Azed No. 2,557 Plain

20 comments on “Azed No. 2,557 Plain”

1. Thanks for the blog. Found this very tricky indeed , especially the right hand side. Took me three times longer than a typical Plain.
   MATAI not in my Chambers but had to be correct.
   COCHLEATE is very clever.

2. thanks for the blog. found this one middling difficulty personally. am i understanding your parse for 13 correctly and that the answer COCHLEATE plays the role of anagram indicator? struggling to get my head around it

3. davey @2 barley sugar is TWISTED a bit like DNA, the legs on our dining table are called barley sugar. So the chocolate ( after E for O ) must be twisted ( like barley sugar , say ) .

4. I found this harder than usual as well, and was left with a number of question marks on my copy. Some have been clarified by the blog, so thank you (although there is a minor typo at the parsing of EMOTION – it’s an anagram of NO TIME). I am doubtful about the soundness of COCHLEATE, although I suppose “like barley sugar” is intended to be the anagram indicator. And I thought “rat run” as a definition for BYLANE was a little loose.

   MATAI has been in Chambers since at least the 2008 edition.

5. Yes, the right-hand side of this defeated me, only got a couple there. When I failed to get any more answers all through Monday, I decided I wasn’t going to finish this. Worst finish for me in a plain Azed for some time.

6. Agree that this was a lot harder than usual. Small correction: in 21 the T is surely half of IT, not COAT (the A is already accounted for, and there’s no indication of reversal).

7. Thanks all for the corrections and improvements.

   davey @2 – I have updated the blog to replace cochleate with like barley sugar as the anagram indicator. The clues says that barley sugar or chocolate is being twisted. I think we have to read or as inclusive here: either one, the other or both. The solution word cochleate is not directly involved.

8. Good to join in. Thanks, as always, to Azed and to PeeDee for sharing his comments.
   I suppose barley sugar is the sort of confectionery not in modern experience but I thought COCHLEATE was one of the best.
   Azed is always kind in the subsidiaries when introducing the unexplored regions to our vocabulary and this one did include some of these.
   About to see what today brings (paper boy/girl delivered my Observer to a neighbour!)

9. Unsatisfying. Azed trundling. He is well entitled to occasionally. I’m with bridgesong on BYLANE and “rat run”. I just filled in COCHLEATE and didn’t notice “Like barley sugar, say” had to do two jobs. What does “Just like” have to do in DURRA? I’m sometimes too quick to criticise because I have an old Chambers but is an “eye” a private eye? There seemed to be too many dog-ears this week. I can’t remember if I found it more difficult than usual.
   Stefan

10. Well this is absolutely bizarre. I’m having a weekend in Glasgow, picked up the Observer to do the Azed on a train journey to Edinburgh, and it was a non-prize LEFT-RIGHT puzzle. I was well chuffed I had it done on the train on the way back, then I come here to see what everyone else thought, and it’s a completely different puzzle. Is this a regular thing? Do the Scots get a different puzzle?

11. Hi Skinny, in your paper you are looking at this week’s Azed. This is a write-up of last week’s puzzle. The blog for the current puzzle will be available next Sunday.

12. Aww Jeez, PeeDee – a rookie mistake, consider me totally chided.

13. I must be being dim, but I don’t understand 14A ‘corridors’: I saw ‘orrid, but that leaves me with cors(e) not cours(e) – where’s the ‘u’ gone?

14. Sarah @13, i believe ‘corso’ is the run which is shortened to give CORS.

15. Well spotted Sarah and thanks to davey for pointing out the error. Fixed now.

16. Thanks, Davey! I don’t know how I managed to miss ‘corso’ in Chambers.

17. Azed is normally a stickler for grammatical accuracy. Yet, in 24D, he has “Regular helpings”…”is”, which makes a complete mess of the surface, it seems to me. He also almost always insists upon obsolete and dialect usages being clearly indicated, as, for instance, “once provided” in this clue. Yet, at 1D, there is no such indication that jack-pudding is marked by Chambers as “hist.” As for the double duty in 13D… Homer nodding more than once this week?

18. Robin+Gilbert @17, i agree the surface of 24 leaves a lot to be desired, and still can’t abide the double duty, or missing anagrind (!) in COCHLEATE. but for JACK-PUDDING, does the fact that “fool” is also marked “historical” when referring to a jester let it off the hook?

19. This seems to have gone in OK except I made a mess of GREYS, putting in ‘grays’ for some reason, so didn’t get TRICE. Couldn’t parse MATAI, and it seemed doubtful that girls were simply ‘tits’ in PETTITOES, but there you go. Thanks to Azed and PeeDee.

20. I agree with Robin@17. 13dn can only be justified I think if it’s an &lit., which it surely isn’t. The grammatical solecism in 24dn could easily have been avoided with something like ‘Regularly, beer is …’. In 1dn the presence of a question mark isn’t to my mind quite enough to indicate the ‘hist.’, and I’m fairly sure that if I’d entered such a clue in one of his competitions it would have been rejected on this account.

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