Sphinx fails to start with rake ts:start or rake ts:rebuild

$ rake ts:start
Failed to start searchd daemon. Check ../log/searchd.log.
Failed to start searchd daemon. Check ../log/searchd.log
Be sure to run thinking_sphinx:index before thinking_sphinx:start

Almost always is the case for me that searchd is already running / orphaned and needs to be killed. Run

$ps -ax | grep searchd

shows that its already running

49630 ttys000    0:00.06 searchd --pidfile --config ../config/development.sphinx.conf
49644 ttys001    0:00.00 perl /usr/local/bin/grep searchd

and kill it

$kill -9 49630

Voila!