Azed No. 2,702 – Plain

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A more than usually tricky puzzle from Azed this week.

I’m glad that this wasn’t a competition puzzle as there is one clue that has completely baffled me: 17 across. I’m sure that there is something obvious that I have missed and no doubt someone will be able to enlighten me. Other than that, there were no Scottish terms this week, or at least none specified as such.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 BABACO
Subtropical fruit in small cake, firm (6)
A simple charade of BABA (a cake) and CO (a company, or firm).
6 TEMPTS
Sitter in test fumbled is alluring (6)
MP (“sitter”) in *TEST.
11 PRIORITISE
Give preference to pierrots I twice observed dancing (10)
*(PIERROTS I I).
12 NAIL MEN
Fundraisers for German soldiers, number with endless disease (7, 2 words)
N(umber) AILMEN(t). This is the answer not to be found in Chambers; according to Wikipedia: “Nail Men or Men of Nails were a form of propaganda and fundraising for members of the armed forces and their dependents in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire in World War 1”.
13 SWAP
Gives indecent treatment to turns, rare flop (4)
PAWS (rev).
14 NIGH
Close loose robe without need of tie (4)
NIGH(tie).
15 MADERISE
Rust got to lift (8)
MADE (got) RISE (lift).
17 ROVER
I’ll do a turn welcomed by king twice, or character representing him (5)
I’m completely baffled by this clue: and the answer could equally well be ROPER (but probably not ROGER or ROKER or ROWER). R(ex) of course is a common abbreviation designating a king, but I have no further insights.

The answer, as revealed by Gozo @1 is of course ROGER, (EGO (rev) inside R and R).  The definition is somewhat indirect: Roger can indicate R and R stands for Rex.
18 STERTOROUS
Otters swimming are exciting, endlessly snorting (10)
*OTTERS ROUS(e).
21 PRESENTIAL
Grudge I held with chum around, rarely alert (10)
RESENT(grudge) + I inside PAL.
24 REWED
The old regretted being married again – sounds vulgar (5)
A homophone of “rude”; Chambers doesn’t have “re-wed” as a verb but does of course have “remarry”.
28 APOSITIA
Total loss of appetite as before nurse accepts to assume as valid (8)
POSIT (assume as valid) inside AIA (nurse).
29 GLIS
Certain rodents, not all English (4)
Hidden in English.
30 COIT
Aussie bum I confined to hospital bed (4)
I in COT; Australian slang for the buttocks.
31 UNTWIST
Twins dancing in do straighten out (7)
*TWINS in UT (old version of doh in the musical scale).
32 SWELL ORGAN
Pipes clearly limited to awful groans (10, 2 words)
WELL (clearly) inside *GROANS.
33 SEMEIA
Metrical marks, extremes of metre I positioned in the main (6)
M(etr)E I inside SEA (the main).
34 SAWDER
Flattery judged reverse of rubbish (6)
SAW (judged) RED (rubbish) (rev). This use of “red” or “redd” is designated as “chiefly Scot” by Chambers.
DOWN
1 BONNES GRACES
Couples imbibing ten timeless nogs drunk as favour (12, 2 words)
*(t)EN NOGS) inside BRACES (couples).
2 APAID
I’ll get installed in a room once satisfied (5)
I in A PAD.
3 BRIGUE
Cloak and dagger stuff to happen involving outfit, superior (6)
RIG (outfit) U (superior) inside BE (happen).
4 COMMOTE
Part of old county division – I ask you about word (7)
MOT (word) in COME (in its interjectional sense).  It’s a subdivision of a cantred, and both words are Welsh in origin so perhaps it’s only Welsh counties that were so subdivided?
5 OREAD
Love switching parts? Echo perhaps (5)
ADORE with the syllables transposed. Echo was a mythological oread, or mountain nymph.
6 TINDER
Fuel not dried? Do this possibly (6)
Subtractive anagram: remove the letters DO from *(NOT DRIED).
7 ETHER
Anaesthetic? Take that, last taken first (5)
THERE (that) with the last letter moved to the beginning.
8 MISROUTE
Give wrong number for redirecting moisture (8)
*MOISTURE.
9 TEASEL
Dried flower-head, for example in sesame (6)
AS in TEEL (a form of sesame).
10 SUPERCLUSTER
Huge starry gathering, fantastically spruce result (12)
*(SPRUCE RESULT).
16 ARRESTEE
One nicked in New York arriving with reputation slightly reduced (8)
ARR(iving) ESTEE(m).
19 ONDATRA
A tornado swirling without end that can damage US waterways (7)
*(A TORNAD(o)). It’s the musquash, a large aquatic N American animal, very destructive to dams and waterways (according to Chambers).
20 DEPOSE
Remove extreme pressure in draught (6)
E(xtreme) P(ressure) in DOSE (draught of medicine).
22 SITULA
A Latin clamour once rising – Romans had a handle on it? (6)
A L(atin) UTIS (clamour) (all rev): it’s Latin for a bucket – not the most precise definition.
23 ILLIAD
Line in epic: a brief look in Shakespeare will suffice (6)
L in ILIAD: it’s a Shakespearean spelling of oiellade and means an ogle, glance or wink. I’m not sure what “will suffice” in the clue is doing.
25 DILLI
Simple bag down under, sounding foolish locally (5)
Sounds like “dilly” which means foolish in Australia and New Zealand.
26 MINOS
See me with absence of sun in waterproofs (5)
“See me” apparently here means “sounds like me”; NO S(un).
27 VISNE
Thoughtful, but without extremes, turning up in place for court hearing (5)
(p)ENSIV(e) (rev). Although Chambers doesn’t label this as such, I’m pretty sure it’s an obsolete Norman-French term that has not been used in legal circles for many generations.

