Sunday Times 4428 (10 Apr 2011)

Author   daveperryPosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
Solving time: About 24 minutes, albeit with one mistake. Pretty standard fare.

There were three words I didn’t know, but all went in confidently enough from the wordplay alone. They were PINON, NISEI & ANIMADVERSION.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 COTTAGE CHEESE = (SETTEE + CHOC)* about AGE
10 EN FAMILLE – cd – This was where I went wrong. I was vaguely aware of the phrase, but went for EN FAMILIE.
11 BARON = “BARREN”
12 PIN + ON – A piñon is a type of North American pine nut, or the pine tree it grows on.
13 S(TREAT)HAM – Not the best known part of London. My sister used to live in Tooting, just a stonesthrow from Streatham, so it wasn’t a problem for me.
14 RE + IN + DEE + mooR
16 L + I + QUID
19 TOGGLE = (LEG GOT)*
20 RINGSIDE = RINGS + I + ED rev
22 ZO + ROASTER = This was straightforward enough once the Z was in place. I’d heard of the Zo people, but hadn’t realized they were native to Tibet. I also thought the prophet was called ZOROASTRA, but I may have been getting confused with ZARATHUSTRA.
24 CHE + SS
25 NISEI = IE + SIN all rev. Technically, a NISEI is a citizen of anywhere except Japan. So they could be American, but could also be Australian or European. A Nisei is a child born to Japanese parents in a foreign country.
26 AN + TIP + AS TO
27 MAGNETIC FIELD – cd
Down
2 OFF + ENDING
3 TIMON – hidden – a reference to Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens.
4 GALOSHES = GAL + (SHOES)*
5 C(HE + E)RY
6 EMBRACING = E + MB + (CARING)*
7 SARAH + HAS rev about RA
8 TEMPER + ATE + Zoo + ONE
9 A + NIM + AD + VERSION – Nim is an ancient strategy game.
15 DALMATIAN = LAD rev + MAT + IAN
17 UNIVERSAL = (SLAVE I RUN)*
18 HIERATIC = (CHAIR IT)* about aislE
21 STRAIT = “STRAIGHT”
23 RASTA = A TSAR rev
24 C + APRIl

6 comments on “Sunday Times 4428 (10 Apr 2011)”

  1. The zo referred to (well-known to Scrabble players) is a yak/cow hybrid, and hence the source of the “beef” in the clue. Zarathustra is just an alternative name for Zoroaster.
  2. On NISEI: They may not be defining the word according to its Japanese meaning, but Chambers, Collins and ODE all have “American or Canadian” in their definition.
  3. 28 minutes so fairly straightforward for me, 22ac being the only unknown but worked out from the wordplay. I see I pencilled ZECHARIAH in the margin which must have been early in the proceedings with only a couple of checkers in place, hoping for a repeat of the answer that gave me problems a couple of days earlier.

    On today’s puzzle, 11ac would have been a fun clue if we’d had the Latin for six again!

  4. 26/28 which was pretty good for me but I had one mistake. I had PITON for 12ac rather than PINON (never heard of it). As a climber I used to enjoy bashing pitons in to Cairngorm granite when winter climbing in the dark corries of Lochnagar. So I immediately seized on ‘metal peg’ as the definition. I duly thought it was PIT (for v small tree!), + ON. Of course, it doesn’t quite read right but it never occurred to me it could be wrong and so I totally failed on 2d which now looks ridiculously straightforward.

    Didn’t get 9d either and the NIM part would have stumped me. Thanks for the blog. More learned, as ever…

  5. 13′, a PB. I had no idea what was going on in 22, never having heard of a zo. ‘nisei’ (‘issei’, ‘sansei’) simply means ‘2d (1st, 3d) generation’ in Japanese–Queen Elizabeth is Elizabeth Nisei 二世–but then this is English. But the word doesn’t itself connote citizenship; Nisei are American citizens because they were born in the US to US-resident Japanese. If they had been born in Germany (or, mutatis mutandis, Japan!) they wouldn’t be citizens of that country.

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