Sunday Times Cryptic 4947 by Robert Price — Yo-’o-’o, and a bottle of rum ♫

Author   Guy du SablePosted on Categories Weekend Cryptic

I flashed on the answer to 13 on first glance, so decided to take the time then to work out the long anagram in 16, which made it possible to finish everything below that pretty quickly before tackling the top half.

There’s almost a Cockney theme ’ere, if we include with 22 and 18 the random aitch dropped in 27.

I indicate (a Sam rang)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.

ACROSS
 1 Language game on the radio (4)
THAI — “tie” Collins: sport, British | a match or game in an eliminating competition | a cup tie… As y’all know. But an American like myself might have assumed “tie” was linked to “game” only in the sense of a particular match that ended in a draw.
 4 Plot linking kids to the main crime (10)
CONSPIRACY — CONS, “kids” + PIRACY, “main (sea) crime”
 9 Mariner’s story about halting descent (6)
ABSEIL — AB[’]S, “mariner(Able Bodied)’s” + LIE<=“about”
10 Carp’s tail gripped by land animal (8)
TERRAPIN — TERRA(P)IN
11 Staunch a flow evenly, opening bandages (8)
STALWART — ST(A)([-f]L[-o]W)ART… START or “opening” is wrapping or “bandag[ing]” the other elements. I prefer to stick with the spelling “stanch” for the other word alluded to here, but then you wouldn’t have an apparent double meaning to play with.
12 One might hold your trunks up? (6)
LOGJAM — CD
13 Writing page messily could be humbling (6,4,1,3)
TAKING DOWN A PEG — TAKING DOWN, “Writing” + (page)*
16 Conclude a menu skimped on rum (4,4,4,2)
MAKE ONES MIND UP — (a menu skimped on)*
20 State of play on words agreed in Europe with Britain’s leader (6)
PUNJAB — PUN, “play on words” + JA, “agreed in Europe” (not to be too precise) + B(-ritain)
22 Murders look common in Whitechapel (8)
BUTCHERS — DD, as a verb and a noun (CRS, “butcher’s hook”)
24 Hint of bosom (8)
INTIMATE — DD
25 High flyer and rich earl busy ripping off banks (6)
ICARUS — “Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky”… COD, for the true-to-life story of the surface (this rotten world is full of such bounders!) and its seamless blending with the indicator of a device we don’t see every day.
26 Trying different elements out to eliminate Uranium (10)
NETTLESOME — (elements o[-u]t)*
27 Statistics collected at ’ardware stores (4)
DATA — ’idden

DOWN
 2 Home of some in Derby perhaps (7)
HABITAT — H(A BIT)AT
 3 What a trader might claim is perfect (5)
IDEAL — “I deal”
 4 Tin with new filling: Irish food (9)
COLCANNON — COL(CAN, “tin”+ N)ON I got this from the checkers and it took a moment to see that the punctuation mark is essential to the parsing. Brilliant!
 5 Scored at last then went around with no top on (7)
NOTATED — [-the]N + [-r]OTATED I hastily put in NOTCHED, which I had to correct before I could get my LOI, 11.
 6 Threat from peripheral power goddess has left (5)
PERIL — PERIPHERAL, removing P(ower) and the divine Hera
 7 Protection during withdrawal from a rare drug treatment (9)
REARGUARD — (a rare drug)*
 8 Making up like Bob and Penny were (7)
COINAGE — Sweet. But they couldn’t kiss without the vaccine… I think the idea here is fairly obvious, yet have some difficulty in prising apart the layers. Any old word (such as the nicknames spun off of “Robert” and “Penelope”) had to be coined by someone sometime, and the fact that both “[b]ob” and “[p]enny” were once numismatic neologisms could be seen as just a bonus. Yet it cannot help but seal the deal as to what word is wanted here.
14 Joke in ENT about another body part (4,5)
KNEE JOINT — (Joke in ENT)* On both sides of the pond, ENT is a hospital department or a physician taking care of your ears, nose and throat.
15 Measure of corporation rubbish broadcast on cable (9)
WAISTLINE — “waste” + LINE, “cable”
17 Manual distributed to English students once (7)
ALUMNAE — (manual)* + E(nglish)
18 Very cool reserves star at West Ham, we hear (7)
SUBZERO — “subs” + “’ero”
19 Search activity (7)
PURSUIT — DD
21 Flash jacket that lacks finish (5)
BLAZE — BLAZE[-r]
23 Crowd almost surrounding a squirrel (5)
HOARD — HO(A)RD[-e]

27 comments on “Sunday Times Cryptic 4947 by Robert Price — Yo-’o-’o, and a bottle of rum ♫”

  1. FOI TAKING DOWN A PEG; like Guy I flashed on it at once. I assumed that West Ham is somewhere in h-dropping country. Biffed NOTATED and COLCANNON, which I somehow remembered. It was only after submitting that I finally twigged to the :. Definite COD, but I also liked CONSPIRACY, LOGJAM (LOI) & PERIL. Guy, you’ve got a typo at 21d.
  2. It took me a while to get going and found myself searching for anagrams but it all fell into place soon enough.
    Like you, Guy, I was impressed with the device in 25ac ICARUS.
    FOI: PERIL LOI: LOGJAM which I thought was very good but my COD, like Kevin said, goes to COLCANNON.
    I loved the use of the :
    Thanks, Guy!
  3. 37 minutes. LOI and COD was LOGJAM. Penultimate and another brilliant clue was the Irish dish, which had to be constructed from its ingredients. Great stuff. Thank you Robert and Guy.
  4. 18.18 for this one, wondering if NETTLESOME was a word,and whether the setter originally had METTLESOME thought that would be too easy.
    I think COINAGE is more straightforward than you make it: Bob and Penny were, as you suggest, “numismatic neologisms”, but they were also simply coinage, Bob having gone the way of all silver and Penny giving way in the UK to the horrid singular/plural pence.
    I have “fond” memories of MacDonalds advertising their 99p offerings as costing less than “a pound, also known as a bob”, and refusing to acknowledge that they’d made a mistake. I had some fun correspondence with them on that one
    1. As far as I could determine, COINAGE means “coins collectively,” not a specific currency (I don’t have Chambers in print, though; who knows what’s in there…) and I thought these coins were still in use, whereas the clue says “once were.” But I just got around to looking up “shilling”… Damn!

