Azed 2728

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Recently I’ve been solving Azeds quite quickly; on this one, however, I made rather a slow start, but once I’d got a few answers in the rest came reasonably smoothly. Thanks to Azed.

 
Across
1 PHAT Sexy topper builds to this (4)
A topper is a top hat, which is “built” from TO PHAT
5 MOSTWHAT 2’s dreadful with maths usually, as before (8)
Anagram of TWO MATHS
12 SERAGLIO Foreign station in painting recalled sultan’s palace (8)
Reverse of GARE (French for station) in OILS
13 PENDICLE Short stalk containing new appendage (8)
N in PEDICLE
14 UTILE Profitable but ineffectual head dismissed (5)
[f]UTILE
15 SPAIN Country minnie will thus treat bairn (5)
Double definition: it’s a Scots word for “wean”, as indicated by the other Scots words “minnie” (mother) and “bairn” (child)
16 DACOIT One robbing wayfarers, a company appearing in old poem (6)
A CO in DIT (archaic word for a poem)
17 DOITS Things of little worth I kept in tiny amounts (5)
I in DOTS
18 STOLIDNESS Drunken sot, hat on head, showing little emotion (10)
SOT* + LID + NESS
21 RELIGIEUSE Girlie trained with ultimate in Ursuline custom? (10)
[ursulin]E in GIRLIE* + USE (custom) &lit
26 BANAT Old military district, one limited in strength locally (5)
A in BANT (dialect word for strength)
27 MAWMET Jaws of a glutton encountered as Shakespearean figure (6)
MAW + MET
28 NINTH Beethoven’s this in hint clued here (5)
Beethoven’s ninth letter is N, and NINTH is an anagram of N + HINT; I’m not sure how to indicate the definition, but there’s an obvious allusion to his ninth symphone (the Choral)
29 TAPET Hanging of old, favourite preceded by cheers (5)
TA (thank you, cheers) + PET
30 DOCILITY Lido constructed with city compliance (8)
(LIDO CITY)*
31 STERNSON Seabird like this nested in tin part of ship’s timbers (8)
TERN SO in SN
32 MARAVEDI Old Spanish coin, not worth much? Mum was ecstatic given one (8)
MA + RAVED + I
33 YANG Timber tree forming part of Malayan groves (4)
Hidden in malaYAN Groves
Down
1 PSEUDORANDOM Like computer-generated numbers, changing poem’s date around (12)
Anagram of POET’S D[ate] AROUND
2 HECTARE Square measure? Male given charge including tons (7)
HE + T[one] in CARE
3 ARTICS Trucks spilt it with bends going round on the outside (6)
Reverse of IT in ARCS (bends)
4 TALLOT Junk that’s left, look, inside attic (6)
L LO in TAT (junk)
6 OLENT Smelly Italian dish not swallowed by pa (5)
POLENTA less the surrounding PA
7 SINE DIE Function to languish, indefinitely postponed (7, 2 words)
SINE (trigonometric function) + DIE (languish)
8 WHIP IN Act as hunt assistant, creating confusion among the gorse (6, 2 words)
PI (confusion) in WHIN (gorse – whin is a word I learnt from my Scottish stepfather, though Chambers doesn’t mark it as Scots or dialect)
9 HECATE Tom having start of ecstasy for goddess (6)
HE-CAT (tom) + E[cstasy]. Hecate is the Greek goddess of witchcraft: she has a cameo appearance in Macbeth
10 ALLIS On each side island reveals fish (5)
ALL (on each side) + IS[land]
11 TREND-SETTING Turkey, final piece including congealed last bit of breast? Right-on (12)
TR + SET (congealed) [breas]T in ENDING
19 LITHITE What’s secreted in an animal cell, limber about it (7)
IT in LITHE
20 SWEET ON Very fond of counter-irritant you and I’ll get involved in (7, 2 words)
WE in SETON (a thread used as a counter-irritant)
22 LANCER Picador e.g. in singular set of old dances (6)
A singular version of The Lancers, a quadrille
23 INTIMA It coats e.g. blood vessel eventually with adult replacing how it ends (6)
IN TIME with A[dult] replacing the last letter
24 SWANNY Like a whistle in sound suggesting a trumpeter? (6)
Homophone of “Swanee”, as in the Swanee Whistle, more prosaically known as the Slide Whistle; the Trumpeter is a kind of swan
25 EMPUSA What’s just above sends me, a spume whipped up (6)
(A SPUME)* – “what’s just above” in the grid is HECATE, who sends this goblin or spectre. Azed doesn’t often cross-reference clues and answers, and this is a particularly unusual device
26 BIOTA British letter from Greece giving local flora and fauna (5)
B + IOTA
27 MUTED Blockhead mostly with reduced education, not bright (5)
MUT[t] + ED

