Azed 1857: All creatures extinct and hungry
Posted by jetdoc on January 6th, 2008
This was not officially a Printer‘s Devilry crossword, but the typesetters seem to have contrived some devilry of their own — a typo in one clue, one clue omitted altogether, and one clue wrongly numbered. Apart from that, it was a pretty good Azed, with some interesting clues (and plenty of opportunities for links).
Favourite clue this week — 19d, for its surface reading and the double definition within a definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PHLEGMON — Purulent inflammation, which also seems to have affected the typesetting. ‘Boil’ is the definition. H LEG = ‘hot’ (not ‘lot’) ‘piece of lamb’; in PM = afternoon (should this have said ‘put in afternoon’?); ON = ‘just after’ (one of the definitions in Chambers). |
| 7 | PEGH — a Scottish word meaning ‘to pant’. A ‘peg’ can be a pin in a cup to show how far down one may drink; hence a drink measure, esp of brandy and soda. H = hard. |
| 10 | OEIC — *(o ice). Open-Ended Investment Company. How fascinating. |
| 11 | OLEARIA — O = ‘beginning to ornament’; LEA = pasture; ‘air’ reversed. Olearia is also known as the daisy bush, because its flowers resemble daisies. |
| 12 | MISCONSTRUCT — ‘Fashion awry’ is the definition (and may have been an instruction to the typesetters this week). CONS = studies; ‘curt’ (brief) reversed; in MIST. |
| 13 | AREOLAR — ‘lo’ (= look) reversed; in A REAR. Areolae, in biological parlance, are (among other things) slightly sunken spots. If you want the Wikipedia nipple picture, find it for yourself. |
| 15 | TANTI — hidden in ‘student antics’. |
| 16 | RUSTRE — TR, the international licence plate code for Turkey; inside RUSE. A rustre, in heraldry, is a lozenge pierced with a circular opening. |
| 17 | SETTLE-BED — *(test) followed by *(bleed). A pallet and a settle-bed are types of makeshift bed. |
| 19 | PLEONASTE — L EON (‘left a long time’); in PASTE. Pleonaste (also called Ceylonite) is a form of the mineral spinel — named after a redundant expression, apparently. Someone liked it, then. |
| 24 | SACHEM — SAC = Strategic Air Command; on HEM = edge. A sachem is the head of a Native American tribe. |
| 27 | ENSUE — *(unsee). Interesting construction — ‘being rumbled’ is the anagram indicator; ‘must avoid tail’ indicates that we should remove the final letter from ’unseen’ before rumbling it. At least, I think that’s how it works… |
| 28 | CONFIRM — This clue was omitted from the printed version, perhaps as a result of the instruction at 12a. It was ‘Make official study hard’, which is probably the easiest in the puzzle — CON = study; FIRM = hard. |
| 29 | CHALICOTHERE — And this clue was numbered 28 in the printed version. H = ‘horse’s head’; in CALICO = ‘a spotted or piebald animal, esp a horse’; THERE, which can be ‘used without any meaning of its own to allow the subject to follow the predicate, and also in corresponding interrogative sentences, etc; used without any meaning to draw or attract attention or for emphasis’, according to Chambers. The chalicotheres (the name means ‘gravel beasts’) were a group of perissodactyl mammals, related to present-day horses, so there’s a bit of an &Lit here. |
| 30 | INSCULP — IN = fashionable; L = line; in *(cups). |
| 31 | USED — US = American; ED = ‘end’ minus N (new). |
| 32 | DASH — double definition. |
| 33 | MISENTRY — SENT in MIRY. |
| Down | |
| 1 | POMATO — a bit of mild scatology here: POO = ‘number two’; around MAT, which can be a verb meaning ‘to frost (glass)’. I don’t think I’ll bother trying to grow my own pomatoes this year — the Phytophthora infestans would have a field day! |
| 2 | HEIR-AT-LAW — *(with a real). |
| 3 | LISENTE — IS; in most of LENTEN (= ‘of fast’). The ‘of’ seems to be doing double duty here. Plural of sente, a monetary unit in Lesotho, 1/100 of a loti. |
| 4 | GOOLIE — LIE = press; following GOO = sentimentality. ‘Victorian’ here refers to the place in Australia. And ‘goolies’ can also mean testicles — in turn giving rise to the word testiculation, waving one’s arms about while talking bollocks. |
| 5 | MONACT — MAC = Scot (maybe); accepts (containing) ON = ‘on the way to being drunk’; T = time. Monact sponges have single-rayed spicules. |
| 6 | NETFUL — *(unfelt). A draught can mean ‘that which is taken in a net by drawing’. |
| 7 | PARIS — P = prince; A; ‘sir’ reversed. I’m not sure about the definition here, though — Paris was the son of King Priam of Troy, and he did have a somewhat eventful life, in which his behaviour could often have been described as ‘wayward’. Is that it? |
| 8 | ERUPT — hidden in ‘cheer up that’. The definition is ‘outburst’. Why ‘you see’, though? Does it indicate a visible outburst? |
| 9 | HATRED — ‘red hat’ (a staff officer) with its parts switched. |
| 14 | PRECURRER — a Shakespearean word for ‘forerunner’. *(rep); CURRER. Currer Bell was the pseudonym of Charlotte Bronte, whose sisters Emily and Anne used the pseudonyms Ellis and Acton Bell. |
| 18 | BUSIEST — IE = that is; S = small; in BUST, a component of so-called ‘vital statistics’ (how quaint). |
| 19 | PSOCID — *(dipso); imbibing C = circa (about). A psocid is a member of the Psocoptera, some of which are known as booklice because they are found in old books, feeding on the paste used in bookbinding. Nice clue, using a double definition of ‘volumes’. |
| 20 | NERIUM — NE, an obsolete word for ‘not’; on ‘muir’ (Scottish form of ‘moor’) reversed. Nerium oleander is an evergreen flowering shrub. |
| 21 | SCOOPS — quantities of ice cream; also exclusive news stories that cub reporters hope to secure. |
| 22 | TENTIE — X = 10; TIE = bond. |
| 23 | REMEDY — M in REEDY. Presumably, M here means ‘metre’ or some other unit of dimension. But Chambers gives D as the abbreviation of ‘dimension’, which would give REDEDY as the answer. |
| 25 | CRASS — RAS = headland; in CS = Civil Service. |
| 26 | HILCH — ‘climb’, less MB (doctor), reversed; inside HH = very hard (as in pencils). A Scottish verb meaning ‘to lift’. |
January 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
In 27A I read the wordplay as “unseen [that] tail must avoid …”
January 7th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I saw in errata section of “The Observer” (I was in London today) that due to the misprints the deadline had been extended to Jan 12. So don’t read this blog!
January 7th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Yes, plenty of devilries – including the repetition in the afterword. Clearly a new typesetter and/or an everso slightly distracted editor? Still, it’s always exciting to have to negotiate extra obstacles. Isn’t that what it’s all about?