Times Cryptic 29234

104 comments on “Times Cryptic 29234”

1. 23:14 but
   my hair-trigger keyboard doubled the E of NUMBERS to give me two errors. I biffed SKYE TERRIER & ARTIST, parsed post-submission. (The dog took a while, as I DNK ‘skier’.) I couldn’t figure out GALLIPOLI; forgot about GAOL and never would have come up with ‘pill’ for ‘ball’. My heart sank when I saw ‘Nordic city’ twice, but in fact I knew both of them. MINT was my LOI, and I had to do an alphabet trawl to get it.

2. I’m pretty sure that down here in the antipodes we call it a SLAGGING MATCH, but I don’t recall having ever seen it written down, so maybe I’ve been mishearing it these last four decades. Anyway that was my error. 13:34 fwiw

   1. Well, much to my surprise “slagging match” is listed in the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary based on an appearance in Portadown (County Armagh) Times in 1956. Of course it could have been a misprint in the newspaper. We had an example of that recently about the apparent misspelling of a word in a famous poem (I forget which at this moment). OED supported the spelling but the only citation quoted was the same poem.

      1. That was “Quinquireme,” from Masefield’s “Cargoes.” Almost(?) a nonce word.

   2. Me too – SLAGGING MATCH

   3. and me – SLAGGING MATCH

      1. FWIW, despite the entry in OED I don’t think the case for SLAGGING MATCH as an alternative answer is viable.

         1. I agree, Jack. In my memory it’s always been ‘SLANGING’.

            1. Slagging match definitely deserves a place in the eggcorn database (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/) – surprised it’s not there already. I don’t think I’ve ever come across “slang” being used as a verb, but “slag” (off) is pretty ubiquitous, so seems the more likely candidate to the uninformed when first hearing the expression.

               1. ‘Slang’ is in OED as a verb meaning ‘to attack, rebuke, or criticize (a person) with abusive or vulgar language’. Surprisingly (to me anyway) it’s not labelled as archaic and the most recent citation is from 2008.

                  1. Surely the clue “commonly speaking” refers to slang as idiomatic language as well as abusive language. That double meaning doesn’t apply to slagging?

                     1. +1 for Gerry. That never occurred to me. And even though I’m Australian where we all slag each other off, I’ve never heard of a slagging match, only a slanging match, so got it right with a modicum of luck.

                        1. I’m with him

                     2. Thats how I read it too. Surprised by the controversy.

                     3. The term SLANGING MATCH doesn’t imply the use of slang in this sense (different meaning of the word) so if this is what’s intended the clue is missing a complete definition. Perhaps the question mark is supposed to paper over this crack but it’s quite a big one IMO.
                        Edit: actually I guess ‘battle royal, speaking’ is a perfectly good definition and ‘commonly’ is then just a cryptic hint towards the use of slang. As you were!

                        1. Seems a lot of lexical gymnastics going on here to justify what is an absolutely atrocious clue.

                           1. Out of interest, when was the last time you mentioned a clue you liked? Or are you one of those commenters who just complains?

                           2. I thought it was a reasonable clue not requiring much “lexical gymnastics”. There are much worse clues most weeks.

                              1. Agreed. A degree of lexical suppleness is required to appreciate a clue like this, and in my case my own lexical rigidity got in the way.

                  2. Is the 2008 citation a back formation from slanging? I hear slanging often, usually in this phrase, but slang in that context and as a verb, not.

                     1. From the OED entry it’s hard to work out the exact relationship. Often in language we just don’t know, of course.

               2. Thanks for link to Eggcorn Database- very interesting!

               3. ‘Slagging [off]’ means a slandering or a calumny. Not the same thing at all as ‘slanging’

                  1. My BRB has –
                     Slang: to scold, vituperate.
                     Slag: to criticize, mock, deride (especially with “off”).
                     Slanging match: a bitter verbal quarrel, usually involving an exchange of insults.

                     Close enough for me.

