Times 28057 – Sage and Oregon

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, another pretty easy one on my watch. I romped home in 17:24, but that time will be made to look like Dom Sibley trying to bat compared with some of the speed merchants around here.

Quickie regulars may want to have a go at this. Not too much in the way of obscurities, if you know your religions, your Zulus, your plants and your carpentry.

ACROSS

1 Die crossing source of Irish river, blooming thing! (13)
PASSIONFLOWER – I (source of I[rish]) in PASS ON (die) FLOWER (river in Crosswordland)
8 Work in church, wearing this? (4)
COPE – OP in CE; a liturgical cloak-like vestment that comes in a variety of natty colours
9 Musician’s assistant’s gripping novel (4-6)
PAGE-TURNER – double definition (DD)
10 One getting rid of retired male model (8)
DISPOSER – SID (random male) reversed POSER (model)
11 Fashionable woman seen with duke? Quite so (6)
INDEED – IN (fashionable) DEE (random woman – the one I knew was actually christened Dolores) D (duke)
13 Waver like an ass, swapping new for very old moggy (10)
EQUIVOCATE – EQUINE (with V – very – for N – new) containing O (old) CAT (moggy); strangely, I have always called dogs ‘moggy’. There again, I am what Malcolm Gladwell would call (in that prosaic, if well paid, way of his) a bit of an outlier…
16 Island politician primarily investigating old African warriors (4)
IMPI – I (island) MP (politician) I[nvestigating]; a Zulu body of men gathered for war, now decommissioned everywhere except in Crosswordland
17 Duck, possibly, served inside (4)
BIRD – DD; a jail sentence may be called bird
18 Failing old firm in security almost unknown (10)
DEFICIENCY – ICI in DEFENC[e] Y
20 Sound made by small seal or young 17 (6)
CYGNET – a signet is, typically, a small seal, and a cygnet is of course a young swan. They are of course differentiated among other things by their calls: the adult giving a swansong while the young prefer signature tunes
22 Sick Damascene, say, beheaded like some ancient countrymen (8)
ILLYRIAN – ILL (sick) [s]YRIAN; Illyria is an ancient Adriatic region roughly corresponding to modern-day Albania and Montenegro
24 Family position offering cash with it, keeping you and me (10)
COUSINSHIP – US (you and me) in COINS (cash) HIP (with it)
26 Shady type important people recalled (4)
SPIV – reversal of VIPS; Private Walker in Dad’s Army is perhaps the best known (and best loved) spiv of popular culture
27 Doubting Scotsman, perhaps, following female medical expert (13)
DIAGNOSTICIAN – DI (random female) AGNOSTIC (doubting) IAN (slightly less random than customary Scotsman; even if a pukka Scot might insist on the Iain format)

DOWN

1 Closeness of rugby forward, one abandoning sin (11)
PROPINQUITY – PROP (rugby player of massive bulk with a large set of skills, predominant of which is the ability to pull the scrum down while convincing the ref that it was the other bloke) IN[i]QUITY. No ref to my knowledge has ever played prop, so, in terms of absence of guesswork, it’s a bit like the Hong Kong Jockey Club stewards’ room, where people who have never sat on a horse pass judgement on jockey’s rides and the possible nefariousness thereof
2 Possibly Jacob’s novel record (5)
SHEEP – SHE (Rider Haggard’s book that is to the biblio cruciverbal arena what ET is to the filmic) EP (record)
3 Stop media representation — it’s laid on thick (9)
IMPASTOED – anagram* of STOP MEDIA
4 African country raising river spirit (7)
NIGERIA – reversal of AIRE (the setter is probably referring to the river in Yorkshire, which flows into the Ouse) GIN (spirit)
5 Note about husband supporting US city club (5)
LATHI – H (husband) in TI (note) on LA (sprawling metropolis in California); Indian policemen used to use these, I believe
6 General’s promise to fence in lake with fish (9)
WORLDWIDE – L (lake) in WORD (promise) W (with) IDE (fish which is abundant in crosswords)
7 Spiky plant found in country estates (3)
RYE – hidden in countRY Estates
12 Nice poet involved with tax? That’s the assumption (11)
EXPECTATION – NICE POET TAX*
14 Popular lecturer on French art originally in Asian country (9)
INDONESIA – IN DON ES (French word for are [singular], AKA ‘art’) initial letters of I[n] A[sian]
15 Typical reforms suppressed by Brussels oil producers (9)
EUCALYPTI – TYPICAL* under EU; I like the imagery and the connotation
19 Struggles to capture large groups of birds in the air (7)
FLIGHTS – L (large) in FIGHTS (struggles)
21 Part of joint music group going north (5)
TENON – reversal of NONET gives the carpentry term
23 Teacher turned up, greeting Hindu sage (5)
RISHI – SIR (teacher) reversed HI; perhaps – or perhaps not – Rajneesh, AKA Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Osho, immortalised in the Netflix series Wild Wild Country. If someone gives themselves a lot of names, it can generally be taken to mean they are pretty dodgy.
25 Former Labour leader dipping into overdraft (3)
OLD – L (initial letter of L[abour]) in OD

