Times Cryptic 27590

55 comments on “Times Cryptic 27590”

1. Since I know SHAW, and I know NEE, and I know SHAWNEE, I have no idea why I typed in SWANNEE, or why I didn’t notice it. DNK OXBOW the lake, or continental QUILT. I managed to spot the hidden TWEEN, but failed to see that since ‘hosts’ indicates the hidden, ‘flanked by’ was part of the definition; so I put in the correct solution while wondering if there was a poet named TWEEN. Biffed 18d, where the enumeration suggested a foreign phrase. Definite COD to TRAVEL-SICK.
   1. Jasper Albright Tween (Cantab), b. Huddersfield 1793. d. Stockton-on-Tees 1835, one of the first suicides by steam train. Works included ‘Perambulations’- ‘A Black Daffodil’ and ‘Zephyros and Euros’. (tWiki)
   2. I did the same thing ; put me right up the Swanee .
2. …as I did have ‘Swannee’, but decided it couldn’t be right and thought again – well, there’s Pawnee, but that doesn’t fit, so try and try again. I did biff a fair number, including dissenter, exorbitant, and incline. I was definitely on the wavelength, as this could be difficult for some.
   1. I was definitely one of the some. Ox-bow had a hyphen in it in my Geography studies at school. No sign of it now.
      1. the Hyphentor.net asks ‘Are you trying to hyphenate oxbow? Unfortunately it cannot be hyphenated as it only contains one syllable.’
         Fortunately my old Chambers (1988) has it only hyphenated.
3. for what I thought was fairly tough 55 minutes.

   FOI 7 darn Jill

   LOI 17ac QUILT (close to April!)

   COD 24 darn ‘er indoors & Co. WIVES from St Ives.

   WOD 10 ac SHAWNEE – proper injuns

   North West passage was the problem- now for the easy one!

4. Nice to see my home popping up in 20A but most people around here are averse to the pluralisation: it’s either Orkney (which is a county) or the Orkney Islands/Isles. I believe the same is true of Shetland and the Scilly Isles.

   The etymology is disputed: the ‘ey’ is definitely from the Vikings who ran the roost here for 600 years or so, and means island; the ‘ork’ may be from orcas, which we see often, or the Norse for seal, or an adaptation of the Roman name Orcades. Whatever you call this place, it’s wonderful.

   Anyway, a tough solve for me at almost 50m. In my transatlantic travels I’ve now been re-educated never to call the indigenous people Indians – I think the PC version is now ‘First Nation’. However it always reminds me of the brilliant slogan on the van of Patel Bros builders: You’ve had the cowboys – now try the Indians!

   Thanks Jack and setter!

   Edited at 2020-02-18 08:05 am (UTC)

   1. Interesting – I find myself educated. As a (clearly) ignorant South-Easterner I would without a qualm pluralise all the archipelagos mentioned: in future I’ll try not to!
   2. I was another who blenched at this misuse. Orkney is an archipelago, and “ORKNEYS” would indicate two such formations.

      1. Yes, this is all very well but in common parlance people speak of the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, the Falkands, etc etc etc. It’s often the case that specialist (or in this case local) knowledge leads to this sort of discussion and it’s absolutely fair enough to make the point, but it really doesn’t invalidate the clue.
         1. As another Scot I agree about the erroneous reference to the “Orkneys”. It’s either the Orkney/Shetland Isles or simply Orkney/Shetland. (Clever clue however!)
            Use of The Hebrides is different – there aren’t any islands called “Hebride”! And I don’t think anyone would refer to these west coast islands without distinguishing between the Inner and Outer groupings.
            I’m a QC solver who usually has a go at the 15×15 without much success but found this one mostly doable although completely stumped by Honeypot, Incline and Fright Wig. Liked 2d and 22ac!
         2. As another Scot I agree about the erroneous reference to the “Orkneys”. It’s either the Orkney/Shetland Isles or simply Orkney/Shetland. (Clever clue however!)
            Use of The Hebrides is different – there aren’t any islands called “Hebride”! And I don’t think anyone would refer to these west coast islands without distinguishing between the Inner and Outer groupings.
            I’m a QC solver who usually has a go at the 15×15 without much success but found this one mostly doable although completely stumped by Honeypot, Incline and Fright Wig. Liked 2d and 22ac!
   3. Very funny! It reminds me of something I heard recently. A van with the name “Mr Bit” on the side. The owner was a window cleaner!
5. I was relieved to finish this, taking a hard 49 minutes with LOI IDLES. COD to GET SHOT OF. I managed to construct FRIGHT WIG quite early without really knowing of one. I didn’t know the QUO VADIS film but the anagram solved easily and I sometimes even use the expression in jest. Everything else was known, although ‘following act’ to mean LEGAL took some seeing. Not worth blowing a GASKET over though, on this tricky but fair puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
6. As off the wavelength today as I was on it yesterday, limping home at 51 minutes having failed to parse quite a few, especially my last couple of 29 DISSENTER and 22 WRITER. I also had problems with the NW corner, taking forever to see GET SHOT OF (though PUT PAID TO kept springing unhelpfully to mind) and GASKET, where apparently the very wrong answer I couldn’t quite remember was KELPIE. Well, I suppose they live in the sea.

