Azed No. 2,614 Plain

29 comments on “Azed No. 2,614 Plain”

1. For 22D, I know from crosswords past that EA can mean “water,” but what exactly is the reference for that? I have never seen a clear explanation of that.

2. Never mind. Found it. “River, running water” (dial.). Thanks.

3. Ah, the weekly lexicon tour. Thanks Azed, but you beat me this time. I had no idea with DROMIO so resorted to going through the alphabet with Google. Thankfully he wasn’t YROMIO!
   Thanks for the blog Peedee.

4. Thanks for the blog, precise , concise and comprehensive, it is how I try to get my students to write. Very much a tale of two halves , the left hand side in very smoothly and the right needing a lot of thought, I am glad DROMIO had five letters checked and the DO seemed fairly obvious.

5. For TRIE maybe my Chambers 93 is more appropriate, it simply has TRIE – an OBS spelling of try ( no restrictions at all ).
   I agree for ANION, a negative (ion) encapsulates its main property, I think the clue is trying to mislead us into thinking about photography.

6. As does C2014 for TRIE Roz @5. The particular meaning of “turn out” with the Spenserian spelling of trie is listed under the “try” headword. I just took the ‘Trie’ entry to mean that it was an obsolete spelling for ‘try’ with all its meanings, as you did.
   I agree with your and PeeDee’s take on ANION.

7. I went for Grumio as the slave, remembering him from the Latin textbooks I used 40 years ago, but thought it was an obscure reference, even for Azed.

8. Grumio was also the dim-witted slave in the TV series Plebs a few years ago. Not that obscure, but I wasn’t able to convince myself that was the answer.

9. Tim C – do you have the paper copy of Chambers? I am in The Netherlands at the moment and all my paper dictionaries are in Scotland. The Chambers phone app I am using (presumably the same source material used for the 2014 paper copies) doesn’t show any entry for TRIE as a variant spelling of TRY (apart from the one Spenser reference).

   Is TRIE listed as a separate headword in the paper copy?

10. Yes it is listed as a separate headword PeeDee @9. The entries in C 2014 are….
    trie an obsolete spelling of try

    and

    try vt to attempt,…….; to strain;…….vi …..(Spenser trie) to turn out…….

11. Thanks Tim. That explains it.

12. And not in the Chambers app in Windows on my computer. (I’m in Berlin at the moment.)

13. Hello, early birds. I am at home and racking my brain to remember this one, for which many thanks to Azed and PeeDee. I do remember spotting Dromio instantly, recalling a school production of the “Comedy of Errors”. The producer had wanted to do it for years and spotted two pairs of twins (one of the couple of Antipholuses (Antipholi?) had failed his 11+ and had to be borrowed. The producer, a friend, had had the distinction of piloting a glider of troops into Normandy in June 1944 so directing a play will have been light relief. Alec McCowen & Ian Richardson played the roles in Stratford and the West End.

14. The online/paper edition differences are interesting. The 2014 hardcopy which Azed works from is labelled as the 13th edition. Who knows whether a 14th edition will appear. If not, I’m sure the 13th will last me out.
    The Chambers website lists the dictionary app as the 11th edition. I’m pretty sure that refers to the e-edition, as they wouldn’t revert to a copy of the 11th print edition. I suspect that the hardcopy and electronic editions have had very different teams of people working on them so I’m not surprised that there are differences like “trie/try” above that appear. The (free) online Chambers search doesn’t recognise “trie”.
    The accuracy of online resources came up recently in the Nutmeg 28,805 prize puzzle where I noticed that the phrase “Bird of Passage” was listed by quite a few online dictionaries like Collins as originating from 1785-1795 although I could find two examples predating that.
    Read all things (including printed dictionaries) with a critical mind.

15. My Compact OED (with magnifying glass 1980) also has TRIE as obs=Try. Most other dictionaries follow the OED.

16. I nave noticed that the index on the phone app does not always bring up every word listed in the entries. I wonder if the app is being “helpful” by linking the index record for TRIE directly to the entry for TRY?

