Azed 1943

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I am always full of admiration for Azed’s grids. Here he has what seems to me to be a great achievement, four twelve-letter words, two next to each other going down the centre of the puzzle and two going across. As always, some of the words in the puzzle are very rare, but everything is clued soundly and fairly.

Across
1 S(C)LIM
7 GEBUR — (rub eg)rev.
11 OU ABA IN — I’m not quite sure why OU is ‘dark blue’, since ‘a present or past representative of Oxford or Harrow’ is the only reference I can find; how is the university itself the same thing as a representative of it?
12 A MINO
13 PITUITA — {Lo}ui{se} in (Patti)*
14 herBAL DYes — a baldy is ‘an over-short haircut (Scot)’ so I suppose this is what is referred to as a prison crop, since that is also very short
15 PE TR(IF)IES
17 SHIRT — (This r)* — both stuffed shirt and boiled shirt are in Chambers
18 INCORRIGIBLE — in Corri{e} (bilge)* — if you’re ‘in’ a play you’re ‘as member of cast’, I suppose
21 S(ELF C ONCE)ITS
24 END{ear}ED
28 HERNIATED — (in re death)*
29 ISIAC — is 1ac
30 NO(RIM)ON
31 PISTE — (I step)*
32 GOANESE — goa (seen)*
33 TA(Y)RA
34 EGRET — greet with its centre, which is e, at the front. A sharp eye will have noticed something odd about ‘centre forward’, since the football position is ‘centre-forward’. Some setters would have sloppily written the hyphenated version in the clue, but not Azed.
 
Down
1 SOPHS — SOS about (hp rev.)
2 CU{lt}ISH
3 LATHI — comp. anag.: [lathi darn law] … [will thanadar] — since a thanadar is an officer in charge of a police station in India this, at a rather uncomfortable stretch, is some sort of an &lit.
4 IBUPROFEN — (for pub)rev. in (I en)
5 BITTER O{f} RANGE — ref. Coopers Oxford marmalade
6 S(N ARLINGTO{n})OL
7 choosinG A BINder — this is clearly the ‘proper name which may be unfamiliar’ — I’d never heard of him although the wordplay made it pretty obvious — he was an actor who did some films with Jean Renoir
8 B(1 LIMB)I — a bi (or bisexual) is a switch-hitter, as I learned in my innocence
9 UN DEAL T — refers to a deck of cards
10 ROY’S T
16 FRI ENDING
19 NEMESIA — (is)rev. in Nemea — a long trail leads to the celandine, which seems to be rather feeble, so perhaps that’s the significance of ‘(delicate?)’
20 CLERISY — (sire)rev. in cly
22 WHI(P)T
23 {cop}PICE A
25 DIMER — dim (re)rev.
26 E{nglish} ROSE
27 DONE T{opcoat}

4 comments on “Azed 1943”

  1. Really good stuff here.

    18ac. in-corri(e) -gible (anag)
    6dn. s-narlingto(n) -ol

    I guess were my faves. Lots of penny dropping moments and well constructed clues.

    I found it hard going to start but, it all came together.

    Thank for the post John. There were a few I managed to get but not fully understanding why.

    12ac. I had ‘amino’ -descriptive of an acid (the easy bit for me), but what’s ‘mino’ I don’t get it ???

  2. I enjoyed all the biological science clues: AMINO, OUABAIN, DIMER etc. I think SNARLINGTOOL was terrific. The whole puzzle seemed easier to solve than previous week’s

  3. Thanks, John. I enjoyed this and almost got it all out. I had ASIAC for 29ac, despite not being able to find it in Chambers. That meant I couldn’t get 22dn.

    ‘Blues’ at Oxford and Cambridge are members of the universities’ sporting teams, hencing a ‘rowing blue’ or a ‘cricket blue’. Dark blue is Oxford, as opposed to light blue which is Cambridge. I suppose that if a ‘blue’ can be a sportsperson, a ‘dark blue’ can be an OU or Oxford one.

    I also wondered what ‘delicate’ was doing in 19dn.

    My favourite was 16dn.

  4. The usual good stuff.

    Jake, a mino is a Japanese raincoat made of hemp.

    And 19d, nemesia is a delicately scented half-hardy plant, doubly delicate perhaps.

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