I found it harder than usual to get started on this, but once I had a few crossers it all started to fall into place. Thank you Azed.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | KOFF |
King not wanting vessel from the Netherlands (4)
|
| K (king) and OFF (not wanting, off ones food) | ||
| 4 | MISPRISE |
Mistake is occurring twice in resetting of perm (8)
|
| IS IS (twice) inside anagram (resetting) of PERM | ||
| 10 | VALLECULA |
See everybody, a clue solved, in the groove? (9)
|
| V (vide, see) ALL (everybody) then anagram (solved) of A CLUE | ||
| 11 | EQUANT |
Point in Ptolemaic system, as in variant of 10 (6)
|
| QUA (as) inside anagram (variant) of TEN | ||
| 13 | SCAG |
This horse I pen carelessly may be escaping (4)
|
| an anagram (carelessly) of SCAG (this horse, the solution) with I PEN may be ESCAPING | ||
| 15 | OATCAKE |
Cheese biscuit maybe Spooner’s swallowed with fizzy pop? (7)
|
| a Spoonerism of ATE COKE (swallowed and Coca-Cola, fizzy pop) | ||
| 16 | CONKS |
Packs up loaves (5)
|
| double definition | ||
| 17 | EOSIN |
Red dye is one, when mixed (5)
|
| anagram (when mixed) of IS ONE | ||
| 19 | HONEYBUNCH |
Poppet giving hint about somebody turned aside (10)
|
| HUNCH (hint) containing (about) ONE (somebody) BY (aside) reversed (turned) | ||
| 21 | STREAMERED |
Street ameer converted, brightly coloured with festoons (10)
|
| ST (street) then anagram (converted) AMEER and RED (brightly coloured). The PDF version of the puzzle has a misprint in the enumeration (!0) | ||
| 23 | DITCH |
Choir following words of old song stank (5)
|
| CH (choir) following DIT (the words of a song, old indicates archaic) | ||
| 24 | BRISE |
With which ballet-dancer kicks off jump? (5)
|
| the first letter (with which…kicks off) of Ballet then RISE (jump) | ||
| 25 | TERMINI |
Victoria and suchlike showing expression at home with middle of reign (7)
|
| TERM (expression) IN (at home) with middle letter of reIgn – Victoria is a railway terminal (a final station on a line), one of several such stations in London | ||
| 27 | WHID |
Local spat now hidden (in part) (4)
|
| found inside (n part) moW HIDden | ||
| 28 | CAMOTE |
Sweet potato was served, ’eated inside (6)
|
| CAME (was served, e.g. it came with chips) containing (with…inside) ‘OT (‘eated) | ||
| 29 | BATH SALTS |
Fragrant additive – some rock’s containing this, not half (9, 2 words)
|
| BASALT’S (some rock’s) contains THis (not half) | ||
| 30 | STARLESS |
Stone square round Vincent’s home for a time – unlike his famous work? (8)
|
| ST (stone) S (square) contains (round) ARLES (Vincent van Gogh’s home for a time) – unlike one of his “stary night” paintings | ||
| 31 | LIAS |
Indication of some rock fan being bowled over? (4)
|
| SAIL (fan) reversed (being bowled over) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | KVETCHED |
Climber nipped by wingless fly complained (8)
|
| VETCH (a climber) inside (nipped by) KED (a wingless fly) | ||
| 2 | FLUX |
Fine light fuse (4)
|
| F (fine) and LUX (light) | ||
| 3 | FLACKET |
Grass turned up admitting need for bottle (7)
|
| TEF (an Ethiopian cereal grass) reversed (turned up) containing (admitting) LACK (need) | ||
| 4 | MENUS |
What waiters offer us after draughts? (5)
|
| US following MEN (draughts, pieces in board game) | ||
| 5 | SUBAQUATIC |
Fishy perhaps, as in a cubist’s doodle (10)
|
| QUA (as) inside anagram (doodle) of A CUBIST | ||
| 6 | PLATEN |
Roller parking? Delay follows (6)
|
| P (parking) followed by LATEN (delay) | ||
| 7 | IN CASH |
Measure including old coin with money (6, 2 words)
|
| INCH (measure) contains AS (old coin) | ||
| 8 | SHAKINESS |
Has wobbly movement? Not I! Not true if I’ve this (9)
|
| anagram (wobbly) of HAS then KINESiS missing (not) I | ||
| 9 | EDGE |
Moved faster switching halves for advantage (4)
|
| GEED (moved faster) with the two halves GE + ED swapping places | ||
| 12 | TORBERNITE |
Brie, rotten, going off? It’s bright green and watery (10)
|
| anagram (going off) of BRIE ROTTEN | ||
| 14 | COOLIE HAT |
Love to stretch out, hot, inside cover, one of many to be seen in tea plantation? (9, 2 words)
|
| O (love) LIE (to stretch out) H (hot) inside COAT (cover) | ||
| 18 | NUDENESS |
One undressed may turn red with this – O! (8)
|
| an anagram (turn) of ONE UNDRESSED may be RED with NUDENESS (this, the solution) O | ||
| 20 | CERAMAL |
Electronic resistor? It’s turned calmer with one installed (7)
|
| anagram (it’s turned) of CALMER containing (with…installed) A (one) | ||
| 21 | STRIGA |
Being dressed up in it makes one bristle (6)
|
| GIRT (being dressed) reversed (up) inside SA (sex appeal, it) | ||
| 22 | RHINAL |
Prone to sniffiness? John may make you this by the sound of it 6) (6)
|
| a John (toilet) might be a URINAL which sounds like (by the sound of it) YOU + RHINAL (this, the solution) | ||
| 24 | BRASS |
Pro demanding money (5)
|
| double definition – slang for prostitute and money | ||
| 25 | TWAS |
Contraction gripping wife pressed from below (4)
|
| SAT (pressed) reversed (from below) containing (gripping…is…) W (wife) – a contraction of IT WAS, more of a hint than a definition | ||
| 26 | SOLI |
Cadenzas perhaps, sensible if lacking depth (4)
|
| SOLId (sensible) missing (if lacking) D (depth) |
I also took a while to get really started as I got bogged down on OATCAKE. I just could not get it to work although the answer was clear. I think my dislike of spoonerisms is well known.
