Comments on: Azed 2068

By: bridgesong

bridgesong — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:35:59 +0000

Thomas@5, you are right to point out that the compound anagram at 22down is unusual in having the definition in the middle of the clue; I had meant to mention this in the blog.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:16:45 +0000

I also thought this was harder than most plains. Apolar/backsets were last in for me – I had to redo that bit of the grid after guessing that “isolar” might be the answer. It was pretty cunning having such a hard clue – a very well-hidden comp. anag. – for the non-Chambers word. I imagine isolar doesn’t exist and can’t remember how I parsed (or defined!) it now. He seems to be making comp. anagrams harder these days. They can be rather easy to spot, but he’s put the definition in the middle twice in a row now and this one certainly fooled me for quite a while. You still sometimes see submissions to the competitions with the giveaway blanks (“_________”), but I don’t think azed would do that now.

I also had “palets” for 23d to begin with – a palet being “a scale on the receptacle of a flower head”, which I persuaded myself was close enough to armour, and “pat” being an archaic euphemism for a hit with a fencing foil – this definition alas existing only in my imagination. The realisation that the clue was actually more straightforward was of course all the more pleasurable for the fact that I’d gone so badly wrong.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:05:29 +0000

Thanks all
Nice to see consistency here. My last in was 33 and I didn’t see the quite brilliant explanation (thanks matthew).
Penultimate was ‘apolar’ which I did parse – I do enjoy compound anagrams.
I thought 31a was very clever.

By: bridgesong

bridgesong — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:32:38 +0000

Matthew and Pelham, you’re both absolutely right on 33a and 23d and I’m kicking myself for allowing myself to be fooled yet again by a word including the letters AS. In 23d it was “sword thrusts” that confused me, but I suppose that “cuts” could be defined this way.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:01:45 +0000

Thanks Azed for a good puzzle which I too found more difficult than most plains and thanks bridgesong for the blog. I got stuck for some time on the right hand side with only a few clues solved.

I remember working out 17ac and 23dn the same way as Matthew@1. For 33ac I think I just put it in as the only word that would fit with the definition, but again Matthew’s explanation is convincing.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:31:58 +0000

Thanks for the blog, bridgesong.

17a: I think “regular feature of his work” indicates O not because it is the second letter of “work” but because, as you mention, his sculptures famously include large circular holes.

33a: I think the point is that BEAM with M as KER is BEAKER. I’m sure I promised last time that I wouldn’t let Azed fool me with a clue like this again. Maybe next time.

23d: I think this is just LE(g) in CUTS.