               4. Thanks for the link – nice one

3. It took me nearly 30 minutes to get in my first answer ATE UP then AT A PRICE and TYPE. I quickly got going after that but finishing required the use of aids. I thought for example that LEMON SOLE was a dish with sole cooked with lemon flavour. As a fellow antipodean I have never heard of SLAGGING MATCH but SLANGING MATCH is well known to me. I took a while to put in DADAISM since I couldn’t relate it to avant-garde. LOI MINT.
   Thanks Jack.

4. I finished correctly, but parsed nearly nothing. The biff list: lemon sole, ease, inducement, artist, discreet, Circus Maximus, Skye Terrier, Gallipoli, cat litter, excise tax. I also biffed estate tax, which turned out to be wrong.

   Time: 23:35

5. I did half of this before and half after dinner, and the nourishment helped. I forgot to parse a few. LEMON SOLE sounds delicious (I sometimes have grilled salmon in lemon mint couscous from the finest local deli), but I know it’s only a yellow fish.

   1. They’re not yellow but a muddy olive greeny colour.

      1. Yeeuugh

         1. “Confusingly the Lemon Sole is neither a Sole, nor does it taste of lemons (it’s in the family of Flounders) but it is an incredibly delicious fish with delicate soft small white flakes and a lovely sweetness.” From the excellent Rockfish website. It is true, they are delicious

            1. Nothing on a proper sole though!

               1. So this, and maybe the lemon variety, may eventually be added to the very short list of fish I like to eat. If I ever come across then on a menu (or prepackaged for reheating—I use steam—at the nabe’s finest deli). Merci bien !

6. A steady solve today with no real hold-ups.
   Failed to parse Gallipoli, though the answer was obvious enough, and a mer at launch = reverse, which I don’t remember seeing before. If you launch a rocket, the front stays at the front, you don’t reverse it …
   No great fan of sole, either Dover or lemon. Lacks substance, imo.

   1. I mentioned in my comment that ‘launching’ is only going to work in a Down clue. Chambers Crossword Dictionary has a sub-list of these which doesn’t include ‘launch’ but contains a number of other words that would seem to work along the same lines: arise, ascend, climb, elevate, raise, upward, uplift.

   2. Any Scotsman will tell you that a properly launched caber should first hit the ground precisely upside down. Though of course, he might be the only one who gives a toss.

      1. 😂😂😂

   3. I’m with you Jerry regarding ‘launching’.

7. Pretty quick for me at about 20′, the smaller words giving me most trouble. Looked at AXLE for a while, sure that the definition was “feller”. HIE was entered only having eliminated all others, and at least knowing “high” as “off”. Didn’t know pill=ball but finding the G starter stopped me trying to make an anagram from Bastille… Thanks Jack and setter

8. Good effort but missed a few at the top, such as LEMON SOLE, which I had ending in ONE as instructed. Can’t believe I missed HUDSON. And also the recurrent NUMBERS.

   NHO SKYE TERRIER, and although I had Terrier, would never have thought of Skier.

   Always suspected that five banks of oars on a Quinquireme wouldn’t work well.

   COD GRACIOUS ME

   1. According to Wiktionary:
      “(history) An ancient Carthaginian or Greek galley having three banks of oars, rowed by five oarsmen: two to an oar in each of the upper rows, and one to the lower oar.”
      So no need for the 5 banks of oars. I don’t think it would be seen at Nineveh though, too far inland.

      1. If you only have 5 oarsmen you’re going to go round in circles. You need 10 to balance things out, 5 on each side. A diecireme? Is it a Latin word? Don’t know Greek, but quinque sounds Latin.

         1. aha!
            there are say x oars on each bank, and two sides, and three banks. so there are 6x oars and 10x rowers. clear? I thought not. andyf
            quinque is Latin AFAIK.

   2. Did you never watch the Magic Roundabout as a kid ?

9. I thought is was slaGging match rather than slanging match, so ended with one error. Cat Litter was simple but enjoyable.

10. I had the same response as the blogger – initial bafflement quite rapidly dispelled. The southern half was completed first, and then I worked back towards the NW corner, finishing with SKYE TERRIER, SLANGING MATCH and LOI TYPE which should have been obvious but wasn’t. Just over 21 minutes.
    Thanks both.

