Times Cryptic 29210

80 comments on “Times Cryptic 29210”

1. Didn’t know SPUME but with checkers in place managed to see it. I thought this was another fun crossword and lots went in from the definitions. LINCTUS was slow to come as I thought of Lancs for the county first. Like GEE and thought the surface was excellent. PESETA was my LOI as I just couldn’t see the climber being ‘pea’ despite it coming up regularly here. Also thought Tom Sawyer was good with some tricky parsing. All good fun.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

   1. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
      Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
      And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
      And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
      John Masefield Sea Fever

      1. I have that fever too from time to time. Thanks.

      2. and the Spike Milligan version:
         I must go down to the sea again,
         To the lonely sea and the sky.
         I left my vest and socks there:
         I wonder if they’re dry?

2. 25:17
   I put in PEERLESS at 16d, which slowed me down some; getting the Y suggested TOM SAWYER and then PEROXIDE BLONDE. DNK SILVER FOX (not in ODE, in Collins US). DNK blag. I liked DIURNAL.

   1. SILVER FOX with this meaning is in the on-line Oxford Dictionary (POD) and the OED (the multi-volume thing) and in Collins online under American English (as you say). It doesn’t seem to have made it to print yet unless it’s in a newer Chambers than my 2011 edition.

      1. SILVER FOX is not in the Chambers App with this definition.

         1. Thanks.

      2. SILVER FOX was a nickname for Barbara Bush – wife of Pres. George HB Bush and I’ve seen it more recently applied to George Clooney.

         1. Not in SOED at all, and not in Chambers with that def. Collins Online has it as an exclusively US meaning. I found that rather surprising.

3. Marked 10ac as the (2,3) instead of 11ac and as a result took ages to finish the top. I finally corrected the matter for the top left and got that out but when I came to the top right I forgot to correct 10 across. I also thought 5ac should be PANACEA or NOSTRUM as universal remedy. I finally realised 5dn had to be LAG and fixed 10ac and finished as a shattered wreck.
   Thanks Jack

4. DNF, just one missed, PESETA. I thought it would be an unknown climbing plant, containing an H.

   Also had PEERLESS, and misread county as country, nit for the first time. Tried hard to make Laos work. Since I hadn’t really heard of LINCTUS, I was nervous about a possible “lanctus”. LAG was late in, as MUG looked good for violent robbery. NHO of this use of blagging, which surely now is only ever used for “talking one’s way into”. Excellent word with no simple synonym.

   Was tempted by SPRAY for SPUME. I thought “circling” was a “cycle” indicator, not a reversal. Hence thought RAYS might be birds as well as fish. (Thinking of “rail”, I guess)

5. Despite a lot of tricky parsing, and going down several of the dead-ends outlined by Merlin, I did this in 18.17 and somewhat surprised myself. The NE was toughest for me and my LOsI were LINCTUS and NATTY. Thanks Jack, blog much appreciated at several points but particularly REIMBURSING which I biffed and never could unravel.

   From If You See Her, Say Hello:
   If you see her, say hello, she might be in TANGIER
   She left here last early spring, and is living there I hear
   Say for me that I’m all right, though things get kind of slow
   She might think I’ve forgotten her, don’t tell her it isn’t so

   1. Nice song that. I sang it on a Zoom session on Sunday.

   2. Funnily enough, as I wrote in TANGIER I did wonder if that would be your Dylan quote for the day…

      1. It’s too good a song to pass up! Anyway it turns out there are no Dylan songs containing the words NATTY, LINCTUS or PEROXIDE BLONDE…

6. Time seemed to pass in the blinking of an eye as I solved this one. FOI AUSTIN, finishing up with TRADUCE and finally PESETA, where I started constructing an unknown ancient coin, but realised after entering the P.

   31:53, thanks J and setter

7. 8:22. On the wavelength today, which seems an increasingly rare occurrence. I did have to cross my fingers as I entered my LOI, EXAMS where I only knew NCO for non commissioned officer and thought I may have completely missed something.

   With the World Snooker Championships underway, I was reminded of the player David Taylor who was prominent in the 1980s and who was nicknamed the SILVER FOX.

   1. Dennis Taylor?

      1. No, no.. David Taylor. Seem to remember that his party trick was sometimes potting a ball left handed instead of using a rest, if it was an easy pot. Ahhh, 1980’s snooker. Happy memories.

         1. Doesn’t seem like a great party trick now Ronnie O’Sullivan sometimes switches and plays whole frames left handed!

         2. So much for my memory given the hours we spent watching snooker back then. Just searched images of him and still not ringing bells. Indeed several of the images were actually of Dennis.

