

         1. Rugby.

            1. Damn, that’s not an animal!
               But I guess there’s no kicking in cricket…

               1. True, You can get out kicking the ball.

4. 90 minutes with two resorts to aids as the hour passed because I was stuck and getting a bit fed up by then. The lower half was completed within 30 minutes so all the rest of my time was spent on the upper half.

   My first reveal was DUA LIPA. I never heard of her and I resent that we are now expected to identify a living pop singer solely on the basis of a venue she has appeared at, once in 2017 and once this very year only a couple of months ago. Ridiculous!

   The other look-up was DELILAH where the only Shearers I could think of were a footballer, a Scottish ballet dancer and an American actress. Of the three the most likely connection given the way The Times puzzle seems to be heading this days was the footballer, and that was enough for me give up on the clue. I had considered it being something to do with sheep-shearing but that didn’t get me anywhere. Even having seen the answer I was nowhere near to unravelling the wordplay.

   The long answer at 11ac came to me once I had all its checkers but it was a very long haul to reach that point.

   I had no idea about ‘Garryowen’ but recognised UP-AND-UNDER when I realised it might fit. It’s an expression associated with the amusing Rugby League commentator, Eddie Waring. I think ‘taking an early bath’ was one of his for when a player was forced to retire early from a game. I almost wish I’d chosen that for myself today over this puzzle.

   1. Disagree on Dua Lipa. I thought the Glastonbury reference generously let us know this was a pop act ad opposed say to “singer” which could lead us down multiple garden paths.

      1. Fair enough, but in the tradition of cryptic crosswords ‘Glastonbury star’ could have been a misdirection and need not have had anything to do with the pop festival or ‘star’ in the sense of a well-known performer. Glastonbury is historically a centre of myths and legends and has many associations with mysticism and cults. For all I knew there might be a star in the heavens that has a particular connection to the place. And as a matter of fact, having revealed the answer DUA LIPA and before I googled it my mind was still working along astrological lines.

      2. How do those alternative descriptions make any difference? Both types have appeared at Glastonbury.
         Although diehard fans would say that the festival really only puts on the ‘pop acts’ on the Sunday afternoon as an antidote to all the preceding obligatory ‘cool’.

   2. The “no living person” rule may have been for a reason we are now beginning to appreciate, as your comments suggest.

5. Excellent crossword. Great to see DUA LIPA . I cannot decided on my COD between the wonderful surfaces for DELILAH and UP-AND-UNDER. Thanks setter and George.

6. 15:21

   I had some trouble in the NE corner thanks to misspelling GANDHI, but eventually corrected myself.

   I liked DUA LIPA (heard of her without ever knowingly hearing her music), and was perfectly happy to believe she’s appeared at Glastonbury, which is really all that’s needed.

   Thanks both.

   1. An interesting leap of logic. Dua Lipa having appeared just the twice and seven years apart can in no way be defined as a ‘Glastonbury star’.
      In fact very few acts, if any, can be.

7. Hmm, found this tricky. At the time of writing we still have an error 404 on the club page so I printed it from the puzzles page of the newspaper.
   In the end it was a bottom-up solve and several near the top I found hard. Had vaguely heard of Ms Lipa, though wouldn’t recognise her or her voice. I put the H in the wrong place in Gandhi and that didn’t help .. distal rang vague bells only but looked right. A toughie, I thought.

8. Whether ’tis nobbler in the mind to suffer
   The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune …

   30 (ish) mins pre-brekker. Yes, very tricky in parts. If you don’t know Dua Lipa, then I thought even Dual IPA might be a bit tricky. And it is a while since I have heard someone use Garryowen.
   Very nice. The one that was new to me (I think) is Alma as a dancing-girl. Not my specialist subject.
   Ta setter and G

   1. I forgot to query ALMA as dancing girl because the clue was easy to solve from definition alone . Even Google and my AI assistant don’t connect the two. I assume some other modern thing known to everyone except me.

      1. ‘Almeh’ or ‘Alma’ is a term applied in Egyptian Arabic to female entertainers or dancing girls, also sometimes as professional mourners.

         1. Thank you. So more obscurity. Chambers is alone amongst the usual sources to list it as a first spelling. Collins has it as one of three alternatives to ‘almah’ and in the Oxfords one has to go to the two-volume SOED to find it or the alternatives listed at all.

