Fewer obscure words than usual this week. Thank you Azed.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ATTAP |
A dry cape’s inside – something supplying effective cover (5)
|
| A TT (teetotal, dry) and cAPe (inside letters) | ||
| 7 | SPUDS |
What comes after lying in sun repeatedly? We’re often baked (5)
|
| PUD (afters, what comes after the main course) inside (lying in) S S (sun, repeated) | ||
| 11 | GEALED |
The old set, age failing, shown the way (6)
|
| anagram (failing) of AGE then LED (shown the way) | ||
| 12 | STOWRE |
Wife entering shop and not budging once (6)
|
| W (wife) inside (entering) STORE (shop) – definition is not budging, once indicates an obsolete word | ||
| 13 | PETRONEL |
It was fired from the saddle, oil coating more than half of one (8)
|
| PETROL (oil) contains (coating) oNE (more than half the letters of) | ||
| 14 | REBORN |
Transformed dress given a going over, in service (6)
|
| ROBE (dress) reversed (given a going over) inside RN (Royal Navy, service) | ||
| 15 | RENTAL |
Lease king attached to form of estate I ignored (6)
|
| R (rex, king) then ENTAiL (form of estate) missing I | ||
| 16 | ONE UP |
UK’s No. 1 in Open struggling, only just in the lead? (5, 2 words)
|
| Uk ((first letter of, no 1) inside anagram (struggling) of OPEN | ||
| 18 | PERSPICACITY |
A bandage applied to very large place? Discernment required (12)
|
| PER (a, two a-day) SPICA (bandage) CITY (a very large place) | ||
| 19 | BARNSTORMERS |
Starmer’s born afresh, producing strong campaign performances? (12)
|
| anagram (afresh) of STARMER’S BORN | ||
| 26 | BASAN |
Crude fleece wrapped round in turn as a blanket (5)
|
| found inside (wrapped) turN AS A Blanket reversed (round) | ||
| 28 | PIERID |
Butterfly to free following rulebook (6)
|
| RID (to free) following PIE (rulebook) | ||
| 29 | PANINI |
Sandwiches: number in foreign bread set before one (6)
|
| N (number) inside PAIN (bread, in French, foreign) then I (one) | ||
| 30 | INERTIAL |
Pair reduced to single in travelling interrail, moving slowly? (8)
|
| anagram (travelling) of INTErRAIL with the letter pair RR educed to a single R | ||
| 31 | CEROUS |
Large tropical fish, American, revealing soft metallic element (6)
|
| CERO (large tropical fish) US (American). I’m not sure about the definition. | ||
| 32 | STEALE |
Countryman’s handle to lift on end of scythe (6)
|
| STEAL (to lift) then scythE (last letter, end of) | ||
| 33 | ADAWS |
Acreage yokel yurned over for cows out of service (5)
|
| A (acreage) then SWAD (yokel) reversed (turned over) – out of service indicates historical, from Spenser | ||
| 34 | FLEER |
One escaping mockery (5)
|
| double definition | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | AGGRO |
Behaviour occurring between ragtag groups (5)
|
| found inside (occurring between the two words) ragrAG GROups – an extended definition | ||
| 2 | TEMENE |
Ecstasy filling African people in some sacred places (6)
|
| E (ecstasy) inside TEMNE (African people, from Sierra Leone) | ||
| 3 | TAYBERRY |
Ingredient of summer pudding maybe concocted by ear in one go? (8)
|
| anagram (concocted) of BY EAR inside TRY (one go) | ||
| 4 | ALMOUS |
A liberal creature associated with church mostly giving charity locally? (6)
|
| A L (liberal) then MOUSe (creature associated with church, mostly) – locally indicates dialect | ||
| 5 | IDENTITY DISC |
Personal tag i.e. didn’t get confused with city’s (12, 2 words)
|
| anagram (get confused) of IE DIDN’T with CITY’S | ||
| 6 | ASTROCOMPASS |
Company in flying to Mars go by direction finder (12)
|
| CO (company) inside anagram (flying) of TO MARS then PASS (go by) | ||
| 7 | STREP |
Cause of disease forward fellow’s turned up (5)
