ST Jumbo 4308 (Sun 21 Dec) – ‘Twas the aconite before Christmas…

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
Solving time: 25:25, appropriately! One mistake (10dn: ‘acotine’ for ACONITE).

The Sunday Times gave us a Jumbo puzzle for Christmas, which contained several seasonal answer words and many clues having Christmas-themed surface readings. Like last year’s puzzle (if I remember correctly) the grid was a horror, but there were lots of good clues with just the odd curiosity here and there.

The top right and bottom left corners gave me the most trouble, but my final entries were COLUMBINE at 49ac and LUTE at 32dn.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 CHRISTMAS DAY; (HASTY CARDS I’M)*
8 SUR + PASS
13 PRE-SENT; &lit – I liked this.
14 GIFT HORSE; (FORGET HIS)* – as in ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’. Nice definition (‘offer – dental examination not recommended’).
15 STOIC; S + T + O (= ’round’) + I + C[ame]
16 NEATNESS (2 defs) – referring to neat spirits, i.e. as drunk without a mixer.
18 LEE(K)S – not sure about ‘Wenceslas, maybe’ for K, which (as far as I know) is only used as an abbreviation for ‘king’ in the context of chess or cards. ‘Lees’ means the sediment that forms in a drink such as wine.
19 GAS-PIPE; GASP + (PIE)* – only a partial definition here.
22 HARP (2 defs) – as in to ‘harp on’ about something.
24 KN(A P.S.)ACK – excellent clue.
25 STAMPEDE; (DAME’S PET)*
29 MINCEMENT; (A CEMENT I’M)*
30/48 SANTA CLAUS; (CAN’T + US ALAS)*
31 FANTASY; (SANTA)* in F[unn]Y
33 BOUNTEOUS; “BOUNTY US”
34 SHIP-BREAKER – nice clue with two definitions in one word: one to the type of ship which might break other ships, one to the person whose line of work is in breaking up old ships.
40 REPOSSESSES; POSSE in [d]RESSES
44 UNSTUDIED; (STUD I) in (NUDE)*
46 POLEMIC; ([gri]M + POLICE)* – I found this one difficult, thinking the definition was at the end of the clue.
49 COLUMBINE; [p]LU[m] in COMBINE – another I found difficult, partly because of the dubious ‘Plum part’ for LU and partly because I didn’t know the name ‘Columbine’, the lover of Harlequin in traditional Italian pantomime.
51 DIASPORA; (A DROP IS)* + A
53 TENEMENT; (E[nglish] MEN) in TENT – I don’t really understand this. Is ‘Canon’ the definition, with ‘here?’ being the vaguest of indications for TENT, or does ‘here?’ give the definition with ‘Canon’ somehow indicating TENT?
54 CHAR (2 defs)
58 CERAMIC; C (= 100, i.e. ‘many’) + (AMERIC[a])*
60 HER(O)D
62 SPICE ALE; (ESPECIAL)*
65 ROBIN; R (= ‘red-headed’) + O (= ‘duck’) + rev. of NIB
66 AERONAUTS; (ARE)* + O (= ’round’) + “NOUGHT’S” – don’t think I’ve seen this variant before.
67 KOI CARP; (OR PICK A)*
68 MATINEE (2 defs) – meaning both an afternoon performance of a play and a women’s jacket for morning wear.
69 DECLARATIONS; (CALENDAR IS TO)* – an erroneous definition (‘Announcement’) which needs to be plural for the clue to work. There’s also a superfluous ‘that’.