            1. I knew it from Rimbaud’s poem, “Is She an Almah?” or “Est-elle almée ?”

               1. I knew it from the Hebrew in Isaiah 7.

                  1. Now you’re showing off. But “virgin” is not “dancing girl”, is it?

                     1. Right, and “virgin” is a mistranslation that has led to a world of nonsense.

            2. I DNK but it didn’t matter. Added lower case to Cheating Machine. Wiktionary:
               alma (plural almas or alma)
               An Egyptian singer or dancing-girl employed for entertainment or as a professional mourner.

   2. As Jack said, Eddie Waring (and Mike Yarwood) tended to use the ‘up and under’ term, whereas I always heard ‘GarryOwen’ coming from Bill McLaren or Nigel Starmer-Smith’s RU commentary.

9. Had to submit on the puzzles page, as I got (and keep getting) the message G refers to.

   Enjoyed this, and came in a little under par at 25:28.

   G, you need to pop the L (left) in 11 across.

10. 46:27 on the non-Club site. I stubbornly persisted in thinking that the second letter of the singer’s surname was a U, despite seeing the DUAL IPA wordplay, so this held me up for ISAAC, my LOI. I didn’t know MINGS for ‘smells terrible’ and had only vaguely heard of ‘Garryowen’ for UP-AND-UNDER. I went through the same ‘Shearer’ list as Jack above but was rescued by crossers which also helped with the vowel placement in DEMERARA.

    Crosswords Club not even accessible now; I’ll take this as a sign they’re fixing up the problem with the 15×15.

11. 71 minutes with LOI TRIMMINGS. The word MING wasn’t in my vocabulary until relatively recently and I still have trouble with the hard g. But I did get DUA LIPA. The UP-AND- UNDER was a write in. COD to ISAAC. Good crossword, a bit too good in places. Thank you George and setter.

    1. I reckon you need the hard g or you could get some funny looks.

       1. I remember Kenny Everett inventing a character called “Mary Hinge,” which the BBC suits failed to spot..

    2. Allegedly derives from the lexicon of Northumbrian fishwives at Craster. ‘Minging’ to mean offensively smelly. Which I’m sure they had lots of cause to use.

12. About 40 minutes.

    – Still not sure how hailed=came for DELILAH
    – Got the ‘barb’ part of 9a immediately but then wasted time thinking of other endings before I saw it had to be BARBAROUS
    – Biffed BACCALAUREATE
    – Caused myself problems by putting ‘Ghandi’ for 15a before LOWER CASE set me straight
    – Didn’t parse UNITED KINGDOM
    – Hadn’t heard of Garryowen but UP-AND-UNDER was clear from the enumeration
    – Didn’t know Alma as a dancing girl for ALMANAC

    Thanks glh and setter.

    FOI Debt
    LOI Pathetic
    COD Lower case

    1. I imagine hailed = came as in the traditional first sentence of dull autobiographies, “I believe the family hail from Gloucestershire”.

       1. I really should have thought of that. Thanks!

       2. But the ‘from’ bit is needed to make it make sense.

13. 12.10
    I seem to remember Mick Hodgkin writing about clues referencing living persons in the newspaper earlier this year, with DUA LIPA given as an example. Those for COD DELILAH and DUKES (and HYSTERICAL, come to that) might also go under that heading.
    Also quite a few biffs here, but no DNKs for a change.
    LOI PATHETIC

14. 81m 25s
    Same problems as others; I had to access this through the puzzles section of the paper and not the CC.
    Like Jack I had to use aids for a few clues, specifically for DEBT, ISAAC and DELILAH. I thought there must be some funny Aussie/Kiwi word for a shearer that was being looked for.

15. I’m glad this wasn’t mine: quite apart from the frustrating exercise of actually finding the thing, I found it stiff, taking 26.52. Several not particularly parsed, and I thought ALMA was just a girl and the dancing was irrelevant. Clever cluing, but in a rather annoying sense. And while I know we now have livers, do we still have to have DUA LIPA?
    On top of that, TftT has forgotten who I am, again.

    1. On the subject of livers, I have been doing The Guardian puzzle every day since the first lockdown where they have no such restrictions , but I can honestly say that with the exception of themed puzzles on subjects beyond my ken I have suffered far less liver trouble there in all that time than at The Times over the past few months since the new rule came in.

