A couple of typos appear to have crept in to this week’s puzzle.
Other than that, we have Mac and Glasgow as Scottish indicators and a couple of Spenserian terms (with no mention of Ed). I have a couple of quibbles with the parsing of 10 and 18 down but nothing that caused any real difficulty.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ENGULPH |
Hospital needed after crazy plunge in swamp once (7)
|
| *PLUNGE + H(ospital). “Needed” like “required” (see 3 down in the discussion last week) is one of those words that Azed uses to indicate placement of an element of the answer. | ||
| 7 | SCOPS |
Hooter signalling special police (5)
|
| S(pecial) COPS. It’s a kind of owl, hence a hooter. | ||
| 13 | ALOHA SHIRT |
Silly tailor about to make mess of bright summer wear (10, 2 words)
|
| HASH (mess) in *TAILOR. | ||
| 14 | SCRIMURE |
Fencer no longer confident, pierced by delinquent? (8)
|
| CRIM (delinquent) inside SURE. It’s labelled as “obsolete” by Chambers, hence “no longer” in the clue. | ||
| 15 | TEADE |
Meal of foreign brand (discontinued) (5)
|
| TEA (meal) DE (French, hence foreign, for “of”). It’s a word used by Spenser to mean a torch. | ||
| 16 | CLIFT |
Opening in the Bible, chapter leading to elation (5)
|
| C(hapter) LIFT. It’s an alternative spelling of “cleft”, meaning an opening made by cleaving. | ||
| 17 | INSATIATE |
Anti-eats? That’s wrong – I’ll tuck in, voracious (9)
|
| I inside *ANTIEATS. | ||
| 19 | GLEI |
Clayey stuff featuring regularly in galleria (4)
|
| Alternate letters (“regularly”) in GaLlErIa. | ||
| 20 | LYCEUM |
Where one might have studied unravelling my clue (6)
|
| *(MY CLUE). | ||
| 23 | MESS-UP |
Sums being schooled with PE? That sound like one (6)
|
| *(SUMS PE). Presumably “sound” is a typo for “sounds”. This compound is hyphenated when used as a noun, but is two words in its verbal sense. | ||
| 26 | ERNE |
I’m turned out in fur, long, outworn (4)
|
| ER(mi)NE (fur). For once it’s not the sea-eagle, but a Spenserian word meaning “yearn” or “long”. | ||
| 27 | APPETENCE |
Favourite sweet’s middle in pecan nuts, a craving (9)
|
| PET (favourite) (sw)E(et) all inside *PECAN. Azed doesn’t generally approve of nouns as anagram indicators, but here “nuts” is of course an adjective. | ||
| 29 | TROPE |
Last in boozer moving forward, part of mass (5)
|
| TOPER (a boozer) with the last letter moved forward. This sense of the word was new to me: it is defined in Chambers as “a phrase formerly interpolated in different parts of the mass”. | ||
| 32 | CAN IT |
I’ll enter sale – pipe down (5, 2 words)
|
| I in CANT (an auction sale). | ||
| 33 | MINORITE |
Member of strict order requiring waterproof before liturgy (8)
|
| MINO (a Japanese word for a raincoat made of hemp), RITE (liturgy). | ||
| 34 | STRATOCRAT |
Military-style supremo, form of tsar, CO round bistro? (10)
|
| TRAT(toria) (kind of bistro) inside *(TSAR CO). | ||
| 35 | MISGO |
GIs erring in a flash stray from the straight and narrow (5)
|
| *GIS inside MO (a flash). | ||
| 36 | RED CELL |
Component of precious fluid bottled in tiered cellars (7, 2 words)
|
| Hidden in “tiered cellars”. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | NACELLE |
Little old boat, not once having a portable phone installed (7)
|
| A CELL (phone) inside NE (old form of “not”). | ||
| 3 | GARAGES |
Filling stations? There’s fury when their supply is out (7)
|
| GA(s) RAGES. I wonder if there is another typo here and “out” should in fact be “cut”? I suspect that this use of “garage ” is not one that will be familiar in the US, although here of course we fill up our cars with petrol, not gas. | ||
| 4 | LOMENT |
Pod of a kind, pieces breaking the whole (6)
|
| MEN (pieces, as in chessmen) inside LOT (whole). | ||
| 5 | PHUT |
Sound of collapse, not loud with small structure (4)
|
| P(iano) (soft, not loud) HUT. | ||
| 6 | HARMALIN |
Caper may yield this injury – one falls after it (8)
|
| HARM (injury) A LIN (a waterfall). | ||
| 8 | CHOLIC |
Bilious? Have break, day off, cold before and after (6)
|
| HOLI(day) (break) preceded and followed by C(old). | ||
| 9 | OIDIA |
Fungal stages over – I’ll need help getting up thereafter (5)
|
| O(ver), AID (help) I (rev). | ||
| 10 | PROF |
Head of department showing improvement when it’s cut (4)
|
| PROF(it). I don’t really understand this clue: you need to add “it” to the answer to get improvement, not cut it. | ||
| 11 | STATEMENTED |
Untidily matted teens given special educational needs (11)
|