14 comments on “Azed 2728”

  2. Lately my experience with Azed is going through nearly all the clues fruitlessly trying to find one solution and feeling as though I will never solve the puzzle, until I finally get one of the easier solutions and start building out from that foundation. I found PHAT, EMPUSA, and NINTH a little trickier than average.

  3. Thanks for the blog, RELIGIEUSE was very neat and I liked the use of HECATE and EMPUSA which is unusual for Azed .
    NINTH is a bit circular , N in an anagram of HINT clued here giving us NINTH which is “this” for Beethoven . I suppose “this” is the definition . It is a bit like the clue for CAPO once.

  4. Thanks Azed and Andrew

    Found this very accessible but hit a mental block in SE corner. Eventually was happy enough with answers but needed to check with blog for parsing/confirmation

  5. Cineraria@2: That’s how I usually solve Azed. 🙂 Can’t understand these people who like going through the clues in order. (Hint: I find the bottom right corner is a good place to start.) Also, with the NFL having restarted Sunday evening, I often get distracted and don’t finish to Monday.

    As usual, I can’t remember much about this puzzle, but I was amused to notice looking at the blog that UTILE also appeared in yesterday’s Independent.

  6. I thought 28ac was a bit circular and the “here” didn’t seem to play any part in the wordplay, as “clued” indicated the anagram of hint, as Gonzo@1 says.
    3dn: either “going round” or “on the outside” would have indicated ARCS round TI; “going round on the outside” would seem to me to indicate SCRA .
    Dormouse @5: I’m with you – I often start in the bottom right-hand corner as well!
    Thanks for the blog.

  7. Late as usual. Greetings all and thanks, as ever, to AZ and to Andrew for blog (John Naughton usually brilliant self in yesterday’s Ob on blogs, podcasts etc)
    Hope some/many will not be daunted by no 2729. Glad to get out my 1952 Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
    Re 2728 I don’t recall a particular struggle. NINTH was a bit cyclic but pretty clear, lesser setters would take such an idea in their strides. My last in was 1across (PHAT). In MOSTWHAT Azed used 2=TWO, something he does rarely and rejects, in my experience, in clueing comps.
    Now to completing “Give & Take”

  8. I guess we all got 28ac, despite any qualms, so doubt it can be deemed unfair. But I’m still wondering about the precise meaning of “clued” there.

    A quick reality check, if I may. Given that the preamble to 2729 “Give & Take” says that it’s the omitted letters that “form a vaguely appropriate quotation”, I’m assuming that it’s the last word in that sequence that’s the word to be clued, rather than the next, last word of the actual full quotation, as in ODQ and elsewhere. Am I correct? In the previous “Give & Takes” I’ve found, 2397 and 2695, the question hasn’t arisen, as the quotations there are complete.

  10. I certainly chose the last word in the truncated version spelled out but can understand lemming;s doubts. It is certainly “vaguely appropriate” whereas the missing word is not (though Azed deserves that).

  11. I understand that the following announcement will appear in Sunday’s Observer:

    In case of any possible misunderstanding in the preamble to Azed Competition Puzzle No. 2.729 last Sunday, the clue word is one of 13 letters. Publication of the competition results will be postponed by one week.

  12. Thanks for the reassurance. I then posted my entry straightaway, just to save myself from another week ruminating on it.

  13. Remembering thoughts from a week ago is hard enough- a fortnight is even worse. Just to say I thought “Give & Take” was a gem and reassuring to solve. It’s a pity there is no method of putting thoughts into a cache.

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