Beelzebub 1,252

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Just the one I can’t explain this week, which admittedly is often the case. 31 across has me beaten so I’ve reproduced the clue.

*=anagram, []=dropped, <=reversed.

Across
1 GATSBY – TSB in GAY.
6 IN STOCK – COTS< in INK.
12 ONAGRA – ON AGRA.
13 AIRMAN – R in (AIM + AN).
14 CONCUPISCIBLE – UP in (CUBICLE PICS)*.
17 AUTUMN – Au + TUM + N[ote].
18 HUMORAL – HUM + ORAL.
20 HONEYCOMBED – HONE + (B in COMEDY*).
21 APPALTO – (PAL in APT) + O[il].
23 HAEMIN – H[alt] + A[naemia] + (IN ME)*.
27 EQUIDIFFERENT – E + QUID + IF + F + E + RENT. Nice long charade clue.
28 NURSER – S in RERUN<.
29 EUNUCH – UN in (H + CUE)<.
30 TESTATE – STAT in TEE.
31 IMARET – Marine engineers avoiding second Turkish inn.
Down
2 ANON – A NON.
3 TANK TOP – KNOT* in TAP.
4 BRUMMELL – (RUM + M) in BELL. Beau Brummell, noted Regency dandy.
5 YAPON – (NO PAY)<.
6 IRISH COFFEE – (HER OFFICE IS)*.
7 NASH – [mai]N AS H[onest]. And a second dandy, Beau Nash.
8 TRILOBED – LOB in TRIED.
9 OMBU – MB in OU.
10 CALLA – Maria CALLA[s].
11 KNEE-LENGTH – KN[itting] + (THEN GLEE)*.
12 OCTAVALENT – (A + VAT + CO)< + LENT.
15 LUNARIST – (SUN TRAIL)*.
16 OMMATEUM – MATE in (0 + MUM).
19 REMUEUR – EMU in (R[attle] + EUR. Apparently the chap who turns the bottles.
22 PIQUE – PIQUE[t].
23 HEFEI – (IE + F[r]E[s]H)<.
24 OURS – [t]OURS.
25 GIRT – TRIG<.
26 ONCE – [b]ONCE.

 

5 comments on “Beelzebub 1,252”

  1. 31ac was one of two answers I couldn’t parse, too. The other was 25dn so thanks for that, although looking at it now, I’m not sure what my problem was. (You have a typo in your answer for that, by the way.)

  2. Well spotted – typo now fixed. That was certainly one of my last in. I think I’d heard of GIRT existing, though I didn’t know this sense, while TRIG seemed worth a shot, and Chambers thankfully confirmed it.

  3. Just got 31ac, and it’s been staring me in the face. If you look up “imaret” in Chambers, the entry before it is IMarEST, which turns out to be the Institute of Marine Engineers, Science and Technology. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

  4. I saw this in a wakeful moment at 4 a.m. I could not guess how the answer to 31ac was derived. I thought I would give it a try after I got out of the bed and had my cup of coffee but I find that Dormouse has cracked it. Congrats!

    I don’t think I would have succeeded in parsing it.

    The question is: is it a fair clue? Of course, for TU, clues sometimes give the indication ‘union workers’. Criticism may be made that this has become a convention, a cliche.

    The abbr. for ‘marine engineers’ is not so well-known as the abbreviations and acronyms of international organisations and I think but for Dormouse’s look-up in the Chambers dictionary, Dormouse may also have been beaten. (The 2005 edition of XWD does not include this abbr.)

    The very abbr. is a little odd, including as it does an agent-noun and two subject names.

    Having said that, I do concede that not all clues in a puzzle can be of the same high class and occasionally a setter may have to dismiss a clue in a rather strange, novel way.

  5. I think what puts this just on the fair side is that I’m sure most people would have to have looked up IMARET – I certainly didn’t know the word – and it is the word above it in Chambers (at least in the 2011 edition) so there is a good chance you’ll spot it, eventually.

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