      Edited at 2021-03-28 11:42 am (UTC)

      1. Which means we’ve apparently lost the ability to read. “One pence” is rather too common these days.

  5. It took me quite a while to get started. FOI was HOARD; then I managed to get the bottom half with the exception of 24a. So about 16 clues in my first hour.
    I then glanced at it whilst watching West Ham play (they were leading Arsenal 3-0 at half-time). And West Ham are in 18d.
    A big help was knowing COLCANNON and eventually my last two were LOGJAM and COINAGE.
    A most enjoyable Sunday challenge. Favourite was INTIMATE.
    David
  6. High class crossword, this one. Several lovely clues including 12ac, 4dn, 25ac. Good surface readings throughout.

    8dn is a very simple clue, bob and penny being coins, ie coinage. As I see Z says above

    Edited at 2021-03-28 09:33 am (UTC)

    1. That’s what I thought before I looked up the word. But I thought both coins were out of circulation, so you’d say they still “are” coins (and together both COINAGE). The clue says “once were.”

      Edited at 2021-03-28 11:40 am (UTC)

      1. Well of course they are still coins, I’ve even got some, somewhere .. and you can have Roman coinage, can’t you?

        Collins says: COINAGE:

        2 – metal money; coins
        4 – an invented word or expression

        It is just a simple DD, that is all. The setter says “were” to point out that in a shop, you might struggle to use them nowadays

        Edited at 2021-03-28 11:55 am (UTC)

        1. Those are the only two definitions I saw too. I didn’t think you could pull out a handful of pennies and call that “coinage.” I took that definition as more abstract. Ah, well…

          Edited at 2021-03-28 12:01 pm (UTC)

      2. Shillings are not used any more, so the setter had to use the past tense. I read the clue this way too.
        1. I meant to write, of course (should still be in bed…) “I thought both coins were still in circulation.”
          In any case, I don’t see how the same tense would work for both, if only one is out of circulation.

          Edited at 2021-03-28 11:54 am (UTC)

  7. Something amiss here, despite taking almost an hour to complete, our time is shown as 0-9:0-7, we’re first on the leaderboard with a whopping 941 points, beating the fleetest neutrinos out of the park.
  8. ….sometimes says of a pub that is off the beaten track that “the effort to find rewards the searcher”, and so it was for me when I’d spent three minutes alpha-trawling my LOI, and the PDM was wonderful.

    FOI TAKING DOWN A PEG (usually ….”or two”)
    LOI & COD LOGJAM (it’ll never replace gin and lime marmalade, as Mr.Price himself will surely agree !)
    TIME 14:53

  9. 15:39. A brilliant puzzle. 4dn was my last in: the answer seemed obvious but the wordplay eluded me for a while. Great stuff.
  11. 16:21 Lovely stuff as usual from Robert. I particularly enjoyed COLCANNON and INTIMATE. Thanks Guy and Robert.
    1. Oh, OK. I really wanted to be able to simply say, “Yeah, they’re coins!” but for some reason my mind had to make it more complicated.

      There are five countries that still use shillings. Of course, shillings would be bobs only in the UK.

      Edited at 2021-03-28 12:14 pm (UTC)

  13. 15.20 a very enjoyable canter, highlights for me were the colcannon punctuation mark clue, coinage and my favourite the subs ‘ero on the bench at Upton Park, sorry London Stadium.
  14. Thanks Guy, nice blog, and real thanks to Robt. No MERs, lots of ticks. Extra time spent trying to get ‘luggage” out of my mind and Logjam in. I’m a sucker for clues like 4d where the punctuation is used, so COD there, for me, and I also liked Waistline.

    Edited at 2021-03-28 04:00 pm (UTC)

  15. Just got round to this one only to need aids to finish 4dn – then I needed your blog to get the colon reference. Thanks!
  16. Thanks Bob and guy
    Typically enjoyable puzzle with a wide variety of devices to contend with along with some great anagrams. IDEAL was the pop out clue on the first pass, then down to PUNJAB. The two long ones came mid-solve.
    COLCANNON came to mind quite early for some reason (obviously had lodged in the memory banks from previous crosswords, wonder what it tastes like). Took a while to convince myself why until that punctuation as a word trick finally dropped. Didn’t twig to the West Ham folk dropping the ‘aitches’ and just put it down as a ‘sound like clue’.
    Finished in the NE corner with COINAGE (took ages for the penny (and the bob) to drop), PERIL (clever and was my clue of the day) and LOGJAM (which required an alpha-crawl and became my runner up cod).
    1. wonder what it tastes like

      Absolutely delicious. One of my favourite dinners as a kid. Use one of the simple recipes if you make it, just potatoes, cabbage (or Kale) and green onions.

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