11. I thought this was harder than it looked. 58 minutes, despite seeing SKYE TERRIER straightaway. Maybe it was hearing in my head the sadness of ‘The Band played Waltzing Matilda’ that slowed me down. I’d call it a SLANGING MATCH. To slag someone off would be to criticise them in forceful terms. A toughie. Thank you Jack and setter.

    1. Have you heard Eric’s follow up song for the 75th anniversary of Gallipoli? It’s called the Gift of Years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PHb05Cl83M

       1. Just listened to it John. Still poignant.

12. 17:53* (3 x typos)

    The least said the better.

    SERBU was a Nordic city until it wasn’t, HIE was a stab in the dark, and GRACIOUS was PRECIOUS for longer than it should have been.

    Not my finest effort but thanks to both.

13. 55 mins and a bit of a struggle. Last two in, EASE & AXLE only arrived at after the great ORSON WELLES appeared.

    A number unparsed so thanks as ever to our blogger for the hard work.

    I liked the ARTIST/MUNCH link up and CIRCUS MAXIMUS.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

14. 35m 06s
    Thank you, Jack, particularly for SKYE TERRIER and GALLIPOLI. In the latter case, despite your comments, I’m with Jerry W in not liking ‘launching’ meaning reversal. Harrumph!

    1. Perhaps I created a problem here by sticking to my usual terminology ‘reversed’ which I always use to indicate one of the standard wordplay devices, along with ‘contain’ in their various forms. The clue doesn’t say ‘reversing’ but ‘launching’ which in my book simply means sending upwards. If you write PILL normally as a Down answer you put:
       P
       I
       L
       L
       but sending that upwards (launching it) it becomes:
       L
       L
       I
       P
       It seems perfectly logical to me and within the normal bounds of cryptic terminology, but the only people commenting on it so far haven’t liked it so perhaps it’s me.

       1. I don’t have a problem with it, personally. I would object to ‘launching’ for ‘reversing’, but that’s not what it means in this context.

       2. Fine with me.

15. Just under 20 minutes.

    – Nearly biffed INCITEMENT for 18a before realising that it had to be INDUCEMENT
    – Didn’t parse ARTIST – I got MUNCH beforehand, so that and the checkers left no real alternative
    – Biffed CIRCUS MAXIMUS
    – Had no idea how GALLIPOLI worked because I forgot ball=pill
    – Didn’t parse EXCISE TAX because I didn’t see what ‘useless’ was telling us to do

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI Ate up
    LOI Artist
    COD Trondheim

16. 14.49. My impression was that this was a new setter, with quirks and cleverness that took some getting used to, including some delightfully, infuriatingly complex clues like SKYE TERRIER and GALLIPOLI. And possibly the first time a decent knowledge of Norway (and its citizens) has been required. On balance, I think I enjoyed it, though I’m glad I’ve only heard the correct version of the CD at 1ac.
    Well blogged, Jack!

17. In contrast to the comments I thought this was going to be hard and it so proved to be. Slowest solve for months (ignoring those few fiendish Friday ones) but I’m still at the ‘happy to complete’ stage of my cryptic journey.

    SLANGING MATCH, GALLIPOLI, SKYE TERRIER and GRACIOUS ME accounting for most the time.

    I thought I had encountered every cricket term by now but skier is a new one for me. I had TERRIER in for an age but just couldn’t get that first word.

    LOI HIE where I was going to guess a vowel when the penny suddenly dropped.

    COD CAT LITTER

    Cheers blogger, it got a good read from me today.

    Is there a Nordic event falling today accounting for the mini theme?

    1. Norwegian National Day was on Saturday…

18. 34 mins with LOI HIE rather than HYE and fingers crossed. NHO. Similarly LAC.
    A recent trip to Norway and the accompanying atlas study helped which is lucky because otherwise I found this tricky and off-wavelength.
    Dogs are another black hole in my GK but I have heard of Terriers. Didn’t parse it though.
    Thanks to Jackkt and setter.

19. I too thought this was going to be hard, getting only one across answer on the first pass. Didn’t get TURKU (vaguely heard of) until MUNCH led to ARTIST.