|
| PERT’S (forward fellow is) reversed (turned up) | ||
| 8 | POONAC |
Coconut oil product to preserve eggs soft? Reverse of that (6)
|
| CAN (to preserve) O O (an egg, twice) and P (piano, soft) all reversed (reverse of that) | ||
| 9 | DREAMT |
Daughter mater unexpectedly conceived (6)
|
| D (daughter) then anagram (unexpectedly) of MATER | ||
| 10 | SELLA |
Osteal places may afford space to this (5)
|
| OSTEAL PLACES is an anagram (may afford, provides the letters for) SPACE TO SELLA (this, the solution) | ||
| 17 | DIES IRAE |
Feature of requiem to fade with soaring swell within? (8, 2 words)
|
| DIE (to fade) contains (with…within) ARISE (swell) reversed (soaring, going upwards) | ||
| 20 | ALINED |
Like e.g. US soldiers on parade, from Weald, leaderless, might one assume? (6)
|
| 21 | NARROW |
Precise pointer at top of compass? (6)
|
| N ARROW is the “north arrow” (pointer at top of compass) | ||
| 22 | MANTEL |
Shelf honey industrious insect’s found in (6)
|
| MEL (honey) contains (…in found in) ANT (industrious insect) | ||
| 23 | RANKLE |
Poison swallowed direct, dad dropped (6)
|
| dRANK LEad (swallow, direct) missing DAD | ||
| 24 | SPICA |
Avian spur son observed on magpies (5)
|
| S (son) with (observed on) PICA (magpies) | ||
| 25 | AITUS |
United in small island group, they’re not wholly divine (5)
|
| U (united) inside AITS (small island plural, group of) | ||
| 27 | NIXER |
Check up about sign of what’s not right in Paddy’s bit of casual work (5)
|
| REIN (check) reversed (up) contains (about) X (a cross, what is not right) – Paddy’s indicates an Irish word |
Thanks PeeDee.
AL IN ED gives you EALD 🙂
Thanks as ever to Azed.
Thanks for the blog, a lot of messing about for this one to check everything, looking up a word then directed to another word ……
Poor week for Chambers 93, no CERO ( very recently in ) , ADAWS, TEMNE, NIXER , even ASTROCOMPASS, fortunately the clues were clear enough.
ALINED is very good and CEROUS is surely completely wrong in the definition ?
SPICA appears twice and still no mention of the star.
My second finish 🙂 but I couldn’t parse RANKLE, or ALINED (Thanks Gonzo@1) and couldn’t work out what out of service was doing in 33. Obvious now of course.
I knew pica for magpie so checked SPICA for the spur which rather gave away the bandage in PERSPICACITY.
A couple of quibbles for me, not every city is large let alone very large, and I agree with PeeDee and Roz, the definition for CEROUS is dubious.
Initially I wasn’t keen on moving slowly for inertial, but I was being too narrow minded only considering physics and not language.
Interestingly with 30, the fodder had to be either INTERAIL (-R) or INTERRAL (-I), the latter does allow for ralentir which is a very common road sign in France. It means slow down.
Thanks Azed and PeeDee.
Thanks Gonzo. That’s great!
No comment on what I assume is the typo that caused all the brouhaha here last week in 33ac? I’d assumed it was supposed to be “turned”. (“yurned” is not in Chambers.) It was my last one in, only found after a word search.
Blah @ 3 you are now an Azed veteran.
Azed will always give some indication of words that are obsolete etc also Scottish, American even Maori.
Sometimes it is subtle, recently we had theater in a clue and the answer was an American term.
For 20D Azed could have used – Like GIs on parade …….
Thanks Azed and PeeDee
Tiny correction to the parsing of 13ac: It should be PETROL containing oNE.
What’s the problem with the definition of CEROUS? Chambers defines it as “Of or containing cerium”, which is a soft metallic element. Maybe “revealing” could be improved, but it’s not horribly wrong (in my opinion). Well done, Blah, you’ve mastered these very quickly!
