AZED 1863
Posted by petebiddlecombe on February 17th, 2008
Solving time: not recorded, but I did finish this without looking anything up. 8/11 were the last two to go in. A couple of quibbles at 12 and 35, and some of the puzzlement that you can easily get if you think too hard about the def’s in Chambers.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | SESAME OIL E,SAME in SOIL = sewage |
| 8 | SOAP SO(A)P – crumpet and soap are both women seen as sex objects |
| 12 | YUKO YUKO(n) – but ISTM that this is a judo rather than wrestling term. Is judo a kind of wrestling? Maybe. |
| 13 | MYOTUBE a stage in the development of muscle from a myoblast |
| 14 | SCIENT SC(I=Institute)ENT |
| 16 | STERLET If inserted into eater, it makes ‘Easter letter’. And it’s a small sturgeon. |
| 18 | PLOP P(L)OP – onomatopoeic container &lit |
| 20 | ARCADE A,R,CADE = a barrel or cask. This used up my barrel luck, as ‘large barrel’ – ?A?K in the Times 2 puzzle the other day had me typing TANK! |
| 21 | CYBERSQUATTER (bets quarry etc)* |
| 23 | APOLLO Poetry corner: Frances Cornford described Rupert Brooke as “A young Apollo, golden-haired”. No, of course I didn’t know that before. |
| 26 | LAVS move the S in SLAV |
| 28 | PERIAPT PAIR rev. in PET – a Shak. word for an amulet |
| 30 | DOGCART crag* in DOT = a marriage portion, not to apportion in tiny amounts, as I guessed |
| 31 | BUTANE The clue here is Fuel in armour shows all such letters —–. I hastily wrote in VOWELS, but as a wiser head elsewhere reminded me, this would make the clue into a sort of cryptic def. with no wordplay – anathema for this inquisitor. The def. is ‘Fuel’, and ‘in armour’ shows all vowels ‘but an E’. Which I understand but don’t think quite works – how do we know that ‘such letters’ means vowels except by word-game instinct? |
| 32 | ALANNAH ANNA in Hal*. I wondered briefly whether there might be an Alannah Crowther but then remembered to look in the First Names section of Chambers where Alannah is equated with ‘oh child’ which I guess is close enough to ‘my child’. Robert Zara’s comment below explains where ‘My child’ came from. |
| 34 | DERM RED rev., M=marks – In C, derm is the ‘true skin, below the outer layer’ – does this make the outer layer ‘false skin’? |
| 35 | SHEEPWASH two Hs = hands in an anagram of ‘pass ewe’. But the clue has ‘pass ewes’ – which can’t be a misprint as one ewe doesn’t need to be in order. So I guess this is a slip-up – which seems to happen more often in Azeds than it used to – or does writing up all the gory details just make you look harder? |
| Down | |
| 1 | SYSOP posy’s, rev. |
| 2 | EUCALYPTOLE (place you let)* |
| 3 | SKIBOB (BO,BIK(e)S) rev. |
| 4 | MINT – which in Scots really does mean ‘aim’ – both noun and verb. |
| 5 | EXTENSOR (rex tones)* |
| 6 | OMBRE O(M(o)B)RE – nut just an old card game, but with final é, ‘with tones or clours shading into each other to give a shaded or striped effect’ – of a fabric or similar. |
| 7 | LOVE RAT OVER in LAT = an isloated pillar (from Hindi) |
| 9 | OUIDA = audio* – This novelist. |
| 10 | ABERDEVINES (a breed)*,VINES – siskins as described by bird fanciers – ‘ety uncertain’. A big help for the rest of the puzzle as I remembered it from previous xwd uses |
| 11 | PEDDER P.E.,redd rev. – variant of pedlar – watch out for pether and (Walter Scott) pedder-coffe |
| 19 | ORLEANS AN in ORLES – I claim to have remembered that orleans was some kind of fabric |
| 21 | CAUDAD CA(t),(a dud)* – towards the tail, in anatomy/zoology |
| 22 | TAMARA compound anag – (as marinated)* – (dines)* – ‘a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, coriander etc.’ – one of those Chambers puzzling etc.’s – do we carry on with other spices that begin with C? |
| 24 | ONGAR – hidden. If you remember Ongar as a place in Essex, the ‘part of Essex locations’ is a bit puzzling, but then you might remember Chipping Ongar (part of Ongar, apparently). Then Google maps reveals there’s also a High Ongar nearby. |
| 25 | HITHE – HIT,H.E. = high explosive – a hithe/hythe is a small haven or port – obsolete except in place names – like Rotherhithe, and Hythe in Kent |
| 27 | SIETH T in (is he)* – a Shak. spelling of scythe, as carried by Old Father Time – most famously on the weathervane at Lord’s. |
February 17th, 2008 at 8:53 am
The Chambers definition of aberdevine — ‘a bird-fancier’s name for the siskin’ — has always struck me as one of their more unhelpful offerings (though what kind of help I’d expect, I’m not sure).
February 17th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Alannah is in fact defined in the main section of Chambers as “my child”.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
In 35a I was convinced that an R and an L were to be inserted so I had SLEEP…. penciled in thinking that it was some reference to counting sheep!