Sunday Times 4553 (1 Sep 2013) by Jeff Pearce

Solving time: 39:25

I wasn’t keen on this one as it seemed to require an awful lot of specialised knowledge. There were lots of unknowns to me – the birds PRION and TOURACO, the plant ERIGERON, the fact that Welling was part of Bexley, and the phrase RAREE-SHOW.

It wasn’t that difficult though, for all that, and had I known all those words then I probably would have raced through it in record time. I rather liked 12a and 4d, the latter of which gets my COD. And 27a was quite good too, although would have worked slightly better as a down clue.

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

Across
1 VITALS = kepT in VIALS
5 OFF + STAGE
9 R(INGLe)EADER
10 UTAH = rUTH about A
11 wEDGE
12 THIRD PARTY = PARTY (band) after (HIT)* + RD (road) – ‘Cover’ is the definition in an insurance sense.
14 PRI(S)ON – PRION as a bird was one of several unknowns for me today
16 TOPCOATS = TOP (best) + (ASCOT)*
18 ERIGERON = (GREEN OR Indigo)* – Another unknown for me.
20 COWARD = COD about RAW rev
22 PERNICKETY = PE (gym) + RICKETY (likely to collapse) about stanchioN – I’m not sure about the usage of ‘nice’ as a definition here, but I believe it’s OK in a little used sense.
24 RAbID – lift & separate required on ‘heart attack’
26 CHAR – Initials of Chronicle Hadn’t Any Readers
27 APP (Perhaps Candy Crush, Candy Crush being the popular Facebook app of the moment) + RENT (payment) all put on ICE (delayed) – I’m not sure how well this works as an across clue – down would have been better.
29 S + WELLING – I’m from the southeast originally, but I couldn’t have told you that Welling was situated in the southern part of the London Borough of Bexley. I guessed it from the checkers, but this seems quite a specialist knowledge required.
30 MODE + ST (two ways)
Down
2 I + VIED
3 ALGIERS = AL + “JEERS”
4 SWEETENER = (ENTERS)* about WEE – ‘pill to replace sugar’ is the definition
5 ODD – dd
6 F(I)RED
7 T(OUR)ACO – Another bird I didn’t know
8 GIANT STAR = (STARTING)* about A
13 INTENSE = “IN TENTS”
15 RAREE-SHOW = (WAR HEROES)* – Another expression unkown to me
17 PACHYDERM = (CAMP + Y + HERD)*
19 GENERAL – I think this is a quadruple definition – that’s just showing off!
21 WORSTED = W + (SORTED)*
23 COATI = CAT (catamaran, vessel) + I about archipelagO – another obscure creature, but at least I’d heard of this one.
25 INCUS = IN + S about CU – the proper name for the bone of the inner ear commonly known as the anvil
28 PUG – dd – short for ‘pugilist’

8 comments on “Sunday Times 4553 (1 Sep 2013) by Jeff Pearce”

  1. A good 20 mins for me – I did know Welling As Keriothe says, the plant one of those where you have to play around with the anagram letters until you suddenly remember a plant our plant-mad son planted in the garden before he left the country! I particuarly liked the quadruple definition.
  2. 27:57 for me. This puzzle irritated the hell out of me. All the difficulty comes from gratuitous obscurity. “Southern pPart of Bexley”, seriously? And then at the end an obscurity clued by an anagram where if you don’t know the word you can more or less put the vowels in any order and get a word that looks as likely as the correct answer. I confess I looked up ERIGERON before submitting.

    Edited at 2013-09-08 12:04 pm (UTC)

  3. Point of order: the clue only specifies part of Bexley, not southern part. If memory serves, and I visited a lot of Royal Arsenals flogging Branston and Nescafé in my youth, Welling is actually in the west central part of the borough. Bob Hope was born down the road in Eltham.
  4. The hardest Jeff Pearce I can recall, due to a raft of unknowns. PRISON and SWELLING went in purely on the definition, I knew TOURACO from a visit to Uganda (not a bird fan but the Great Blue Touraco is a fine looking fellow), but was done in by the RAREE-SHOW/ERIGERON anagramfest. I guessed correctly at RAREE-SHOW, but chose some other alternative to ERIGERON.

    Re 19D, we had a quintuple definition back in December. Bring on the six!

    COD to TOURACO, the surface of which reminded me of a childhood friend whose family ate their pet rabbit.

  5. No solving time for this one as I think I dozed off and finished it later. I agree with all the negative comments so far and I shared all the Don’t Knows mentioned to this point. I had absolutely no idea what Candy Crush was about and having found out I’m rather proud of not knowing it. Do we really need to resort to this sort of potentially ephemeral drivel unless it has lasted long enough to make it into a reference work of some substance?

    Edited at 2013-09-08 02:04 pm (UTC)

  6. I knew Raree Show, but the other somewhat obscure answers had me thumbing the dictionary sufficiently after I was done guessing that I couldn’t submit. Even the should-be-known Pernickety threw me – I could only think of the related Persnickety, and spent ages trying to parse the S in some way, or else to re-set the grid with one extra square. Neither effort met with much success.
    PS – count me with jackkt regarding cutting edge popular culture.

    Edited at 2013-09-08 02:38 pm (UTC)

  7. Same complaints here, although RAREE SHOW (or just RAREE) is something of a NY Times chestnut, and I knew TOURACO (I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve had it here before). Prions and Bexley at least weren’t that much of a problem given the checkers, but Candy Crush! I second Jack’s comment, except for the ‘potentially’.

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