Sunday Times 4712 by Jeff Pearce

Author   keriothePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic
10:34. A fairly gentle offering from Jeff Pearce this week, but none the less enjoyable for that. I was slowed down a bit by misspelling the little fella at 8dn: I put RUMPLE instead of RUMPEL. Fortunately this is just a crossword so being forced to give up my first born child was never on the cards, and eventually I realised I had gone wrong when the answer to 11ac occurred to me. I also struggled a bit with the unknown 29ac, which took me over the ten-minute mark at the end. There are one or two other unusual words in here but they’re all fairly indicated.

So thanks to Jeff, and here’s how I think it all works.

Across
1 Charlie left party knocking back cocktail
SNOWBALL – SNOW (cocaine, aka charlie), then a reversal of L, LAB.
5 Sailor left a mark
LASCAR – L, A, SCAR.
10 Observe beetle and car crashing
CELEBRATE – (BEETLE, CAR)*. Oh, that meaning of ‘observe’.
11 Wheat uni put in snare?
DURUM – D(U)RUM. The type of wheat used in pasta.
12 North-eastern China is a mountainous area
NEPAL – NE, PAL.
13 Cool city leader leaves farm with fruit that’s not new
ANCHORAGE – rANCH, ORAnGE.
14 Asian is carrying one son for another
INDONESIAN – IND(ONE, S)IAN.
17 Price at which one may be disagreeing
ODDS – since the ODDS are the price of a bet, and if you are ‘at ODDS’ then you are in disagreement.
19 Mention sex in church
CITE – C(IT)E.
20 Removed nit for upsetting Italian scorer
MONTEVERDI – (REMOVED NIT)*.
22 Kind of cat made alarm go off
MARMALADE – (MADE ALARM)*. What I would call a ginger tabby, I think.
24 Gay? Not born straight
RIGHT – bRIGHT.
25 Lively beer’s right on time
ALERT – ALE, R, T.
27 Not knowing when badgers might appear
IN THE DARK – nocturnal creatures, badgers.
28 Place making car needs parking for it? That’s unnecessary
DE TROP – DETROit, P.
29 Cut some butter to go on this snail
RAMSHORN – RAM (butter), SHORN (cut). An acquatic snail I had never heard of, so I had to tease this one out from the wordplay.

Down
1 Deputy that might make you resign!
SECOND IN COMMAND – a reverse number where the answer is wordplay for part of the clue: SECOND IN COMMAND gives you RE(S)IGN.
2 Old player finally cut deck
ORLOP – O, playeR, LOP. Another case of trusting the wordplay: I had never heard of this name for a lower deck in a ship.
3 Show disapproval of couple grabbing black bird
BOBOLINK – BO(B)O, LINK. I needed the wordplay here too, but this bird must have come up before because it seemed familiar.
4 A shopping district erected over Peruvian transportation
LLAMA – reversal of A MALL.
6 Very much an Arabian boat
AND HOW – AN, DHOW (Arabian boat).
7 Carried on chopping leaves for cooking
CORIANDER – (CARRIED ON)*. Aka cilantro.
8 Odd plumber initially ordered little sinks for wee chap
RUMPELSTILTSKIN – RUM (odd), Plumber, (LITTLE SINKS)*.
9 Liking charm when put under pressure
PENCHANT – P, ENCHANT.
15 Scare off short toilet cleaner
DETERGENT – DETER, GENTs.
16 Nervous picadors scattered
SPORADIC – when I solved this I thought ‘how does sporadic mean nervous?’
18 Watches Durham, say, being contained by some bowling
OVERSEES – OVER(SEE)S.
21 Throw gold over Latin American dictator
CASTRO – CAST (throw), reversal of OR.
23 Special walk-on part
EXTRA – DD.
25 Fertiliser sample of Nicaraguan origin
GUANO – contained in ‘Nicaraguan origin’.

10 comments on “Sunday Times 4712 by Jeff Pearce”

  1. so definitely an easy ST, although I biffed the 1s: DNK ‘Charlie’, but remembered the cocktail from a recentish cryptic (sounds awful to me, but then most cocktails do); and couldn’t figure out the wordplay in 1d, trying for some time to do something with O (2d in ‘command’). I also, like K, started on 16d with the wrong word for anagrind. DNK RAMSHORN (I wonder if anyone did), but. We did have BOBOLINK recently; I remember remarking on its song. COD maybe 28ac.

    Edited at 2016-09-25 02:47 am (UTC)

  2. 29ac was known hereabouts – plenty found in aquaria.

    24mins LOI 3dn BOBOLINK WOD.

    FOI 1ac SNOWBALL.

    I didn’t realise that 5ac LASCAR was specifically an Arab, Indian or Chinese sailor.

    I too misspelt RUMPELSTILTSKIN initially as per keriothe.

    11ac DURUM reminds me of the Pink Panther!

    COD 7dn CORIANDER

    horryd Shanghai

  3. Keriothe,are you serious that you had never heard of ORLOP?I think this one is fairly common in crosswordland,remember filling it in a DT xword in the early 90’s.Ong’ara,Kenya.
    1. A quick google suggests it hasn’t come up in the Times crossword at least since this blog started, so I don’t think it’s that common. I’d never heard of it, anyway, but fortunately the wordplay was clear.

      Edited at 2016-09-25 10:23 am (UTC)

      1. This is definitely a word I learnt fairly recently from crossword puzzles so I’m surprised the Google search comes up with nothing but this blog. I don’t do very many puzzles other than The Times. The word never fails to remind me of “The Hands of Orlac”, a horror story that has been filmed and adapted for TV on several occasions since 1935.
        1. From a search on fifteensquared it seems to have come up quite regularly in other puzzles: twice in Everyman in 2014, for instance.
          1. Thanks for that, k. My regular puzzle away from The Times is the Everyman, so that must be where I know it from, yet it seems a bit obscure for them.
  4. Fairly straightforward for a Sunday apart from the wordplay at 1dn which I worked out eventually having biffed the correct answer, and the unknown 29ac. Once I’d thought of RAM for “butter” the answer seemed most likely but I had made the mistake of assuming “some” was necessary to the clue and “some butter” had me considering PAT for a while.
  5. At the easier end (I happened to know the deck and bird). Not entirely sure 1d works for me because of the “you”. I would prefer “Resign as a consequence of deputy” perhaps?

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