Instructions for the puzzle were as follows: Each numbered square in the diagram is surrounded by eight blank squares. All clues lead to answers of eight letters, and these are to be entered around their appropriate numbers, clockwise or anticlockwise, beginning anywhere. Solvers must determine where each begins and the direction in which it is to go. The twelve unchecked letters at the corners of the completed diagram may be arranged as LESS FINE POEM. This was actually a lot easier than it looked, partly because of there restrictions caused by such a puzzle. For example, Azed was stuck using TABLE in a few clues, and he also used INDICTED next to INDICANT. I can't fully parse 9 as I don't get the INS bit, but I'm sure one of the commenters will put me right. In the solutions below I have indicated the starting point as a compass point (N for north of the square with the clue number, NE for north east of the square with the clue number, and so on) and C = clockwise and A = anticlockwise. 1 Deadhead what overdue bloomers display? LATENESS (E,C) LATE ("dead") + NESS ("head") 2 Place for voyage details initially gets all muddled with nothing entered SLATE-LOG (NW,A) *(gets all) [anag:muddled] with O (nothing) entered A slate-log or slateboard was a hinged board used on old ships to chalk temporary notes for the logbook. 3 Old bit of furniture ripe for plunder? LOO-TABLE (W,C - just a coincidence!) Something "ripe for plunder" could be considered LOOTABLE A loo-table was a round table, primarily used for playing loo (the card game). 4 Cheers firm that can be experienced TASTABLE (E,A) TA ("cheers") + STABLE ("firm") 5 A lemon crushed? At inside a fruit acid product MALONATE (S,A) *(a lemon) [anag:crushed] with AT inside Malonate is a salt of malice acid, which is found in apple juice. 6 Cease cooking round chop for a thinner cut ESCALOPE (E,C) *(cease) [anag:cooking] round LOP ("chop") 7 Control such as is contained by ultra deploying energy REGULATE (W,A) E.G. ("such as") is contained by *(ultra) [anag:deploying] + E (energy) 8 Togs’ll measure what you do, restyling lean suit INSULATE (E,C) *(lean suit) [anag:restyling] 9 Government put forward for discussion what’s likely to collapse? INSTABLE (W,A) INS ("government"?) + TABLE ("put forward for discussion") 10 Where church panels may sit in secret ? a blessing RETABLES (SE,C) Hidden [in] "secRET A BLESsing" A retable is a shelf behind an altar 11 Finds new words for whistle-blower with terrible smear REFRAMES (SW,A) REF ("whistle-blower") with *(smear) [anag:terrible] 12 Mark flipper with head of gouge ? part of whaler’s dissection of carcase. SCARFING (NE,A) SCAR ("mark") + FIN ("flipper") with [head of] G(ouge) A scarf is a longitudinal cut in a whale's carcase. 13 Group we’ve left involved G. Stein, one for developing master race? EUGENIST (E,A) EU ("group we've left" post-Brexit) + *(g stein) [anag:involved] 14 Gentle old fellow with fatty stuff on end of nose MANSUETE (SW,C) MAN ("fellow") with SUET ("fatty stuff") on [end of] (nos)E "Mansuete" is an archaic word for "mild" or "gentle". 15 US warehouse keeper calls about putrefaction all over STOREMAN (N,C) <=(NAMES ("calls") about ROT ("putrefaction")) [all over] 16 Band of twisted metal present in ornamental lampstand TORCHERE (NW,A) TORC ("band of twisted metal") + HERE ("present") 17 Cow, English, in favour of being kept in appropriate group HEREFORD (SW,C) E (English) + FOR ("in favour of") kept in HERD ("appropriate group" for cows) 18 Doctor back, on firm ground being completely variable OMNIFORM (SE,A) <=MO (medical officer, so "doctor", back) + *(on firm) [anag:ground] 19 Militant appearing in a court briefly is seen in ITV broadcast ACTIVIST (E,C) IS in *(itv) [anag;broadcast] appearing in A Ct. (court, briefly) 20 Doctor intervening when cocaine is involved MEDICATE (NE,C) MEDIATE ("intervening") when C (cocaine) is involved 21 Insurance scheme I deem out of order, covering vehicle MEDICARE (NW, AC) *(I deem) [anag:out of order] covering CAR ("vehicle") 22 Welsh elite, part of circle that’s brought back dance (not accepted) CRACHACH (N,A) <=ARC ("part of circle" brought back) + CHA-CH(a) ("dance", not A (accepted)) 23 ‘Foul mixture’, reverse of solid, mass Scotsman swallowed DRAMMACH (N,C) [reverse of] <=HARD swallowing M (mass) + MAC ("Scotsman") Drammach is described in Chambers as "meal and water mixed raw" 24 Monkey? See some getting flogged in market MARMOSET (SW,C) *(some) [anag:flogged] in MART ("market") 25 Antic when swimming in catching a sea-anemone ACTINIAN (E,A) *(antic) [anag: when swimming] + IN catching A 26 One’s held in charge ? here’s the pointer INDICANT (SE,A) AN ("one") held in INDICT ("charge") 27 Welcoming investigators around, I’d net crook accused INDICTED (SW,C) *(id net) [anag:crook] welcoming <=CID (Criminal Investigation Department, so "investigators", around) 28 Symbolic meal came up in talk informally CHAROSET (NW,C) ROSE ("came up") in CHAT ("talk informally") Charoset (aka haroset, haroseth or charoseth) is a sweetmeat eaten with bitter herbs at Passover, supposed to symbolise the clay from which the Israelites made bricks in Egypt. 29 Flavoursome herb to spoil large drink MARJORAM (NE,C) MAR ("to spoil") + JORAM ("large drink") 30 Wire edging, obstruction when bent back TELEGRAM (N,C) <=(MARGE ("edging") + LET ("obstruction"), when bent back) 31 Trouble following dip in river? Something to deal with extremities on hand NAILFILE (NE,A) AIL ("trouble") + F (following) dipped in (River) NILE 32 Showing brass that’s bust, lacking inner volume INSOLENT (NE,C) INSOL(v)ENT ("bust") lacking V (volume) 33 Spin-drier not fully working? One’s responding to fresh ideas INSPIRED (NW,A) *(spindrie) [anag:working] where SPINDRIE is [not fully] SPINDRIE(r) 34 Bull may be pulled by this diminutive bird entering drink NOSERING (E,A) SERIN ("small bird") entering NOG ("drink") 35 Erica, breaking rule? ? ‘a thing of shreds and patches’ JONGLEUR (N,A) (Erica) JONG (author) + *(rule) [anag:breaking] A jongleur is a travelling minstrel or a mountebank. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the eponymous hero describes his uncle as 'a king of shreds and patches' 36 How corpse ends in morgue’s awfully … so? GRUESOME (N,A) [how] (corps)E [ends] in *(morgues) [anag:awfully] and semi &lit.
28 comments on “Azed No 2,610 ‘Eightsome Reels’”
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Thanks loonapick, I had the same puzzlement about INS in 9, but one of the definitions in Chambers is ‘ruling’ or some such, so perhaps ‘those ruling’ is a fair extension.
The blog looks a bit odd, some sort of framing?
Thanks as ever to Azed.
Oh thanks for the loo-table, I thought it was just where you wouldn’t put your best furniture 🙂
I parsed ins at 9a as ‘member(s) of the party in office’, as in Chambers. Wasn’t 100% sure though.
Ironic that the paper printed the unusual grid correctly and then messed up the straightforward plain puzzle a week later.
Thanks for the blog, I started with 4, 5 and 6 and the row below put them in the right order . Then did all 18 of the right hand side without even looking at the left. They are surprisingly easy once you get started because you have so many consecutive letters for the next ones.
I sort of like this , they must be very hard to set, but you do get repeated bits of words and I miss having answers with all the different lengths. Once a year is quite enough.
This week was like a carte blanche but easier because we had the lengths of each answer. Last time this happened they printed the whole puzzle again with the correct grid the week after. I really hope this does not happen this time.