22 comments on “Azed No. 2,702 – Plain”

  1. Aha, thanks Bridgesong. 17 is ROGER , it’s ego (I) reversed in two Rs for rex – and roger is airforce code for R, so “character representing him” is the way I took the definition.
    Solving without Chambers I didn’t get MINOS – seems MINO is not in the usual online dictionaries. I think we have the two spellings of the musical note there, rather than a homophone.

    Thanks as ever to Azed.

  2. Another here with ROGER, parsed as per Gonzo @1.
    A couple of Australian slang words this week. Dill (fool), Dilly (foolish) for DILLI is fairly common here. COIT is less so, and is really more anus (date being another more common slang term for it) than bum. I’d mainly heard it from the humorous Rugby League commentary and Roy and HG’s inventive nicknames for some players, Mark Coyne being “The Two Dollar Coit” and his brother Peter being “The One Dollar Coit”. The $1 coin is larger than the $2 coin!!!

  3. MINOS
    A mino (蓑) is a traditional Japanese raincoat made out of straw. (Wiki)
    Gonzo@1 You may be right about mi and me. I thought as Bridgesong thought. The ‘see’
    looks like a homophone indicator (in the sense of get/understand).
    ROGER
    Your explanation is plausible.
    R for Received (OK. Got it). Otherwise, R is represented by Romeo. Right?

    Thanks bridgesong for the excellent blog!

  5. KVa @4 yes 🙂 and I didn’t check OED, so it may be there too.
    Romeo for R is the usual NATO thing, but the RAF alphabet has things like ack emma …

  6. Thanks Gonzo@5.
    Does RAF still use ROGER (Google throws back only Romeo) for R?
    R for Roger (in the sense of ‘OK/message received’ is said to be the short form of ‘Received’).
    A very minor point. Sorry for stretching it …eventually, I will be wrong. :-

    ILLIAD
    On the ‘will suffice’ bit, nothing to offer.

  7. I think the last two words of the clue for ILLIAD are just there for the surface, i.e. “will suffice as the answer”.

  8. As to whether Roger was used for R generally, not just ‘received’, some serious work has gone into compiling some tables (and ack emma may have been army rather than airforce).

  10. Thanks to Gozo for pointing out my error and for providing what is not just the right answer but the correct parsing. It’s a very subtle definition, which partially explains my complete failure to understand the clue. I’ll amend the blog later.

  12. Thanks for the blog, I found the bottom left quite tricky , had to use Chambers in the end , APOSITIA was hard to find and no way to get SITULA from wordplay or definition, just a look up.
    We were warned about NAIL MEN and the clue was very fair.
    I agree with Gonzo @1 for ROGER and I think the term is very common outside the military , people using CB radio , walkie talkies etc . I have heard ROGER used many times in film, books , TV etc. It even had its own TV series Roger Roger about a taxi firm.

  14. APOSTIA
    We use ‘ayah’ in several Indian languages to mean ‘a nursemaid’. A Raj period word. Dunno where it came from.
    AIA is a new spelling for the word learnt from this puzzle.

  15. Thanks for the blog, bridgesong. I agree with @1 on ROGER and on MINOS. Improbably enough there were two kings of Sicily known (in English) as ROGER and there’s an opera by Szymanowski about one of them.

  16. Going back to the clue for ILLIAD, I agree with Tim C @7: “will suffice” is just there for the surface. Unfortunately, this breaches one of Azed’s own basic rules: “Every clue should contain a definition or equivalent of the answer plus a cryptic treatment of its component parts, and nothing else” (from A-Z of Crosswords, Azed’s italics).

  17. I thought the same as KVa@11 as regards ETHER and There! I also assumed me=mi for MINOS – ‘Mino’ has come up before in Azed and no doubt will again, so worth remembering! I believe Chambers defines it as a hemp raincoat. Agree with Bridgesong@16 about ILLIAD.
    Roz@12, once I had –TULA for 22dn, I immediately thought of UTIS, so it must be something I’ve seen before in crosswords – definitely not a word in everyday use! Again, perhaps one to remember for the future.
    34ac – I only knew RED in its sense of to tidy up, so I was a bit confused by ‘rubbish’, but I see Chambers gives it as a definition under the noun.

  18. Yes, bridgesong @16, but I’m sure it’s not the first time Azed has broken one of his “rules”. He has been known to have ‘link’ words (my recent VHC had ‘from’ as a link word), which would also be against that rule strictly speaking. I guess he could argue that “will suffice (as the answer)” may be within the rule of “a definition or equivalent of the answer”. And what does “plus” imply? 🙂

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