STREAMERED also confused me until I ignored the numeration.
Thanks for the blog peedee – I did enjoy my weekly dictionary ramble.
After getting a bit uppity I could complete an AZED a few weeks ago this brought me back to the ground with a bump. Not helped by confidently entering GEED rather than EDGE. Enjoyed learning all the new words after going through the blog. I’ll try again this week!
STREAMERED it is ST , then AMEER converted then RED, the length is 10 not helped by the misprint in the paper, the anagram is 11 , an extra T .
Thanks for the blog, HONEYBUNCH was clever with the misleading ONE YB in the middle. BRISE was very neat and STARLESS. The wingless fly in KVETCHED made me ponder for a while on flies missing outer letters.
GEED or EDGE actually works both ways which is unusual for Azed , fortunately I had the first E. As=QUA turns up twice and SOME ROCK is nearly in consecutive clues.
For 14D I am very surprised this term is used without some indication of its very offensive nature.
Thanks Roz for correcting STREAMRED. I read it that way when I solved the puzzle but had forgotten by the time I came to write up the blog a few days later and got lazy.
My major problem with this is that my newsagent didn’t deliver the Observer that morning. Instead, I got the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Mail! I could have downloaded the puzzle but I wanted to read the paper so I went out for a copy.
Roz@3: Not sure what you are referring to here. STREAMERED is ten characters long and 10 was the enumeration for the clue in the copy of the paper I have.
There is a minor misprint in the blog for 8dn. Movement is KINESIS and only one I removed.
Hi Dormouse, regarding your query to Roz@3 on STREAMERED: that is my fault, I had written (11) for the enumeration instead of (10). The online version of the puzzle had something like
Street ameer converted, brightly coloured with festoons (!0) (11)
Which has clearly confused me completely, hence my taking several attempts to get the blog entry right.
OK. I had looked at the pdf before commenting and didn’t notice the ! and it looked like 10 to my eyes. There is currently no (11) in the pdf, though.
I made things difficult for myself by misremembering wingless fly to be GED instead of KED – even when I’d come up with VALLECULA, I assumed it must be wrong, as GV…… didn’t seem a likely start to a word. It was only much later that KVETCHED came to mind and I realised my mistake. Agree with Roz@4 about 14dn – not the first such instance, as Roz has mentioned before.
Hi Dormouse – when I write the blog I use a computer program that extracts the grid and the clues from the PDF and converts it to an online-solvable puzzle. It may be that the software got it wrong and added the (11). That seemed strange, as I can understand how it might have added (10) but not (11). Before I spent hours in the debugger trying to find out where it had gone wrong I thought I would check on the Guardian website first. I am fairly sure I saw (!0) (11) written in the PDF too, but I may have mis-remembered that.
Of course, they may have corrected it.
Just checked the version in the paper with a magnifying glass and the exclamation mark is there, too. Only just seen it.
If I may come to Azed’s defence:
I appreciate the occasional “local” for dialect. “Robbie’s”, “Jock’s”, “north of the border”, etc for Scots. “Poet’s”, “Bard’s”, “old”, etc for archaic words. But I do not expect or require Azed to infiltrate them into the clue. Especially if the clue is better without it. So, if he wants to call a callet laced mutton he may do so, with no other indication to me.
There is, further, the dictionary-makers’ dispute about what is “local”, “dialect”, “slang”, “offensive”. This blog would not be a haunt for me if we didn’t have some of the old bastards hanging around for example. How do you expect Azed to clue “bastard”? Must he indicate that it is offensive? Or affectionate? He needs to do neither, for me at least.