    It does not seem to be possible to browse the entries directly on the phone like you can by leafing through a paper dictionary. It is only possible to look for something in the index, or search for it using a word search, though the word search returns even fewer entries than the index.

17. I’m glad a paper version has some benefits – even though mine (’98) is almost as old as Roz’s. Some interesting words: I hadn’t realised HEIST could mean thief as well as theft and I liked AD HOCERY. Thanks for the blog and to Azed.

18. Like Roz@4, the left side went in smoothly (for me ). The right took longer even though SHARES and BEANOS were staring me in the face. Ultimately a DNF: it’s too long since I came across DROMIO in a Comedy of Errors and POON just escaped me.

    Given the usefulness of EA (I had to look it after guessing the answer), I’m surprised I’ve not come across it before in the daily Guardian puzzle.

    I too use the phone version of Chambers (the Android app). Although it’s laid out differently, I think all the information is there. Even though, as PeeDee pointed out, there’s no separate entry for TRIE (it comes under TRY), the actual text is as Tim C@10 described it:

    2. (Spenser trie) to turn out, prove

    The convenience of always having the whole of Chambers and the Thesaurus far outweights any difficiencies for me. I also, for good measure, have the SOED on my phone. After all, you can never have access to too many dictionaries 🙂

    It is unlikely but some may not know that if you’re a member of a library in the UK, you likely have free access to the full (13-odd volume) OED online.

    Thanks PeeDee for the many explanations and Azed for a reasonably doable puzzle.

19. My paper copy of the 2014 edition fell apart many years ago. It is beginning to look like there’ll never be another. (Anyone tried contacting the publishers?)

20. I think it was Francis Wheen who once said he used to turn up at some gatherings on Sundays with his Chambers to do Azed crosswords. And when told, “That’s cheating”, he’d offer the person the dictionary and crossword and say, “Here, you have a go!”

    I loved my Chambers but it was time to let go when electronic versions became available.

21. pdp@18 old golf clubs (s)poon etc turn up fairly often so worth remembering , Azed often uses a lot of cricket references as well. EA is rarely used in the dailies , probably thought a bit obscure.
    My Chambers93 has lost the cover and now losing pages from each end gradually, I use it very sparingly and carefully. It is possible to do Azed without Chambers, need to be brave with educated guesses, I do like to check everything afterwards though.

22. Good quality used copies of Chambers are available cheaply on eBay. I have all sorts of editions now, it is interesting to see the entries appear, change and disappear over the years.

23. I never thought of that , the sprogs offer to buy me a new one but I tell them I would change my children before my dictionary.
    So it is possible they could get me a 93 edition in reasonable condition ?

24. Hi Roz, yes, I am sure they could. There are several versions of Chambers published in the early ’90s with various names, so you would have to make sure they knew exactly which one that are looking for. I searched for “chambers dictionary 1993” inside eBay, this was one of the results, it costs £3.13. They practically give old dictionaries away now.

25. Re taking Chambers- when I first met Sybil in the 1950s I always took my copy on visits to my future in-laws’ farm. Her father Frank, not surprisingly, thought me quite eccentric.

26. Roz@21 – thanks: POON noted and I’m looking up golf and cricketing terms, my knowledge of which is ropey.

    Keith@25 – I admire your dedication. There was someone at my secondary school who used to read his Gem pocket dictionary during breaks. He was considered weird. It took me a few years to chase words in dictionaries.

27. Many thanks PeeDee @24 , what a great idea , mine is the first time they used “The Chambers Dictionary” so I imagine it will be easy to find . I suppose some people just have them on a shelf and rarely use them so they stay in good condition.
    Keith@25 I used to try and take mine on holiday but I was always outvoted even though I claimed it was for Scrabble.

28. Roz@27, if you do get a ‘new’ one, might I suggest a plastic cover of some kind? My ’98 version is held together with sticky tape (covers and contents intact, if separate), but I still have its predecessor, the 1988 edition, which has survived well thanks to a thin sticky-backed plastic cover.

29. Thanks MunroMaiden another great idea. Our librarians will be able to do this, they have a special machine. I will look after my next (used) copy and it should last well . The one I have now I used to use pretty roughly when I was solving Azed .

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