    HIE required a short alphabet trawl, remembering Steeleye Span singing “…this rustic was a thresher as on his way he hied…” in One Misty Moisty Morning (it’s much older than that, a version appearing in Mother Goose).

    18’43”, thanks jack and setter.

    1. That’s where I got HIE from too 🙂

20. On a roll today, 19.26. Special shout-out to Jack for doing the business with SKYE TERRIER, INDUCEMENT and DISCREET (which was a whole lot less complicated than I thought). I suppose it doesn’t matter that the name of the bloke who painted The Scream does not sound at all like ‘munch’ but it still seems a bit of a strange fit to me.

    From Tangled Up In Blue:
    She lit a burner on the stove, and offered me a pipe
    I thought you’d never say hello she said, you look like the silent TYPE
    Then she opened up a book of poems and handed it to me
    Written by an Italian poet from the thirteenth century
    And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal
    Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you
    Tangled up in blue

21. 20 mins, but I felt very on the wavelength after getting SKYE TERRIER early.

    COD to TRONDHEIM maybe. I vaguely remember the -HEIM suffix as being a Nordic thing from watching Thor movies 🙂

22. I made this harder than it needed to be, by biffing GOODNESS ME and having to untangle the mess. Also held up by INDUCEMENT by trying to work around MASS for service. Finished correctly in about 35 minutes, with GALLIPOLI and CIRCUS MAX biffed not parsed. I’ve been to TURKU to see the Sibelius museum, and knew about Trondheim from Greig, so no problems with Nordic geography.
    Enjoyable challenge, thanks jackkt for the blog.

    1. I knew about Trondheim from Monty Python

23. 55:04
    Pretty chewy.
    Thanks, jack.

24. SLAGGING MATCH here. Otherwise 15’41”

25. Slowed down by five-letter Nordic city ending in U – obviously, TARTU (which has a famous university), if you stretch Nordic to include Estonia. Although I couldn’t quite see what the tart was doing, and eventually had to think again.

26. 8:28. No major problems.
    Like PK I put in GOODNESS ME initially, but I wasn’t really convinced so took it out as soon as CAT LITTER occurred to me.
    MER at ‘commonly speaking’ for SLANGING MATCH, which is something I can imagine very posh people doing. However the OED definition of ‘slang’ (see my comment above) specifies ‘vulgar language’ so fair enough.
    I haven’t been to TRONDHEIM or TURKU but I have been to Stavanger and Tampere.

27. Still unclear why ‘rowdy group’ should/can bring to mind CIRCUS, though the answer was a write-in. Beaten at the very last by the NHO HIE. Gave up at 45 mins unwilling to guess it.

    1. Does this from POD help?

       circus – informal – a public scene of frenetic, noisy, or confused activity:
       a media circus

       1. Thank you.

          I’ve always taken ‘circus’, used figuratively, to mean a performative con – an assembly of people/actions intended purely to convey a sense of something being done, at odds somehow with reality. Never encountered it in this usage. But everybody else seems to have understood it thus, so my impoverished life has somehow side-stepped it!

          1. I’m definitely with you on this. ‘Performative’ is exactly the word I’d use for a circus, and the members of the circus all play their required roles accordingly. Rowdy doesn’t come into it.
             Not sure ‘media circus’ as ‘frenetic’ helps in any way either, since that is a bunch of journalists essentially writing from their own angles to garner a reaction, and for their own ends-the very definition of performative.
             ‘Media scrum’ maybe to describe the paparazzi, but that’s a different thing.

28. 14:21 mostly speedy but held up at the top with SLANGING MATCH last in. CDs canbe like that if you don’t see them early.

29. Thanks jackkt and setter.
    I found it hard to start but it became easier. I was a bit unsure of a couple:
    16a (l)Ease, OK but not an obvious fit IMO. 17a MinT, again an OK answer but leaving just a hint that it might not be the best answer. 7d Hie similar.
    FOI 2d Ate up.
    1d Skye T biffed, thanks jackkt.
    3d Gallipoli biffed. Thanks again.
    6d Trondheim came swiftly, probably because I think that is where the RAF hit the German battleship Tirpitz.
    15d Excise Tax. Not familiar with this. Duty yes, tax no.
    21d Turku, HHO probably but it didn’t spring to mind. COD.
    I don’t usually like Xrefs, but the artist Munch 20a 5d worked well, even though he sounds more like a monk.