16. I got the 404 on the club home page link, but could access it fine from the cryptic tab.

17. DNF, the rum unknown. I found this really difficult, and while some answers came from intense WP concentration I’m still not sure how I got a few of these beyond guessing. That being said there were many excellent clues, just too many that were too obscure and convoluted for me to enjoy. Alma the Egyptian Arabic dancing girl, the rugby jargon and someone defined by appearing at a festival did not thrill me. Probably took about an hour, but hard to say because two-thirds through I went to the movies. (Saw Lee, Kate is great and it was pretty good but not for the whole time.)

    From Tombstone Blues:
    The geometry of innocence flesh on the bone
    Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
    At DELILAH who’s sitting worthlessly alone
    But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter

18. I get this tech issue regularly. It normally sorts itself out after a few mins but not today. It is just one symptom of what is the worst website I know of. A triumph of style over function. In fact the puzzles are an oasis of relative simplicity. I disable much of the 3rd party resource and sometimes images.

    The only reason I can think of that the Times produces such an unusable website is to keep me taking the paper version. I do like being part of the leaderboard online but read the rest hardcopy.

    DNF incl DUA LIPA. No objection to her appearance here but thought the clueing was too vague and did not spot the wordplay.

19. Tricky. DNK ALMA was a dancing girl, and puzzled over the parsing for BARBAROUS, DELILAH and GANDHI – though at least I knew they were right. Knew what a Garryowen was – named I believe after the Limerick rugby club that apparently popularised the tactic. Was frankly just glad to finish this, in 45 mins.

20. Wow! That was hard. For me anyway. But I persevered and got over the line all correct. 46:45. Pleased to have solved the DUA LIPA puzzle. It feels like an historic moment for The Times having a young, living famous person as the answer to one of the clues. COD: DUA LIPA.

21. 13:54. My main problem with this puzzle was gaining access to it, which turned out to be device-dependent. Poor show.
    I for one am delighted to see DUA LIPA appear. She’s a lot more famous than Beerbohm bloody Tree, and although I had no idea that she had appeared there ‘Glastonbury star’ is just a perfectly fair indication that you’re looking for a pop star.
    My last in after quite a long pause was BACCALAUREATE, which is doubly embarrassing because 1) it’s very obvious and 2) I have one.

    1. 😅

22. 19:17. Nice to see DUA LIPA appear at 1A. I don’t know any of her music but she’s very famous which is good enough for me.

23. I’ve been added to the SNITCH! Many thanks to Starstruck for making this happen. Now I just need to improve my scores ….

    1. You’re very welcome 🙂

       1. 👍

24. PS in 2020 (puzzle 27792) I wrote ‘GARRYOWEN rang a vague bell: it’s come up before (last time in 2016 it seems)’. On that previous occasion it had defeated me, which is perhaps why it has stuck in my memory.

25. 23:30 – inventive stuff, but no particular holdups or standouts

26. 1a Dua Lipa, 2OI. Proud of self for knowing of a current pop singer. I even knew she is Albanian. DNK she has appeared at Glasto. Needed the D from FOI 1d Debt. Enjoyed the PDM of Dual IPA.
    5a Delilah; biffed, never saw Hailed. Doh!
    11a Baccalaureate not in Cheating Machine, added. glh, you missed out the L from left.
    19a Demerara semi-biffed, didn’t see esp grand=rare. Still don’t. Thanks glh.
    22a UK, not totally convinced that DOM=Benedictine. OK it’s on the bottle, and the monks put it on documents, but is that all? Incidentally the link between the drink and the monks is 100% marketing bullshit.
    26a Trimmings. DNK Mings=smells. Wiktionary marks it as Irish. Guessed it, wrongly, from minge, nuff said, after all this isn’t Private Eye.
    5d DNK or had forgot distal=farthest.
    12d DNK garryowen=up and under.
    16d MeAntiMe COD. Or is it a chestnut?

27. Just over the hour at 60.43 to finish this, or to be more accurate to nearly finish it. I had about eighty percent of it done in under twenty five minutes but slowed to picking them off methodically after that. AROMATIC enabled me to get my LOI which was BACCALAUREATE, but on checking the blog I find that my spelling with an H instead of the second C was wrong. I had worked out the card game in parsing, I’ve even played the flaming game, but I still managed to spell it incorrectly. So in the end a frustrating DNF.

28. I thought this was superb, and enjoyed the guest appearances of Dua Lipa, Alan Shearer and the warring Princes. All the clues seemed good to me, but I really liked DELILAH for its great definition, TRIMMINGS for its deployment of the rather unusual but funny MING, and LOWER CASE again for the definition.