I also had a question mark against INSTABLE until looking in Chambers, and “in” as Government looks OK to me.
I puzzled about the “shreds and patches” but JONGLEUR couldn’t be anything else so thanks loonapick for the quote.
I had LOG-SLATE for 2 not Slate-log (which isn’t in C2014), not that it makes any difference to the filled in grid. There is such a thing as a slateboard (also not in Chambers) which is the clapper board they use in making films (do they still do that I wonder) to synchronise sound and vision.
I thought I was going to struggle with this one as you need to solve quite a few clues without ‘crossers’ to get a start, but I found it not too bad with possibly slightly easier clueing and more ‘normal’ words than usual, so once I got a start it went fairly well.
The grid for this week on the web page was OK for me, it was just the pdf that was wrong which had a filled in grid for 2608 instead of the empty grid for 2611. The correct pdf appeared yesterday.
Good spot TimC@5, I did not check this originally but LOG-SLATE is in my Chambers 93 but not the reverse. As you say, it does not actually matter.
[ The paper had a completed 2608, it was actually easy to make my own grid }
I’m another who had a question-mark against INSTABLE, but I agree with the comments above.
Does anyone know what is happening with the Azed slip? It’s usually published online by the &lit website but this month’s hasn’t appeared, although winners and VHCs were published in the paper on Sunday. The &lit Twitter feed is still publishing every day, but I suspect that it is automated in some way.
I recognised “shreds and patches” as being a Gilbert & Sullivan quote (The Mikado); I didn’t realise that Shakespeare got there first. He referred to a king: Gilbert’s parody changes it to a thing.
I was a bit surprised that Chambers gives STOREMAN as American. When I worked in engineering it was in common use to refer to the guys who looked after and issued the stocks of tools and materials in the workshops
bridgesong at #9 – I believe that it has temporarily relocated to here: http://www.crossword.org.uk/Azedslip.html due to John Tozer’s current incapacitation.
“The only black cloud over the day was, of course, the sad news announced by Azed of the illness of John Tozer, the architect and keeper of the invaluable “andlit” archive and the Crossword Centre Clue-writing Competition. I’m sorry to report that John suffered a heart attack towards the end of last week and is currently in hospital in a serious but stable condition. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing John a swift and complete return to health.”
“Due to John Tozer’s illness, his excellent &lit website will not be updated until he is back to health – and we all wish him a speedy recovery.
In the meantime Azed has kindly allowed us to publish each month’s slips, on The Crossword Centre website.“
RichWA @11 re storeman, the entry in 2014 is “n a storekeeper (N Am); a person who looks after stores or a storeroom”. That semi-colon can be tricky. I think the North American is limited to “a storekeeper” (what the English would call a shopkeeper). The second definition isn’t limited to America and as you rightly point out refers to people looking after storage areas. Like you, I worked in Engineering in a Stress Office in the UK and there was something called the “Dead Stores” where old stress reports etc went. The news arrived one day that the Dead Storesman had died which resulted in a few chuckles. 🙂
mc_rapper67 @12 Thanks for the link. As usual I see I didn’t make it with “Spent a fortune, wasted this for ten small potatoes” (comp. anag.)
I find the Eightsome Reels much easier than Carte Blanche. I usually can’t get enough clues to fill in a Carte Blanche but with these, you know where the answer is to go – approximately – and you have enough letters to start on the adjacent clues.
[By the time I’d had breakfast on Sunday and started looking at the paper and seen the grid, the online pdf was blank and OK.]
Agree with Twmbarlwm @3 on the definition of INS and Tim C@5 on LOG-SLATE. I had trouble getting going on this, as I couldn’t seem to solve any adjacent clues; then initially I pencilled in the wrong overlap for REFRAMES/RETABLES (gave me an F in 5, which definitely didn’t seem right!). Once I’d sorted that out, it was fairly plain sailing. There did seem to be a lot of TABLEs – LOOTABLE, TASTABLE, INSTABLE, RETABLES, as well as MEDICARE/MEDICATE and INDICTED/INDICANT.
mc_rapper: many thanks for the link. Like Tim C @ my submission also failed to meet with approval. But it’s interesting that Azed refers to there being no mistakes, which suggests that he allowed CHOPSHOP as an alternative to CHIPSHOP.
