I always cheat when doing Azed. In a normal daily cryptic this would be unforgivable until perhaps the very end when one is stuck, but with Azed I always say to myself that the words are so weird that one needs help. You may say that I should persevere and try to do it all from the wordplay and only then look up the word to see if it exists, and yes I do sometimes do that, but the wordplay itself also often makes reference to some impossible words and I’d never get anywhere. At least I would. but it would take me about ten times as long as I normally spend.
As always everything, with its neat clueing, is perfectly clear after the event.
Definitions underlined and in maroon.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BUTTOCK PLANES | Cable knots put irregularly – they help in measuring ships (13, 2 words) |
| (Cable knots put)* | ||
| 10 | RISORIUS | Teacher having turned sour I exercised what causes a smile? (8) |
| (sir)rev. (sour I)* | ||
| 13 | AWARNS | Old counsels, reverse of inexperienced in brief retort? (6) |
| (raw)rev. in ans[wer] | ||
| 14 | RETAKEN | Rank tee shot? That may be this (7) |
| (Rank tee)* — although as so often with Azed I can’t understand why one of the words is in italics | ||
| 15 | GIMPY | Submissive gray broken by puckish type (5) |
| g(imp)y | ||
| 16 | KILERG | The French queen replaces monarch’s name, more than a little work (6) |
| king with its n replaced by (le R) — 1000 ergs | ||
| 17 | LOBELIA | Garden flower, look, the devil when cut finally (7) |
| lo belia{l} | ||
| 20 | SNIRTS | Band section (not good) backing – they’re smothered by amused Scots (6) |
| (strin{g}s)rev. — the strings are a section in an orchestra, which is often called a band | ||
| 21 | DOMINEE | He’ll preach to Boers in English inside old cathedral ((7) |
| Dom(in E)e | ||
| 24 | LIP OUT | Almost drop Latin? I look sulky (6, 2 words) |
| L I pout — ref. golf | ||
| 26 | TORNADE | Storm poetically rushed round and round (7) |
| tor(nad)e, the nad being (and)* — the first ’round’ = surrounding, the second one an anagram indicator | ||
| 27 | IDOIST | Speaker of international lingo, i.e. not English but including ‘Hey, you!’ (6) |
| id (Oi!) {e}st | ||
| 29 | STRAE | Suit (not the first) doing turn as material for tattie-bogle? (5) |
| ({h}earts)rev. | ||
| 31 | MISSISH | Her indoors with husband, namby-pamby (7) |
| missis h | ||
| 32 | ONIONS | What the well-informed know? No-no is perplexed (6) |
| (No-no is)* — the well-informed know their onions | ||
| 33 | CARCANET | Caught pinching mysterious old jewelled torque? (8) |
| c(arcane)t | ||
| 34 | INTERESTINGLY | Energy-filled R. Stein broadcast, thrilling in absorbing fashion (13) |
| e in (R. Stein)* tingly | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BRAGLY | Edmund’s showing pride through bagging a girl, wayward, I lost (6) |
| by round (a g{i}rl)* — Edmund Spenser | ||
| 2 | TSAMBA | Climbing e.g. mizzen sailor hoisted dish of barley (6) |
| (mast)rev. (AB)rev. | ||
| 3 | TORPEDOIST | Submariner possibly, close against port side, heaving (10) |
| to (port side)* | ||
| 4 | CIST | You want a ritual implements box? Chat turns to that if so (4) |
| ‘chat’ becomes ‘that’ if c is t | ||
| 5 | KURDAITCHAS | They perform revenge killings, a desire that nags one among Islamic people (11) |
| Kurd(a itch a)s | ||
| 6 | LATINER | One had no difficulty with Alma Mater – schools learn it (7) |
| (learn it)* — two things here that I’m not sure about: how does the Alma Mater come in? Is it just a way of referring to Latin? And how is ‘schools’ an anagram indicator? ‘school’ is (it can be seen as an imperative), but in the plural? | ||
| 7 | NAKER | Poorly, semi-pink ear drum (one of a pair) (5) |
| ({pi}nk ear)* | ||
| 8 | EXERTED | River runs dry, once strained? (7) |
| Exe r ted — and I haven’t mentioned what ‘once’ is doing since I can’t see: exerted is a straightforward synonym of strained, nothing archaic about it I should have thought; likewise ted and dry. | ||
| 9 | SONGS | What you’ll get from soprano close to G & S (5) |
| s [= soprano] on GS, &lit. | ||
