Azed No. 2,703 ‘Jigsaw’ – Competition Puzzle

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How complicated this all is. It took me ages. I drew the grid on a piece of squared paper and armed myself with a pencil, not the usual pen, then started by solving as many of the clues as possible. Since I got two of the ten-letter answers I took a punt and pencilled them in at right angles to each other — there was a letter that fit both words where they crossed. Then I tentatively added the answers that I had and went on until things went wrong. For the second time I was lucky and the only wrong positioning quickly led to a dead end, and I could retrace my steps. I went on and on and to my surprise it all worked out OK, although I was very fortunate: similar such things have in the past led me to start all over again.

Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.

Clues as in the paper
1 ABLET
Supply of food, first to last river fish? (5)
(This goes at 32ac) table with the t (first) moved to the end (last)
2 AUNE
Length of fabric once used in France, one here and there (4)
(7dn) a is one here (in the UK) and une is one in France
3 BATELEURS
Eagles seen in Africa are bluest when flying (9)
(32ac) (are bluest)*
4 BOARS
Black crew maybe doctored barrows? (5)
(25dn) B oars — a barrow is a castrated boar according to Chambers. Does that mean that a boar is a castrated barrow?
5 BOSS COCKY
Aussie foreman, self-important when trailing dogie, say (9)
(1dn) cocky after boss —two words according to my Chambers, so should it have said (9, two words)?
6 BUSH-CAT
Wild feline that mostly plays with cubs (7)
(1ac) (tha[t] cubs)*
7 CAMRA
What’ll have no time for poor draughts, cold and making room arctic initially (5)
(4dn) c[old] a[nd] m[aking] r[oom] a[rctic] — draughts of ale (Campaign for Real Ale)
8 CATACLASIS
Deformation of rocks (10)
(21ac) The straight definition, for those who want to dream up a clue
9 CHIN
Health reduced by half – but it may be double (4)
(16ac) chin[-chin] — double chin
10 DISCASE
Undress as before? See where heart is in illness (7)
(34ac) disease with a C (see) instead of the heart of the word
11 ESCOPETTE
Light rifle? Summer abroad taking in range with time (9)
(15dn) é(scope t)té
12 ICER
One applies coating that may be repeated away from table put up (4)
(28dn) (reci[table])rev.
13 IONONE
Perfumer’s plant extract I love? Not one (6)
(29ac) I 0 none
14 KNOW-ALL
Not much of a rise? With one accepted he’s a clever dick (7)
(24ac) kno(w a)ll
15 LAMELLATED
Left meal dealt out, thinly plated (10)
(12dn) l (meal dealt)*
16 LAND-RAT
Thief, but no pirate, in league with one, dammit (7)
(24ac) l an drat
17 MANNERS
Good behaviour displayed by monarch in writing (7)
(17ac) m(Anne R)s
18 MESENTERIC
Regarding fold inside, terrible crimes – admit endlessly breaking in (10)
(19ac) ente[r] in *(crimes) — I’m finding it hard to see how admit = enter, since to admit is to allow to enter
19 ONERS
Cracks, Norse originally (5)
(27dn) (Norse)*
20 PARAQUITO
Colourful bird seen in S. American state and capital (9)
(10ac) Pará Quito — Pará is a state of Brazil
21 RUNLET
Litre drunk I drained, one inside little old barrel (6)
(13ac) (L[i]tre)* round un
22 SASSY
Fresh slice of sausage – try without a stuffing (5)
(6ac) s[ausage] ass[a]y
23 SATARA
Indian cloth – a sailor’s wrapped in it (6)
(14ac) S(a tar)A — SA = sex appeal = it (in Crosswordland)
24 SCATOLE
Crystalline compound to put in thin plate (7)
(20dn) sca(to)le
25 SCOP
Minstrel offering self-contained brief work (4)
(26ac) s/c op. [conveniently, I never noticed that this and 26 were the wrong way round, as has been pointed out by several]
26 SCOLIA
They were sung irregularly in drunken social (6)
(23dn) *(social)
27 SILVER
Some coins amounting to pound found in Glaswegian drain (6)
(8dn) si(L)ver
28 SMARM
Handgun completely missing fawn (5)
(11ac) sm[all] arm
29 SQUINTS
Casts stop going on board steamer (7)
(6dn) S(quint)S
30 STATIM
Hands going up about answer straight away (6)
(3dn) (mitts)rev. around a
31 STEARIN
Part of fat burnin’, temperature held (7)
(9dn) s(t)earin’ — searing
32 STERE
Unit for measuring wood that’s damaged trees (5)
(33ac) *(trees)
33 TARTANALIA
Self-consciously Scottish stuff, creative works in brown et al (10)
(5dn) t(art)an alia — but there seems to be no entry in Chambers for alia, just for inter alia, nor for et = and, or al = alia. I’m not quite sure what’s happening here.
34 TONITE
Explosive temper? It should be contained (6)
(22dn) ton(it)e
35 TRICOT
Mostly ample child’s clothing in hand-knitted wool (6)
(30ac) t(ric[h])ot
36 UMMAH
Community of devout Muslims entering museum, Mahommadan (5)
(2dn) Hidden in museUM, MAHommadan

