AZED 2,436 ‘Billets-doux’

Azed temporarily turned into Baudelaire to create a love poem in rhyming couplets as a late Valentine’s Day present to solvers.

I am not going to comment on the literary worth of his poetry, which I would be unable to even attempt, or to the fact that he seems to have addressed it to more than one lady…

Apologies for the different look, but I forgot to write this blog until this morning (see my comments at 5 and 21), so the blogging tool I use had flipped over to today’s Azed, which means I have had to type this in from scratch.

Each of the couplets had two answers, which were anagrams of some of the letters in the clue.  In the blog below, I have indicated the definition in bold and the letters required are scored through.

 

ACROSS

1 FONDEST             Most loving thoughts I send to fairest Maud,

6 CHAT                     Whose causerie at Christmas I adored

12  STARAGEN      What strange aroma, source of flavours, fanned

(Staragen is another word for the tarragon plant)

13  ARABY               Thy breath – a bay reared in exotic land?

14  INERT                 Sluggish in winter? Rather, I’d be there,

15  UNRIPPED       Rent-free and happy under Pippa’s care!

17  SLOPSELLER  Whose wares are ready-made? Dolores’ spell,

18  NOTED                Well-known to end in tears, I know too well

19  SWEDES            To ignorant foreigners doubtless we’d seem

20  DOTTLE             Lassie and dotard, thick as clotted cream

23  SPANE                As pensively mum waits her bairn to wean

26  INHARMONIC  So Nina, rich mother, has ne’er jarring been

28  SUPPLANT         To oust my rivals, pants pulled up, I’ll be

30  NARAS                First to the fruit on Sara Jane’s tall tree

(Naras or narras is a SW African melon-like fruit)

31  SERAI                   Houris I praise, the harem their abode,

32  SLINKILY          None more than Lily, skin in sexy mode

33  FATE                     Your features, Susie, form my destiny

34  CAPSTAN            The turner’s lathe can’t pass such symmetry!

 

DOWN

1  FRAUENDIENST  Fastened in urgent vows of courtly love

2  OURN                        I honour thine and mine neath heaven above

3  DEBILE                     As once enfeebled in my heart I bleed

4  STOPPLE                  Lest opportunity may stem the flow, Candide

5  TABES                        I’m wasting away as Beth my love still spurns

(This clue is one of the reasons the blog is late and in such a mess, as I could not work out what tabes was and was looking in the dictionary for a plural of tabe, so had left the puzzle to the side until I woke up this morning realising I had not completed it.)

7  HANTLE                    A lot, then languishing till sanity returns

8  AGE-OLD                  Since ancient times a lodge for lovers true –

9  TERREENS             Dishes serene tread hither, two by two

10  INTERSECTION  My Connie tires; to crossroads I have come–

11  KARST                      Stark stony ground awaits, a prospect glum

16  MOONCALF          Fool that I am no other fool can match

19  SCOPULA              And yet I love you, clasp thy tufted patch

21  THERIA?                Sweetheart , I give you pounds, euros and such,

(The other reason this blog is late, as I cannot see the definition here – I am assuming “theria” is the right answer given the letters available, but the only “theria” I can find is a genus of mammals?)

22  TALANT                 Most tantalising things to claw and clutch

24  PILEUS                   How cap my love? My pulse is racing fast –

(A Roman felt cap or the cap of a mushroom)

25  ACARI                     With Erica a yearning to father mites at last

27  MUSIC                    O pax vobiscum, harmony I seek

29  NADA                     And nothing else, fair Danae, fair Greek

13 comments on “AZED 2,436 ‘Billets-doux’”

  1. Definition/letter mixture puzzles don’t do much for me. The rhyming couplets were clever and appropriate for Valentine’s Day, but solving this was still a mechanical exercise in letter crunching. It wasn’t too difficult, partly thanks to my use of an anagram finder to get started, but I missed the wit and ingenuity which are a trademark of Azed clues. I do quite enjoy Printer’s Devilry, the other relatively common non-standard type of clueing.

