Azed 2263 — ‘Eightsome reels’

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This is something Azed only occasionally does, to have one of his specials on a non-clue-setting-competition day. I don’t know how many solvers there are who do the n-c-s-c puzzles but not the c-s-c ones, but if there are any then they will appreciate this one. Azed’s Eightsome Reels are always enjoyable.

Definitions are underlined.

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Across
1 Conceited about dear cheese — VACHERIN — va(cher)in
2 Burrowing rodent? Twice one’ll surround hiding place, cutting off tail — BISCACHA — bis (cach{e}) a
3 Sculptor made rapid progress in variant of cubism mostly — BRANCUSI — ran in (cubis{m})* — this is the proper name referred to by Azed at the end of the clues
4 Humorist against taking in radio, TV, etc — COMEDIAN — co(media)n
5 US salt pork, maybe, or variety of same diet (2 words) — SIDE MEAT — (same diet)*
6 Tree genus: seek one alongside river — CASTANEA — cast an ea
7 N. European Queen, one seeking surface effulgence — POLISHER — Polish ER
8 Meal, not much, the old throw out of home — DISHABIT — dish a bit
9 Support receding, trial collapsed? Such is judge’s decision — ARBITRAL — (bra)rev. (trial)*
10 Placed urn back to front? Typical of some estates — ALLODIAL — (laid olla)rev.
11 Is clothing soiled badly getting honours? — IDOLISES — i((soiled)*)s
12 Test to judge English cads nervously entered — SEEDCASE — se((E cads)*)e — test = testa
13 What bees gather to support blend of oils — PROPOLIS — prop (oils)*
14 ‘To evict’ is scheme in transmission of data — DISPLANT — (is plan) in DT
15 Amir prances about with this pheasant – or a ptarmigan? — TRAGOPAN — a comp. anag. &lit. with [Amir tragopan] … [or a ptarmigan]
16 A fool, one cutting lines, separated from the sea by reefs? — LAGOONAL — l(a goon a)l
17 Make channels through middle of marches, i.e. nalas (more obscurely) — CANALISE — ({mar}c{hes} i e nalas)*
18 Diving birds: canal men head off after cutting couple’s wings — CARGEESE — {b}argees in c{oupl}e
19 Rather boastful, or prissy about love — PROUDISH — pr(0)udish
20 One part of NZ within the sound of the surf? Fairly straightforward — PLAINISH — pla(1 NI)sh — I’m sure Azed wasn’t really happy to have two words next to each other each of which ends ‘…ish’, but perhaps the grid fill necessitated this
21 Masses of flower grains forming lumps behind the head — POLLINIA — poll inia
22 Wine glasses, things to be thankful for, completely swallowed — BALLOONS — b(all)oons
23 President cut short answer – tough stuff — BARACANS — Barac{k} ans — but baracan is according to Chambers a thick strong fabric and my suspicion is that in some dictionaries it would be called a mass noun; can you really pluralise it?
24 It’ll devour roadkill, worthless when vehicle goes round one — CARACARA — ca(raca)r a
25 Some sparring’s ideal … for fans seated here — Hidden &lit. in sparRING’S IDEal
26 Tribal festivity – it’s detained many in America — SING SING or SING-SING — 2 defs, one of them referring to the American prison
27 Smelt rod with fish on it — SPARLING — spar ling
28 Where scientists work, all’re puzzled regarding flower’s ‘lip’ — LABELLAR — lab (all’re)* — not actually in Chambers but as Azed says attested on the Internet
29 Clan ailing with poor housing – one’s hard to shake off — BARNACLE — bar((clan)*)
30 Polish Unitarian turning a vicar on — RACOVIAN — (a vicar on)*
31 Producing meal at an advanced stage, I smell — FARINOSE — far I nose
32 Criminal offspring is caught by cunning — ARSONIST — ar(son is)t
33 College pants as exercising – they got puffed a lot! — CAPSTANS — c (pants as)* — referring to the cigarettes — I was a bit thrown here since after the clues Azed says ‘one proper name’ and we’ve already had it in 3, but the proper name Capstans is also a word in Chambers
34 Sound exercises: they’re associated with manual labour — CALLUSES — call uses
35 Deck cut, deals out – groovy — SULCATED — ({c}ut deals)* — ‘Deck’ tells you to take the first letter off [Not so, as said below. But what is in fact happening with ‘deck’ I can’t see]
36 Going over part of speech I worried – it must be brief — BREVIATE — (verb)rev. I ate

AZED2263

 

12 comments on “Azed 2263 — ‘Eightsome reels’”

  2. I suspect, for regular solvers, the clues are on the easy side for Azed. Once you have three or four that intersect it’s a mater of jigsawing them in. Nowhere near as hard as some of his specials, I have absolutely no idea how Azed goes about constructing this type of grid though.