Agree with Brian @8 on CEROUS. As regards 17D, is ARISE really synonymous with swell? Swell means to increase, so rise might be a synonym, but surely not arise. I also found the parsing of ALINED and RANKLE a bit contorted.
Thanks Pelham, fixed now.
Thanks for the plaudits Roz & Brian. Not sure I would use either veteran or mastered just yet though, have to see how today goes first ;-).
Thanks to all for being here, to Azed as always and to PeeDee for the analysis. I thought this was fairly straightforward. Agree that all cities are not large (e.g. Southwell).
Good luck to al with today’s and to all who submit clues. It is sad to look back to days when there were 400 odd people (400-odd I mean!.
I never submit clues, no imagination, I am just a solver.
Do you mean 400+ used to submit clues ? What is a rough number these days ?
Roz @13 – 136 for the last competition. Azed provides comments on the Monday after three weeks after each one, eg https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2021/sep/27/azed-slip-no-2569, where you can see the winning clues. He seems to favour complicated, sometimes compound, anagrams over terser, dare I say wittier, clues. I’ve accepted the fact that I don’t have the kind of mind that comes up with winners.
Thanks Azed and PeeDee.
Blah @3 – I like your thought process, but strictly speaking ‘moving slowly’ and ‘slow down’ don’t mean the same thing.
brian-w-a-i @14 – I know what you mean – looking at past winners, I find many of them rather convoluted for my taste. I’m only an occasional dabbler in Azed and I’ve never submitted before (not that I recall, at least), but having completed today’s competition puzzle and come up with a couple of ideas, I’m going to give it a go. Question is, do I submit the one *I* like best, or do I try to second-guess Mr Crowther…
Go on- have a go. And then wonder at Azed’s 2500 plus (times 36 per crossword)
I’ve got somewhere a Ximenes slip on which I appeared in the same category as a whipper-snapper J.Crowther!
Back when I first did Azed around 1979, I regularly submitted attempts at a clue. Never won and I realised I was not one for writing clues. (I think I won the non-competition puzzle a couple of times. I think the prize was book tokens.)
Widdersbel, couldn’t agree more completely different parts of speech to start with. Ralentir was obviously not correct. Oddly it’s the infinitive that appears on the road signs rather than the imperative ralentis or ralentirez, which I never questioned before.
Re your competition clue I say go with what you like, having almost solved your crossword I think your constructions were good and you should be true to yourself rather than try to please someone else.
Keith @16 kudos for that! And @12 Freudian slip perhaps?
Keith @16, in the early post-Ximenes days 500+ entries for Azed competitions wasn’t uncommon – and there was this entry of 820 too: https://www.andlit.org.uk/azed/slip.php?comp_no=105
Obviously things have fallen off a lot, but I still reckon the average compares favourably with other weekly newspaper clue-writing competitions (which don’t, of course, require you to complete a fiendish puzzle too).
When there were normal prizes I used to enter every single week without fail and would win fairly regularly at first , perhaps every 18 months on average. It was book tokens , £15 I think. In recent years , before Covid, the time between winning increased considerably. I put this down to an increased entry, perhaps due to people using the internet. I never entered for the clue writing once a month.
Thank you Brian@14 but I never look at Azed slips , I just see the winning clues in the paper. Azed definitely favours compound anagrams and &Lit , although these may actually be the best entries each month.
Roz@20: when there was an actual Listener magazine I used to enter (& win) regularly – prize of book token also included a bookplate.
Brian@8: definition of CEROUS in clue does agree with that in Chambers, but as so often with scientific terms, the BRB is inaccurate.
(it describes a compound of divalent cerium)
peterM @ 22: when there was an actual Listener magazine I used to be one of the setters. Always good to make even very distant contact with a solver!
When the crossword moved to the Times I stopped submitting because I refuse to be published by Murdoch.
I completely boycott the Listener and the Independent because of the ownership issues. Occasionally if someone brings the Listener in to work and they are stuck I will finish it for them It is a shame I missed out on the actual magazine.
Blah @18 – good point about the infinitive being used on road signs. I’ve never questioned that either.