    Sod’s Law that we had this in the same weekend that the Listener was a numerical 🙁

  2. Definition/letter mixtures are my least favourite form of Azed “specials”. But I did like the way that the top row and left column give the thematic expressions FONDEST CHAT and FRAUENDIENST.

  3. Haven’t done one of these for ages, and I found it very difficult to get started.  And getting 4ac as my FOI wasn’t much help.  But, of course, as crossing letters build up, it becomes easier to work out what the anagram fodder must be.

    21dn held me up for a while until I looked up euro in Chambers to find the marsupial connection.

  4. I know that the opinions of Azed solvers are divided when it comes to certain types of ‘special’ – Printer’s Devilry and Playfair puzzles spring to mind as cruciverbal Marmite – but I do wonder just how many among our number are thrilled to see a DLM waiting at the rank. Even PD clues don’t (or shouldn’t, at least) include truly superfluous words, whereas DLM clues can routinely involve more stuffing than an ostrich. Apart from the nicely misleading definition in the clue for 21dn there seemed little here to savour. I think the previous Azed DLM puzzle appeared in 2012 and I’m more than willing to wait another seven years for the next one…

  5. Having failed to complete the puzzle to my satisfaction, I resisted commenting on my preferences when it comes to this type of puzzle. I don’t mind them but they are far from my favourites. I don’t like Playfair either, but don’t mind Printers Devilry and superfluous letter style puzzles. This puzzle did feel like a bit of a chore, but I enjoyed the challenge and have to admire the skill required in getting these rhyming couplets to work.

  6. Interesting that Playfair’s been brought into the discussion. I can’t stand Playfair, but at least you get a more or less complete set of cryptic clues to solve and it’s up to you whether you can be bothered to work out the code for the final handful of entries. Azed’s last Playfair gave a very generous hint to the codeword, so the Playfair element was relatively trivial. Alas Listener setters have twigged that many of us use online code crackers, and have started using non-dictionary phrases as codewords!

  7. DRC: there was actually a DLM puzzle in 2014, which I see I blogged, though I had no memory of doing so until  I found it just now. I think I’d still agree with what I said then, which is that DLMs are “not my favourite type of Azed, but enjoyable enough as a change once in a while.”  In contrast, I like Printer’s Devilry at lot, so was pleased to see in the December Slip that “a Printer’s Devilry competition is scheduled for April.”

  8. Well spotted, Andrew – I shall brace myself for the next one in 2024 rather than 2026! I can’t claim ignorance of that puzzle – though I can claim to have become grumpier in the intervening years – because I find that I remarked at the time that it was a ‘pleasant variation’ 🙂

    I very much enjoy solving PD puzzles myself, though I can’t write a decent PD clue for love or money in any combination.

  9. Can’t understand the grouses about DLM puzzles. I still stick with a battered Chambers and would feel shame if a used  a search engine to find anagrams. Surely the fun is in rejigging your mental system for the different challenge.

    It would be a duller world if all Azeds were plain. Having won one of my few prizes with a PD clue in the last millennium I’ve always had a soft spot for that variant and Playfair solving gives one a touch of Bletchley Park.

    Certainly DLM solving gets easier as you go on and this one didn’t have many clues where a couple of letters failed to pick out the anagram required. I seem to remember that DEBILE held me up as “enfeebled” also had the B, L, E which I sought.

    The couplets were charming, quite teenagerish in their tributes to a range of heart-stoppers.

    Thanks, as always, to Azed and loonapick. I actually completed yesterday’s on the day, a rare achievement nowadays.

  10. Keith, I agree with you about anagram finders in almost all cases. However I find trawling through superfluous verbiage to find a jumble of letters a bore, especially at the start when there are no crossing letters to give any indication of where to look. It’s admirable that you have the stamina and patience to do this; I’m afraid I haven’t!

  11. DRC @10, your last line has cheered me up because I’m the same. I love tussling with a PD puzzle, and marvelling at Azed’s ingenuity, but my brain freezes up when I try to come up with one myself. I’ll still give it a go in April (if it’s a competition puzzle), but there may be tears.

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