Bridgesong @16, I speculated on that at the end of the other thread a couple of days ago http://www.fifteensquared.net/2022/06/14/azed-no-2608-competition-puzzle/
It does seem odd that Azed didn’t mention it though – he usually does when accepting an alternative that he hadn’t noticed at the time of setting. Maybe he scanned the entries quickly and didn’t even notice!
Twmbarlwm @ 18: Or maybe my entry got lost in the post again!
Consonant with comments above, I read 9 as referring to the political “ins” versus the “outs.” This usage is common enough in US crosswords.
I do not quite understand the definition for 8? I get that a coat or clothes provide insulation (“togs” in that sense), but what does “measure what you do” have to do with it? Is there some pun or literary allusion there?
Apologies for the unusual formatting. I had to do the blog longhand rather than using the tool that I normally use. Apologies also for “slate-log” – I got myself a bit confused with that one for some reason.
Cineraria @20 – a tog is a measure of insulation provided by a duvet or quilt, at least here in the UK. For example, in our house, we sleep under a 4.5 tog quilt in summer and a 10 tog quilt in winter.
Cineraria@20: a tog is a unit of insulation measurement.
From Chambers: V#A unit of measurement of thermal insulation as a property of textile fabrics used eg for quilts
Duvets often come with a tog measurement on the label.
You beat me to it! and the V# was finger trouble.
Thank you, Loonapick and Dormouse. I see that definition way down the list now. If that measurement is used in the US, I have never noticed it.
Hello, anyone who’s still reading this. Thanks to Azed and loonapick. Didn’t get round to it yesterday but am delighted to read so many contributors. This “special” was Azed’s own addition to these and I applied my usual strategy of concentrating on on the corners. 36, GRUESOME was first and the twelve letter corners list tied in the O with either ME or ES. Now TELEGRAM nailed the positions and the whole fell together pretty quickly. The repetitions in the middle were a bit of a shame but I just wonder how long it took the master to construct it.
A propos andlit I suspect the illness of John Tozer is the reason there has been no paper copy . Like bridgesong I always look for my name in the also-rans and hope there may be some solace to be achieved.
I enjoyed treating this Sundays as a Carte Blanche as my paper printed a second copy of the solution instead of the new puzzle. I presume those modernists who get it on-line didn’t have that problem.
Keith@25 , I also liked making my own grid, actually a lot easier than a Carte Blanche because we know the lengths of the answers , I always find the unknown lengths make the clues much trickier.
I agree about this, must be very hard to set but quite easy to do because of so many checked letters .
TOGS – the standard unit of thermal resistance is called R ( with SI suffix ) , it allows through 1 Joule per second for an area 1 metre squared with a temperature difference across it of 1 Kelvin ( or 1 degree Celsius ) . This unit R is put equal to 10 TOGS, I suspect they wanted larger numbers for the public .
I really enjoyed this! Having assumed at first that it was completely beyond me, I was deeply satisfied when I completed it, having worked outwards from the top right corner. I came like others to check on INS, which was the only element I couldn’t parse. I still can’t do Printer’s Devils or Cartes Blanches, alas.
I dealt with the plain AZED gone wrong by making screenshots of the grid and the questions and printing them off – it actually made the clues easier to read, given my elderly eyesight.
Late to this after an inordinate amount of time spent on a recent Listener. A steady and enjoyable solve, but I’d like to revisit the definition for the insulate clue (No8). While I know togs is a unit of measurement for insulation, what is the ‘what you do’ doing here? It can’t be referring to the solution, as that’s a verb. Similar question over 33, ‘one’s responding to fresh ideas’. Why ‘one’? The answer is an adjective, so again the def can’t be referring to it, can it?