30. 1a and 1d took me far too long to work out, and I was trying to fit lob in, rather than sky. LOI ARTIST, after TURKU finally came to me, having discarded SERBU. I failed to parse 3d – couldn’t make anything of it, for goodness sake! EASE was also bifd. Can’t say I’ve ever heard the term LITURGIST, so it was fortunate it was an anagram. Quite a struggle, overall.

31. 42 minutes which I think might have been marginally better if I hadn’t had CAT LITTEL. This is a recurring problem with my tablet: the keyboard has L on the right and it’s very easy to let the little finger of the right hand touch it, so replacing the last letter of the answer that has just been done. It happens when I’m doing the other puzzles: frequently I get the instructions. Hadn’t heard of CIRCUS MAXIMUS, but might have solved it from wordplay. C_L_U_ MAXIMUS was a bit of a problem.

32. 25.57

    Another GOODNESS ME but slow to realise the error, to the point of considering DOG LITTER. Well our cat does behave like a canine on occasions. D’oh and thrice d’oh.

    Thanks Setter/Jackkt

33. Started with ATE UP and NUMBERS. Took a while before SLANGING MATCH came to mind. Fortunately hadn’t come across the other version. Biffed GALLIPOLI from checkers and definition. Many years ago I caught 3 LEMON SOLE off the rocks at Sango Sands on the north coast of Scotland and our landlady cooked them for our tea. Tasty! Another with GOODNESS ME until Kitty Litter put me right. Knew TRONDHEIM from the works of Greig, but LOI, TURKU was new to me. Liked CIRCUS MAXIMUS. 19:34. Thanks setter and Jack.

34. Right off the wavelength, found that really hard. Went away to eat, came back, and the answers… didn’t pour in, had to grind it out. A few unparsed: indiscreet, skye terrier, slanging match. Joined others in pencilling in goodness me and, dubiously, estate tax. Surprised Circus Maximus is bigger than the Colosseum, but Wikipedia (which lies almost as much as ChatGPT) confirms it. Thought Hudson needed a question mark.
    Liked quite a lot of it.
    Fun Fact: as far as I can tell, this is the first time in at least 30 years that this grid pattern has appeared.

    1. How can you possibly tell?

       1. You have to be anal.
          I started doing the crossword in about 2007, and saved them all (do you want 20-plus years of crosswords?) – in a format that included grid shape. Peter Biddlecombe when he was a blogger not editor listed all the “current” grids back around that time, in a blog, and they’re still the current grids. There’s been one or two exceptions in the past 18 years, this is maybe the third. One I remember vividly that Verlaine blogged, a themed crossword for somebody’s wedding with an exceptionally ugly gird.
          The Times website goes back to about 2001, so over the years I’ve worked backwards solving all the puzzles back to then. And also discovered newspaper archives online, so simultaneously working backwards from 2001… to about 1996 so far. Saving them all, so I can easily identify a unique grid pattern.

          1. Somewhere I’ve got a file with all the grids in them. I understood that the templates were needed for the typesetting and printing process before computers got smart enough to print anything a setter could devise, and they just never got superceded. It would be interesting to know if the change in technology came during the famouse Murdoch / printers slanging match. Or, in that case, slagging match.

             1. I suspect it’s also for quality reasons. It’s very easy to make up a poor grid, harder to make a good one. If setters were given carte blanche there might be many more rejections. The Times grids are mostly good – there’s only about 2 that I’d class as poor: one I think of as the F grid, a big F of black squares in the center; and one I think of as the E grid, a big E top right and bottom left with 2 fully-checked 4-letter words in the middle row.

