Sunday Times 5144 by Robert Price

22:47. Well this was an absolute delight. I didn’t find it particularly hard, but it felt a bit like an Advent calendar, with another cryptic Christmas treat in clue after clue. Lots of lovely things in here but the thematic 17ac and 10dn are perhaps the pick of the bunch.

Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, deletions like this, anagram indicators are in italics.

Across
1 After whisky having a go at carol singing
WASSAILING – W, ASSAILING.
6 Visitors to hide turkey? And timers, we hear
BIRDWATCHERS – BIRD, WATCHERS. Is WATCHERS supposed to sound like ‘watches’? I’m pretty liberal when it comes to homophones but this is pushing it a bit even for me. Or am I missing something obvious?
14 Spiced like eggnog passed through by a footballer
NUTMEGGED – A DD, the second relating to passing the ball through the legs of an opponent in football.
15 A season mostly for jelly
ASPIC – A, SPICe.
16 Dodgy claim re virgin birth?
MIRACLE – (CLAIM RE)*.
17 Container replacing crimson sack with tights
CHRISTMAS STOCKING – (CRIMSON SACK TIGHTS)*. Brilliant!
18 Small unopened gift is something to eat
SNACK – S, kNACK. I think of a knack as more of an acquired skill, but the distinction is a fine one.
19 Smelly game bird topped and tailed by old cook
ODOROUS – O, DO, gROUSe.
21 Support function working close to Cupid
SECOND – SEC, ON, cupiD. SEC is one of the lesser-known trigonometric functions.
22 Almost all foodstuff taken from tree! Little monkey!
TAMARIN – TAMARINd.
24 Cut out customs for one day
EXCISED – EXCISE, D. The reason ‘Customs & Excise’ is so-called is that the two terms are more or less opposites (taxes on goods produced for home and export/import markets). A distinction that will concern few solvers, I suspect.
26 A child with waterproof clothing for this time of year
SEASONAL – SE(A, SON)AL. ‘Waterproof’ is a verb here.
27 Writer of a sort of card with love to Victor
ASIMOV – A, SIM, O, V.
30 Spooner voicing note skids and trips in the snow
SLEIGH RIDES – spoonerism of ‘re slides’ (musical note as in do re mi).
32 Filled with spirit, these host merry spectacles
SHOT GLASSES – (HOST)*, GLASSES.
33 Gets away with breaking Nick’s ladders
CUTS AND RUNS – CUT (nick), S, RUNS (ladders) containing AND (with).
35 Toy young women and liberal bods played with
BARBIE DOLLS – (LIBERAL BODS)*.
37 Disney dog lead for snowy walks
TRAMPS – TRAMP, Snowy. The dog from the movie Lady and the Tramp, of course.
38 Animal pelt, expensive sounding
REINDEER – homophone of ‘rain dear’.
39 Old lady artist left to entertain relations of the husband
MARITAL – MA, R(IT)A, L. IT as in sex (ooh er).
42 A sin eating Mary’s stuffing and craving more
AVARICE – A, V(mARy)ICE.
44 Festive icon’s way in from Northern Europe
NORDIC – (ICON)* containing RD. In the surface reading the apostrophe here is a possessive, in the wordplay it’s a contraction of ‘has’.
46 Foul relative borders on aggression
UNCLEAN – UNCLE, AggressioN.
48 Contemplating a slice of turkey in gravy
EYING – contained in ‘turkey in gravy’.
49 Something scary forced on a Bible woman’s chap
ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN – (ON A BIBLE WOMAN’S), MAN.
51 Men a trifle bored by king’s speech
ORATORY – OR, A, TO(R)Y.