63 comments on “Times 28057 – Sage and Oregon”

  1. Slowed down a bit toward the end until I thought of PROPINQUITY, which I biffed and which led me to BIRD, CYGNET, EQUIVOCATE, and LOI DISPOSER, where I didn’t much care for SID (or DEE, for that matter).
  2. …putting in worldling from the cryptic, without quite seeing how it meant general, although it might. Most of the clues were pretty easy, but propinquity, equivocate, and event he obvious page-turner. I also wondered how a cygnet could be a young duck, which helped me realize that the answer to 17 must be bird.

    Time: 29 minutes.

  3. 37 minutes delayed by the four long words, all of which I attempted early on but had to return to several times as checkers gradually arrived. The last of these to fall was PROPINQUITY, a word I knew but with only the vaguest idea what it meant, and now it seems I was confusing it with ‘propensity’. IIRC the ‘variety of natty colours’ the COPE comes in represent different periods of the church calendar.

    Edited at 2021-08-16 05:12 am (UTC)

  5. I didn’t find this particularly straightforward, struggling mostly with DIAGNOSTICIAN, PROPINQUITY and EQUIVOCATE. For the latter I thought waver was an anagrind and the anagrist was “like an ass” with the N swapped for VO. Elsewhere it took me an age to think that a duck was a BIRD which pretty much summed up how off the wavelength I was. As always, happy to finish with no errors though.
      1. Me too, but the anagrist didn’t look very promising so I abandoned that quite quickly.
  6. Sluggish pre-caffeine effort here.

    Stared at ___poser propi______ and ___vocate for far too long. Not helped by 1ac being a flower which tends to send me into semi-panic mode.

    But despite stumbling over some of them, I liked lots of the vocab and the clueing was clear and precise

    Thanks Ulaca and setter

  7. 07:20 which is in my top 10 fastest solves. [Update: Oh no! I see I got a letter wrong, ILLURIAN rather than ILLYRIAN, so actually this was a DNF] Only EQUIVOCATION and DIAGNOSTICIAN held me up for much deliberation. Definitely one for the QCers today, I thought. I wondered if PROPINQUITY and SPIV used much these days, but I see the former is used in Social Psychology and the latter is coming back into fashion.

    Edited at 2021-08-16 03:11 pm (UTC)

  8. 42 minutes, so not easy at all for me. LOI was OLD. COD to ILLYRIAN. I liked DIAGNOSTICIAN too though Di is seeing too much action as a random female, and PROPINQUITY when I’d stopped confusing it with ‘propensity’. This seemed to be a crossword of long words but I guess it was the same as normal. Thank you U and setter.
  9. Not very happy at all, DNF at the 1-hour mark with 4-and-a-bit clues unsolved. I had the feeling this was a moderately difficult puzzle, so I wasn’t too distressed about this until I checked the SNITCH rating and comments here…
    …and discovered that I*’m a useless schmuck who missed some very easy cues (promise=WORD, river=FLOWER), as well as just not knowing a few
    Didn’t know about the novel “She”
    – Didn’t know that “jacob” is a breed of sheep (so that’s a double-whammy for 2d)
    – Didn’t know there’s a fish called “ide”
    – NHO a tribe called the “Impi”

    Spent an age getting (NHO) IMPASTOED out of the anagram, failed to get the crucial 1a, which would have enabled me to work through the rest – a litany of might-have-beens

    I feel emotionally shattered – is this supposed to be fun?