| *(MATTED TEENS). I’m not sure about “given”: the statement is the formal recognition by the local education authority of the fact that the child in question has special educational needs which the authority is under a duty to try and meet. | ||
| 12 | ASTIGMATISM |
Is at MGM flicks after wine? It affects viewing badly (11)
|
| ASTI (wine), *(IS AT MGM). | ||
| 18 | SUPERIOR |
Endless time installed over in Paris as head of order (8)
|
| PERIO(d) (endless time) inside SUR (French for “over”). I’m not sure the cryptic grammar actually works; to make sense the clue really needs “in” after “installed” but that would perhaps spoil the surface. | ||
| 21 | ERINITE |
Cornish salt appearing as fool in lake (7)
|
| NIT (fool) inside (Lake) ERIE. | ||
| 22 | UNVITAL |
Against cuts provided by a single body, not terribly important (7)
|
| V (against) inside (“cuts”) UNITAL (by or of a single body). | ||
| 24 | SEPMAG |
Specially recorded TV programme showing contests with piano in, coming up (6)
|
| P(iano) inside GAMES (rev). | ||
| 25 | ACCORD |
Instrument trio finally lacking in harmony (6)
|
| ACCORD(ion). The reference to “trio” denotes that three letters must be removed from the end of the word. | ||
| 28 | POURS |
Bits of ordure regularly alternating with matter in Glaswegian drains (5)
|
| OR(dure) interweaving with PUS (matter). A relatively rare example of Azed using “bits of” to denote the first two letters of a word. The word itself is a Scottish term meaning drain, as in rinse. | ||
| 30 | ROTI |
Remove crusts of foreign bread in exotic sandwich (4)
|
| I think that this is a reference to EURO TIN (foreign bread) with the outer letters removed. | ||
| 31 | UNCE |
Mac’s lightweight entity, numskull shedding what he’s known to wear? (4)
|
| (d)UNCE. I suppose that a numskull would traditionally have worn a cap with the letter D on it. An unce is a Scottish variant of an ounce. |
Thanks Azed and bridgesong
30dn: I think this works as follows:
“foreign bread” = Brot (German);
then we are to remove the crusts of BROT IN,
leaving ROTI defined as “exotic sandwich”.
For 3dn, I had RAGE with GAS outside.
Good blog, and I think your observations are on point. I agree with PB@1&2.
10d: improvement=profit
improvement when it’s cut = prof
What Cineraria@3 said.
Thanks bridgesong and Azed!
Thanks for the blog, I think after a complicated special like the week before, the clues are often not as tricky or as polished.
MESSUP – is it the Sums with PE that SOUND like a MESSUP ? I am not convinced .
UNCE I think we just remove the cap of dunce in a down clue, the D is just coincidence.
SUPERIOR I cannot seem to make this work cleanly.
STATEMENTED it needs a word like recognition added on the end.
Roz @6, did you ever do a combined maths/PE class at school? Sounds like a (timetable) MESS-UP to me.
Agree with you about the cap in dUNCE.
Does SUPERIOR work with a comma between “installed” and “over”. We’ve seen this sort of construction a lot from Azed recently I think.
I parsed GARAGES as per Pelham Barton @2.
Tim@7 I am just not convinced by the SOUND rather than SOUNDS, as in the blog. The definition is fine.
Yes, sound sounds like a typo
Thanks, all, for your comments. Pelham Barton @2 is clearly right about the parsing of GARAGES; but, if anything, that parsing reinforces my point about “out” being a typo for “cut”. And I think that BROT IN is better than EURO TIN, although it’s still a somewhat clumsy construction.
bridgesong@10
GARAGES
(There’s) RAGE when GAS is out—There doesn’t seem to be any typo. Am I missing something?
My point is that the suggested parsing inserts (I.e. “cuts”) RAGE inside GAS. If “out” is correct, then this parsing doesn’t work, as there’s no insertion indicator.
Many thanks for the blog. I was surprised by”bits of” to indicate the first two letters and also queried “flicks” as an anagram indication, though on reflection I suppose it works. I hesitated to put in MESSUP thinking I must have missed something, but it seems not.
Good fun, many thanks to Azed, Bridgesong and other commenters.
POURS
Bits of ordure regularly alternating with matter
If we take O R as bits of Ordure and Regularly, we have O R alternating with P U S.
Alternating is in any case regular by definition. Does it work?
On reflection, I suppose that GARAGES does work if you take “out” as shorthand for “outside”.
I didn’t have any issue with GARAGES – as KVa@11 said, it’s RAGE with GAS out(side). If GAS was to be cut, you would need to add RAGES, which doesn’t properly correspond to ‘fury’. As regards SUPERIOR, I think it works (according to crossword grammar) if you imagine a comma after ‘installed’ ie Endless time installed, over in Paris = Sur with Perio installed.
