Comments on: Azed 2070 – Jigsaw

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:55:37 +0000

Thank you to Sidey for recomending this puzzle in the Guardian blog on Saturday. Thank you to Andrew for the blog and particularly for explaining LITHE and RASCALS.

HE for Guy Fawkes’s day seemed stretched to me, too much of an anachronism for comfort.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:24:46 +0000

My apologies about 19. I didn’t look carefully enough and assumed that because it wasn’t mentioned in the comments it wasn’t mentioned at all, which was silly.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:30:07 +0000

(but with the right number of inverted commas)

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:29:09 +0000

Sorry – slight error in the OED quotation above, which shouldn’t have the bit at the beginning. It should just say:

“[High explosive:] an explosive compound, such as dynamite, guncotton, etc., which is more rapid and powerful than gunpowder…” – and also gives no instances earlier 1874.”

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:25:25 +0000

Thanks for the blog; it is particularly appreciated when an advanced cryptic gets such a thorough one.

I certainly enjoyed the puzzle a lot, despite noticing the questionable elements in lithe and metrostyles. The “metrostyles” clue was indeed corrected and it now says “fixers” online; and at the time I just saw the “HE” allusion as evidence of unwonted libertarianism from Azed, which I for one was quite happy with. It would presumably not have seemed untrue to call the large close-packed quantity of gunpowder “high explosive” at the time – it was as “highly explosive” as things got back then, and then the extra leap to the modern abbreviation was one I didn’t mind making either… I even chose it as my favourite clue. I’ve since seen that the OED excludes gunpowder pretty emphatically:

[High Explosive:] “An explosive agent or compound. (See A. 3) high explosive, an explosive compound, such as dynamite, guncotton, etc., which is more rapid and powerful than gunpowder…” – and also gives no instances earlier 1874.

Chambers (which Azed uses, of course) is is less unequivocal, but the implication is still there I think. I haven’t got my proper Chambers with me today but the online Chambers 21st Century gives:

“1 a detonating explosive of immense power and extremely rapid action, eg dynamite, TNT, etc. 2 as adj exploding with a huge effect • a high-explosive bomb.
ETYMOLOGY: 19c.”

I don’t think the normal Chambers mentions the 19th century coinage (and I’m not sure how much it matters). Anyway, it was good enough for me, but I can see why some might think it’s a bit odd for Azed. Perhaps he’ll mention it in the slip.

PS. Guncotton, I now know, has nothing to do with gunpowder and didn’t exist in 1605.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:37:10 +0000

To be fair to Andrew, he says in his introduction that there was an error in clue 19 that was corrected on the website on Tuesday, and under the explanation of clue 19 he says that “fixers” appeared as “fixer” in the published version.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:33:09 +0000

Amongst all the mistakes that have been mentioned, nobody has pointed out that 19 has a singular definition but a plural answer. It is ‘fixer’ on the printout which is all I have left, but I think I checked in the paper copy and it was also singular. So where Andrew gets his ‘fixers’ from I’m not quite sure. Perhaps it was changed in later editions.

Nice crossword as always but an unusually large number of errors from someone. Usually they don’t matter, but the wrong enumeration of 36 did cause a delay.

By: Jan

Jan — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:41:11 +0000

Thanks, Andrew. I found this easier going than the usual puzzles since there were so few unfamiliar words.

I didn’t see the High Explosive connection; I just read it as ‘lit he’, which didn’t make much sense!

PB @5 – thanks for that explanation of INERTIA. It becomes clear, now.

I had to endure a chemistry lesson from my husband explaining the different bondings of alk-anes, -enes and -ynes, even though I was in the same A-level class as him!

By: The Trafites

The Trafites — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:07:59 +0000

Well, sidey, I for one get annoyed on puzzles like this – quite a few errors (whether they are typos on transcription, or setter error) when the competition gets judged. I doubt the clue to ‘lithe’ would even get a mention in the slips due the obviously wrong assumption.

I can’t see how a judge can judge when he seems to prefer certain ‘rules’ that he himself can’t seem to abide by.

But, having said that, a few errors makes it a bit more ‘rewarding’ to solve, I suppose.

Nick

By: sidey

sidey — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:50:49 +0000

I do like Azed specials. I rarely touch Chambers these days, I might if they made the newest edition available to download. It means I miss some of their really not very good definitions though. It does mean I have fewer of the problems others encounter with it though.

I don’t print to paper very often either, preferring DoroPDF which means I can scribble over the screen. It did make spotting the wrong enumeration more difficult though.

My first clue entry was EDAM so stuff sort of spread from there.

HE is obviously wrong for gunpowder, it’s still a darned good clue though.

Good entertainment. What else can you ask from a puzzle?