Azed No. 2,690 Plain

21 comments on “Azed No. 2,690 Plain”

1. I was half familiar with PAKAPOO from the Australian expression “a pack of poo tickets” meaning something messy. I always thought there was a lavatorial connection (poo ticket = toilet paper) but it derives from this word, a betting slip full of Chinese characters which would have looked messy to Western eyes. The word means white pigeon ticket in Cantonese as a pigeon was used to (randomly) select the winning squares, presumably by pecking. The game itself has survived to date with numbers rather than Chinese characters in the game of Keno, popular in the pubs and clubs in Australia,

2. I did not understand “nippy” in the definition of PRAU?

3. PRAU
   As (Collins) it’s a swift sailing boat, it’s nippy?

4. Perhaps Cineraria is unfamiliar with nippy=fast.
   Thanks loonapick for the parsing of REDO – I managed to miss redd(1) in Chambers.
   Thanks as ever to Azed, some lovely words. Managed to deduce BATWING SLEEVE which was fun

5. Thanks for the blog, quite a lot to look up this time, thanks to TimC@1 for the extras for PACKAPOO . PRAU turns up a lot in Azed , I think nippy means fast and nimble, they are in Conrad stories a lot, able to go where other boats can’t.
   Chambers93 gives NOSE-RAG so that is okay, do not know about C16.
   For SKATE I could not find any link to BOB ??
   The red(d) in REDO was very sneaky.

6. C2016 has nose rag as two separate words Roz @5. It also has bob skate under the bob1 headword.
   Here is an image of a pak ah pu ticket for anyone interested. Keno has the same number (80) of squares.

7. Thanks Tim@6 a win for C93. What is a bob skate?

8. I liked “nippy” which clearly distinguishes PRAU from PRAM (a Dutch sailing vessel). NOSE RAG is given as 4,3 in my Chambers.

9. Roz @7, C2016 “bob skate n (NAm) an ice-skate with two parallel blades.” They’re apparently for young kiddies as it’s harder to fall over with them.

10. Thanks Tim , perhaps it is a newish thing .

11. It passed through my mind that the Azed compiler must surely have been involved in making the old TV programme “Call My Bluff”.

12. C98 is as Roz@5 says for C93 – NOSE-RAG is given and bob skate is not. In relation to the latter, when the clue says “Bob may be attached to one”, does that mean purely in a lexical way ie that there is an expression ‘bob skate’, or is there something called a ‘bob’ that attaches to the skate? My C98 gives one definition of ‘bobs’ as runners for a sled, but only in the plural.

13. 35ac: Chambers 2011, 2014, and 2016, Collins 2023, ODE 2010, and SOED 2007 all have only the form nose rag with two words. Not one of the current editions has the hyphenated form, even marked archaic or obsolete. The reasonable conclusion therefore is that the omission of “2 words” from the enumeration was a mistake by Azed, albeit an extremely unimportant one.

14. Thanks to Azed & loonapick.
    I competed this on the day so Christmas pressure was less in evidence.
    HEPCAT was a horror to clue. I must have seen P in TOM used many times. I go back a lot longer than all the terms for different kinds of (usually recorded) music. Am sure that would be much like Viennese waltz music to moderns.
    My own favourite was 1ac as POTHER was frequently used by my farming, Yorkshire in-laws in the long-ago

15. I found quite a few options for clueing HEPCAT, Keith @14 and certainly found it a lot easier than the Cool Yomp Spoonerism. I did spend ages trying to decide whether I needed a DBE indicator for my definition which was “Bird sends me”. I opted not to include one which probably means I’ve failed (yet again).

16. TimC@15, I agree that it was much harder to find a Spoonerism clue. I think that you could argue that any contemporary hepcat would be sent by Bird, so not a DBE What’s the rest?

    I went for the man himself, so an indicator was needed.: “Bird, perhaps chat, taking first couple of peanuts on the wing”. I decided that omitting the “first” might leave the anagrist too opaque, although it is combinatorially slightly easier than a seven letter anagram.

17. The rest was “Bird sends me hot mix tape introducing Charlie” TimSee @16.

18. DBE ? Not sure what that means.
    Also, does ‘Hepcat’ cover someone keen an any modern trends other than jazz ?

19. Laurence @18, a DBE is a “Definition By Example”. So ODEA in this crossword is defined by “such as the Albert Hall?” which is a DBE, indicated by “such as” and the ? at the end. Other indicators include “say” or “maybe” which show that it’s an example of the thing being defined rather than a definition in its own right.
    Yes, I think hepcat can cover others, but it’s especially applicable to jazz.

20. Thank you Tim

21. The Azed slip for this says that not indicating nose rag as 2 words was an error.

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