Comments on: Azed 1980: Jigsaw

By: bridgesong

bridgesong — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:53:22 +0000

I enjoyed this one as well; the additional difficulty of not knowing where to place the answers is balanced by the fact that the answers are in alphabetical order, so helping to identify that crucial first letter.

One useless bit of information: TERPSICHOREAN was a prize clue word for Azed in 1994. I remember it because I got a VHC for my entry, something I haven’t repeated very often (or at all) since!

By: Handel

Handel — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:29:07 +0000

Really enjoyed this one, which we found very tough but ultimately rewarding as everything fell into place. Swapping from our customary pen to pencil was the key – lots of guessed locations made it possible to make progress.

As usual we enjoyed learning a few new words, and as usual we remarked that we’d probably never have any use for any of them ever again. But not this time – ‘Terpsichore’ turned up on the pub quiz machine just after we’d finished the puzzle. Still didn’t win the quid though.

By: Peter Biddlecombe

Peter Biddlecombe — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:21:33 +0000

I enjoyed the puzzle but found it very hard – ESCARMOUCHE was the only inked-in entry for quite a while, and Chambers got plenty of use. My fault I think – the other 11 and 12-letter answers should have been easier than I found them, and duff square-counting led to a vain search for a 6/7 pairing instead of 6/6 for the BAMPOT/BEGETS pair.

I wonder how Azed chooses puzzles for this treatment – any Azed could be presented this way. I guess it may have been the fact that TITANIC was the last in the alphabetic sequence, which may be unusual. It din’t make much difference though, as the THOMAS and TITANIC clues were pretty solvable.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Sun, 16 May 2010 12:06:48 +0000

Jake
“I wonder if SHMEK is a slang Scot term. It sounds like it?”

According to Chambers it is US slang, with the origin being Yiddish.

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:45:50 +0000

I just noticed you had cavanova. I too in pencil had ???A?OV. I couldn’t see why it would be him so I carried on solving in case any other letters took me to the answer.

I wonder if SHMEK is a slang Scot term. It sounds like it?

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:37:27 +0000

i-and-i. and thomas the anag ones! I got held up on these two answers and couldn’t complete the grid. I didn’t know ‘doubting thomas’. And i-and-i with two hyphens fooled me into thinking it was 3 words! D’oh.

Well, thanks for the cluing info Jetdoc. Have a good week.

By: Bob Sharkey

Bob Sharkey — Sun, 16 May 2010 08:25:28 +0000

My thanks to Matthew and Don for pointing me in the right direction on SHMECK – horse, as a slang word for heroin, is new to me. I have a doubt that ‘landing craft’ may be taken as a definition of ‘lunar excursion module’ in 16. I echo appreciation of both puzzle and blog.

By: sidey

sidey — Sun, 16 May 2010 08:03:36 +0000

Thank you Matthew. Chambers is rather good at hiding entries.

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:33:35 +0000

Apologies for not checking — I have ALL-ROUND in the grid, but for some reason looked only at my list of clues. I will edit it now.

By: Don Manley

Don Manley — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:28:54 +0000

Yes, Matthew, it would — but remember that one-volume dictionary-makers have space constraints. Enjoyable puzzle.