Azed No. 2,530 Plain – Competition Puzzle

18 comments on “Azed No. 2,530 Plain – Competition Puzzle”

1. Thanks, PeeDee. No questions or comments from me this time, just a cheerful hello to the blog.

2. Thanks for the explanations.  I went astray with my last two in, “WHOOPUP” and “OUPHT” (unverified adjective from “ouphe”, a goblin), which was why I couldn’t make “totty” fit.

   I understood the “kindly” in the definition for 22d was referring to the Furies being euphemistically known as “the kindly ones”.

3. Thanks BiglyNifty – I didn’t know that.  I have updated the blog.

4. Thanks PeeDee.

   I found this an easier one. I couldn’t get TAVERNA: I was struggling with n. [name] and Vera [also name], but the answer was obvious.

   I think you are right in raising an eyebrow at 9 Dn ARMED.

   I refuse to give up my fight against gross composite anagrams. Clever ones are fine but, at 26 AVES, we have no fewer than nine letters added to get to a four-letter-letter word! And even then the surface is rubbish unworthy of Azed.

   BiglyNifty is right about the reference to the Furies.

   Stefan

5. I was initially wrong-footed by the construction of 26, too.  I spotted the CA and extracted the right letters, but then couldn’t be certain which part was the definition.  My first attempt was “SEVA”, which one source claimed was a “subgenera of Metopochetus” and therefore fitting for “invertebrates”.  It wasn’t until TAVERNA that I realised my mistake.

6. For me, the question with ARMED is not what is ‘rings’ doing there?, but what is ‘is embodied by’ doing there? A dash in place of those three words and it would have made sense.

   I thought the choice of competition word was a little odd at first, but looking at the other answers I can see that there’s good potential for funny and imaginative definitions.

7. Another problem with the clue to AVES is that they are not invertebrates!

8. Hi bridgesong – I assumed the question mark took care of that.  In the cryptic reading it indicates one possible anagram, in the surface reading it is asking a question: are Terns invertibtaes? Answer – no.

   I read somewhere there is a law of journalism that states whenever a newspaper headline poses a question “is something such-and-such” the answer is invariably “no!”

9. Re: OUBIT.  This was an answer in one of the first Azeds I ever did back in the seventies.  There are a lot of different spellings of this word and the edition of Chambers that was current at the time had it listed only under a spelling beginning with a W.  It took me ages to find it (but I’ve never forgotten the word).  I did wonder if Azed searched Chambers specifically for words that were not where you’d expect them alphabetically.

   There are no question marks on my completed grid so I presume I filled it in with no problems.  I certainly recall finishing it in good time Sunday night whilst watching American football on TV.

10. can somebody explain the parse for RAYLE? not quite seeing how the poet comes into it!

11. Hi davey, RAYLE meaning to flow is a Spenserian spelling of RAIL which is itself an archaic word.  Azed usually indicates when a word is not standard modern English, in this case “of old” indicates archaic and “from poet” indicates that it was spelled this way by Edmund Spencer (the poet).

12. Thanks to Azed for the usual dictionary tour and PeeDee for unravelling them all. As enjoyable as ever but not as difficult as some. Um, PeeDee in the interests of blog correctness, it is STUDy shortened in 17a. 

13. Thank you Mystgore – you are becoming my No.1 proof reader! 

14. Yes, excellent. Edmund Spenser himself would not have known how to spell his own name. Which is why we have our Shakspeer’s. My own name is a stupidly long east European thing with lots of z’s and strings of consonants. If I need to book a taxi or a table I use my wife’s name. Even then, someone once said: “Jones… could you spell that for me?”Stefan

15. Marmite Smuggler, I have a fondness for the days of Shakespear and Spencer when what mattered was what you had to say not how it was spelt. In cryptic crosswords spelling and grammar are now treated with almost religious fervor. The outrage that greets any slight deviation for the strait and narrow is rivaled only by religious extremists feeling their religion has been insulted.

    Azed sets his stall out on setting by those rules, so fair enough in his case.

16. Well, Chambers defines the spelling of ye olde bards of old, so you have to define as such… but there is a lot of leeway.

    Here is a blog I read (and have read most of it in the archives too – the author is a true polymath!)*

    https://blog.plover.com/IT/typo/middle-english.html

    Nick
    * P.S. if you start reading the archives, you could be there for days – really a great blog.

17. thanks for the clarification on RAYLE, PeeDee. this was in fact my first Azed and i got a hell of a lot more in than i expected i would (it seems i chose a good one to start with!)

    the archaic poetic forms will take some getting used to…

18. So we have this year a Cineraria and a davey doing their first Azeds. Welcome to both. This is superb news in a dismal year: almost as good as seeing the hind of Trump (am I allowed to say things like that?—I have just discovered that Chambers does not recognise “hind” in this sense as a noun. I have used it thus for sixty years or more. SOED accepts it.)

    One wonders how many others are joining us and solving their first.

    My own was a Ximenes. The first week I solved ONE clue. The following week three! Then I did my John Cleese hissy fit impression, punched a few Manuels, got rid of my unnameable dictionary and bought my first Chambers, withdrew from meals and family and… and I did the entire thing! I think it took the whole week but I finished only the third I’d attempted.

    For me it is not so much the poetic or archaic forms which cause dismay but when you see a reference to “Jock’s” or “in Glasgow”. You know it’s a Scottish word, it almost certainly begins with ‘s’ and you know it’s going to take you ages to figure it out.

    Stefan

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