24 comments on “Azed No. 2,703 ‘Jigsaw’ – Competition Puzzle”

  1. Thanks John. In 33 I think we can expand ‘et al’ to ‘et alia’ and interpret as ‘and “alia”‘.
    For 18 ‘admit’ is in Chambers under ‘enter’ – “he was entered into the competition”?
    Shared your qualms about BOARS.
    I got three of the 10-letterers cold, then having CAMRA and CHIN went through the dictionary until I found CATACLASIS. Quite a lot of electronic help needed here. Last in and last to parse was ICER – we have Azed’s idiosyncratic ‘A away from B’ meaning A-B.
    Despite the out of order 25&26, thanks as ever to Azed for a fun challenge.

  2. Gonzo@1
    TARTANALIA
    Agree with your parsing.
    MESENTERIC
    admit=enter. Yes.
    BOARS
    (maybe this is a stretch)
    doctored could mean ‘castrated’ but it could mean ‘treated/cured’ as well.
    A whimsical question: Is it a de-castrated barrow?

    Thanks John for the excellent blog!

  4. My lead in was also the 10 letter words which could only go in one way with one other crosser I had. It certainly helps having the clues in alphabetical order of their solutions (it was only later that I saw 25 and 26 were the wrong way round).

    Azed clued CATACLASIS in 2630 as “Chap leading a lesson about one type of rock deformation”.

  5. In addition to the mistaken enumeration for BOSS COCKY, and the transposition of SCOP and SCOLIA, I felt that to have numbers in the grid and for the clues was unnecessary.

    Good spot by Tim C about 2630: I suspect that Azed will admit in the slip that he had overlooked this relatively recent puzzle. Glad that I had forgotten it as well; it would have made devising a clue even harder.

  6. Thanks for the blog, I do like these for the cold solving but I would prefer it more alphabetical, only 15 letters used and S used 11 times. No need for numbers in the grid , I suspect this was just a normal puzzle later changed to a jigsaw.
    I had no trouble with the grid , BUSHCAT had to go top left , gave me UMMAH, CAMRA and TARTANALIA. Everything I had then went in easily.
    I agree with all the quibbles noted above, I could not find BOSS COCKY in Chambers93 but had to be right.

  7. Thanks for the blog. I almost decided not to bother with this, but on my second run through the clues got three of the ten-letter words, plus a few others so that it was easy to start filling in the grid. From there on it got progressively quicker, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. My only question mark was, like others, for BOARS.

  8. This is a type of special I don’t get on with. My normal solving method involves finding a clue I can solve and then working out from there, using the crossers to help. With this puzzle, I got all of four clues by the end of the day and gave up.

  9. Unlike Dormouse@8, I always welcome this sort of jigsaw – unlike some of the other variations on the Plain norm. My quick way in this time was via the two 9-letter solutions, conveniently placed, starting with ESCOPETTE – what could ‘summer abroad’ be but the French word? Intersecting words seemed less likely on the left than on the right, and from then it was (relatively) downhill. John is more familiar, I think, as commentator on the Everyman: he did a great job here, so thanks to him and of course to the evergreen Azed,

  10. Yes Bridgesong @5 the numbers in the grid were unnecessary for the solver. But not for the blogger. How else would I have indicated where answers went, apart from having the grid?

    Quenbarrow@9 I do the Everyman every 4 weeks and Azed every 6. So every 12 weeks I am particularly busy.

    Roz@6 why does BUSHCAT have to go top left?

