Sunday Times 4682 by Jeff Pearce – Despicable Lee

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
20m. I got through most of this quickly but then made a bit of a hash of the last few clues. One of these (DESPICABLE) had an arguably rather loose definition, and a couple of the answers (SALAMANDER, DOLOMITE) weren’t exactly everyday terms, but it still felt like I made unnecessarily heavy weather of them.

There are a couple of bloopers in here, both of which have been acknowledged by Peter Biddlecombe on the Club forum, but neither of which caused me any real problems while solving. In this regard I was greatly helped by having no very precise idea of where Omaha is. There are a couple of other things that struck me as a bit loose when going through the puzzle for blogging purposes, but with the one exception I’ve already mentioned none of them caused me any problems while solving either, and all in all this was another very enjoyable puzzle, so thanks to Jeff and here’s how I think it all works.

Across
1 Fruit and a soft white cheese? No thanks!
APRICOT – A, P, RICOTta.
5 Dog and what its cruel owner is heard to do?
WHIPPET – sounds like ‘whip it’.
9 Hoo-ha made by Royal pair with horrible fluff on rear of throne
KERFUFFLE – K, ER (Royal pair), (FLUFF)*, thronE.
10 Note heard by this singer
TENOR – sounds like ‘tenner’.
11 Dozing snake seen around meadow
ASLEEP – AS(LEE)P. This alternative spelling of LEA is arguably not quite cricket, as it’s not in Collins or ODO, and even in Chambers it doesn’t have its own entry, and I see from the club forum that Peter Biddlecombe has acknowledged this. On the other hand with ASLE_P and ‘dozing’ in the clue it seems unlikely that anyone will have gone with ASLEAP, so I think this is a case where the Pragmatism Override can be legitimately deployed.
12 Vet left Omaha flying to reach a state further north
OKLAHOMA – OK (vet), L, (OMAHA)*. Even for the most pragmatic of solvers, OKLAHOMA isn’t north of Omaha.
14 Some French guy, say, pinches very good bum
DESPICABLE – DES (some French), CABLE (guy, say) containing PI. Whether PI means ‘very good’ or ‘affecting very-goodness’ has been debated around these parts before, but this definition is well-established in crosswordland. I’m not sure about ‘bum’ for DESPICABLE, though: a ‘bum’ might be a DESPICABLE person, but as an adjective it seems to me it means something different. But even if this is a little oblique the delightfully naughty surface reading more than makes up for it.
16 Steam iron captivates surrealist
MIRO – Joan of that ilk. Contained in ‘steam iron’.
18 Idiot starts to play rough and act oddly
PRAT – first letters of ‘play rough’, odd letters of ‘act’.
19 Nasty dog’s very old and fast
MALEVOLENT – MALE (here ‘dog’ is the opposite of ‘bitch’), V, O, LENT (fast).
22 Star takes young girl around entertainment centre
LAS VEGAS – LAS(VEGA)S. That Vega is a star is something I know vaguely from past crosswords. See also Rigel.
23 Aussie playing it appears 11
POSSUM – because to ‘play possum’ is an expression meaning to feign sleep. I don’t think it’s necessarily an Australian expression, and in fact ODO suggests it comes from the behaviour of the opossum when threatened. The American opossum is known as ‘possum’, but it’s not actually the same animal as the Australian possum. Reaching for the Pragmatism Override again, however, I’ll say that whatever the origin of the expression, the ‘Aussie’ reference pointed me in the right direction.
26 Endless clue about firm material? Just the opposite!
CHINO – an unusual construction: the wordplay is CO (firm) about HINt (endless clue) rather than the opposite. And note that the definition isn’t always at the end of the clue.
27 Cup tie with lad playing match
DUPLICATE – (CUP TIE, LAD)*. Slightly looseish definition, I thought.
28 Mistakenly suppose Glastonbury feature is a copy for Spooner?
TAKE FOR – a Spoonerism of ‘fake tor’. Another slightly stretchy definition?
29 Article on “It girl”
THERESA – THE (article), RE (on), SA. In crosswords, SA means ‘it’. SA isn’t short for ‘sex appeal’ and ‘it’ doesn’t mean ‘sex appeal’, but for the purposes of solving crosswords we all pretend. Just get used to it.

Down
1 Clumsy seller loses her charge
AWKWARD – hAWKer, WARD. It’s a little unusual for ‘loses’ to indicate a removal where the word in question isn’t all in the same place.
2 Game bird seen briefly up in the country
RURAL – RU (game), reversal of LARk.
3 Gossip about employer that’s short
CAUSERIE – CA (about), USER, IE (that’s short).
4 Rubbish written about female President
TAFT – TA(F)T. A prescient surface reading? We can but hope.
5 Weird leek left out by gardener’s friend?
WEED KILLER – (WEIRD LEEK, L)*.
6 One artist has some old books — there’s work to be done here!
IN-TRAY – I, (Man) RAY containing NT (some old books). You wait ages for a Surrealist and then fourteen dancing pineapples come along at once.
7 Criticise volume when I’m in show
PANTOMIME – PAN (criticise), TOM(IM)E.
8 Fuss made about sailors and a very strong wind
TORNADO – TO(RN, A)DO.
13 Monk cleaving smoother poker
SALAMANDER – SA(LAMA)NDER. A ‘poker used hot for kindling fires’ according to Chambers. This seemed vaguely familiar once I’d solved it, but it took me a while..
15 Comedy hits get sign of approval
SLAPSTICK – SLAPS, TICK.
17 Miss cutting small portion in stone
DOLOMITE – DOL(OMIT)E. My last in, by a long chalk. I thought of DOLOMITE early on based on the mountains, but I didn’t see ‘miss’ for OMIT. Instead I managed to convince myself that the small portion was a MITE or a BITE, which unsurprisingly hindered my solving effort.
18 European court imprisons a weaselly type
POLECAT – POLE, C(A)T.
20 Paint member of agency staff joining Times
TEMPERA – TEMP (member of agency staff), ERA.
21 Extremely likeable member of upper classes is fired
LET OFF – LikeablE, TOFF.
24 Fish under small rock
SHAKE – S, HAKE.
25 Discern a good deal when schilling crashes
SPOT – which when the S falls to the bottom (‘schilling crashes’) becomes POTS.