    Regards Denise

    1. It does get easier over time – every single one of those examples will come up again before too long, so worth remembering! An Impi is a cohort of Zulu fighters, not a tribe
      1. Thanks for the words of encouragement, guys.

        Going to lighten up with Popmaster (which I do with my friend Kay Serasera) then get my hair done, by way of consolation.

        One other thing: Saturday night I fell asleep with the radio on, and I awoke about 03:30 to hear the World Service announcer trailing a feature of this year’s Proms – compositions by the Italian baroque composer…
        … and I knew what was coming even before he said it – Pergolesi!

        Not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I’m suspecting collusion at the heart of UK journalism

    3. I was going to comment that this puzzle contains a good clutch of ‘crossword words’: you almost never encounter them in real life but they become familiar after years of solving these things. All the words you mention fit into this category, and I would add COPE (and ecclesiastical garb generally, look out for ALB), BIRD (for a prison sentence), TENON, LATHI.
  11. 14.30 with a few trials along the way in what was a very good puzzle I thought. FOI sheep and last across the line equivocate. Took most time over propinquity getting tied up thinking of proximity with no real cause to do so. Liked equivocate and propinquity but my COD would be diagnostician.
    One minor quibble, isn’t a lathi more of a stick than a club?

    Thx setter and blogger.

  12. Quite quick today .. I quite agree with you over the too many names thing, Ulaca, as exemplified by our own royal family
  13. A steady solve for me, though I didn’t parse DEFICIENCY correctly – I thought ENC was the old firm and ‘defici’ was the ‘security almost’, even though a deficit isn’t any kind of security. PROPINQUITY is a word I had heard of but couldn’t tell you what it meant, and I wasn’t sure about IMPASTOED until I had all the checkers.

    FOI Indeed
    LOI Impi
    COD Indonesia

  14. I found this very straightforward and no parsing problems at all.
    FOI: PROPINQUITY
    LOI: CYGNET. I shouldn’t have taken so long on this as I’m currently reading “The Mirror & The Light”, the third part of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy. One of the characters in all three novels is Thomas Wriothesley (aka Call-me-Risley) who is Clerk of the Signet.
    COD: DIAGNOSTICIAN although I agree with ulaca in that a Scot with that name would spell it Iain.
    1. Have ploughed my way through the trilogy. It is in my opinion one of the great literary efforts of the modern age. They should have given her three booker prizes, if they had only dared to …
      But I expect you know how it ends Martin, not in a good way and no spoilers but Wriothesley does not come out well …
      1. Thanks, Jerry. I’m about a third of the way through the book. A couple of people have said to me that they didn’t think it was as good as the first two in the trilogy but, thus far, I think it reads very well and agree with your assessment.
  15. IMPI, LATHI, RISHI,,, where’s the Green Manalishi with the two-pronged crown?

    Enjoyed this. A few old favourites but plenty to keep one on one’s toes. PROPINQUITY is a lovely word.

    Thanks to the setter and Ulaca.

    2. The story of Jeremy Spencer’s abrupt disappearance is one of the great stories of rock.
  16. ….but had to alpha-trawl both NHO COUSINSHIP and DIAGNOSTICIAN. Biffed DEFICIENCY, parsed afterwards. I have to say I didn’t enjoy this very much. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to the QC brigade !

    FOI COPE
    LOI COUSINSHIP
    COD WORLDWIDE
    TIME 8:07

    1. I liked it a lot. It was not for QCers perhaps but for hard-bitten old veterans like me it was fine. If you finished in 8m then I guess you are likely a hard-bitten old veteran too..
  17. Looked funny but it had to be. ILLYRIA was a bit gruesome. Found I’d pretty much whizzed through this except for a brief stutter looking for the name of a famous general starting with G until the checking letters checked in. 11.26
  18. Hard for a Monday, so I think differently to most. The long words all took a while to construct with checkers in place.

    Knew IMPI from the great film Zulu, where Aarendorf explains it. Knew LATHI from the great film Gandhi, where they are much used. Knew ILLYRIA from the great film Shakespeare in Love, said country being the setting for Twelfth Night. Knew INIQUITY, though not the longer word, from numerous occurrences in the Psalms. Knew RISHI only from the Chancellor (and maybe next PM?).

    15′ 12″, thanks ulaca and setter.