    I’m sure we will increasingly encounter names from the Land of the Living, but as we become more used to that experience, I’d imagine the compilers will become more judicious at the same time, as the rule wears in.

    Thanks GLH and very up-to-date setter.

29. 38:26

    Tremendous puzzle I felt with many clever twists and turns – bottom half all done in twenty minutes, but a far chewier top half where I had only 6d, 7d, 8d, 10a and 15a for a long time. Picked out 1d followed by the excellent (in more ways than one – 14 top ten singles including 4 number ones) DUA LIPA, which helped to fill in 2d and 4d and then 13a.

    I had thought 9a would begin with BARB for a long time, but with my head stuck on BARBarian, it took a while to change my thinking and come up with BARBAROUS….. which left 5a, 11a, 3d and 5d. It took 3d to see 11a then a long think for DISTAL and a few moments later, the pdm for DELILAH though I failed to see the reversed HAILED.

    Thanks G and setter

30. 44 minutes with a while spent trying to think of an obscure African country U…. K….

31. Liberal use of the check button and lots biffed then parsed (or not). Glad to have my ‘Alma’ question answered above and also needed blog to see how UP-AND-UNDER and UNITED KINGDOM worked. Many thanks. Very enjoyable and lots of learning.

32. I got through most of the puzzle fast enough, but then took 10 minutes to work out dual ipa, someone of whom I’ve never heard, but I must admit I should have got the cryptic much faster. So 36:22 in the end

33. I am so glad I was not the only one spelling Gandhi wrong! Finished in 50 mins. I had heard of Dua Lipa as I have two teenage sons and a wife who loves her music. Personally I have no problem with The Times moving into covering the realms of popular culture. Seeing Chloe Hutton and Liam Hughes came second and third in the final and are both 27 – I wonder whether this is a way to attract a new crowd. I applaud it if so – though I fear for my stats!!!

34. As is my wont, I arrived late to the puzzle and the link to it had been fixed. I drew a complete blank in the top half, until GANDHI got me off the blocks. My next one in was DEMUR. I then worked my way around the SE before spreading SW after the UK put in an appearance. LAGGARD and HYSTERICAL got me moving upstairs and the arrival of LOWER CASE paid off and I got my WAGES. My impending vist to the dentist this afternoon seemed to help with DISTAL, DELILAH having turned up after LOWER CASE and helpfully provided the initial D. Back in the so far recalcitrant NW, ACROBAT entered the ring and BARBAROUS was assembled, then BACCALAUREATE provided more helpful letters. AROMATIC was next and the vaguely heard of DUAL IPA took centre stage after ISAAC emerged as the marked man. DEBT finished the proceedings and I breathed a sigh of relief as the green grid appeared. 31:32. Thanks setter and George.

35. 14’54”, late in the day. I’d put in DUA LIPA long before I parsed it, but like others, could tell you nothing about her or her music.

    Thanks george and setter.

36. 50:50 – I started in the SW corner znd worked anti-clockwise. 1d was my LOI. I found it quite tricky today but with no unknown answers, although one or two bits of wordplay I was unfamiliar with – Screw for wages, Alma for dancing girl. Can’t say I’m familiar with Dua Lipa’s body of work, but I have at least heard of her.
    Always happy to complete under the hour without recourse to aids, especially with a 120+ SNITCH rating.

37. About an hour.
    Judge looks quizzically over his half-moon reading glasses: “And who are the … Beatles?”
    Thanks, g.

38. Not in need of the herpes advice so I’ll move on and say I really enjoyed this. Hesitantly put in DUA LIPA, not because I didn’t know it, I just couldn’t believe it! Liked the Shearer clueing. A few not completely parsed but had to be such as BACCALAUREATE and I couldn’t get past “L” for Labour. Alma the dancing girl not in my ken, but easy definition. Played golf this morning in beautiful autumn sunshine hence missed the 404 trauma. Thanks George and setter.

39. Obviously going to have to start paying more heed to the music scene. I’d vaguely heard of her, but thought that a random reference to an appearance at Glastonbury was a bit unlikely as the basis of a clue. Isn’t there some other way of defining her? Are the Rolling Stones “Knebworth stars”? Are we supposed to know all the line-ups at Glastonbury that ever there were? That will end up including every living pop-star. Got there in the end. Time: 40’12”. Liked SHEARER.