Well done PB@1 for working out BROT IN. I thought perhaps Erotic could be defied as foreign and when Chambers didn’t agree, I gave up trying to parse it! It didn’t help that ROTI can mean both a sandwich and the bread that is in it.
UNCE – unlike Roz@6, I think the D is relevant. I don’t think dunces just wore any old cap, but specifically a hat with a D (and I think “what he’s known to wear” = cap = the first letter of a clue would be very convoluted, even given the question mark). But I could be wrong.
28dn: Many of the setters I see in daily puzzles would happily use “bits of ordure regularly” for O R, but I think Azed’s style would require “ordure and regularly”. As supporting evidence for Azed’s careful style on this sort of thing, note how, in 19ac, he is careful to say “featuring regularly in galleria”.
31dn: I have a clear memory of the letter D appearing on dunce’s caps in comics I read as a boy. Although I cannot support this from the dictionaries or Brewer, I still prefer the explanation given by bridgesong and MM@16, essentially for the reasons given by MM.
This was the first time I’ve attempted an Azed in quite a while, and after coming back to it on and off all week the missing ones were SCRIMURE, TEADE, TROPE, LOMENT, POURS, ERNE and SEPMAG. I may have another go…
Yes, I remember the conical cap with D for Dunce in old comics. Did they ever really exist?
Well done Gladys , got a long way for a first attempmt in a while. Azed , more than most setters, is a matter of practice , you learn all the extra little tricks and habits.
UNCE – who knows what Azed meant ?, I find the D an unnecessary complication.
numskull= dunce , what he’s known to wear= cap ( a dunce’s cap is very common usage ) .
shedding this is removing the top letter in a Down clue.
31dn: I think changing from cap as a physical object to an indicator of the first letter of a word is an unnecessary complication. Of course, all we will get in the official notes (if anything) is “(d)unce”.
30dn: Here we should definitely expect the notes to say either (b)rot i(n) or (eu)ro ti(n) or something else.
As a German speaker, I thought it was B(ROT I)N.
Gladys@21: I should own up to the fact that, while solving, my thoughts on 30dn were similar to those expressed by MM@16. I only thought of BROT for “foreign bread” when having another look at the puzzle about two hours before the blog was due to appear. It is good to have some support for that reading.
Pelham Barton @17, I think ‘bits of ordure and regularly’ would be better as you say, but don’t agree that the missing ‘and’ indicates that it’s just ‘bits of ORdure’. It seems similar to the case of multiple word anagram fodder having a plural verb, eg ‘men at dance …’ to indicate an anagram of MEANT. I think that should be ‘men and at dance’ but Azed doesn’t mind omitting the ‘and’ in that case. I agree with KVa @14 about the regularly being superfluous because it is implied by alternating. I parsed it as first letters of Ordure and Regularly alternating with P U and S. Another case of two equally satisfactory (i.e. neither fully satisfactory) alternatives, neither of which will be invalidated by the intended parsing.
I have to repeat my comment @10 above: BROT IN is much better than EURO TIN, even though I think it’s a weak clue. Like MunroMaiden @16, I looked at e(ROTI)c, but rejected it. For solving purposes, it was obvious that the answer had to be ROTI, given that three of the four letters could be confirmed from the crossers. But as I was writing the blog, I had to come up with something and EURO TIN popped into my head. I liked the fact that TIN, like “bread” can refer to a loaf and can also mean money. But there is no such phrase and the fact that 2 letters had to be removed from the front, but only one from the back, was a definite weakness.
James @23: Actually I do need to withdraw my suggestion about 28dn in comment 17, not because of the supposed similarity with anagrams, but from an actual example of Azed’s last November, where he used “glimpses of my boyhood” to clue MB. See 18 across in this puzzle:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/11/05/azed-2680/#more-178227
Thanks, excellent research!
This was my second attempt at an Azed, and only got a few on the first pass and a few more after another hour or so. As I was a week late, I decided to go to 225 and flip back and forth to get the hang of it. I’d fill in one and then try to solve the ones it crossed with some successes. Definitely helped with the parsing. It was usually the definitions that provided the mystery. Enjoyed the challenge though and will keep trying.
Mark, keep going. I started Azed about a year ago (on the recommendation of Roz, via the Everyman thread, to whom I’m very grateful btw) and you will certainly find that there’s learning curve regarding certain stylistic elements that Azed employs, but it doesn’t take too long to get up to speed. The comments here each week from some of the more seasoned solvers are incredibly helpful. Look forward to hearing more from you.
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement, Jay, (my youngest son’s nickname btw; my soubriquet here is from my location in Canada) and I shall persevere. Am working on 2697 now and think I’ve got all but 4, although unsure of the parsing of several others so will look forward to explanations in a couple of weeks.