Another mistake from Azed at 1A – the last Azed I did (1831) had one as well. What is the world coming to? I did the first half of this without a dictionary and the second half with Chambers 1998 (courtesy of Jon Delfin in NYC). I came up short in understanding a couple though for which I’m indebted to PeterB’s help.
Across
| 1 | [b]U[s]H-[b]U[s]H – This seems like a mistake to me: Chambers 1998 has uh-huh meaning agreement – but doesn’t haven’t UH-UH. According to JonD (who kindly lent me that Chambers while in NYC), Chambers 2003 indeed has UH-UH which means (as any American schoolchild kno) the opposite. |
| 4 | GASSY – def is “talkative” and G, AS, SY is how you convert buG into buSY (so wordplay in the answer). |
| 8 | SCUR – my first clue: hidden in “emptieS, CURiously”. Scots for scour. |
| 11 | A PIECE OF CAKE – a fairly easy double def (one cryptic). My second clue. |
| 12 | C(R)APS – not sure about CAPS for “bowls” but if I scur Chambers sufficiently I’m sure I’ll find something (cricket? bowling? haberdashery?). Yes, it’s a (surprise!) Scots bowl. |
| 13 | COLT,S[ide] – “effective shooters” as in the wild west sense. |
| 15 | HE(APSTE)AD – spate* in HEAD. Means what the clue says it means: the buildings above a mine. Since this was unfamiliar, I looked for spate* in ADIT for some time. |
| 17 | EPIP=rev(pipe),LOON – not being a gastrointestinal surgeon, I was unfamiliar with this as well which is indeed a kind of anatomical fold. |
| 18 | ST ANTHONYS NUT – neither am I a botanist – so took me a long time to work out the anagram of: (hunt’s not nasty)*. In Chambers 1998 the associated headword is ANTHONY. |
| 21 | TAR(SEAL)S – refers to paving (sealing) a road with TAR. |
| 25 | FIS(HERM)EN – HERM (type of statue based on Hermes) in fines* |
| 27 | SENES[cent] – I’m pretty sure this is right since SENE is a Samoan coin (meaning cent as it happens). Senescent means growing old, e.g. becoming obsolete. |
| 28 | B(O)URG – O in rev(grub=food), BOURG is a market-town from the French. |
| 29 | EXTRA(DI[et])TABLE – “more food” is EXTRA TABLE here and if they want you to be put on trial in your home country, then you can be extradited presumably. |
| 32 | EDDY – ref. the singer Nelson EDDY and hidden in the answer for 14, 30: “trouserED Dyad”. |
Down
| 1 | UNCHASTISED – (Dunce’s hat is)*. A nice longish anagram for a relatively familiar word in an Azed is a luxury! |
| 2 | H,A,REST,ANE=Scots one – this on the other hand required some inspired Chambers crawling. At some point, I searched for HAREST???. And yes it’s indeed a Scots boundary marker. |
| 3 | HIP,PIN – more Scots (a baby’s diaper). HIP is with it! |
| 4 | G(ESS)O – ESS for ‘s’ in GO. |
| 5 | A,CUTE – as in a French accent ACUTE (which is the one that goes up… or is it down?) |
| 6 | SE[a]ME[n] – SEME is a heraldic term for scattered bearings (though not sure what “bearings” are in that context frankly). Note how precise Azed is in the wordplay instructions: remove (“losing”) A (“American”) and N (“navy”), which are not contiguous (“separated”), from the fodder! |
| 7 | SODA,IN – a whisky may have SODA IN it. And SODAIN is archaic sudden (“once sprung on one”). |
| 9 | CAL,ZONE – I think the definition “Pizza doubled” refers to the fact that a CALZONE is effectively a folded-over pizza. |
| 10 | RESEN=sneer*,TINGLY |
| 14 | TROUSE=routes*,RED – ref. not being worth a RED cent (which is an Americanism). Def is well-hidden at the end: “in pocket”. |
| 16 | M(A,RANT)A – I guessed polenta here at first but turns out that MARANTA is also a starchy rooty thingy. |
| 20 | SCROBE – my last clue: def is “groove” but I thought it was STROBE at first. It’s a compound anag since (scrobe, altered)* = (Beatles’ record)*, where scrobe=this. |
| 22 | SHE(R)D – First the wordplay: centre of fumaRoles yields R, which is in SHED, in the sense of “to pour forth”. The definition seems to be an alternative spelling of shard so I suppose “section of crater perhaps” works since crater is also a pottery bowly thingy. |
| 23 | SHUT,E – same as “shoot” as in “shooting the rapids” (under chute in Chambers 1998). |
| 24 | REBAR – hidden in “secuRE BARracks”. |
| 26 | S(W)IZ[e] – a term from my English schoolboy past for a “cheat”. |
Thanks for the blog. For 2d I initially had MARESTONE which held me up for a long time.
I haven’t got Chambers (2006) to hand because I am in a library, which doesn’t have C (or didn’t the last time I asked). I’ll check when I get home.
What is Chambers 2003 definition for UH-UH? My edition of this fell apart… which is why I have got Chambers 2006
Al
(thanks to jon delfin) in C2003 uh-uh is:
interj
a sound used in place of ‘no’ or to express disagreement