8. It was a quick one slowed down by the last few in.

   Just not seeing LINCTUS and LINCS was quite low down on my trawl of counties.

   As with the blogger NHO ‘blag’ in that context so I was reluctant to put in LAG despite thinking of it straight away.

   Can you spell GEE like that? I can’t think of anything better so I will have a punt.

   NHO SPUME and the crossing letters made me want to do something to SCUM to get a bird that circles around. Got there eventually.

   TOM SAWYER I got from the crossing letters. Could only make out half the wordplay but that was good enough for me. Thanks blogger for the full explanation.

   Couldn’t parse EXAMS but what else was it going to be? Thanks again blogger.

   TRADUCE was slow in but that one’s on me.

   I thought of an old currency as soon as I saw ‘out-of-date bread’ avoiding a common mistake for me.

   FOI: AUSTIN
   LOI: TRADUCE
   COD: SLAPDASH

9. Also on the wavelength today, with my LOI PESETA – like Merlin I was looking for an unknown climbing plant. No exact time as I’m on the train and on paper, but c. 20 mins which counts as very good for me!

10. 14 minutes with LOI AUSTIN, so super-fast for me. Slight twitching of the eyebrow at SLAPDASH but a rushed job is certainly that. After all, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. Thank you Jack and setter.

    1. On fire BW!

11. 10 minutes, with similar issues to others.

    – Vaguely remembered LINCTUS from somewhere
    – Biffed EARLY BIRD and TOM SAWYER once I had enough checkers
    – NHO the violent robbery meaning of blag – only know it in the sense Merlin mentioned above
    – Had no idea how PESETA worked as I was looking for a word from which to remove H, and for some reason I’ve never got pea as a climber lodged in my head

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI Artisan
    LOI + COD Peseta

12. I was going to quote Sea Fever, but I see our excellent blogger got there first. Nice one.

    20 mins pre-brekker for a gentle, neat one, I thought. My eyebrow twitched at whitewash=gloss over but didn’t fully raise.
    Ta setter and J

    1. Sea Fever was in my mind already following the discussion here on Saturday about Cargoes, as both poems are in Masefield’s wonderfully evocative collection Salt Sea Ballads.

    2. Same MER. Or it would have been, if I’d solved it. Instead I put in GROUT OVER (also a MER), but ROUT is so much more of a crushing defeat than LOSS is, and grouting/plastering walls is literal rather than figurative whitewashing.
       So ultimately I suffered a crushing defeat after scorching through the rest. 1 wrong and well-known SPUME ungettable – even having thought EMUS when seeing the U and the E. Sometimes my intransigent stupidity is astounding!

    3. I found out the hard way a few years ago that the lovely Sea Fever lays a trap for the unwary crossword solver. Masefield has “quinquIreme of Nineveh” when apparently it should be spelled quinquEreme.

       1. Hi, Olivia, please take a look at the 15×15 blog posted last Saturday where that came up. It was in Cargoes rather than Sea Fever but in the same Masefield collection Salt Sea Ballads. It appears that Masefield secured a place for “quinquIreme” in the OED simply by misspelling it in his poem!

          1. Cargoes! Of course, stupid me – thanks Jack.

13. Thought I was on for a sub-ten but had invented ‘grout over’, which held me up. No problem with SILVER FOX, thought it was common usage. Also no difficulty with ‘blag’, well known from The Sweeney.

    I did not notice until afterwards that we had GEE and LINCTUS in the same puzzle. Gee’s Linctus was (is?) noted for containing tincture of opium – a schoolmate once drank a whole bottle.

    10’35”, thanks jack and setter.

    1. Ditto GROUT. I was wondering where I knew BLAG from – I’d guessed Rumpole books or TV series.

    2. Did he live to drink a second one?

14. 6:46. NHO this meaning of ‘blag’.
    In 16dn I think ‘things’ must be part of the indication for LESS, or it’s unaccounted for. A box might have fewer things/less in it.

    1. Thanks. Oversight corrected.

15. 18:50
    I thought I was on for a great time only to be bogged down by a few of the stickier clues and some nonsense of my own making. Some of that nonsense I am too embarrassed to add to the annals of history.

    An enjoyable solve though, with TRADUCE causing the most problems and RAMPANT slow to appear thanks to one of my errors.

    Thanks to both.

