Azed 2053 – ‘Wrong Number’

“Wrong Number” is one of the older types of “special”, dating back at least to Ximenes. These puzzles can be hard to get started on, because you have to solve a lot of clues “cold” before the crossing letters start to be any help at all. My strategy, in combination with the advice given in the preamble, is to start by separating the clues according to the lengths of the answers. In this puzzle this reveals that there are six clues each with answers of lengths 4 to 9, meaning that the grid is rather unusual too: normally the distribution is less even.

On writing up this blog it seems that most of the clues are relatively straightforward (though it didn’t always seem like that while I was solving them), with no fewer than 4 hidden answers, and as always they are of high quality, even with the added constraint of including an extra definition, which is always done very smoothly.

In the notes below the definition of the answer of the clue is underlined, and the one-word definition of the word to be entered is bold, On the line under the clues I’ve show then main answer first, then the answer to be entered in italics, together the number of the clue it comes from, and finally an explanation of the clue. As the layout is already quite complicated I’ve generally kept the explanations quite concise: you may need to refer to Chambers and/or Wikipedia to confirm some obscure words and meanings.