A relatively straightforward plain puzzle from Azed this week.
Like last week’s puzzle, this would also be a good puzzle for beginners to attempt; all the word play is perfectly clear. It is only the obscurity of some of the vocabulary that might cause a problem, but every word and component is in Chambers, except for the common French term at 9 down. There are three hidden clues and some obvious anagrams such as 20 across and 15 down which make it easy to make a start.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BESTRID | First, clear, carrying old rider imposingly? (7) |
| A charade of BEST (first) RID (clear). The slightly odd definition comes from Chambers, which labels this as an archaic past tense of the verb bestride: “to stand or sit across in an imposing manner”. | ||
| 6 | CADET | Trainee returning section in unscripted activity (5) |
| Hidden and reversed in “unscripted activity”. | ||
| 10 | RUBELLITE | Red stone with wavy blue line held in ceremonial (9) |
| *BLUE, L in RITE. | ||
| 11 | SHAW | Playwright has tinkered with start of wording (4) |
| *HAS, W(ording). There aren’t many well-known playwrights whose names have only four letters. | ||
| 13 | OAKUM | What’ll help one remain seaworthy? Sounds like ’ogwash (5) |
| Sounds like (h)okum. Oakum is old ropes “untwisted and teased out for caulking the seams of ships”. Hokum is apparently a conflation of hocus-pocus and bunkum. | ||
| 14 | HERISSON | Hedgehog is trapped by a woman’s offspring (8) |
| IS in HER SON. It’s an heraldic term. | ||
| 16 | OLD-HAT | Books often read including Dahl wrongly presented as passé (6) |
| *DAHL in OT. Azed treats hyphenated words as if there was no hyphen for enumeration purposes. | ||
| 18 | MOOL | Old implement that’s turned back earth in Scotland (4) |
| LOOM (rev). | ||
| 19 | CICATRICES | Frozen water in Arctic’s melting, revealing pockmarks maybe (10) |
| ICE in *ARCTICS. They are scars. | ||
| 20 | INTACTNESS | Insects, ant included, destroyed a whole state (10) |
| *(INSECTS ANTS). | ||
| 22 | PEND | Vaulted passage in Balmoral to be glimpsed in open doorway (4) |
| Hidden in “open doorway”. Nothing to do with the Royal Family: Balmoral is just there to indicate that this is a Scottish usage. | ||
| 23 | INTROS | Lead-ins, those for instance not to Rossini opera scores (6) |
| First letters, although the surface reading is not one of Azed’s smoothest. | ||
| 27 | FASCIOLA | Colourful band yielding allure, nation vented Spanish greeting (8) |
| FASCI(nation) OLA. | ||
| 29 | TRAIL | Dog holding master’s rear, lead on (5) |
| (maste)R in TAIL (dog as in follow or stalk). | ||
| 30 | CAUP | What’s better wi’ wee bit of usquebaugh in it? (4) |
| U in CAP. To cap can mean to outdo or surpass, hence to better. A caup is a Scottish wooden drinking bowl. | ||
| 31 | OMINOUSLY | What makes you slim? No, quite different – weight increasing thus? (9) |
| *(YOU SLIM NO). | ||
| 32 | LINEN | Bed sheets in poplin, entirely (5) |
| Hidden in “poplin entirely”. | ||
| 33 | SMASHER | Singular flirt, one of dazzling charm (7) |
| S MASHER (archaic slang for a flirter). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BASHO | Heavy blow’s nothing in wrestling tourney (5) |
| BASH 0. It’s a sumo wrestlng term. | ||
| 2 | EPHELIDES | Lentigo peels – hide flakes (9) |
| *(PEELS HIDE). It’s a medical term for freckles, which are also known as lentigo (which can mean either a freckle or freckles). | ||
| 3 | SWARD | Fully extends rising grassland (5) |
| DRAWS (rev). | ||
| 4 | RUSS | Muscovite maybe again exploits energy being twice cut (4) |
| R(e)US(e)S. | ||
| 5 | DEMOTICIST | Student of colloquial speech, aural, in d—— troubled times (10) |
| OTIC in D *TIMES. | ||
| 6 | CLONIC | Endless ticking noise round leg, indicating damage to nerve fibres (6) |
| ON (the leg side in cricket) in CLIC(k). | ||
| 7 | ALAIMENT | Former reduction, one introduced in food (8) |
| A in ALIMENT. | ||
| 8 | DIKA | A child climbing for wild mango (4) |
| A KID (rev). | ||
| 9 | TEMPLES | The weather in France requires moving article inside some local churches (7) |
| LE TEMPS (French for the weather) with the definite article (LE) moved inside. In France, Protestant churches are known as temples. | ||
| 12 | ASTRAGALUS | One bone like the same one broken by rough hard stone (10) |
| RAG (rough hard stone) in AS TALUS (another name for the ankle bone). | ||
| 15 | CONSOLUTE | Ounces, lot dispersed being equally soluble (9) |
| *(OUNCES LOT). | ||
| 17 | HAND LINE | Launce? He’s replaced each end to fish without a rod (8, 2 words) |
| (s)ANDLIN(g) (the launce or sand-eel) inside HE. | ||
| 19 | CAPITOL | Defile entered by a cavity, one of 9 in Rome (7) |
| A PIT in COL. It’s unusual for Azed to define a word by the answer to another clue, as he has done here. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill was the oldest large temple in Rome. | ||
| 21 | TEFLON | Like a slippery president left’s disposed against? (6) |
| *LEFT ON. The Chambers definition is worth quoting in full: “To whom the blame for incompetence, dubious dealings, etc somehow fails to adhere, attaching itself instead to others”. According to the OED it was first used in Congress in 1983 to describe President Reagan. | ||
| 24 | ROACH | Old huntsman’s dog gripping duck in butt (5) |
| 0 in RACH (archaic term for a dog that hunts by scent). | ||
| 25 | SAPOR | Relish one’s got in endless games (5) |
| A in SPOR(t). | ||
| 26 | JAIN | Ascetic is half stripped in early part of calendar? (4) |
| (i)S in JAN. | ||
| 28 | COLA | Pass on dash of absinth for soft drink (4) |
| COL, A. | ||
*anagram
Came a cropper in the bottom right corner. I assumed the Spanish greeting was olé and entered FASCIOLE, which is an alternative spelling, and therefore couldn’t get 25dn. And 30ac completely defeated me.
Dormouse, CAUP troubled me for some time; it’s often the case with Azed that the shortest words are the hardest to solve.
Indeed. In this case, having the two middle letters, one of which I deduced was part of the word play, I was looking for a three-letter word, middle letter A. Just too many possibilities.
Some crossword clues remind me of trapdoor functions in maths, like those used in online cryptography. If you know the input, the output is relativity easy to work out, but knowing the output, it’s nearly impossible to work out the input.
I had the same problem as @1 Dormouse. Chambers – routinely recommended – does not give ola as an alternative to ole, and online sources, at least the initial ones found, distinguish firmly between hola (always with the h, though not in Chambers either) and ola = wave. This all confirmed FASCIOLE and blocked SAPOR for some time. Has Homer nodded on this occasion? Otherwise all was, as usual, stern but fair.
following @4: sorry, Homer did not nod. I assumed ola meant a wave of the sea, but on a closer look find that it’s a wave of the hand, a greeting…
The Spanish at 27ac came as second nature thanks to too many hours enduring Dora The Explorer… 🙂 Overall on the easy side for Azed, with all understood, and less trips to Chambers required than usual perhaps.