16 comments on “Sunday Times 4682 by Jeff Pearce – Despicable Lee”

  1. I wondered about ASLEEP, but just assumed that LEE would be found as an alternate spelling if I were to look in those dictionaries. I didn’t even think about DESPICABLE=bum at the time, but now that keriothe mentions it, it is a bit suspicious. And (I was rather obtuse last Sunday) I didn’t stop to wonder what SALAMANDERs had to do with poking. Slowed myself down by coming up with ‘carp’ as the fish. Possums play dead, not asleep: What advantage would a possum derive from pretending to be asleep? Other than maybe getting out of some household chores.

    Edited at 2016-02-28 05:40 am (UTC)

  2. Very enjoyable but with several opportunities for nitpicking apparently, none of which played any part in my thought process whilst solving. Even the obscure LEE for “meadow” has come up somewhere within the past month or two, and I looked it up then so I knew it. 45 minutes.

    Edited at 2016-02-28 05:37 am (UTC)

    1. Are you sure it was ‘lee’ (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before) and not ‘lea’ (which is quite common)?
      1. Yes, absolutely, but it’s possible it wasn’t in a Times crossword, not that I do many others regularly (maybe it was Oldie Genius). I tried searching TftT but a three-letter word is not the easiest to track down.
        1. All the examples of LEE I can find have it as ‘shelter’ (or Laurie Lee) so perhaps it was somewhere else.
  3. I’m happy to accept responsibility for slip-ups, but for both of these, your dispute is with the dictionaries. Apart from the Oxford D of English describing sa=sex appeal as “dated”, this and Collins back us up 100%. See also “it girl” in wikipedia, for confirmation that this expression isn’t as dated as it used to be.
    1. I took a look at a couple of dictionaries–my new electronic job contains a couple dozen, albeit mostly Japanese–and sure enough, my dispute is with the dictionaries. It’s hard to tell from the example sentences whether the sleep sense is intended; but in any case it is an odd behavior to attribute to an animal. But then so is sticking one’s head in the sand.
      1. The original behaviour may be to imitate death, but a human doing that might elicit more of a reaction then they intended. ‘Is Bob coming to the shops? No, I looked in on him and he’s dead, let’s just go without him’.
        My comment about SA/it was supposed to be a little joke. Lighten up people!

        Edited at 2016-02-28 11:18 am (UTC)

    2. As I’ve said my comment was meant as a joke, but as you mention ‘it girl’, it has always struck me that ‘sex appeal’ is at best a rather reductive definition of ‘it’ in this context, since being stylish and, in recent cases at least, posh, are integral parts of the concept. Sex appeal is if you like necessary but very far from sufficient.

      Edited at 2016-02-28 09:53 am (UTC)

      1. On the joke side: usual problem on the internet. How do people tell?

        “reductive”: maybe so, but if we had to be as precise as “sex appeal with posh stylishness”, I don’t think entertaining cryptic clues would be a practical proposition.

        1. Fair point: perhaps I should have put a little smiley face next to it. 🙂
          I do think SA/it is a bit silly: you’ll never encounter it outside crosswords.

          Edited at 2016-02-28 12:09 pm (UTC)

  4. Rushed down to the comments section to defend It = sa = sex appeal, but I find it’s already been authoritatively done .. these are not only technically correct but surely one of the great crosswording traditions, right up there with priest = Eli and supporter = bra. Hands off! You’ll be complaining about red telephone boxes next, Keriothe…
  5. I got lost in the Dolomites – thanks for the parse Keriothe. I did the same as you with “mite” and then just threw up my hands. Not too bothered by LEE, SA, POSSUM or the fuzzy geography. Nice to see a surrealist other than Dali, Miro and Ernst (not to mention Dada). Forgot the time – 14.20

    Edited at 2016-02-28 12:18 pm (UTC)

  6. After playing possum all day just had to comment and say it was an enjoyable crossword and an even better blog. I did look twice at ‘lee’ for ‘meadow’ but no real objection, and ‘it’ and ‘sa’ are entirely acceptable. Marked DESPICABLE as COD so little in the way of agreeing with the blogger. Nevertheless I appreciate the, no slight intended, smiley face, earnest nitpicking.
  7. Not that I got it, but once I looked up the answer I thought that the “Aussie” had to do with Dame Edna, who greeted her audience as possums.

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