The last few Azeds have been quite plain sailing for me, a bit disappointingly so. Perhaps I really am just getting old…
Stefan
Good afternoon all! Glad to see a larger blog than in last (very exceptional) week. I found this a straightforward solve with none of the on-line problems.
Re not getting an Observer acouple of times in the eighties holidaying France I’d missed my fix and went to the office, then near the Westway, to pick up a copy.
I typed all this and then tried to underline and lost it all. What did I do wrong?
Re COOLIE HAT I agree with Roz that a recognition of the term’s “colonial tea plantation” ring would have been suitable.
Put one word on the wrong side in Right & Left. Ugh.
I am not easily offended but I would be shocked if any dictionary does not label the word in question as offensive, Even my Chambers from 1993 agrees. It is a word that can only be used in an insulting sense , implying racial superiority over a subjugated group. I shudder to think what Azed could use next and no doubt some people will defend him.
Roz @14 – I have no wish to defend Azed here, but be careful what you wish for. If there is a campaign to stop Azed using such phrases then the result may well be that he just retires from setting altogether. This may be a satisfactory outcome from your perspective (or it may not, that isn’t for me to say), but just consider that this is a very possible result. Lighting the blue touchpaper is all that it takes.
I have no wish to campaign or to hasten Azed’s retirement. I am even just about okay with this word in the puzzle if nothing else fits. I just think it is not beyond Azed’s powers to write the clue in such a way to acknowledge the offensive/ derogatory nature of the term. I have seen him do this occasionally for offensive terms.
Right: we have Mr Thomas creaking out of his bed. And long may he do so, the old bastard. From what he has let slip in these columns, his life must be worth at least a tuppence-‘appeny, or million-dollar, self-published memoir many of us would read.
If Azed [2619] wants to clue “tsotsi” as skolly, I think it’s delightfully clever. Weird, perhaps. But I like weird people. Some of us read dictionaries at bedtime. Odd; skeeny…
Or is it “brass”, pro, prostitute, hag? Are we so juvenile that we must be so trivially and pock-markedly correct that we cannot use the English language?
I, would point out only, further, that you cannot campaign a retirement. Campaign, as a verb, needs the “for”. It’s a breach of syntax. Common mistake thingy. At a dining table someone once asked me: “so what does ‘syntax’ mean?” I said then, and say now: I haven’t a clue.
Stefan
Enumeration error in 4d this week, should be (5) of course.
[ Coolie implies “racial superiority over a subjugated group”? That’s a lot of work for two syllables. It’s a word used by all sorts of people in the past, some of whom thought they were superior, some of whom didn’t, and some of whom thought they weren’t subjugating but opening up employment opportunities – to people who were just as capable of abusing power over their fellows as any of us. This is the old ‘all four-legged animals are cats’ argument and it’s bullshit.]
“Opening up employment opportunities ” hilarious , long live the Empire. We invade a country , steal all their resources, force them to work for us and casually insult them but never mind, we are British and superior.
Any mathematician can prove that all four-legged animals have two legs. My teacher at school did back in the 1960s.
I have spent quite some time in India. “Coolie” is offensive. I was surprised to learn that “—wallah” isn’t. So you can be a “shop-wallah” or an “office-wallah” and it’s no different from being a “major-general-wallah-in-the-armed-forces-sir”. Which is exactly, word for word, what an Indian man said to me on a B-class bus out of Srinagar and we knew we had at least 48 hours to sit next to each other. (It turned into about five days…) And I told him that he did not need to call me “sir”, but he kept forgetting and, in the end, I thought I was being rude telling him not to call me sir.
I like being rude to people, especially if they deserve it. My wife will tell you. “Thank you for waiting…” Have you any idea what the word “thank” means? “We are sorry that our lines are so b…” No you aren’t. What is sorrow? Why lie?
If Azed, and Chambers, want to call a spade a spade, or a pro a harlot, I will be the private in the trenches in front of them.
Stefan
Roz & Marmite Smuggler – this is just what I meant @14. I’m sure neither of you wants to damage the Azed series, but this is how the process starts.
Can some kind contributer help me to explain why ‘LOAVES’ means CONKS? I’ve looked in Chambers and can’t see the connection. Many thanks
Hi Tyro, it’s listed in Chambers under “loaf” – meaning the head, from the Cockney rhyming slang “loaf of bread”. Conk is slang for the head too.
Many thanks PeeDee
Dear PeeDee. I am truly sorry. I did not know that I was offensive to you. Roz, if I have offended you, I am even more deeply sorry. Azed: you see what you’ve done? I was defending Azed’s right to use “pro” for prostitute. It seems reasonable to me, but I did not spell it out in my post. If that offends people, so be it. Have I got this right?—It offends you that I haven’t offended you?
Please do no block me from this blog. I started off with Ximenes. Only a few things are left in life for me. I would never insult anyone here.
Stefan
I’m not offended, I just want to stop this going any further before it does some damage. This sort of comment is better suited to Twitter. On here lets explain how to solve the clues and help people get started on cryptics.