    1. I agree. “Albanian singer” would have made it so much easier ..

       1. Fortunately the enumeration would distinguish her from Rita Ora, Ava Max, and Bebe Rexha, all of whom have Albanian connections (and have had UK number ones).

          1. Ha, I feel old already. No need to rub it in 🙂

    2. Based on what Mick Hodgkin said on Saturday, I think that the fact that you and I have no idea who may or may not have appeared at Glastonbury recently may be the point. For younger solvers this is no doubt common knowledge, and ‘Glastonbury star (3,4)’ leads to DUA LIPA as naturally for them as ‘1962 Oscar winner (7, 4)’ might lead to GREGORY PECK for an older solver. Those without that precise knowledge have to speculate a bit, and this tips the scales a little more in favour of youth.

       1. Fair points, which I hadn’t thought of but quite admire. My opinion, which is likely wrong and ill-conceived, is that Gregory Peck will still be known 20 or 50 years hence, but Dua Lipa will be long-forgotten within 5 or 10 years. For those who like to dip into decades-old puzzles such references will be complete head-scratchers in the very near future. This puzzle will not age well. It’s a future dud.

          1. You are right about that of course but I suspect that the demand for old puzzles is minuscule. These things are, generally, ephemeral.

40. If the Times crossword is henceforth going to include foreign pop singers (at 1ac of all places!), could they also insert a special sign in the clue? A hashtag perhaps.
    DNF after about 40 minutes.

    1. * born in London, 1995.

       1. You beat me to it. Congratulations on having the most famous British born singer in the world! Sorry her fame hasn’t fully infiltrated here 🙂

       2. If you are born in a stable, does that make you a foal or a filly?

41. Phew! All correct, but had to put it down and go for a long walk with the NE corner a mess.
    Once I realised I’d spelt GANDHI incorrectly, it started to fall into place. I didn’t understand DELILAH or BACCALAUREATE (and crossed my fingers for the double C, rather than CH).
    Thanks George and Setter.
    A nice Ximenean puzzle with a SNITCH of about a 100 will be perfect for tomorrow please!

42. Okay with this using my two wobblers is okay rule. I think Up and inder is Leaguespeak and Garryowen Union.

43. Really enjoyed this. Got most of it done in 30 minutes then spent a long time trying to complete barba—— and trying to work out what basil was an example of if not just a herb. Once they went in then the other missing clues pathetic and elevens fell out in 45 mins.

    On the Dua Lipa controversy I thought it was fair enough. The word play was generous and here headline appearance at Glastonbury this summer was a newsworthy / noteworthy event that was very well publicised so Glastonbury star as a definition gave us a much better chance than just singer or pop star or whatever.

    As someone who quails at classical references and composers I’m happy to see a reference to someone I actually listen to ( and I’m 66 so not helping the youth trend)
    Thx G and setter

44. 37.05. I thought several times that I would not finish this one but eventually got all the solutions, albeit without managing to parse them all.

45. I found this very tough, and never really felt I was on the wavelength. I gave up counting the minutes and was glad to have got to the end. I eventually landed on DUA LIPA but fear I am in for serious liver trouble if this trend becomes too popular and anything goes. On Benedictine the monks of that order of my acquaintance are all styled Dom someone (not DOM). I must add Egyptian Arabic to the list of languages I need to master before the next crossword.
    FOI – GANDHI
    LOI – AROMATIC
    COD – MEANTIME
    Thanks to george and other contributors.

46. No problem with DUA LIPA, it was my third one. Didn’t know ‘Alma’ was a dancing girl but happy to learn new things. Must’ve been on the wavelength, around 27 mins in all.

47. Far too tricky for me but a really enjoyable puzzle with some good clues, loved Dua Lipa in there!

48. Liked this. Didn’t parse everything but wasn’t unduly delayed at any point. About average time for me: 37 mins

    FOI: DUA LIPA
    LOI: DEMERARA

49. Haha, my brother makes no comment that DUA LIPA was FOI. I was about 10 minutes quicker with an erroneous BARBARIAN not helping

50. This puzzle required too much esoteric knowledge of pop stars (Dua Lipa), (Garryowen), the Old Testament (Isaac) : it was therefore pain in the neck! One or two of this week’s puzzles were similarly annoying, rather than offering the enjoyment which we solvers should expect. Time to protest me thinks!

Comments are closed.