Down
1 C + APE
2 ROE-DEER; (DOER)* (= ‘Wrongdoer’) + E (= ‘opening enclosure’) + E.R. (= ‘royal) – the enumeration here should be either (3-4) or (3,4) but not (7), according to my dictionaries.
3 SIESTA (cryptic definition) – nice.
4 MITRE (2 defs) – a mitre (corner) joint and a bishop’s hat.
5 SAGAS; AGA in S.S.
6 [l]AWFUL
7 THRUSH (2 defs)* – the checking here is terrible (only 2 letters of 6 are crossed by an across clue) and this was a bit of a guess for me, from ‘singer’. The other definition, ‘sprue’, is an obsolete word for a disease of children.
8/35 SLEIGHT (“SLIGHT”) OF HAND
9 ROSES – as in a bed of roses.
10 ACONITE; (ONE CAT I)* – I wrote in ‘acotine’ here, by analogy with ‘atropine’. I’m sure I’ve made this same mistake before and would welcome any advice as to how to remember the correct spelling! The etymology doesn’t seem helpful, with the word coming from the Latin ‘aconitum’, itself from the Greek ‘akoniton’.
11 SECRETE (2 defs)
12 TH(REEK)INGS
17 SE(AFAR)ERS
20 SHAMAN; SHAM (= ‘bogus’) + AN (= ‘one’)
21 ASS – from ‘The law is an ass’, as said by Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist.
23 PICCOLO; (I + CC) in POLO
24 KIMONOS; (SIMON OK)*
26 MANGE[r] – an inflammation of the skin of domestic animals.
27 DASHES (2 defs) – very nice double definition, with both words (‘Strokes’ and ‘hares’) having not only a different meaning in the cryptic reading as opposed to the surface reading but also being a different part of speech.
28 MAG + I
32 LUTE (2 defs) – I didn’t know that this could mean a protective coat of clay, cement or other material (from the Latin ‘lutum’, meaning ‘mud’), and spent a long time at the end looking for an alternative answer to fit ?U?E.
36 POTHOLERS; (SHORT POLE)* – nice anagram.
37 RE + DOUBT
38 ACERBIC; AC + (BRICE)* – possibly a reference to the late Bill Brice?
39 NEROLI; anag. of R (= ‘river’), NILE and O (= ‘duck’)
41 SUM + UP
42 SACK (2 defs)
43 S(HATTER)ING
45 SHERRY; ERR in SHY
47 CORNCRAKE; (ON CRACKER)* – one of these.
50 HE + X
51 DECORUM; O in DEC[ember] RUM
52 ACROBAT; A.C. + (BORAT)*
55 HUANACO (hidden) – ‘of SW China’ is all superfluous here: I think you only get huanacos (or guanacos) in South America.
57 S.C. + R.I.P + T (= ‘model’, as in the Ford Model T)
59/56 MAN IN CHARGE; MAN (= ‘crew’, as a verb) + (REACHING)* – very strange answer which I don’t think is a dictionary phrase.
61 [beyon]D + R + USE – a religious community in Syria.
62 EASEL (hidden) – a much better hidden clue.
63 P(O.K.)ER
64 OPTS; (TOPS)*

5 comments on “ST Jumbo 4308 (Sun 21 Dec) – ‘Twas the aconite before Christmas…”

  1. I liked most of this, but ended up a little annoyed at the lack of checking letters which led to 21 being empty… 7, 56, 50, 21, 20 and 45 all have more unchecked letters than checked letters. I also printed it off to take on a plane and found the original grid was screwy. Oh well, now I know what goes in 21 and it can go in the recycle bin, moving on!
  2. For 53A, I took it as MEN in TENET — TENE(MEN)T — a tenet being a “canon”. Therefore either “English” is superfluous, or only English men are “chaps.” (That last part makes sense to me, here in the U.S., where “chaps” are “guys.”)
    1. ‘Canon’ = TENET makes sense, thanks. I’d be amazed if ‘English chaps’ was intended to clue MEN: on previous evidence, much more likely is that the second ‘E’ of TENEMENT is clued twice.
  4. I plodded through this one via numerous sittings and, eventually, managed to complete it without any aids. My last two in were the cryptic defs at 9d ROSES and 3d SIESTA. Both perfectly good clues that had to wait until my lateral thinking was engaged. This can take some time.

    I agree with GLH that this grid has a number of answers with more unchecked letters than checked. This isn’t necessary in all cases as, for example, 7d and 56d could have 4 checked and 3 unchecked if 8a and 68a were extended from 7 to 10 letters.

    The unknown oil at 39d was a great example of an obscure word clued with an anagram that – unusually – I managed to enter the correct combination of NEROLI rather than RENOLI, LERONI etc. Fortunately, I knew ACONITE at 10d so I did not make the same mistake as our esteemed blogmeister.

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