          2. 🤯

35. 25:24, LOI MINT which took an alphabet trawl till I got to M. NHO Turku, I also had Serbu pencilled in for a while until I cottoned on to ARTIST. I did find that NW corner harder.
    Thanks setter and blogger

36. Nice puzzle, but FFS (fat finger syndrome) gave me DADASIM and overwrote my perfectly good LITURGIST. Technical DNF, but I include my time below and hope that the SNITCH scrapes it up. Several biffs, including GALLIPOLI and CIRCUS MAXIMUS, and I never really “got” SLANGING MATCH either. LOI HUDSON, which was much much easier than I thought!

    18:07

37. 26 mins. My memories of TRONDHEIM are being a teenage hippy hitch hiker getting short lifts all the way down from Tromso and being picked up by a man who spoke no English but said he was going 10 miles. What I didn’t know was that 1 mile in Norway is 20 km so by the time I got to Trondheim I was too late to go to the youth hostel and finished being put up by the local plod in a cell, and being locked in! They did provide a cup of tea in the morning however…

38. Didn’t get TURKU, but have heard of it (is Finnish related to the Turkish language?), and I had CIRCLE MAXIMUS. Otherwise correct.
    Thanks for explaining the parsing of SKYE TERRIER and EXCISE TAX, which I didnt work out.
    Nice puzzle

    1. AFAIK Finnish is derived from Mongolian as are Hungarian and basque.

       1. If you go back far enough Finnish and Hungarian could have a relationship with Turkic and maybe Mongolian languages, but Basque doesn’t seem to have any connection with any other languages.

39. 34:12. I found that very tricky to parse so several entries were biffs (luckily correct ones). LOI was the combo of EXCISE TAX and DISCREET. similar vibes to yesterday’s. thanks both!

40. The Bard rescued me for HIE . Never forgot the word since first encountering it in Hamlet Act 1 Scene 1 “… Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine…”.

41. At 1A I could not remember if it was a SLAGGING MATCH or a SLANGING MATCH, and obviously the clue did not help. But I guess right. Also guessed right at the NHO TURKU. But all green.

42. 16.31 with LOI mint. Liked Circus Maximus. Got a five hour wait till my flight home commences . This has helped me stay sane.

43. Enjoyable and quite straightforward – esp after immediately getting SLANGING MATCH – but DNF at 20′ due to NHO TURKU. My bad for not knowing it.
    COD EXCISE TAX which took a while to parse.
    Thanks setter and Jack.

44. 44.41 The bottom half was OK but I struggled with LOI SLANGING MATCH and most of the downs leading from it. SKYE TERRIER wasn’t helped by trying to fit yorker in there somewhere. Which I now find is a low ball. Got there eventually. Thanks Jack.

45. No time to report as I was constantly interrupted when solving, but I would estimate about 45 minutes as I found it was a puzzle that would probably take me out to my target time.
    No problems with CIRCUS MAXIMUS having stood on the site of it beneath the Palatine Hill, and marvelled at the size of it. Much bigger than I had imagined it to be after watching the film Ben Hur many years before, featuring the famous chariot race.

46. Some of these were tricky, but since I couldn’t see my way to even some of the easier ones (Number, for example), it’s possible my brain just wasn’t in gear this morning.
    For the record, no problem with launching; familiar with slanging matches and slagging off, which to me are different animals; Turku, really?

47. Well, I went with “Slagging Match” which, commonly speaking, is a battle royal.
    But, yes, I’ve read what everyone above has written.
    I agree with Zabadak’s comment that this puzzle has an unusual feel to it.

48. Thanks, Jackkt! First class job at explaining the answers. I finished in 28 minutes with a few biffs, Gallipoli and Sky Terrier, and finally Excise tax, which seemed tautological to me, but clearly is ok.

49. 26D: The Circus Maximus was not an arena, but a racing course.

50. Too distracted to do well: had the top half in quickly ( no problem with SKYE TERRIER as I didn’t bother parsing it!). At 10a I couldn’t get AT A PINCH out of my head, so failed there…had MUNCH long before I came across 20a, but still didn’t get it ( even though I knew the definition was “drawer, say?” Ho hum. And I wouldn’t have gotten CIRCUS MAXIMUS nor TURKU in a month of Sunday crosswords, so.

Comments are closed.