A fairly easy offering this week, I thought, although there were a couple of four letter words that required some care. As I have done before, here’s a link to the pdf of the puzzle in case you can’t now remember the clues
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | MESSERCHMITT | MESS + CHIRMS* in ET + T(urbo) |
| 10 | AKKAS | K in (ASK A)*. More usually spelled as “ackers”. |
| 12 | BEDYE | B(lack) + D(iameter) in EYE |
| 14 | LARIAT | AR(ab) in TAIL(rev) |
| 15 | OWELTY | 0 + WELTY. It’s an Anglo-French word meaning equality. The clue refers to Eudora Welty, an American writer after whom the Eudora email system was named. I remember once having a Eudoramail account, but I never knew the origin of the name before. |
| 16 | CROQUET | R in COQUET. It’s the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet club. |
| 17 | GENET | Jean Genet, the French writer. |
| 19 | SEDUCER | ReduceS with the ends transposed. |
| 21 | GENISTEIN | INGESTE*(d) + IN. |
| 23 | METRIST | ME + TRIST. Chambers gives “versifier” as the meaning of metrifier, whereas it defines a metrist as “a person skilled in the use of metre”. Perhaps there’s not much difference. |
| 26 | SNELL | LENS(rev) + L. It means a short piece of hair or gut attaching a hook to a line. |
| 27 | BAROTSE | ROT in BASE. |
| 29 | RHEXIS | H in REX IS. |
| 31 | PUSHER | P + USHER |
| 32 | LAYER | EARLY* |
| 33 | MISSA | MISS A |
| 34 | SHORT-TEMPERED | (MEPS HOTTER)* + RED |
| Down | ||
| 1 | MAYO | Two meanings |
| 2 | EKPWELE | LEW (which means warm) in KEEP*. Former currency unit in Equatorial Guinea. |
| 3 | SALLEE-ROVER | SAL + L + EER + OVER. |
| 4 | RORY | Two meanings again, but my wife tells me that in Gaelic the name Rory (however it’s spelled) actually means “red king”. |
| 5 | SAICS | AC and SIS intermingled. |
| 6 | CLARETS | L in CA(ses) + RETS |
| 7 | MESQUINERIE | QUINE in MISERE*. A quine or quean is a Scottish term for a girl. |
| 8 | TYDE | Hidden in “pretty demoiselle”. |
| 9 | TESTRIL | T + LITRES*. It means a sixpence, for which a “bender” is obsolete slang |
| 11 | KRENG | RN in KEG, with the inserted letters occupying the even-numbered positions, hence “regularly”. The word itself is a Dutch word relating to the carcass of a whale after removal of its blubber, and flensing means to cut up a whale’s blubber. |
| 13 | DOUC | DOUC(he). A monkey from SE Asia. |
| 17 | GIMBALS | (SLIM BAG)*. An easy anagram for any fan of the novels of C S Forester and Patrick O’Brian. |
| 18 | MISSUIT | MISSU(s) + IT. One of the many meanings of the simple pronoun is “crowning quality”. |
| 20 | ECLIPSE | CLIPS in (r)EE(l) |
| 22 | NEXUS | Sounds like “necks” + US (under-secretary) |
| 24 | TRAY | A in TRY |
| 25 | TESTE | proTESTEd. One of the last clues I solved, and even then it took me time to work out the wordplay. I have to say that it’s not a usage with which I’m familiar, although I’ve been a lawyer for nearly forty years. |
| 28 | AMAH | MA(ssachusets) in AH. One of those four-letter words that can really give you problems in Azed puzzles. It’s very similar in form and meaning to “ayah” but the word play rules that out. Here Azed is using AH as meaning to show an objection. |
| 29 | RHUM | Unless you already knew that rhumb meant a compass point, (and I for one did not), the wordplay would be difficult to decipher. |
| 30 | SWAD | W in SAD. Shown as 20 on the diagram, in error. |
Incline this one quite tough, and a bit of a slog. Today’s offering much easier.
Was lucky I knew kreng straight away. I came across it as a teenager. One of my favourite words, showing the amazing specificity of our language. Right up there with taghairm (look it up). And sesquipedalianism…which is my favourite mode of verbal discourse 🙂