AZED 2,475

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An anagrams special from Azed this week.

The preamble read like this: “Clues are of two types.  In each of the acrosses, the cryptic part leads to the answer to be entered and the definition part leads to an anagram of that answer.  In each of the downs, the definition part leads to the answer to be entered and the (cryptic) remainder leads to an anagram of that answer.  All grid entries and anagrams thereof are in The Chambers Dictionary (2014), except the (two-word) anagram of the entry at 18, a proper name that may be verified on Google.  Bracketed numbers refer throughout to grid entries.  Anagrams of entries at 4 and 18 are each of two words.  The anagrams of the entries at 28 and 34 are each of one word”.

Azed has set puzzles like this before, but I believe that this is the first for quite some time.  It must be just as hard (if not much harder) to set a puzzle like this as it is to solve it.  Once you get started, the generous checking does help to narrow down the possibilities.  As it happens, my first entry (at 15 across) turned out to be an anagram of the right answer!  Although I have completed the grid, I was unable to deduce the anagram at 18 down, being the proper name not to be found in Chambers.

In the blog, I have given the anagram before explaining the wordplay.

 

Across
1 COMMISSARIAT  Millions fail to get air in bed, it’s strongly emphasized (12)
MARCATISSIMO.  (M(illions) MISS ARIA) in COT.  A remarkable 12 letter anagram that I don’t recall seeing before.
10  POUR Old Jack’s swallowing egg – it’s painful on the windpipe (4)
ROUP.  O in PUR (the jack in the game of post and pair).
11  CASERNE Turns for cleaning, event involving English sailors (7)
CAREENS.  E RN in CASE.
12  CANTORIS Rigid mouldings in tins (8)
CAST-IRON.  TORI in CANS.
14  OLEIN On grabbing swag once move far away (5)
ELOIN.  LEI (which can mean a garland, or swag) in ON.
15  MINAE Chemical derivative one found in pit (5)
AMINE.  A in MINE. I originally (and confidently) entered MAINE (which is in Chambers as part of Maine Coon) only to run into difficulties later.
16  REPENTERS Stand for salesman comes on stage (9)
REPRESENT.  A simple charade of REP ENTERS, but a cleverly misleading surface.
17  IDEM Fish with a bit of may, ten cents (4)
DIME.  IDE (fish) M(ay).
19  A-PER-SE Old Persian dialect a priest alongside Irish Gaelic? (6)
PARSEE.  A P(riest) ERSE.
20  SABOTS Shows off a computer program on board ship (6)
BOASTS.  BOT in A SS.
23  SPEC Fungi, dry, including minimum of porcini (4)
CEPS.  P(orcini) in SEC.
25  TRANSPOSE Female supporter hurried through spelling, card going round (9)
PATRONESS.  (RAN SP) in TOSE (card or comb).
28  LIE TO Fabrication beside fine fabric (5, 2 words)
TOILE.  Another simple charade of LIE TO.
30  STASI Some wines, temperature as in southern Italy (5)
ASTIS.  T(emperature) AS in S(outhern) I(taly).
31  INTAGLIO Fashionable label to lubricate back binding (8)
LIGATION.  IN TAG, OIL (rev).
32  STERNAL Water bird trapped in salt, source of seasoning (7)
SALTERN.  TERN in SAL.
33  RUSE Addict, wrinkled, with no inner energy (4)
USER.  RU(go)SE.
34  MAN OF LETTERS Anticipation freed felon in court proceedings? (12, 3 words)
FORESTALMENT.  *FELON in MATTERS.
Down
1  CACOMISTLE Ringtail, extra-large, resident alien once kept in California (10)
COSMETICAL.  OS (extra-large) METIC (resident alien in Ancient Greece) in CAL.
2  OPALED Some shaped a lozenge like a gemstone (6)
PEDALO.  Hidden in “shaped a lozenge”.
3  MONER Simple organism and not occupying centrepiece of demo (5)
ENORM.  NOR in (d)EM(o).
4  IRONED Free time (long) was pressing (6)
RIDE ON.  A charade of RID EON.
5  SCRAPES Awkward predicaments are breaking down Civil Service (7)
PARSECS.  PARSE (break down) C(ivil) S(ervice).
6  SAINE Shakespearian editor’s emendation, if old English, is inserted (5)
ANISE.  IS in AN (old meaning “if”) E(nglish).
7  RECITES Enumerates what replaced AD in rows (7)
TIERCES.  CE (or Common Era) in TIERS.
8  IRON Grating number, Irish (4)
NOIR, or less certainly, NORI.  My hesitation (the parsing being obviously in favour of NOIR) comes from the fact that NOIR is only in Chambers under “noir-ish”  and “film noir” and not under its own entry.
9  ANEARS Approaches traditionally are more sensible when taken up (6)
ARENAS.  SANER A(re) (all rev).
13  RESECTIONS They cut away bones, hidden and twisted in so (10)
SECRETIONS.  SECRET *(IN SO).
18  MONTERO Huntsman rent troubled, reverse of low (7)
NET ROOM?  This is the proper name verifiable by Google, but I haven’t been able to find it.  There is a jazz pianist called Tom Oren, but although that’s a valid anagram of MONTERO, it doesn’t fit the wordplay.
19  APOSTLE Early preacher turns ashen about part of scripture (7)
POTALES.  OT in PALES.
21  ARISTA Bristly process is coming up in bracken (6)
TARSIA.  IS (rev) in TARA
22  ASSART Prince weighed up reclaimed land (6)
RASTAS.  RAS (prince) SAT (weighed) (rev).
24  EASIER Not so tough as having to skirt lake (6)
AERIES.  ERIE in AS.
26  PENAL Very severe scheme before end of sentence (5)
PLANE.  PLAN (sentenc)E.
27  SALSE Volcano that emits mud lava initially entering oceans (5)
SEALS.  L(ava) in SEAS.
29  EDEN Perfect place to massage by the sound of it (4)
NEED.  Sounds like “knead”.

