Azed 1998 = 2000 – 2

by

By swapping blog duty with Peter, I think I accidentally managed to avoid Azed 2000 which I suspect will be more than the run-of-the-mill challenge.
Across

1 S(PUDDING)IN – initial drilling of a well. My last clue — though the wordplay’s easy.
10 FRENCH DOOR – don’t think Fords ever had sliding French doors but nonetheless a nice clue — comp. anag. (FRENCH DOOR, y)* = (Henry Ford, co)*
11 W,ROOT – archaic write
13 END(U)E – to dress, however is “originally” a kosher anagrind?
14 DANIEL – another comp. anag. — (DANIEL’s, no)* = (a lion’s den)*
15 P(R)EACE – Spenserian press = insist
17 EPA(ULE)T – ULE=rubber tree in rev(tape)
18 S,ODIUM
19 BIDS – “Bath Information and Data Services, an Internet service providing bibliographic information for academic users” which I’d never heard of — perhaps familiar to Brit academics? And I suppose BIDS can be the result of “inviting”.
22 T,AVA – a NZ fruit tree indeed and AVA=kava (which is what I had at first) which is a narcotic drink.
24 RE,A,SON – my first clue answered and rather easy for an Azed (thank goodness!)
26 S([i]T)ELENE – from stele thus “slab-like” with SELENE being a obselete term referring to the moon.
29 CO,RSAC* – an arctic fox
30 LI(LIE)D – LID for hat
31 E(MB)US – to get on a bus thus board. MB (one of the many Brit abbrevs for doctor) in rev(sue)
32 GONAD – hidden
33 NEURILEMMA – (male murine)* a neurological fibrous thingy (though you’d think it ought to be a small theorem proposed by a neuroscientist).
34 M(A,LAD)AP,TED – TED=teddy boy – 1950s era bad boys.

Down

1 SAW,DUST[up] – do they still have pubs with sawdust somewhere?
2 P(A,RAZO[r])A – botanical sponges
3 DROIT – (to, dri[nks])*
4 D(ETEN)U[rance] – ETEN=giant in DU[rance] where rance=bar and DETENU is a prisoner (Indian?)
5 INCLE(MEN)CY – MEN=chaps in (in, cycle)*
6 G(HERA)O – I guess we know that HERA was really in charge. GHERAO is a siege of management to force them to… well, give you more money I suppose.
7 NO(DALI)ISE – ref. Salvador DALI
8 DO,UCE* – Scots “sober”
9 GR,EET – rev(tee = the top of a dagoba = shrine). GR ref. one of the King Georges.
12 AP(PARELLE)D – PARELLE=lichen in pad*
16 AD VERB,UM – um… it’s literally the answer
20 DOG,EATE[n] – the kind of office you’d aspire to if you were living in Venice say in the 16C
21 SN(ODD)ED – Scots “smartened”- where SNED=cut
23 DEASIL – sailed*. Scots for path of the sun
25 ENIGMA – another comp. anag. (into, GERMAN)* = (torn, ENGIMA)*. It’s the code that Ultra broke to win the war.
26 SCENE=”seen”
27 TOMES – mesto=sad with its two syllables inverted
28 C(LOM)P – LOM in rev(PC = copper). Presumably ref. the actor Herbert LOM (played a policeman in the Pink Panther series so not a bad clue).

6 comments on “Azed 1998 = 2000 – 2”

  1. Thanks ilancaron.

    Original can mean novel, so I think originally works as a anagrind.

    I could see that the wordplay for 22ac could give TAVA, but there is no V in Maori so I rejected it without checking in Chambers. A careful reading of Chambers reveals that TAVA is a variant of TAWA in the sense of “a griddle used in Indian cookery” but not in the sense of “an evergreen tree … native to New Zealand”.

  2. Matthew: I tend to agree with you – I think I noticed this at the time, but then forgot to be critical. You’re indeed right: TAWA = TAVA only the latter’s 2nd sense (the Indian griddle). So a mistake by Azed.

  3. One of mine for one of yours. I failed to spot the comp. anag. at 14A, having it as 2 defs. At 19A BIDS = ‘is inviting’

  4. Thanks for the blog, Ilancaron. My academic wife confirms that BIDS is indeed familiar to UK academics, not just those at the University of Bath.

    I was a bit surprised to find that APPARELLED was an answer when APPAREL featured in the clue for 13 across. Also, does anyone else think that “old inscription” is a loose definition of “WROOT”, even though the wordplay made the answer very clear?

  5. Bridgesong, I think the def. at 11A is ‘made part of old inscription’, the part being itself an inscription. The problem then is whether that is a transitive sense of ‘write’.

  6. You WRITE when you make part of [an] inscription [today]
    You WROOT when you made part of [an] inscription [when the obsolete ‘wroot’ was current]

Comments are closed.