AZED 2,260

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Azed gives us 4 12-letter words or phrases in this week’s plain puzzle.

As always in Azed’s puzzles, there is a mixture of common (e.g. hurt, tutor) and obscure (e.g. fraena, perdendo) words, only one of which this week is Scottish (part of the wordplay in 3 down).  I found it to be towards the easier end of the Azed spectrum, and have been able, I hope, to explain all the wordplay, a high proportion of which this week includes an envelope or insertion of some kind.

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Across
5 WHIPSTER
Cheeky tyke of old, beatnik pursuing women (8)

W HIPSTER.  It’s a Shakespearean term.
12 PALEAE
Bracteoles, colourless, bordering drainage channel (6)

EA in PALE.  EA is one of those obscure but useful two letter words that crops up in Azed’s crosswords from time to time.
13 NATANT
Swimming, what a holiday-maker seeks in part of Australia (6)

A TAN in N(orthern) T(erritory).
14 SHARN
Cowpat maybe has disfigured green (gee not involved) (5)

*(HAS (g)R(ee)N).
15 DIRGE
Lament what’s dreadful about Government (5)

G in DIRE.
16 TIMONEER
Unit in clock, one directing course (8)

ONE in TIMER.  A timoneer is a helmsman.
17 LOIN
Bit of meat from duck wrapped in the same (rolled) (4)

O in NIL(rev).
18 REECH
Smoke selection of free cheroots (5)

Hidden in “free cheroots”.  Another Shakespearean term, though not signalled as such.
21 ORGAN OF CORTI
Hearing aid dispersing endless otic fog and rancor! (12, 3 words)

*(OTI(c) FOG RANCOR).  As the name suggests, this is a biological, rather than a manufactured, type of hearing aid.
22 KLIPSPRINGER
Agile SA native, nuts maybe about kisses, a cracker (12)

LIPS in KP (a brand of nuts), RINGER.
27 ISTLE
Most of fine – man weaves – in filaments perhaps (5)

Compound anagram; take the letters of FIN(e) and MAN from IN FILAMENTS and rearrange what remains for the answer.  I don’t know if Azed intended this to be an & lit clue, but the surface reads so oddly that it’s hard to know.
29 HURT
Damage that’s terminal in watch you repair last (4)

Final (terminal) letters of “watcH yoU repaiR lasT”.
30 RETICULA
Stomachs a transparent plastic turned after end of dinner (8)

(dinne)R A LUCITE(rev).
32 EVITE
Avoid old clergyman spouting Latin initially (5)

(L)EVITE.
33 KOTOW
Cheese to put in inverted cooking pan (5)

TO in WOK(rev).  A lesser known meaning of “cheese” is to grovel.
34 FRAENA
Force once almost bent back restrictive ligaments (6)

F ANEAR(rev).
35 EUROPA
Minos’s mum recalled regret having love with dad (6)

RUE(rev) O PA.  In Greek mythology, Minos was one of the children of Europa and Zeus.
36 PERDENDO
Padre, forgetting middle bit, droned terribly, getting slower and softer (8)

P(adr)E *DRONED.  A musical term, unfamiliar to me.
Down
1 UPSTROKE
Puts out smoke? One’s lacking in p’s and q’s (8)

*PUTS, ROKE.  A nicely misleading definition, relating to letter-formation, not etiquette.
2 CAHIER
Tourer maybe, with haste filling notebook (6)

HIE in CAR.
3 BLAME
Scots livid about mass censure (5)

M in BLAE.
4 ZERO
Cross about euro, even ones spent? This one’s worthless (4)

Even  Odd letters of EuRo in ZO, one of many possible spellings of an animal said to be the cross between a yak and a cow.
6 HETEROPTERAN
Operant managed with three bugs? Only one (12)

*(OPERANT THREE).  A heteropteran is a kind of bug.
7 INTERFRETTED
Royal French and English tense, with loosely tinted edging woven on shield (12)

ER(royal) FR(ench) E(nglish) T(ense) in *TINTED.  It’s a heraldic term.
8 PADRE
Cleric prayed fervently with no end of sincerity (5)

*PRAYED, omitting (sincerit)Y.  There was another padre in the clue to 36 across, which helped.
9 STILTONS
Cheeses keep tipping over on board? (8)

TILT ON in SS.
10 TAROC
King in suit that was turned up in card game once (5)

R in COAT(rev).  It’s an old name for what we now call tarot cards.
11 ENGIRT
G is this in rising triad here (6)

G in TRINE(rev).  This is, in my view, a successful & lit.
19 CAPOTTED
Rotter takes in ceramist almost comprehensively defeated at cards (8)

POTTE(r) in CAD.  It refers to one whose opponent takes all the tricks in the game of piquet.
20 FIRE AWAY
Begin to contact a spiritual being, as Rev. Spooner might have it (8, 2 words)

 A Spoonerism of “wire a fée” (or fay) – hard to imagine any sentence in which that phrase might occur.
23 LOUVRE
Allowing unrestricted view lover naughtily limits window blind (6)

U in *LOVER.
24 ELLOPS
Sea-serpent? Head in ocean almost seen rearing (6)

POLL in SE(a)(all rev).
25 FRIAR
Votary teaching religion in service, rising (5)

RI in RAF(rev).
26 IRENE
Sleuth’s passion, I admire new clothes? (5)

Hidden (clothed) in “admire new”.  The reference is to Irene Adler, of whom Dr Watson famously said (in the opening lines of A Scandal in Bohemia): “To Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman”.  Mind you, Dr Watson goes on to make it clear that Sherlock Holmes never felt any love or similar emotion (or any emotion, for that matter) for her, so perhaps passion is a bit strong.
28 TUTOR
Guardian out abroad, in Turkey (5)

*OUT in TR(IVR for Turkey).
31 CORF
Timeless cage for flounders? (4)

C(age) *FOR.  Unusually, Azed here has overlapped the definition (it’s a cage for lobster or fish) and wordplay.  It doesn’t qualify as an & lit, because there’s nothing necessarily timeless about it.
*anagram

4 comments on “AZED 2,260”

  2. Thanks Azed and bridgesong

    4dn: Actually it is the odd letters of EuRo that are used, the even ones being “spent” (discarded).

  4. Thanks for the explanations. The use of cheese to mean grovel is so lesser-known that it’s escaped my old copy of Chambers entirely. I’m also afraid that Irene’s fame didn’t extend to my ever having heard of her. Whilst I was pretty sure that 1D had to be upstroke, I couldn’t see why at all – the best I could come up with was to do with the engines and the exhaust stroke and the p’s and q’s bit was utterly inexplicable!

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