*anagram

19 comments on “AZED 2,475”

  1. Thanks bridgesong. I had NOIR as well.
    I thought ENT ROOM for 18 – it’s a conference venue or such.
    Truly a hard puzzle.

  2. Thanks to both. I got bogged down in the middle but eventually made it. Just – finished yesterday.

    I had NORI for number (no) and Republic of Ireland (RI).

  3. Who needs a Riemann Hypothesis when you can have your own Azed? It was the most brutal thing I can remember and, next time Marg ‘n’ Asa pop in, I’ll be hiding in my attic. And for the whole week. I got the grid done by Thursday evening but I gave up then because I couldn’t be bothered trying figure out the rest of the anagrams. Four whole days of my life I’m not going to get back!

    Incidentally, bridgesong, your achievement in getting the anagrams is no less than Azed’s for coming up with them in the first place. I still had about eleven to go when I gave up. I have no idea about 18. I wondered if there’s somebody called Ern Toom, or perhaps somebody Dutch called ‘ten Room. Then I thought it had to be the Ear, Nose and Throat Room.

    I know it wasn’t a competition puzzle but if any of the inner circle know, I’d be very interested to learn exactly how many correct answers were submitted.

    Stefan

  4. This was very hard. I got about three and gave up. Looking at it now, I can only marvel at the construction, and I wish I’d persevered.

    Thanks to Bridgesong and Azed

  5. Generally I prefer my Azeds plain – I’d be happy never to see another definition/letter mix or Playfair – but I enjoyed this. For me the difficulty was the different nature of the across and down clues. I had to keep checking whether the anagram was in the definition or wordplay.

    I was hoping I’d missed something obvious and I’d kick myself when I looked on here for the anagram of MONTERO. The best I could do was NET ROOM which appears to be a chain of Internet cafes in Japan.  No doubt this answer was the one sticking point in a puzzle full of real, unambiguous anagrams and I don’t mind one obscurity if it was necessary for this excellent puzzle to work. At least there was no doubt about the answer to be entered, so it didn’t really matter.