   I thought when I wrote in ORKNEYS that someone might confirm about the only thing I know about Orkney: that they don’t appreciate being called The ORKNEYS there. Thanks, pleasuredome8!

7. Another application of the “on” positional rule today with LEG AL.

   Nice crossword. COD: TRAVEL SICK. Green on transport. 🙂

8. Just to add a little extra to 20ac, you can also make YONKERS from the anagram.
   Slightly more of a culture shock than moving from Skye to ORKNEYS.
   1. Yeah, they have a city income tax there…
   2. Yep, and that’s what I put in…
9. 40 mins with morning in the bowl of yoghurt, granola, etc.
   Yes the Shawnee, Honeypot, Fright Wig area was the hold up.
   Some clever stuff.
   I see in the Times today that Sir Derek Jacobi does the Times crossword every day. Maybe he could post on here. Does anyone know him well enough to suggest it?
   Thanks setter and J
   1. Perhaps he already does? Pseudonyms are not unknown, Myrtilus 🙂
      1. Joe Kobi?
   2. I am Claudius!
      1. You haven’t aged a bit!
         1. I do not know, but we have a poster whose name may be a homophone….

            Edited at 2020-02-18 12:58 pm (UTC)

10. Bang on 27 mins. No dramas. Thanks jack.
11. Very good stuff here. Some years ago I was AWOKE by a sick child and had to leave my nice warm QUILT to sit up with her and passed the early hours watching an old movie with Henry Fonda called The (hyphenated) OX-BOW Incident. Jack I think the OR in EXORBITANT is “other” ranks, it’s the seamen who are “ordinary”. 18.23
    1. Thanks, Olivia, of course it is! My fingers doing their own thing whilst my brain was elsewhere. Corrected now.
12. Took 51 minutes to finally get this done. Everything parsed except for the ‘back on course’ bit of WRITER. I liked the “Minder” reference (we’ll never know, she may not have been a ‘downmarket version’) as well as the ‘green on transport’ and ‘Poet’s flanked by’ defs.

    Nothing beats a good eiderdown in my opinion.

    1. Sadly, Peter Sarstedt died 3 years ago.
       1. Thanks. Yes, I saw that in his Wikipedia article. Very sad. “Where Do You Go To My Lovely” – one of the all time great songs.
13. Found myself right on the setter’s wavelength today, so unsurprisingly, I officially applaud his or her work. One minor quibble, CLAIR doesn’t have to be cut to be a perfectly valid girl’s name, and if you don’t believe me, you may end up getting a stern talking-to from Mr Gilbert O’Sullivan…
14. Liked the ‘setter back on course’ although didn’t get it while solving. Def COD. Also biffed DISSENTER which took too much time trying to put DISC at the front. LOI GASKET which was very simple, in fact too simple for a complex soul like myself…
15. Just over 30 minutes for this dense and interesting puzzle. My last in was LEGAL, and because I was determined to work out where and what the definition was for the only possible word I could enter, it added mightily to my time. I couldn’t work out whether the cricket leg was involved, or whether the A was accounted for by Act (it could have been!).
    I read Quo Vadis (in English rather than the original Polish) when I was pretty young and before I saw the film (the 1951 version) when they showed it on TV: it was the sort of thing my parents had around the house.
    Being able to draw the stages of OXBOW lake formation got me through O-level Geography, that and the water cycle
16. ….GET SHOT OF this puzzle in what appears to be a decent time.

    I’ve made my view on “ORKNEYS” known earlier. I biffed EVERY INCH, HONEYPOT, and BOLSTERED, but all were parsed OK afterwards.

    NHO FRIGHT WIG.