    Edited at 2021-08-16 09:30 am (UTC)

    1. You ninja-turtled Illyria then; I knew it from 12th Night, being my O-level Eng Lit play. Ho ho.
      Andyf
  19. certainly not an easy one to complete for most regular QCers. 65 and under on the SNITCH, yes.

    Having said that, it wasn’t that difficult. Just some odd ones here and there. PROPINQUITY, ILLYRIAN, EQUIVOCATE.

    SID and DEE today’s random man and woman took me a while to spot.

    18:17.

  20. 9:06, one very stupid error. I always mix up the spelling of CYGNET and SIGNET: perhaps this will be the time I finally get it into my head that I need to pay attention when the baby swan comes up.
    Nice puzzle, not too hard but a good mix of vocabulary.

    Edited at 2021-08-16 09:56 am (UTC)

  21. I agree with philjordan: not suitable for the QC brigade. There were too many odd or possibly obscure things that wouldn’t be at all obvious to a beginner, like Dee as a girl’s name (is it really a name, rather than just an initial letter of a name, different from B or V or C or several others?), cousinship, diagnostician (OK but hard to think of as a medical expert), disposer, ass as an equine (again OK but not the first thing you think of), Illyria.
  22. Like others I was held up by PROPINQUITY and EQUIVOCATE, which were my last 2 in. PASSIONFLOWER also took a while to arrive. LATHI was FOI. WORLDWIDE was assisted by the flower’s arrival, and I wasn’t distracted by LING as I already had all the other checkers. IMPASTOED took a while to decrypt. Enjoyable puzzle. 26:08. Thanks setter and U.
  23. Quite fast, but pause for thought on a few of the less common words: cousinship surely isn’t a real word, and propinquity looked like a word but I wouldn’t have bet on it. Like others proximate was at the forefront of my thoughts, except there was no prop. Impasto a crossword staple, but only ever seen it as a noun so it was slow to go in. Cygnet straight in, deciding the unknown cross-reference had to be a waterbird, smee or swan or something, but in the end bird was LOI after a minute of puzzled thought. So it goes. Equivocate was quick, assembling V O CAT in my mind an immediately seeing it. Liked diagnostician (up until the random ying) for having agnostic in it.
  24. I though IMPASTOED was a verbalisation too far but otherwise generally fair, if tricky. 16 mins and in retrospect pleased to finish in that time.
  25. Thought this would a toughie Monday until I finished in a rush. Nothing to frighten the horses in the end, the DNKs being pretty obvious. Finished with BIRD which should have been FOI if I’d read the clue properly. I did have a MER over COUSINSHIP.
  26. No one has bothered to define 1dn except for Mr. Brenk – though by accident.

    Propinquity: the state of being close to someone (including by a blood relationship) or an object; proximity.

    FOI 8ac COPE

    LOI 6dn WORLWIDE

    COD 17ac BIRD

    WOD PROPINQUITY!

    Time: slap on thirty minutes, but as per Messrs. Jordan & Ransome this is not for the QCLanders! Dom Sibley!? Talk about obscurities!

  27. INDEED, my EXPECTATION is met
    They’ve included a BIRD, the CYGNET
    This OLD DEFICIENCY
    In vocabulary
    Explains all the twitters we get
    1. The references of choice for the 15×15 and QC are Collins and Oxford English Dictionary (online as Lexico). In this instance Collins has the answer as one word, but Lexico (in line with Chambers) has it as two. Chambers is where to go for the Times Mephisto puzzle, and its words and meanings occasionally seep into the 15×15 and Sunday Times.

      Edited at 2021-08-16 01:40 pm (UTC)

  29. Well, I struggled a bit with this. I did have distractions and noise (don’t ask) and it was done in two sessions, but I took an age to see the NHO, ILLYRIAN.

    As some others, a few of the longer words took some working out too. Does this mean that our Chancellor is a Hindu sage. I guess it does.

    COD to EQUIVOCATE. Nice clue when I’d finally worked out it wasn’t the anag as mentioned above (I initially thought it might have been one of the odd named cats in, er, CATS. Thanks U and setter

  30. Fell at the last fence with the nho Propinquity. More than a touch annoying, having previously worked out the completely unknown Illyrian, and the dimly recalled Lathi and Jacob/sheep. CoD Bird, the unusual Cousinship and Equivocate also took some working out along the way. Invariant

Comments are closed.