     

  6. I took the anagram of MONTERO to be the (now permanently closed) TEN ROOM restaurant at the Cafe Royal.

    I really dislike this type of “special”, because there is no point in looking for the anagrams. You might just as well solve it by concentrating exclusively on the cryptic parts of the across clues and the definition parts of the down clues, ignoring the anagrams altogether.

  7. I found this rather unsatisfying, a bit like the Spoonerism puzzle a few weeks ago.

    Solving a plain puzzle is, for me (and this is probably stating the obvious) a synthesis of solving the definition part, the word play and, as the grid fills up, the crossing letters.  In this, the definition and the word play were divorced from each other.   I often could get the answer to the across clues from the word play and the answers to the down clues from the definitions but then was totally lost as to what the anagram could be.

    I was able to fill the grid eventually, although I needed a word search for the last few, and I did use an anagram finder on a couple of answers just to find out, but I soon lost interest.  I don’t think I could ever have found the anagram at 34ac just from the definition.

  9. Andrew @8: you may be right, but I interpreted the wordplay to require an anagram of rent, followed by MOO (rev).  As cruciverbophile points out, it doesn’t really matter.

  10. This is an Azed piece of masochism. I always remember one in which just the four 12-letter words round the edges each had an anagram.

    We can fill in the grid without knowing the anagrams.  I couldn’t spot MARCATISSIMO and TEN ROOM took a while. Ximenes’s thousandth, for those who can remember that far back, was held at the Cafe Royal. We were there! A splendid occasion.

    I can’t agree with Chris at #8, the extra mile is a lot of fun, otherwise why do we do crosswords.

    I finished it too late for the Friday post but, like Marmite Smuggler, should love to know how many were submitted for the weekly prize, and then ask them how many got all the alternatives.

  12. Incidentally, for those who remember 2,473 a oouple of weeks ago, the solution and notes are in today’s paper.  The parsing for 17dn, which had an extra ‘a’, is there uncommented, so either Azed hasn’t noticed it or he’s too embarrassed to mention it.

  15. I’d forgotten aout the Azed slips.  I did get them back in the early eighties but drifted away from Azed when Beelzebub started in the Indie.

  16. Thanks Azed & Bridgesong for working out all the extra bits I couldn’t get, such as marcatissimo.  I haven’t done one of this type before; I think the reservations are understandable but I liked having a bit of extra thinking to do.  I found the downs more satisfactory than the acrosses as there were two ways to attack them.  Getting unusual words with a possibly cryptic definition and no wordplay was a non-starter; I don’t think I got any of the across definitions before working out the solution from wordplay.  I got most of the unwanted anagrams but didn’t feel too bad about leaving a few.

  17. Found it difficult. I thought Tom Nero for Montero. I had a bit of a discussion with my conscience. I do not consider a crossword solved until I understand the clues. After too much work I could not find the anagram of one across, which I was confident about as the answer. So I eventually looked it up (the chambers app gives anagrams if you search on a whole word). I did not know the word, and might not have got it even if I had persevered a long time.
    Be on the lookout for an extraordinary coincidence, said he mysteriously. Explain in a week.

  18. Only just got round to having a go at this, I really enjoyed it.  It would some up the puzzle as “Azed on steroids”. In a normal Azed the difficulties are generally finding a word you don’t know from something you do know.  The uncertainty added by the anagram feature ratcheted this up a notch to “finding something you don’t know from something you don’t know.”

    There weakness in the type of puzzle that there is ambiguity on what is the “correct” un-entered half of the pair.  Anything that you come up with that can be considered a word will do.

    I don’t really get the argument by Chris @6 that there is no point in looking for the anagrams.  One could say the same about not understanding the wordplay in a normal puzzle: one can just guess the solution form the definition.  It depends on what you personally consider a “completed” puzzle: is filling the grid with the correct entries enough, or do you have to be able to explain everything?

  19. Now that The Observer has published Azed’s notes on this puzzle, I can confirm that Chris @6 was correct: it was  the TEN ROOM restaurant that provided the anagram at 18d.

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