Azed No. 2,712 Plain

16 comments on “Azed No. 2,712 Plain”

1. Excellent blog Cineraria!
   SAREE
   The clue covers Shrimati with (a) dash! Silky smooth surface!
   NIRAMIAI
   Agree with the blog on trajectory & AIM.
   BOWS
   ‘Certainly not (a) stern’ should be (a) BOW? Or is the plural form
   all right?

2. KVa@1: “The bows” is generally equivalent to “the bow.” For example, a sinking ship can be “going down at the bows.”

3. Thanks Cineraria!

4. Thanks for the blog, I always aim for the perimeter answers with Azed but it is rare to get the whole perimeter straight away. I found the interior trickier , especially some of the checking afterwards.
   Not a good week for Chambers93 , no HAPU, HAFIZ , CICALE but the clues were clear and I could find the bits.
   I wonder if aim and trajectory are used for the same thing in the military, setting the artillery guns.

5. Thanks to Azed for the usual braintwister and to Cineraria. I did not spot the anagram in 23a and so could not parse this one completely. I wondered about the singular DALE in 24d. As a part of Yorkshire, one normally refers to the DALES.

6. Enjoyed this one. Thanks for the blog, Cineraria.
   Still hoping for some rather more esoteric Scottish indicators. “Scots” in 9a and “from Scotland” in 17a didn’t make it on to my list I’m afraid.

7. Nonafi@5: the “Yorkshire Dales” is a collective term for several individual dales or river valleys eg Wensleydale and Swaledale. So a singular dale is still part of Yorkshire.
   I was less keen than KVa@1 on SAREE. I thought “enfolding” was a bit dodgy as an anagram indicator (folding would be ok, but enfolding suggests wrapping) and “I’m this saree” doesn’t make a lot of sense. Both ‘I’m’ and ‘this’ can be used to represent the answer in this type of clue, so to have both as part of the anagram seems a wee bit clumsy.
   While I’m in a picky mood, Chambers seems to suggest IONIST is a noun derived from Ionism, rather than being synonymous for Ionian, ie someone who ionises (or ionicises), rather than an inhabitant of Ionia.
   But generally an enjoyable puzzle and thanks for the excellent blog.

8. One of those weeks where I can see a completed grid in front of me but don’t remember a thing about it.

9. MM@7: I interpreted the Chambers entry for IONIST to indicate that it is equivalent to “[person who is] Ionic,” and the entry for “Ionian” gives “Ionic” as the first definition. The definition for “Ionicise/Ionise” includes “to make or become Ionian.” But as with a lot words in an Azed, I sometimes wonder when the last time was that anyone uttered this word in the real world, and whether any living person would know how the word is “properly” used. That said, the breadth of English usage is fascinating.

   For SAREE, I took the anagram indicator to be “possibly,” not “enfolding,” and the most intelligible part of the definition to be “what’s enfolding shrimati.” I think comp. anag. clues are usually at least a little awkward/contrived.

10. Thanks, Cineraria – you’re right about ‘possibly’; I was overlooking that. Re IONIST, my Chambers is nearly as old as Roz’s, so maybe definitions are laid out differently in the latest version. Certainly a lot of words in puzzles aren’t in everyday use! I wonder how many sailors today would know what scrimshander (or scrimshaw) was, or have the time to indulge in it. Many of the Scottish words would get blank looks from my local friends (although ha’, along with ba’ and wa’, would be recognised); there can’t be many folk now who go in for kilfud-yoking, never mind taghairm, but they are wonderful expressions.

11. For me, one of the most straightforward Azeds in years. You get 1 Ac and I Dn and then 9 Ac and 10 Ac an 2 Dn and 3 Dn fall and your wife is shouting: “what are you doing clattering about at this time?”

    “Sorry dear. Just getting the roast.”

    “Haven’t you got a crossword to do?”

    “Yes dear: it was quite a simple one today,”

    “Can’t you tell him to make them harder—I’m trying to get some sleep.”

    Stefan

12. Thanks Cineraria.
    Chambers 2016 defines IONIST as a speaker of the Ionic dialect, which would be occupants of Ionia overwhelmingly?
    For SAREE “enfolding’ does have to be the left-hand anagram indicator, even if a poor one.
    Thanks as ever to Azed.

13. Quibble – as Cineraria says, Gaudi’s masterpiece is the Sagrada Familia, so SAGRAD isn’t most of it.
    Roz@4, it’s been a while since I worked with artillery, but the trajectory is the path of the shell, while I believe aim would be applied to the gun laying – azimuth and elevation. Traditionally artillery is not a precision weapon – you walk rounds to the target by correcting from the previous landing point. Modern trajectory calculations have improved this but there remain atmospheric uncertainties unless you have a GPS-guided round.

14. Just looking in out of curiosity, but I think I can answer TimSee’s quibble regarding 7dn, and what I am going to say is I think an expansion of what Cineraria was saying in the blog:
    Gaudi’s masterpiece is indeed the Sagrada Familia or Sacred Family. Therefore, “like Gaudi’s masterpiece” is Sacred or Sagrada. Now most of that is SAGRAD, etc.

15. Further to 14, it occurs to me that we do not need to take the “sagrada” from the name of the building. The masterpiece itself is (allegedly) a sacred basilica, so we just need to put the word “sacred” into the local language for Barcelona. As long as we apply it to a feminine noun (such as basilica), that will apparently be sagrada in either Catalan or Castilian, so we are all right to do that.

    [Apparently the masculine form is sagrat in Catalan and sagrado in Castilian, so we could have problems if we need to use the masculine form of the adjective. When I was in Barcelona in 2005, most of the public signs were in Catalan first and Castilian second, with quite a few in English third.]

16. PB@14+15, I’m persuaded by your argument. Apologies to Cineraria for not reading the blog closely enough, and to Azed for doubting the clue.

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