The competition puzzle that isn’t: “We regret that prizes for our puzzles are temporarily suspended” says the website. I got through this one reasonably quickly, and didn’t have too much trouble writing up the parsings, though there seemed to be quite a lot of unfamiliar words whose meanings I had to check. I’m always wary when I think I’ve spotted an error in an Azed clue, but 12d looks wrong to me. I was wrong, of course: see comment 2 and in my parsing.
The next competition would presumably have been rescheduled to 10 May to coincide with number 2500, but who knows how things will be by then (the lunch on the previous weekend has of course already been postponed). Anyway, thanks to Azed, a reassuring constant in these strange times.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | ESCABECHE | Grated cheese enveloping something in rank marinade (9) CAB (taxi – found in a rank) in CHEESE* |
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| 11. | SHAD | Dock unloaded citrus fruit and fish (4) SHADDOCK (citrus fruit) less DOCK |
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| 13. | ORIYA | Indian language? See this cant I’d translated for a dictionary (5) Composite anagram: (A DICTIONARY)* = ORIYA CANT I’D |
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| 14. | ARPENT | Bit of money that’s short in a payment for land measure (6) P (abbreviation penny) in A RENT (payment); “land” could be attached to either “payment for” or “measure”: I think “land measure” is the intended definition |
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| 15. | ROISTS | Revels? Disorderly sort limiting lives (6) IS (lives) in SORT* |
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| 17. | GÖTHITE | Mineral was smashed with end of sledge (7) GOT HIT + [sledg]E – an alternative spelling of the mineral Goethite, which is named after the poet Goethe |
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| 18. | ABELE | An Asian tree alongside English poplar (5) A BEL (Asian tree) + E |
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| 19. | GREN | Ache being denied wine, making the old smirk (4) GRENACHE (wine) less ACHE – old form of “grin” |
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| 20. | METALANGUAGE | A gun cast in e.g. bronze, mature? See set of linguistic symbols (12) (A GUN)* in METAL + AGE |
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| 21. | POSTER PAINTS | Range of bright colours indicates outside repast, cooked (12, 2 words) REPAST* in POINTS (indicates) |
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| 24. | CUTE | Clever? It shows dash when you do (4) If you CUT the E from CUTE, you get CUT, one of whose definitions in Chambers is “to dash, go quickly” (as in “cut along!”) |
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| 26. | SCAWS | Points on the board, we hear? Low points (5) Homophone (for non-rhotic speakers) of “scores”; a scaw is a low headland |
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| 28. | DAMOSEL | You may see some lad excited by me (7) (SOME LAD)* &lit |
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| 30. | ARILLI | Seed coverings air buffeted around badly (6) ILL in AIR* |
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| 31. | REEDEN | Milton wrote this of marsh plants (6) Milton wrote RE (about) [the garden of] EDEN in Paradise Lost |
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| 32. | FORME | Its contents are arranged for printing, in the writer’s opinion? (5) FOR ME (in my opinion) |
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| 33. | TOEY | Sheila’s irritable, still rebuffed about love (4) O in reverse of YET (still) – Australian slang for “irritable” |
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| 34. | GREEN-BONE | Local watercourse in Britain, one revealing pike-like fish (9) REEN (dialect word for a ditch or watercourse) in GB + ONE |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 2. | SHRUB | Fruit cocktail and sandwich (requiring short time to open it)? (5) HR (abbreviated “hour”) in SUB (sandwich); this shrub is “a mixed drink of lemon or other citrus fruit..” |
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| 3. | CAPLET | Delay once getting under lid for pill (6) CAP (lid) + LET (delay, marked as “archaic”, but in the same sense as found in “let or hindrance”) |
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| *4. | BUNG | A stopper (4) The competition word, or what should have been… |
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| 5. | ECTOPARASITE | Otic area pest, possibly a flea? (12) (OTIC AREA PEST)* |
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| 6. | CARTON‑PIERRE | Sydney harbour feature, note, in papier-mâché? (12) CARTON (Sydney, as in A Tale of Two Cities) + PIER (harbour feature) |
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| 7. | HOO-HA | Outsiders going for shoot that creates a carry-on (5) sHOOt tHAt minus the outer letters of each word |
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| 8. | SISTRA | What makes an Isis rite – i.e. in these being rattled? (6) Another composite anagram, and also and &lit. (AN ISIS RITE)* = I.E. IN SISTRA; plural of “sistrum”, which is “an ancient Egyptian rattle, used in Isis-worship” |
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| 9. | GYTE | Bairn that’s good, yet spoilt (4) G + YET* |
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| 10. | GASTNESSE | Dread Shakespearean blather and tortured tenses (9) GAS (blather) + TENSES* |
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| 12. | DEFLATE | Dejected when damn rings puncture (7) FLAT (a puncture) “ringed by” DEE (i.e. D, euphemism for ”damn”), though the definition surely points to DEFLATED. Thanks to Dansar for the correction: it’s FLAT (dejected) in DEE, with “puncture” as the definition. |
