As one always gets with Azed, a thoroughly sound solving experience and one or two that baffle for ages. If this had been a competition crossword I wouldn’t have dared to submit 29dn since I couldn’t explain it, and in my experience one must always be able to explain everything in an Azed crossword, for otherwise he trips you up. However, I saw it eventually so it wouldn’t have been a problem.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | UPSEY ENGLISH — (he gulps in yes)*, although I can’t quite understand the definition — its Azedian italicisation is also incomprehensible, but the main thing is that I can find little connection between the definitions in the clue and in Chambers [Brew he gulps in, yes? That‘s how we do it here] |
| 10 | CHA FE{male} |
| 12 | ROGUE — g in roué |
| 13 | LA(MEN)T |
| 14 | LUCERN — a comp. anag., where the letters of [lucern hay] equal the letters of [lunch year] |
| 15 | OR(BIT)AL |
| 18 | BOATMEN — (mate)* in bon, the French for good |
| 19 | THOWEL — w{ood} in ({c}lothe{s})* |
| 21 | TIMID — (dimit{y})rev. |
| 23 | SEW(I)N |
| 24 | L(UN)ATE |
| 25 | CANTATA — online this is given as 28, but it’s obviously 25 — can [as in billy-can] ta-ta |
| 30 | USUCAPT — US [= American] uc [= upper-case] apt [= apartment] — this took me a while when solving until I looked up uc in Chambers, and then a few days later, when doing the blog, it took me ages again |
| 31 | ETCHER — etc her [the pronoun used to refer to a ship] |
| 32 | foR A CORTex — hidden rev. |
| 33 | BEGEM — begum with u replaced by e, u and e being the sides of ‘uncle’ |
| 34 | C ILIA |
| 35 | ENTRENCHMENT — (net)* RE n ch{as}m (net)* |
| Down | |
| 2 | PHARE — another comp. anag., this time &lit. — it seems to be unusual for Azed to have two of these in one of his puzzles, but to judge from the number of them to whom he gives awards he likes them — it’s [phare wicks] … [a shipwreck] |
| 3 | SAM BROWNE — (names)* round brow |
| 4 | YE(NT)A — the part of Canada is Northwest Territories |
| 5 | ENTABLATURE — (a neat butler)* |
| 6 | somE URGe — another hidden rev., and not a single straight hidden in this crossword — there are usually two or three |
| 7 | LO(CAT IN)G |
| 8 | SURFE{r} IT — |
| 9 | HEN D |
| 10 | CLOOTS — c (stool)rev. |
| 11 | ALLOPLASTIC — (sal)rev. in (all optic) |
| 16 | I M(MAN)ACLE |
| 17 | T WIT(C)HER — not ‘with’, but ‘wither’ |
| 20 | HEAR TEN — but online it says ‘X.’ and I can’t see the significance of the dot |
| 22 | DECTRA — (traced)* — Azed gives us a simple anagram so that we can be pretty sure this is the correct answer without looking in the old editions of Chambers to which Azed refers at the foot — this word was in the 1993 edition but by 2003 it had been dropped |
| 26 | CUR CH |
| 27 | SPAIN — a in (nips)rev. — Scottishism for ‘wean’, hence the ‘Och aye’ |
| 28 | HE B{ottl}E — it seems to be this, but Hebe was the daughter of Zeus and Hera, so why the ‘him’? |
| 29 | MEM{or is}E — this I was unsure about for ages, although the Chambers definition makes it almost certain — I tried to remove ‘or’ from a six-letter word, and I tried to remove ‘is’ from a six-letter word, but only after a while did I realise that you had to remove ‘or is’ from the eight-letter word ‘memorise’ |
Thanks for the review, John. I agree all your explanations. Re HEBE, I think the parsing may be viewed as ‘he’ with a half-emptied bottle, i.e no longer the youth personified by Hebe.
In 1a the italics means UPSEY ENGLISH is the manner of drinking is defined (rather rudely) by the first half of the clue “Brew he gulps in, yes?”, the habit of bingeing sort of.
I suspect Hebe’s sex change is a simple error. I’m afraid I don’t understand Bob’s comment, the ‘half’ doesn’t refer to ‘bottle’ in the clue at all.