16. 23m 34s
    Couple of old memories….
    5d (B)LAG reminded me of the TV series ‘The Sweeney’ with John Thaw and Dennis Waterman. I remember the word blag being used to describe bank robberies and the like.
    25d: ‘My hotel’s out of butter’ sounds like something out of the Monty Python foreign language phrasebook: ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’!
    Thanks, Jack!

17. 29 mins. Simple and looking on for a fast time until stymied by a couple of stinkers at the end.
    TRADUCE was unparsed so thank you for explaining.
    Wasted ages trying to fit HEDERA (Ivy) in as a climber before the currency idea dropped then went all through the Eurozone twice missing Spain somehow.
    Thanks again.

18. No undue problems today.
    Blag from The Sweeney, a useful source of criminal argot.
    I can add to your list of peroxide blondes, Jackkt: Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld 🙂

19. Quick today, definitely on the wavelength, 29 mins. I had a feeling this may be our American setter (AUSTIN, SILVER FOX, PEROXIDE BLONDE & GEE)?

    I liked SILVER FOX & SLAPDASH.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

20. Straightforward enough, until my LOI which I biffed – thanks for the parsing Jack.

    FOI LINCTUS
    LOI TRADUCE
    COD PEROXIDE BLONDE
    TIME 9:14

21. A quick one today, 14 minutes ending with TRADUCE which I knew but couldn’t have told you what it meant. I knew SILVER FOX. I skipped a bit of the parsing and biffed e.g. TOM SAWYER and GRIEVANCE.
    Thanks for parsing, jackkt.

22. ARTISAN was FOI, followed by LAG, courtesy of, as for others, John Thaw and The Sweeney. A steady romp was slowed at the end by TRADUCE and finally PESEATA. 18:47. Thanks setter and Jack.

23. I’ve definitely heard of this meaning of ‘blag’, it’s certainly not the usual slang meaning but it appears in the Guy Richie film ‘Snatch’ (the quote can be found at the citations page of the Wiktionary entry, though not currently in the entry itself. I know ‘Sea Fever’ through John Ireland’s musical setting https://youtu.be/DLqJZMpjJQ4?si=bOJMj8D9cu_nQbb7

24. 25 minutes. Thanks for the parsing of Traduce – I thought it Traduce (malign) and Traduces (conveys) minus the s (a bit less than expected) – which is a pretty odd solution, I admit (and ignores “suggestion”).
    Otherwise, all ok – I have finally learnt to think “currency” when I see “bread”.
    My COD – Reimbursing.

25. An easy one for me, for which I’m especially grateful after the excesses of the holiday.

    I’m glad the compiler wants to end war: an admirable sentiment. No problems except the mild surprise about silver foxes as described above. 27 minutes.

26. 23:07
    All straightforward apart from LINCTUS and PESETA. The latter was a guess based on the crossers and currency. I needed Jack to explain it.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter

27. can anyone explain 11across from Monday’s cryptic? how is cinch child’s play? I thought it was an adult card game?! thanks

    1. If something is a cinch, it’s very easy – or put another way, it’s child’s play.

       1. thank you amoeba….so simple and answer so presumably everyone else had seen that!

28. 5d Lag. Easy to biff but DNK that meaning of (b)LAG, so had to wait for the checkers.
    18d Rampant, I started with rampage which is quite close but makes 26a Situate very hard.
    Thanks jackkt and setter.

29. 26 mins however I was utterly convinced it was REMNANT, but the clue didn’t support me on this. Wasted several minutes. I thought TRADUCE was a verb and MALIGN was an adjective…

    1. My treeware COED (1935, acquired in an auction joblot) has the second entry “v.t. Speak ill of, slander”, I had the same thought as you so checked after biffing as LOI.
       I hope this counts as not using aids, as this was by far a PB.

30. 14:48. Slow start and then quick progress.

    COD: GEE

31. No particular problems today, 23 minutes. I was lucky that PESETA was one of the first of my guesses: there must be lots of currencies that are no longer in use. The only time I think I’ve heard LINCTUS is in Gee’s Linctus, so perhaps the puzzle was set by someone from that firm, if it still exists. I was a bit unsure that the parsing of 21ac was OK: if a letter is the centre of storyline then it’s Y, no problem; but the clue says ‘central to storyline’, and does that give Y? If ‘central’ is a noun then yes; otherwise I’m not so sure. It’s not in Collins as a noun, certainly (the only time it is a noun is in connection with telephone exchanges, not relevant).

    1. I noticed that when solving but then forgot about it. I’m open to other explanations but as far as I can see it’s dodgy.

