i Cryptic Crossword 4131 Alchemi
May 3, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳
This was a bright and breezy crossword which was a pleasure to solve. A little less challenging than I have come to expect for a Friday, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
There were a few midly obscure bits of vocabulary. We had the trees at 14d. I think I have come across this before, probably in another crossword, but I’m more familiar with it (in the singular) as the forename of the writer of detective stories, Marsh. This was clued in a friendly way, even if the surface reading puzzled me. We had the old word halt at 4d. There was the Roman house(hold) god at 13ac. This I knew in the plural form, so it just required the briefest of checks. But both of these were also clued accessibly, and with helpful crossing letters.
One bit of parsing detained me, which was 7d, where I was left wondering how pears might be redundant, before realising it was East rather than South that needed moving.
My Clue of the Day is 5d. It is a long anagram, but with a very smooth surface reading, no small acheivement: “Golf club trashed in anecdotal yarn (5,3,7)”.
Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/05/23/independent-10487-by-alchemi/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
I agree with all the above, and don’t mind at all that the puzzle was less challenging than three in particular that have appeared recently. My biggest delay was something I avoid in real life – MUSHY PEAS. I just do’t see this as a “dish” as even if I preferred them toz the real thing, I would never want them on their own. SIDE DISH might have worked better. However I’m not complaining. Clues which detain are part of the challenge. The delay compensated for the earlier PDM with a crossing A nd C, I thought of ANCIENT and the CoD hit me without needing to write out all 15 letters.
I guess mushy peas are like Marmite – love ’em or hate ’em. If we order fish and chips for two we’re asked ‘garden peas or mushy peas?’ and our answer is always ‘one garden and one mushy’. But I agree mushy peas are a side dish not a (main) dish.
No more than the one egg-timer required here for, as you say, a bright and breeze puzzle. My favourite was 7d.
Hmm, I had it pegged as closer to ⌛⌛⌛; must be just me. 3d felt a bit “well that’s not a ‘dictionary’ phrase, is it?” Couldn’t parse 16d (not convinced by the 15² blog explanation of how ‘hear Charles possibly’ leads to RA, but heigh ho).
Don’t think you need to split that part of the wordplay up – hear Charles possibly perform becomes Ray sing = racing
Ah okay