52 Epic story detailed Cana’s first hippy?
ILIAC – ILIAd, Cana. ILIAC = of the hip.
53 Showing devotion – for some, it’s beneath them
PRAYER RUG – CD.
54 Friend’s initial anger about gross Christmas gift
FRANKINCENSE – Friend(RANK), INCENSE.
55 Wine merchant to put in a revised order
MONTRACHET – (MERCHANT TO)*. Not exactly your everyday plonk.
Down
1 Ice buckets we crammed with popular cans
WINE COOLERS – W(IN)E, COOLERS (prisons, cans). For your 55ac.
2 Randy reveller attending second year’s gathering
SATYR – S(AT), YR. AT (attending) is ‘gathered’ by S, YR: in the wordplay “year’s” is a contraction of ‘year is’ and there’s an implied ‘which’.
3 Horrors, say, children gobbling pie filling
AVERSIONS – AVER, S(pIe)ONS.
4 Tucking into what’s left, something for sticking peas?
LEGUMES – LE(GUM)ES. What’s left after racking off a barrel of wine, for instance.
5 We find socialising only barely enjoyable
NUDISTS – CD.
7 Poor soup, i.e. spoilt with cumin
IMPECUNIOUS – (SOUP IE CUMIN)*.
8 It’s lying bound up outside church
DECEIT – reversal of TIED containing CE.
9 Supreme leader of men in land unknown
ALMIGHTY – AL(Men)IGHT, Y.
10 Greeting Noël Coward, ignoring the pained expression
CHRISTMAS CARD – CHRISTMAS (Noël), CowARD. Brilliant!
11 Plainly written note to fill cake with cream
EN CLAIR – E(N)CLAIR.
12 Ask ski event about edges for carving
STEAK KNIVES – (ASK SKI EVENT)*.
13 Dancer’s driver at the present time
SANTA CLAUS – CD, ‘present’ referring to Christmas gifts of course.
20 Large band of gold on box, drab when unwrapped
ORCHESTRA – OR, CHEST, dRAb.
23 One works hard on party sandwiches
LABOURER – LABOU(RE)R. Again there’s an implied ‘which’ between ‘on’ and ‘party’.
25 Skirt put on last of all to hold a service
DIRNDL – DI(RN)D, alL. ‘Put on’ as with a play, I think: ‘this year the school did Macbeth’.
26 Ancient Jew, tragic, you view as outspoken
SADDUCEE – homophone of ‘sad you see’.
28 You might peck at this omelet, it’s nutty
MISTLETOE – (OMELET ITS)*. Lovely.
29 Old prejudice, ultimately, gets the Magi moving
AGEISM – (getS thE MAGI)*.
31 It helps climbers fighting like Peter Pan?
GRAPPLING HOOK – a definition and a barely cryptic reference to a couple of J.M. Barrie characters.
33 Lock-up storing too much nut bread
COTTAGE LOAF – C(OTT)AGE, LOAF.
34 In stories, Vixen regularly upset higher ranks
SENIORITIES – (IN STORIES vIxEn)*.
35 Some dishes have this added brass lip
BREAD SAUCE – BREAD (money, brass), SAUCE (lip). I don’t like the stuff so at Christmas my stance is ‘if you want it, make it yourself’.
36 Keeping mum close, time for a carol
SILENT NIGHT – SILENT, NIGH, T.
40 Surprise! Old chap finally turning on a musical
ROCK OPERA – ROCK, O, chaP, reversal of RE, A.
41 She sang, really, about a large nation’s borders
VERA LYNN – VER(A, L)Y, NatioN.
43 Heavyweight elephant, not right as a panto hero
ALI BABA – ALI, BABAr.
45 Cold line, see, turning up in a love song
CALYPSO – intricate wordplay here: C (cold), then L (line) and YPS (SPY, see, turning up) inside A, O (love). Phew!
46 Someone cocky adds more to pastry
UPSTART – UPS, TART.
47 Five books the writer’s given as promised
VOTIVE – V, OT, I’VE.
50 Fragrant extract from turkey after your lunch ends
MYRRHfroM turkeY afteR youR luncH.

