Only one printing error, and the correct rubric, for this month’s competition puzzle.
I should add that I am working from the pdf of the puzzle, since the only newspaper shop in the remote Northumbrian village where my wife and I spent New Year did not open on 1 January, so no copy of the paper was available. I would be interested to know if the version as printed in the published newspaper was different.
My favourite clue was 7 down, which packed three separate meanings into four words while still having a surface reading that made some sense. I invite responses to my comments on the anagram indicator at 9 down.
| Across | ||
| 2 | AMBULACRUM | See cub maul ram dreadfully – a bit of an urchin (10) |
| *(CUB MAUL RAM). An easy anagram for an obscure word – it’s part of the shell of a creature like a sea-urchin. | ||
| 10 | ACAS | They settle disputes when accepting cases (4) |
| CA in AS. We don’t hear so much about the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service as we used to do: a sign of the times, I suppose. The wordplay fits the definition very neatly, but I don’t think it qualifies as an & lit clue, although to be honest I don’t always find it easy to decide. | ||
| 11 | KATTI | It helps to weigh Chinese goods, dry, in food (5) |
| TT in KAI (a New Zealand term for food). | ||
| 13 | TCROSS | Anglican community in fling – it’s associated with St Anthony (6) |
| CR (Community of the Resurrection) in TOSS. A T-cross is another term for a tau cross. | ||
| 14 | ETNEAN | Active teen exercised on one (6) |
| *(Teen AN). | ||
| 15 | IRRITANT | Itch making one declaim, about to scratch (8) |
| RIT in I RANT. | ||
| 16 | GEIT | Child I kept in to learn (4) |
| I in GET | ||
| 17 | TAJINE | African stew out of place in a jet (6) |
| *(IN A JET). | ||
| 19 | ORNAMENTS | Religious articles, pieces held by orants moving about a bit (9) |
| MEN in *ORANTS. An unfamiliar meaning of a common word. | ||
| 22 | ENDREADER | Going back, Descartes inspires reverence – I’m impatient for last chapter (9) |
| DREAD in RENÉ(rev). The term apparently describes one who habitually turns to the end of a novel to find out how it finishes before reading the whole book. | ||
| 25 | PAPISM | Rome, to its detractors, is in grip of premier after personal appearance (6) |
| PA, IS in PM. | ||
| 28 | AMAH | Mother has active husband around as nursemaid (4) |
| MA in A H. Regulars will recognise this as one of Azed’s favourite four letter words. It last cropped up in puzzle No 2224, in January 2015. | ||
| 30 | PARAMESE | Second string (from below) in settlement pharaoh left unfinished (8) |
| PA (a Maori term for a settlement), RAMESE(S). | ||
| 31 | RHEXIS | Teacher flipped about producer of bad spelling, bursting blood vessel? (6) |
| HEX in SIR(rev). Nicely misleading reference to spelling. | ||
| 32 | IBERIS | Spaniards maybe trimming an example of Cruciferae (6) |
| IBERI(AN)S. | ||
| 33 | TINEA | Menial Japanese displays this skin disease? (5) |
| TIN EA (East Asian)? I’m struggling here to come up with a reason why menial = tin, or to justify EA for East Asian. | ||
| 34 | HILI | Anatomical openings – Prince has bit of pus removed from both ends (4) |
| The Prince here is the Duke of Edinburgh: (P)HILI(P). | ||
| 35 | STRINGENCY | Austerity, trying with scene endlessly deteriorating (10) |
| *(TRYING SCEN(E)). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | FATIGUE PARTY | Men on e.g. kitchen duty, bore before special do (12, 2 words) |
| A simple charade of FATIGUE PARTY. | ||
| 2 | ACCREW | Credit in one week showing increase as before (6) |
| CR in ACE W. | ||
| 3 | MARRIED | Err with maid getting knocked up? Did the honest thing maybe (7) |
| *(ERR MAID). | ||
| 4 | UPSTARES | What’s amiss with heavenly bodies circling earth? Gazes aloft (8) |
| E in UP STARS. | ||
| 5 | LASAGNA | Spinach wrapped in genipap, standard in a trat (7) |
| SAG in LANA (the wood of the genipap tree). | ||
| 6 | ANENT | Extract from Englishman entirely opposed to Scots (5) |
| Hidden in “Englishman entirely”. | ||
| 7 | RANK | Taxis for lawyers excessive (4) |
| I think that there are three meanings of “rank” in what appears to be a double definition. Loosely, a (taxi-)rank could be said to mean a group of taxis waiting for a fare, and lawyers use the term to mean excessive. Taxis, however, is also a singular noun of Greek origin which can mean order, or rank. | ||
| 8 | UTERI | Outdated matrices you’ll find computer is holding (5) |
| Another hidden clue; a matrix is an outdated term for a womb. | ||
| 9 | KINAESTHESIA | Sensing muscular effort I think eases a fracture (12) |
| *(I THINK EASES A). The anagram indicator is “fracture”, which on the surface reading is a noun, although it can of course be a verb. Azed is on record as abhorring the use of nouns as anagram indicators: does this clue break his rules, I wonder? | ||
| 12 | TAUNT | Tight after imbibing number in fling (5) |
| N in TAUT. The second use of “in fling” in the puzzle; see 13 across, although there it was part of the wordplay and here it forms the definition. | ||
| 18 | AMENABLE | Subject taking walk round eastern North America (8) |
| ENA in AMBLE. | ||
| 20 | ADORING | Like fans often in trouble on circuit (7) |
| ADO RING. | ||
| 21 | NUMERIC | Mice run all over the place just the same as before (7) |
| *(MICE RUN). | ||
| 23 | NASHI | Fruit tree found in Ulster (5) |
| ASH in NI. It’s the Asian pear. | ||
| 24 | EASILY | Sailing through they half trimmed round flapping sail (6) |
| *SAIL in (TH)EY. | ||
| 26 | PRENT | Scotch to impress? Father maybe refusing a second (5) |
| P(a)RENT. | ||
| *27 | MASON | A builder in stone (5) |
| The competition word. | ||
| 29 | OXER | Showjumping obstacle? One in the ring maybe missing (4) |
| Presumably the wordplay is (b)OXER, but in that case I would expect the clue to finish: “… his head”, or something of the sort. I suspect a printing error, as the clue as printed (in the pdf, at any rate) does not have any enumeration. | ||
*anagram
In the paper, 29dn read: Showjumping obstacle? One in the ring maybe missing first (4)
In 33a, the menial Japanese is ETA which displays T in EA.
When I was solving 9d, I took ‘fracture’ to be a verb and the fact that it appears to be a noun on the surface doesn’t make it a nounal anagram indicator.
Matthew is spot on about 33a and 9d, and I think only two defs were intended by Azed for 7d.
Thanks, Matthew and Richard, for putting me out of my misery with TINEA. I should have rembered Azed’s fondness for this sort of construction: it fools me every time!
I was particularly amused by hex = a producer of bad spelling (i.e. evil spells).
It’s now in my notebook for memorable humour.
re 7d: barristers have (or at any rate used to have) a thing called the “cab rank rule” whereby they are supposed to accept any case that comes their way and that they are available for – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cab-rank_rule
Quite a few trips to the BRB required, but for the most part this was the sort of Azed I was hoping for when feeling a bit tired and emotional first thing in the new year… I didn’t have a problem with 9d, seeing the surface and cryptic readings as quite separate.