    FOI IDLES
    LOI LEGAL
    COD INCLINE
    TIME 11:07

17. A most enjoyable puzzle. FRIGHT WIG unknown, but fairly easily assembled from the instructions, as were many of the other clues. Didn’t bother to parse GET SHOT OF once I saw it, and biffed EVERY INCH. TRAVEL SICK a favourite:) 31:31. Thanks setter and Jack.
18. Tough going but got there though gave up on parsing legal. I think the def. of exorbitant is a little, well…. Good to know of the fright wig. Already one can see the future US/UK alliance in the history books… jk
19. Is an OXBOW a bayou? Always wondered. Formed when flowing water finds a more efficient way, and cuts off a loop. COD, like everyone else, to TRAVEL SICK. LOI was EVERY INCH, a great phrase.

    15’52”, thanks jack and setter.

20. 14:14. There were some great lovely touches here, most notably the definition for travel sick top but nods also to:
    ► in clink for imprisoned
    ► them indoors for wives
    ► came to for awoke
    ► following act for legal

    I initially thought that 22d had two defs (author and setter) and a peculiar cryptic element (back on course we hear) and I wasn’t impressed. Thanks to Jack’s explanation I now see that it’s terrific.

21. 11m 08s for this one. The clue for AWOKE was very good; the one for WRITER wasn’t my favourite. Never heard of RODRIGO but it was highly plausible from the clue.

    I was fortunate with the checkers for 17d, as my first attempt was QUO VIDAS.

22. Derek Jacobi here – Thanks for your comments.
    Only joking. It is not he.
    Definitely tough, and I was held up by Every Inch and Oxbow. COD for Setter and the Righter of Wrongs.
    Wasn’t there a Spanish guitar single in the charts once, Rodrigo’s Music of the Mountains. Mid 70s? Quo Vadis – great book which I read as a youngster. Remember the fish acronym and the good gladiator.
23. Thanks for the blog.
    I think that you have a typo in the title. I have it as 27590.
    1. Many thanks. Now corrected
24. Slowed down in solving by getting YONKERS instead of ORKNEYS !!
25. I agree with commenters above, that Orkney is the archipelago and its plural would mean more than one of such. But it works as a clue, is in common (mis)use, and not worth making a fuss about. Especially as it’s the home of Highland Park, possibly one of the best malts around. There’s a new bottling called Dragon Legend, a bit peatier and absolutely delicious, I found it in Waitrose.
    Anyway, a 25 minutes bottom to top solve for this pleasant but not exceptional puzzle. Fright wig was a new thing but guessable.
26. Here’s one Pip. Once seen never forgotten! https://assets.phillips.com/image/upload/t_Website_LotDetailMainImage/v1526398049/auctions/NY040417/230_001.jpg
    1. I thought that was his own hair.
       1. No he really did wear a wig. He had several.
    2. Hello Olivia, Did you read Waldemar Januszczak’s review in the Sunday Times of a biography of Warhol by Blake Gopnik? I didn’t get past the first sentence. I’ve never liked Januszczak.
27. I found this very hard to get going but gradually got it sorted and finished in 28.10. Took a long time over the NW quadrant, never heard of “fright wig” but reckoned it couldn’t be anything else. Legal was last in getting the answer and then working out how it fitted but I suppose we all do that pretty regularly.

    COD shawnee. Though every inch ran it close. If this is only Tuesday I wonder how hard Friday will be. Soon find out.

28. Not too tough, say 25 minutes. Didn’t parse LEGAL, and I thought HONEYPOT for ‘attraction’ a bit off. COD to everyone’s favorite, TRAVEL SICK. Not tempted by YONKERS, despite having grown up there. There’s a famous American landscape painting usually called The OXBOW, but more fully ‘View from Mt. Holyoke, after a Thunderstorm’, showing the vista of the Connecticut River, by Thomas Cole. Perfect illustration of the oxbow lake. It hangs in the Met in NYC.
    1. I’ve just seen a definition that may be considered a bit off which I admit I didn’t know, but the second one in Collins is perfectly innocent and I think we can take it for granted that’s the one the setter had in mind:

       1. a container for honey
       2. something which attracts people in great numbers
       Barcelona is a honeypot for tourists

       1. Why would the definition “attraction” be a bit off?
29. 20:14. I didn’t have too many problems with this. Either didn’t know or didn’t remember Rodrigo. I found legal a bit tricky and took a while to spot the ‘er indoors def. But no reason to blow a gasket. Loved the green on transport Def.

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