  4. I agree with sidey, that perhaps the clues are on the easy side, although the choice of words is (perforce) often pretty obscure. However, the fact that they are all eight letters long is of assistance (generally longer words are easier to solve than shorter ones). The technique, as sidey suggests, is to start by cold solving some that intersect and then entering some possible configurations in pencil. You soon get confirmation or denial of your guesses; the main problem is determining (a) where to start and (b) in which direction to go. However, once you have a few letters in a sequence, it is usually obvious. Azed always gives us the unchecked letters in the corners, but you don’t really need them.

    John, I think that there’s a c omitted in error at 35: it’s needed for the anagram, although quite what “deck” is doing in the clue, I don’t know.

  5. I think ‘deck’, as a verb, may be another anagrind. It’s possibly my first solve as it was obviously an anagram.

  6. Unlike bridgesong I find Azed’s unchecked letters (A FINE VERBENA in this case) immensely helpful and deliberately try to start with corner clues.
    which is what I think we are intended to do. I agree that it CAN be done without, if you want to make it more difficult for yourself.

    For example, I knew that at least one of the corner clues had a ‘V’ in the answer and this led me to think of Vacherin for 1 across and then with Biscacha for 2 across there was only one way of putting these TWO answers in, which removed NV & I from the list of unchecked letters. If you start in the middle you have to get THREE touching answers not in a straight line, before you can enter anything in ink in the diagram.

    When 36 turned out to have a ‘V’ in it as well, I knew that the ‘V’ WASN’T in any of the unchecked positions, which helped.

    It was even more useful in the run-in when FA&E were the only unchecked letters left. Knowing that the answer had an ‘F’ in it helped me get Farinose, . At that point I hadn’t done any of the touching clues 25, 26 & 32 but knew that the F had to be right in the corner. and that the N had to be diagonally opposite it, whether the answer was put in clockwise or anticlockwise.

    A FINE VERBENA helped throughout.

  7. Gosh Norman, I can’t imagine doing it like that. My method is to go through all the clues quickly to spot the obvious (to me) ones. I also don’t think there is any method “we are intended to do”. I don’t think I have ever used the corner letters until the grid is complete, just in case there was an ambiguity.

  8. I normally do Azed crosswords in just the way sidey describes. (I ignore the surface readings of the clues until I’ve put my last one in, and then savour their clever construction as a second course. In this respect we may differ.)

    I was really answering AJKs question, which was how do you go about an eightsome reels problem, to which my answer is still that there is one option they might find helpful:
    Try the corner clues first
    If you can do any one of them, try the adjacent clues because if you succeed with ONE of the touching clues you can probably start entering your answers straight away with the help of Azed’s information on the unchecked letters. You then have the option of working out from there (or perhaps trying another corner). It is obviously a technique that can be applied to Eightsome Reel puzzles ONLY

    No doubt sidey, like myself, always completes the puzzles anyway and needs no advice from me. It was just a suggestion to others less experienced who may need help.

    I still think it’s highly unlikely that Azed gives us the unchecked letter information just so that we can check that we’ve got it right afterwards.
    Perhaps someone will ask him.

  9. Sorry Norman, I wasn’t trying to say there’s anything wrong with your method, it had just never occurred to me.

  11. Sorry, perhaps I should have said a bit about how I went about solving this. I started by ‘cold solving’ as many as I could and hoping that two of the answers would share a set of three consecutive letters; which in this case fortunately happened. This led to two possibilities, which I wrote on a scrap of paper, and that gave two possibilities for each of up to four other nearby clues that make an L-shape. Eventually one of these fell (in fact they might have been cold solved: I can’t now remember) and this forced the positions of the answers to the three clues. And then I went on from there.

    Like Sidey I never made use of the corner letters, at least at the start, since there were so many possibilities, although once I was down to my last of the corner solutions, and I knew the three unchecked letters at the corner, this made this solution easier. But Norman’s method of using them at the start looks perfectly sensible.

    As for 35 yes Bridgesong@4 I’m clearly wrong and the c needs to be there in the anagram fodder, but I can’t see why Azed uses the word ‘Deck’. Surely he isn’t using two anagram indicators when one would do, something he has taken me to task for in his slip when I used two anagram indicators in a comp. anag.?

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