32. Thank you Jack and Setter for a fine crossword, and for the explanation of TRADUCE, which was the only one I couldn’t parse. TANGIER reminded me of Bob’s excellent song from my favourite album of his.
    Nice to be all correct with no silly single letter errors for a change!

33. 25 mins. Took me a long while to get going. After my first pass, I thought I was cooked. Spume got me started and from that corner gradually improved. LOI peseta.

34. Finished in 8.45, but my solution included a biff too far: HEDERA for PESETA. Saw _e_e_a and climber, thought of ivy, slammed in hedera: unlucky. Nice puzzle today.

35. Just under 20 mins without too much trouble. Like others I thought SILVER FOX was fairly well established as a description of a handsome, slightly racy, older man (never heard it being applied to me unfortunately..). Didn’t parse TRADUCE and like Merlin lost a few moments misreading county as country. I don’t think of Bardot as a peroxide blonde, she seems more upmarket, more Jayne Mansfield or Diana Dors? Thanks Jackkt and setter.

36. 27:27
    LOI was PESETA, having considered HEDERA but not being able to parse it.
    I wasted time on GEE thinking that butter must mean GOAT.

    Thanks Jack and setter

37. 17:20 – no particular problems – bar briefly with SPUME – other than fat-fingeredly trying to solve on an iphone. Are iphone keyboards getting smaller?

38. 25:15 slowed down a lot at the end by PESETA. I got that I was probably looking for some kind of old money, but peseta didn’t come to mind and neither Pea for climber nor Set for hard were spontaneous write ins. Also I was pencilling in H’s to see if it suggested anything. So lost maybe even 5 minutes on that one!
    Thanks setter and blogger

39. 21.03 Quick for me but should have been quicker. I rejected PESETA for a while because it didn’t have an H. Thanks Jack.

40. DNF

    16 mins or so for all but PESETA but totally forgot the bread thing and mombled some unknown plant thinking “out of date bread” = BREA. Don’t ask.

    Maybe a few too many biffs but there were plenty of really nice surfaces, not least 1d.

    Thanks Jackkt/setter

41. DNF. I had an unparsed HEDERA (ivy; climber) for 20D. Bah! Thanks Jackkt and setter.

42. I did two thirds of this in 20 minutes while waiting to see the consultant. It’s amazing how hospitals heighten the powers of analysis. After an honorable discharge I went home and did the rest in 10 minutes, so 30 minutes overall. Not particularly testing, I thought, though I had to come here to get the parsing of 5dn and 6dn.
    FOI – IN USE
    LOI – SLAPDASH
    COD – REIMBURSING
    Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.

43. This was something of a struggle – clues coming slowly, with some biffing and post-parsing and two which I failed to parse altogether – EXAMS and LOI TRADUCE, the meaning of which I wasn’t even clear about, but couldn’t find anything else to fit. I also put in LAG after an alphabet trawl failed to suggest anything but blag, which I didn’t know in this sense. Unusually for me, the longer clues felt easier – the 14 letter across clues being entered almost straight away.

44. 20:04

    Stuck at the end on PESETA and SPUME, the latter falling first. Several bits of parsing (partially) missed due to bunging in from checkers/definition – ARTISAN, EARLY BIRD, PERFORMING ARTS, TOM SAWYER, TRADUCE.

    Didn’t know that meaning of {b}LAG either.

    Thanks Jack and setter

45. Silver fox fairly common parlance these days for good-looking well-dressed older man.

46. 27 minutes, somewhat delayed by TRADUCE (LOI) as I had assumed “Malign suggestion” to be the definition. Once I’d narrowed the definition down to “malign” and realised that it was a verb, in it went.
    Knew “blag” from way back, ditto SILVER FOX. Like others I flirted with “grout”, but not for long. Liked PEROXIDE BLONDE!

47. Failed with my LOI where PESETA defeated me. After all these years of doing crosswords, you’d think mere mention of the word bread in the clue would have instantly brought money to mind – but no! Once I had some unheard of loaf in mind that seemed to be that, and PEHEXA went in with no confidence of success whatsoever.

48. Definitely *Dennis* Taylor, he could pot with both hands, although as mentioned Ronnie is way better at that. Famous black ball to win versus Steve Davis.

49. I enjoyed this though seemed to spend more time than usual working out how the answer fit the cryptic.
    And I’m glad I hadn’t heard of HEDERA because I probably wouldn’t have had the patience to get to PESETA eventually
    FOI PEROXIDE BLONDE
    LOI PESETA
    COD GEE

50. 28:40. This felt particularly intricate today, but no-one else has said it so it must just be me. I enjoyed it

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