Azed No 2,415

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A plain puzzle with only one Scottish word this week.

I found this puzzle relatively easy to start, especially in the top half, but completing it proved a little trickier.  It also took me a while to work out all the parsings, but I think that I have now done so.  Thanks as usual to Azed.

 

Across
1 BAREBREACHED Like Donald in Scottish song, worried re bar, stranded outside? (12)
*(RE BAR) inside BEACHED.  I was familiar with the song, but not the phrase.  It’s the only Scottish term in the puzzle, so far as I could see.
9 ABAS Syrian garments showing down! (4)
À bas is French for “down!”.
10 ABSE Welsh poet settling initially in Lincoln? (4)
S in ABE (Lincoln).  Dannie Abse is the poet in question, and the first of the two proper names referred to in the instructions.
12 HORA Israelis dance to this almost hourly (4)
HORA(l).
13 REMUS Uncle known for his stories recalling part of old Babylon (5)
SUMER(ian) (rev).  Uncle Remus  is the fictional character in question.
14 WARTY Disfigured, but sceptical about start of treatment (5)
T in WARY.
16 DRUTHERS Trump’s preference: hurt Reds deviously (8)
*(HURT REDS).  A corruption of “would rather”.
18 MADRONO Nuts turning gold seen around on evergreen tree (7)
MAD (nuts), ON inside OR (rev).
19 ALBARELLO Pharmacist’s jar, empty, left inside urn, round (9)
BARE L inside OLLA (rev).
21 SHOTHOLES House peg on board – we’re bored to receive charges (9)
HO THOLE inside SS.
24 CURETTE Means of scraping out utter shambles in Church (7)
*UTTER in CE.
28 STRAPOIL In the ground, what’ll catch e.g. moles, thrashing no longer (8)
TRAP in SOIL.  Chambers defines this as old slang for a thrashing.
29 BELOW Life’s ending in calamity, where the damned end? (5)
(lif)E in BLOW.
30 RHODY Often a feature of Chelsea hydro, after treatment (5)
*HYDRO.  I’ve never been to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, but I would be surprised to find rhodendrons featuring very often.
31 LEER Jack blasting out volume, getting a nasty look? (4)
LE(v)ER.
32 OREO Cookie from across the pond flipped over in pursuit of love (4)
O’ER O (rev).
33 ORAL Test No.2‘s out for runs in test ground (4)
OVAL with R for V.  I got misled into thinking that “test ground” was the definition and OVAL the answer, which held me up for a while.
34 EARNEST-MONEY Pledge serious change?(12)
A simple charade of an unfamiliar (to me, anyway) word.
Down
1 BARDO Poet on love: ‘the precursor to rebirth’ (5)
BARD O.  The word has become better known recently by its inclusion in the title of the winner of the  2017 Man Booker Prize for fiction, Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders.
2 ABERGLAUBE Irrational belief, a bugbear – almost all led astray (10)
*(A BUGBEAR AL)l).
3 RAMUS Lecturer amusingly introduces such a barb (5)
Hidden in “lecturer amusingly”.
4 BASHO Thump on ring in wrestling event( 5)
BASH O.
5 ESTRAL US heat’s disturbed rest over US city, rising (6)
*REST LA(rev).  This is only in Chambers as OESTRAL, but Chambers does give ESTRUS as a US spelling of the root word OESTRUS.
6 CHAT ROOM Where views are exchanged online or assorted parts of motor car (hard replacing starter for Rolls) (8, 2 words)
*(MOTOR CAR) with H for R.
7 HORN OWL Night flyer in bay circling round fleet (7, 2 words)
O RN in HOWL.
8 DAYBOYS Eton accepts such rarely, governing body say (7)
*(BODY SAY).  I have no idea if this is in fact correct.
11 BREME Historically keen navy leaving German port (5)
BREME(n).
15 TENRECIDAE Ant, I recede in disarray – with these on the prowl? (10)
The Tenrecidae are Madagascan insectivores, so presumably eat ants.
17 BASEBORN Prohibition involving the raising of dresses, illegitimate of old (8)
ROBES (rev) in BAN.
19 ACCABLE Telegraph following cases up, making one depressed (7)
CA (rev) CABLE.
20 BURBLER He utters gibberish, rough speech including indistinct words mum missed (7)
(mum)BLE in BURR.
22 OTTERS Quarry of a particular hound, barking to rest (6)
*(TO REST).
23 TERFE Poet’s Greensward? Welsh singer omits final line (5)
(Bryn) Terfel is the famous singer.
25 CAROM Cannon gunners brought up, welcomed by Commander (5)
RA (rev) in COM(mander).  It’s a term from billiards.
26 DOORN Feature of Cape gooseberry? Cook before middle of lunch (5)
DO (cook) OR (before) (lu)N(ch).  It’s a South African term for a thorn.
27 SLYLY Southern poet and dramatist in artful style (5)
S (John) LYLY.