24 comments on “Sunday Times 5144 by Robert Price”

  1. I still can’t see how unopened signals remove the k from knack in 18a. For me opened or unwrapped would have seemed more logical. Can someone explain?

    Other than that query I found this a very enjoyable puzzle.

    1. Collins defines “knack” as either “a skilful, ingenious, or resourceful way of doing something” or “a particular talent or aptitude, esp an intuitive one”—i.e., a “gift.” It’s nothing new to clue the removal of the initial letter by “unopened.”
      I think “unwrapped” would be… “nac.”

      1. I have no issue with knack being a gift. I’ve not previously encountered the use of unopened to signal removal of a first letter and don’t understand why unopened works that way. Am I missing some meaning of this word?

              1. Unfortunately Guy, neither of us seems to understand what what other is asking or saying whenever I raise a query with you. It may be a US vs UK language thing. However I do appreciate your patience in attempting to answer and thanks to those who managed to jog my brain onto the correct tracks.

                1. I understood you perfectly.
                  Although I did start off by answering keriothe’s note about the definition.

  2. What I especially liked about this – other than some of the nice cluing – is that in many theme puzzles there aren’t that many theme references, and almost all of the references come in the answers. This had a lot of theme-y stuff, and about half of it was in the clue and not in the answer. Cute.

  3. DNF
    DNK VERA LYNN, and didn’t get the wordplay. There were a couple more like that –CALYPSO, BIRDWATCHERS–that I was able to biff. For rhotic moi, ‘watches’ and ‘watchers’ are of course not homophones, but I would have thought they would be, or as near as dammit, for an RP speaker.

    1. For me it’s watchiz vs watchəz. Quite distinct. I guess some people might pronounce both as schwa.

  4. Very enjoyable. I missed the parsing of ROCK OPERA and used aids for my LOI VOITIVE, a word I can’t say I knew. It has appeared only twice before in the TfTT era, most recently in March 2019 in a 15×15 I didn’t comment on, and previously in 2011 when I also didn’t know it.

    1. I’ve ‘known’ VOTIVE since childhood; it was only when I did this puzzle that I realized I had no idea what it meant.

      1. And it’s only your comment that makes me realise that I didn’t really know either. I’ve always thought of it as ‘offered in prayer’, based purely (and quite vaguely) on what I thought a votive candle was. When I solved the clue I must have subconsciously conflated the notions of prayer and vow/promise because I didn’t question it.

  5. I worder if WATCHERS references clock-watchers, who are assiduous timers who know when 5 o’clock comes. “We hear” is not then a homophone indicator, which I agree would be dodgy.
    But a real Christmas treat, like a good TLS which works literary references into every clue, either in the answer or the clue itself. Should we be sending a thank-you letter?

      1. No, I don’t think so, just signifying “for example”, or something along those lines: it doesn’t have to signal a homophone. I wouldn’t put it past Robert to put that in just to produce the very effect it has.

        1. Sorry my first reply to this didn’t really make sense!
          I don’t think ‘we hear’ can mean ‘for example’, and even if it did I’m not sure how you get from ‘timers, for example’ to ‘clock-watchers’, and even then ‘clock-watchers’ are never called just ‘watchers’. If you said ‘Smith in accounts is a real watcher’, no-one would have a clue what you were on about!
          I do think this is a homophone, and I’m prepared to accept that in some English accents the two words are pronounced the same.

  6. Just on the hour.

    Can only imagine how long this took to compose. A sparkling effort very much enjoyed – thank you Mr P and Keriothe for the blog – agree about the two super good clues.

    Ps on further review there are a stack of other cracking clues, the simple EYING being an example

  7. Annoyingly, I’ve lost the puzzle and notes, but remember this was a cracker. One of those where you do a lot of post-parsing once the answer comes, with no doubts about its accuracy and plenty of PDMs, such as CowARD.
    I had particular trouble with the anagram for BARBIE DOLLS, as I couldn’t work out what the definition was but I knew the meaning of VOTIVE as there are votive nuns referred to in literature. A delight!

  8. I lost mine as well. I had a problem with Barbie Dolls too as the clue says “toy” whilst the answer is plural. It made me think for a bit which is no bad thing.
    Fairly sure I was unsure of the def of Votive too.
    Good puzzle.
    On edit: Oh, found it! I was so fixated on 38a “Animal pelt, expensive sounding” being Deerskin rather than Reindeer that I had a big hole in the middle. Oops, wrong pelt! Schoolboy error, and one that refused to go away.

  9. Annoyingly I didn’t keep a record of this (I solve on paper), but I echo the praises of others for this wonderful puzzle.

    – Didn’t know that ILIAC refers to the hip
    – NHO MONTRACHET so I guessed based on the most likely sounding option
    – I tend to think of a DIRNDL as a dress rather than a skirt, but I can see how either works
    – Embarrassed to say I hadn’t heard of Babar the Elephant, but ALI BABA was obvious enough

    Thanks keriothe and Robert.

    COD Christmas stocking

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