The usual utterly sound and satisfactory puzzle from Azed.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | FIREPLUG — discharging = fire, bolt = gulp, which reversed is plug. A fireplug is a hydrant: one is misled by the word hydrant, which is one of the Chambers abbreviations for h that Azed might have used |
| 7 | skittiSH A Harem |
| 10 | FLAGITATE — florin briefly is fl, beg = agitate; not a word one uses daily |
| 11 | SPIV — (VIPs)rev. — one thinks of a spiv as someone like Walker in Dad’s Army, but one of the meanings tucked away in Chambers is this one |
| 13 | GRASS — 2 defs, as in meadow-grass and also grass the noun as in grass up; canary also means informer (sl) |
| 14 | CUMQUAT — cum = with, a quat is a pimple (now dialect) |
| 16 | SNEER it has to be, but I can’t explain it properly: OK sneer = scoff, s = seconds, ne = not once (ie not (obs)), but how is ‘er’ = ‘on offer’? Perhaps Azed’s attitude to ‘on’ is like that of The Times and A on B = BA, in which case this is the wrong approach. Perhaps neer = ne’er, but what then does the ‘on offer’ mean? It can’t be a reference to Ozymandias‘s ‘sneer of cold command’? (Of course not: just an excuse to provide a link to a wonderful poem, and this comes from someone who isn’t all that excited by poetry) |
| 17 | RETIRE — E(rite)R, all reversed |
| 18 | SCALE STAIR — ales replacing o in Scot, air = look; a scale stair is a Scottish term meaning stairs in straight flights |
| 20 | LUXURIATES — (a Lurex suit)* |
| 22 | CLAMBE — C(lamb)e, a Spenserian past tense of climb |
| 24 | ARGUS — an argus is a vigilant watcher whose origins lie in Greek mythology; and it’s also a pheasant of SE Asia, which explains the ‘Bird watcher’, and it’s argu{e}s, and argue = prove, as a corner of Chambers shows |
| 27 | REMOUNT — r (= take) (men out)* |
| 29 | UN{w}ARY |
| 30 | SLAE — a Scottish form of the word sloe, and “slay”; stonker is, although one thinks of it as a noun, also a verb |
| 31 | T(HR)ILLERS |
| 32 | HYEN — a Shakespearean form of the word hyena, and it’s (Hen{r}y)*, ie Henry shunned by king |
| 33 | END ANGER — if you end anger then you perhaps cool off |
| Down | |
| 1 | FISC — if the f is c in fast it becomes cast (= formulated) — a nice device Azed often uses |
| 2 | IMP UNDUL{ating} U |
| 3 | RHIME — I’m in (her)* — an obsolete spelling of rhyme |
| 4 | PLEURA — P (la rue)* — at first I thought Azed had made a slip here, since a pleura is a side-piece whose plural is pleurae, but when I looked more closely I saw that a pleuron is a side-wall and its plural is pleura |
| 5 | LAVALLIERE — laval (I reel)* — aval means relating to a grandparent, hence the maybe |
| 6 | dancinG I GUEss |
| 7 | STRETTE — tret in (set)* — strette is the plural of stretta, which is a musical term meaning a passage, esp a coda, in quicker time |
| 8 | Harbour Arrive After Fishing, an &lit. |
| 9 | HESPERUS — (she)* Peru s — Venus as the evening star |
| 12 | STREAMERED — (reed’s a term)* |
| 15 | TRIBUNATE — (a nub)rev. in trite |
| 16 | SELCOUTH — (clues to)* h — an obsolete (‘no longer’) term for strange |
| 19 | CUM(AR)IN |
| 21 | TAMARA — 2 defs, one of them the Caucasian name, which hasn’t really reached the West, probably because of the association with the very mannish Soviet athlete Tamara Press |
| 23 | BAY L{anguag}E — a variant of bail, one of whose meanings = barrier |
| 25 | GU{ard} LAG |
| 26 | GARE — 2 defs, a gare as a French station, also a Scottish word meaning greedy or miserly |
| 28 | T EAR — ref Robert Tear, the great tenor who died this year |
Thanks, John, for your blog. I parsed 16ac as S + NE’ER and disregarded the rest of the clue – I have that luxury. Tamara Press – Wow! What a blast from the past. I do vividly recall her manly heaves at the 60 Olympics.
Cheers…
John, I’m with Grandpuzzler on 16ac. All you can say is that “on offer” adds to the surface reading, by reference to the other meaning of “scoff”. I think that Homer has nodded on this one. Thanks for elucidating 1 down; I knew that it was one of those words, but couldn’t understand “formulated”.