  11. Good afternoon. Thanks Azed and John for the heavy-lifting.
    Having done several of these over the decades I began, after a quick run-through, by scanning, removing clues and listing 4s, 5s, 6s,7s, 9s & 10s into a table. Luckily the combination of BUSHCAT & UMMAH, also TATANALIA meant 1ac, 2down & 5down dropped into place. Now 1down was B—COCKY and a bit of grubbing found BOSS . Thereafter things progressed steadily over two days of dentistry, podiatry and audiology to a happy conclusion. CATACLASIS (no Es, Os or Rs) was a bit of a poser.
    I’m sure somenone can tell us when the last Jigsaw was?

  12. Like others, I thought BOARS was a bit odd, unless “doctored” is supposed to mean ‘reversed the castration of’ (if such a thing is possible with boars). A few less usual spellings: Scolia and Scatole, which more commonly have a k, and Siver (in SILVER), which is more often Syver.
    I got BOSS COCKY, though not in my Chambers 98, but can’t match BOSS and “dogie, say” – is there something in a more recent Chambers to explain, or am I missing something?
    I also wondered why there was a question mark in clue 1 – is it because an ablet is a freshwater fish, so not necessarily from a river? If so, I can’t see why the clue couldn’t have just said freshwater – “river” doesn’t seem to add anything to the surface.

  14. John@10, top left has to have a 7 letter word and a 9-letter word starting with the same letter and B is the only option – though you would have to have solved a few clues to be sure of that (it’s possible a priori that clues 10 and 11 start with the same letter, or perhaps 17/20 or 20/24). You could then fill in BUSHCAT, but might have to wait for the down clue, to distinguish between BOSS COCKY and BATELEURS.

  15. MunroMaiden @12, C2016 has “boss3… (US) n a calf or cow” and “dogie… (US) n a motherless calf [Origin obscure]”

  16. I don’t think the definition of boars needs to be causing so much contention. Amongst the boars you can presumably find the castrated barrows, the uncastrated breeding stock, etc.

  18. John@10 after cold solving the only 9 to cross with a 7 was B , I did not know which B for 9 but had to be BUSHCAT , this gave me a lot , UMMAH etc and this gave me SMARM across to decide the B . Once you have a few in , anything that fits is almost cerainly correct.
    Munro Maiden @14 had a similar idea and I could discount the other 7/9s .
    Only B and S had a number of answers and S did not have a 9.

  19. Thanks, Tim C@15. Obviously I need either a more up to date Chambers or an American dictionary!

  20. Gonzo @17 I don’t know why I used “castrated” instead of doctored in my post. I wasn’t disputing that the definition is “maybe doctored barrows”, just giving an example of when you might call a boar a doctored barrow. It is certainly DBE, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. It does seem tautologous but I’m not sure how much that matters. “Boastful braggart” wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows, would it? Having said that I do think the “doctored” made it harder.

  21. John, if you have access to a printer, it might be easier to download the PDF version of the special puzzles and print copies as needed. I also crop the right hand solution etc with Irfanview to get a better fit to A4.

    Thanks for the blog, and to Azed for the puzzle, but perhaps not for the choice of word to clue.

  22. A long slog all day, despite a bright start in SE corner. I got Sassy, Scop and Stearin, but I had already Escopette, Oners and Ionone and, mysteriously, they did fit together.

    One of the things we should point out is that The Jigsaw is not a “special”. It’s a plain crossword with the clues in the wrong order. Sometimes they seem to fall into place but I found this one challenging.

    John’s blog is wonderful but I’ll add that my method is three sheets of paper. Copy the diagram, make a list (1 to 36), make another list: words of four letters, six letters…

    If, like me, you are lucky and get No. 22, which is Sassy, and No. 31, which is Stearin, you know that there are many words starting with ’s’. Azed must do this to help us. I am often reminded of Ximenes’ words that we should have fun. It’s not just obstruction.

    Does anyone know that the five letters EERTS (as in Stere) are rumoured to be the five letters with the most anagrams? (There is even a word êtres, from philosophy.)

    Stefan

  23. I finally completed this. LOI was ICER, which I could not parse, so thanks for the blog. I made an inspired guess with the placement of BUSH-CAT, and finally assumed that the enumeration for BOSS COCKY was a typo. From there, it was a matter of “this must begin with [letter]” and “so this must go here.”

  24. In his review of the competition Azed mentioned that two answers were the wrong way round, but he never said anything about BOSS COCKY. So perhaps my Chambers is out of date.

    A friend of mine said that my clue for CATACLASIS was so good that if it didn’t get a VHC or better I should camp outside his house in protest. It got absolutely nothing.

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