A fairly typical experience — one or two very nice clues, one or two I can’t understand, and quite a lot of working things out from the wordplay and saying “well perhaps it’s that, but I’ve never heard the word”, and then finding it in Chambers.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | ODELSTHING — (Doles)* thing |
| 11 | RANEE — ({g}enera{l})* |
| 12 | B I VOU(A)C{h} — I can’t quite see how: in Chambers the tent is a noun, but it also gives a verbal sense: ‘pass the night in the open air’, and this is not the same part of speech as ‘night under the stars’ |
| 14 | A BINT RA — ab intra |
| 15 | AHIMSA — a (Amish)* |
| 16 | FAIR — 3 defs |
| 17 | SICKO — sic (ok)rev. — sic is the Scottish version of such |
| 19 | SDAINE — (Sandie)*. Azed often does this, using ‘old’ to refer to the word that it follows. I’m ready for it nowadays. |
| 20 | SKERRICK — err in (kicks)* |
| 24 | TRUMPER Y — this refers to Victor Trumper, the Australian cricketer |
| 26 | L-PLATE — (pallet)* |
| 29 | AZTEC I think, although I can’t quite explain it. A homophone of something like ‘as teck’, and Teot. is in Mexico and has an Aztec connection … |
| 30 | EO(I)N again I think, although what the italic ‘he’ is doing I don’t know, and why he should miss such moments, whatever they are, I also don’t know |
| 31 | reaCH OR DAmson |
| 33 | TOKAMAK — (atok)* mak{e}, but why the exclam? |
| 34 | TRIPOLI — trip (oil)* — tripoli is diatomite, and so is kieselguhr |
| 35 | O(RAN)T — pray-er |
| 36 | GÊNE V RETTE{d} — as so often with Azed, a word is in italics and I can’t really see why |
| Down | |
| 2 | DASHIKI — (Kid)* around ash 1 |
| 3 | ENTICED — ice in (tend)* |
| 4 | candLE AMour — the clever extra bit here is that the outer parts give ‘candour’, which explains ‘Outer sincerity being cast’ |
| 5 | SEÑ(S)OR |
| 6 | HI(BISCU{it})S — I think this is how it works, although I’d have thought that ‘it’ is detached from ‘biscuit’ rather than the other way round |
| 7 | I VIED |
| 8 | NON-FAT — (n{utritional} f{ood} a{ccordingly}) in (ton)rev. |
| 9 | {t}SARIN{a} — it took me ages to see why |
| 10 | SCAREDY-CAT — (cared y) in (cast)* — this was the clue word for the Azed competition in March 2004, but Azed has made up his own clue |
| 13 | CAS(SOLE TT)E — lovely clue |
| 18 | FIRE SALE — (sea, rifle)* |
| 21 | RET RE(A)T — the second appearance of ‘ret’ in this cossword (also 36ac) |
| 22 | C(RED)ENT |
| 23 | CAN APE |
| 25 | MAHZOR — zo in (harm)* |
| 27 | POOR 1 |
| 28 | {an}TIMON{y} — till-er, nice clue |
| 32 | longfellOW REading |
12ac: I agree that the definition isn’t very good.
29ac: busy=’TEC
30ac: The answer is EOAN, and one lying in a long time will miss eoan moments.
John, thanks for the blog. I now understand 9 down! I had also put a question mark against BIVOUAC.
Matthew is right about EOAN: I find that 4 letter words often contain a trap, as Azed will choose the most obscure word he can find (which is fair enought).
I liked the reference to red cent in 22 down, but 4 down was the cleverest clue.
I don’t think Azed makes an extra effort to find obscure short words. EOAN is quite an old favourite actually! When you are making up this type of puzzle, you will use whatever little filler you can lay your hands on, (usually) within the vocab of Chambers. That said, why not go for PIKA rather than PIKE, say?