*anagram

13 comments on “Azed No 2,415”

  1. Today’s Azed page links to teh correct puzzle, but the Guardian website has not updated the special  instruction from last week.

  2. Thanks Bridgesong. I was wondering which two of ABSE, TERFEL and LYLY (and also maybe REMUS) Azed thought might be “unfamiliar to some”. Lyly is perhaps the most obscure (though he pops up in crosswords occasionally), but the others are surely well enough known not to need comment in these circles.

  5. Goujeers@1: isn’t this anomaly a regular occurrence? I always wait to pick up the paper itself from my nearby indispensable corner shop before tackling Azed, but often look online in advance, just to check whether it’s going to be a Plain one or otherwise, and of course to catch up with early blog comments from a week ago. Sometimes the special instructions linger inappropriately for several weeks – the result of delegation to some inadequately briefed teenage intern, perhaps? – but at least the ‘printable version’, and the hard-copy version, generally have the instructions correctly in place, as today. And it’s several weeks now since we had cause for more serious complaint!

  6. You’re quite right of course Quenbarrow, but I hope your last sentence isn’t tempting fate!

    Another great puzzle from Azed, and a clear set of explanations from Bridgesong. Nice to see the great Bryn Terfel make an appearance. BTW I rather like the new plain PDF; it’s a bit scruffy but saves printer toner.

     

     

  7. quenbarrow@5 – indeed. I generally print it when I have to get up in the night for the usual reason at my age, then the time to solve a plain is just right to re-compose my mind to go back to sleep!

    cruciverbophile@6 – the new format’s fine as long as I remember to print in Landscape format as the way it squeezes into portrait is too small for me to read comfortably.

    Andrew@2 – if you are Welsh, as I am, certainly neither Abse nor Terfel are obscure. It  pleased me greatly when I was rebelling against my Catholic upbringing that the only old boy of the grammar-turned-comprehensive school I attended (run by an RC religious order) that anyone had ever heard of was Danny Abse, who was of course Jewish.

  8. Goujeers, if you use Adobe Reader there’s an option in the Print dialogue for auto portrait/landscape, and the page is automatically printed in landscape. Perhaps this isn’t the case with other PDF viewers?

  9. Oboist, With Azed being Azed, I doubt Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge would accept a question mark after an incorrect answer to be right!

    Nick

  10. Thanks all for your comments. Like Andrew, I wondered which was the second unfamiliar proper name; Abse had to be the first, if only because the answer was the whole name. Interesting that nobody has commented on DAYBOYS; are there no Old Etonians among Azed solvers?

  11. Personally I think the ‘Cape gooseberry’ is a nice piece of misdirection, to be interpreted in this clue along the lines of ‘gooseberry when grown in the Cape’. This seems akin to using, say, ‘Scots pine’ to indicate ‘weary’ – the fact that there are such things as ‘Cape gooseberries’ and ‘Scots pines’ is just a handy distraction to offer the solver!

  13. I think it’s reasonable to infer Cape as an adjective is likely to mean the Cape of Good Hope / Dutch South Africa, especially in the context of what is essentially an amusing misdirection rather than a factual point.

    It’s often referred to as “the Cape”, after all.

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