| 11 | IWI | Maori tribe – more than one is archaic certainly (3) |
| more than one Iwi is Iwis, = I wis, an archaic form of ‘certainly’ | ||
| 12 | SALIENTIAN | Frog e.g., strange when seen in new islands coming up (10) |
| alien in (n aits)rev. | ||
| 18 | OVIDIAN | Nothing – this I saw if old (7) |
| 0 vidi an — an is an archaic version of if — Ovidian/Latinspeak for ‘I saw’ is ‘vidi’ | ||
| 19 | LOUSIER | One re-interpreting Bach, central duo halved, more unsatisfactory (7) |
| Loussier with only one s not a double s — ref. Jaques Loussier, re-interpreter of Bach, memorable for those of a certain age | ||
| 22 | SARONG | Unisex wrap, one of 9 you’ll find Arab in (6) |
| s(Ar.)ong, one of 9 being one of 9dn and 9dn is SONGS | ||
| 23 | REESTY | Like stubborn mount at Ayr, perverse, around middle of field (6) |
| re(e)sty, the included e being {fi}e{ld} | ||
| 24 | LIMBI | I’ll need e.g. leg over where the forgotten are consigned (5) |
| limb I — the plural of limbo | ||
| 25 | POSIT | Given job I’ll get stuck in (5) |
| pos(I)t | ||
| 28 | DORT | The northern English crop up, making Scots sulk (4) |
| (t’ rod)rev. | ||
| 30 | ANE | Old one again losing weight (3) |
| ane{w} | ||
*anagram
Thanks to John and Azed.
I thought 6d was rather a good clue.
A latiner (a latin scholar) would have no problem with Alma Mater because it’s a simple Latin expression.
I found the use of schools as an anagram indicator rather clever and amusing (though I must admit that the sentence had no subject).
P.S.
I took ‘schools’ as a third person singular, not a plural.
[It] schools ‘learn it’.
Does anyone share my reservations about 18 down? It seems to me that “this” is doing double duty as both the definition (if that is the mot juste) and an indicator that “I saw” has to be translated into Latin? I can’t believe that Azed would ever use “I saw” as an indicator of VIDI without including a qualifier to show that Latin was involved. After all, even in the case of words that appear in Chambers (as “vidi” does not) and are marked as Scots, dialect or obsolete, he almost always includes such a qualifier. Indeed, he does so in this very clue, qualifying “if” with “old” to indicate the obsolete use of “an”. Not the most meaningful of surfaces either!
I should have added that I am with John over the need to “cheat” and for precisely the reasons he cites: getting on for half the answers to this particular puzzle were words I either didn’t know at all or didn’t know in the meaning required, and there are often many more than that, as well as words in the clues used in unfamiliar ways. I often wonder whether Azed has a powerful search facility that enables him to find obscure synonyms, but I expect that facility is actually an extraordinarily wide vocabulary (partly professionally acquired) and a remarkable memory and ability to recall things at will.
I don’t regard looking stuff up in a dictionary as cheating, more a learning process.
Can I echo Robin Gilbert’s point at 3? What indeed is the definition?
Part of the pleasure of Azed is, surely, the opportunity to browse through the big red book looking up weird and wonderful words?
1ac was my way into this puzzle. A bit of time unpicking the anagram and the rest of the grid opened up nicely. Thought 28d was the perfect example of a clue where, without help, or an admirably wide vocabulary, you’d be up the proverbial creek.
I wasn’t clear enough: there is cheating electronically (using word searches and anagram finders) and there is just looking up words in the dictionary. I think looking up words in the dictionary is OK, but it was the more extreme electronic methods to which I was referring.
And Robin I still can’t quite decide if Azed is getting ‘this’ to do double duty in 18dn. The clue looked all right to me when I did it but perhaps you’re right. And perhaps there’s some sort of &lit. thing going on.
I’d say that as long as you’re enjoying the puzzle, it doesn’t matter. We’re not competing in Rio, and don’t have to worry about whatever the Anti-Doping Agency equivalent is in the crossword world.