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| 16. | CAMPCRAFT | What Baden Powell encouraged affected clubs, a large number (9) CAMP (affected) + C[lubs] + RAFT (large number) |
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| 19. | GUICHET | Hatch limitless wealth kept in pot (7) [r]ICHE[s] in GUT (pot[-belly]) – familiar as the French word for a ticket-office |
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| 22. | STAIRS | One among heavenly bodies in flight (6) I in STARS |
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| 23. | NARDOO | Nutritious fern, number fringing neglected road (6) ROAD in NO (number) |
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| 25. | POLER | Idle Aussie, very nippy by the sound of it (5) Homophone of “polar”, very cold; Australian slang for a shirker |
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| 27. | WHEEN | Eyesore? He admitted there’s not so many in Scotland (5) HE in WEN (eyesore, as in “The Great Wen” for London); it’s a Scots word for a few |
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| 28. | DROW | Smur in Glasgow or Dundee coming up (4) Hidden in reverse of glasgoW OR Dundee; Chambers gives “fine misty rain” for “smur” and “ drizzling mist” for DROW: there may be a subtle distinction between the two: in any case, both are familiar to those of us who regularly visit Scotland (for obvious reasons I have had to cancel my next visit, which was due in May) |
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| 29. | LEAN | Sprat (male) goes for this, a line that’s loaded I cast (4) (A LINE)* less I, with a reference to the nursery rhyme: “Jack Sprat would eat no fat” (unlike his wife, hence the “(male)”) |
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Made a bit of a mess of the top left and couldn’t finish. I was convinced 3dn was TABLET – I could imagine tab being a lid if I looked at it long enough. I also couldn’t get away from CHUBB for 2dn, as a type of lock – open it – but couldn’t quite work out why. Never heard of SHRUB as a drink.
Thanks to Andrew and Azed
Def in 12d is “puncture”
12d fooled me for a while too, but I gave it a lot of thought afterwards (paranoid about sending in a passable competition clue but being disqualified by an error in the grid) and eventually got it. Slightly deceptive syntax but absolutely straight.
Quite a few amusing clues this week, I thought. I think a certain veteran competitor would have appreciated 27d.
Andrew, I assume that the competition will still proceed, but without any cash prizes being awarded. Like Nila I certainly submitted my entry to the Post Office box address in Oxford, from where Azed will presumably collect the entries in the usual way. There’s no announcement of any suspension that I can see on the andlit website.
Thanks Dansar, obvious now you mention it! I’ll correct the blog.
Dansar’s parsing of 12d is quite correct, of course, but I think the reason that solvers have struggled with this clue (‘Dejected when damn rings puncture’) is that it is grammatically flawed. The ‘when’ is a subordinating conjunction, so if we are to understand that the FLAT is being ringed by the DEE a pronoun is required to stand in for FLAT as the object in the subordinate clause, ie ‘Dejected when damn rings it’. ‘Dejected when ringed by damn’ would be syntactically ok, as this is acceptable shorthand for ‘Dejected when it is ringed by damn’, with the ellipsis of ‘it is’, but this requires the subject of the main clause to be carried through as the subject of the subordinate clause. ‘Supermarkets are taken by surprise when stripped by panic buyers’ is fine, but ‘Supermarkets are taken by surprise when panic buyers strip’ needs a ‘them’ for it to have the intended meaning.
DRC – I was all set to defend Azed but the more I think about it the more I tend to agree with you. ‘Dejected damn rings puncture’ would be correct but would make no logical sense. That’s the setter’s eternal challenge of course. On this (very rare) occasion I think it’s wrong. I’ve no doubt others will disagree….
I think ‘Dejected that damn rings puncture’ is probably about the best compromise using the same four key words, with ‘that’ being interpreted as a relative pronoun in the wordplay. Using a different synonym for ‘flat’ would offer further possibilities, eg ‘Plain which damn rings puncture’.
In 14a I think it’s probably “pie” minus “i.e.” to give the “p”.
A DNF for me as the only fish I could think of was CHAD.
Re 12d the parsing seems to involve using “ring” intransitively, so the meaning is something like “Flat when damn arranges itself in a ring [i.e. so as to surround something]”. It doesn’t say what it’s arranged around but that doesn’t seem necessarily fatal to the clue. I checked Chambers and the intransitive meaning is there (I can’t remember ever coming across it before though).
What was that about the prize? I saw nothing about it and followed the instructions as usual, posting it during my allowed outdoor exercise, of course…
Once, many years ago, someone much older actually referred to a grapefruit as a Shaddock and it’s stuck with me.
Surely the lack of a prize doesn’t mean no clue competition. Did anyone ever enter in the hope of a book token and bookplate rather than jut trying to prove that, once in a while, we can nearly match the masters?
Delighted to try to rejig the old brain to “Eightsome Reels” mode today.
The Eightsome Reels still has a slip for sending in. Is there any point unless they will at least publish the names of the three lucky people drawn for a (non-existent) prize. I suspect it’s just an oversight, not surprising in the circumstances.