Azed No. 2,729 ‘Give & Take’ – Competition Puzzle

16 comments on “Azed No. 2,729 ‘Give & Take’ – Competition Puzzle”

1. I dug out my solution to 2,695 so that I could remind myself how this particular device worked, eventually getting into the swing of it as I went. I also found the bottom half much harder to crack, but was relieved to find that figuring out the quotation about 1/3 of the way through made working backwards a bit easier, especially considering the restriction that the added letters to the down solutions could not be unchecked. I had to reposition the letters in SPONNGE, and it took me a long time to find ESSLINH, but overall, I thought that Azed was helping quite a bit by refraining from including too many obscurities.

2. The hardest part was working out what the clue word was meant to be and I originally went with the last word in the quote in the ODQ “praise”, before eventually going with “interchanging” for which I submitted a clue before the announcement clarifying that the word was 13 letters.

   Saivaite in the clue for LINGA is not in Chambers and I wondered if it was a misprint, although it was obvious what was meant.

3. Thanks for the blog, hard to imagine how someone can set these , must be so hard to construct the grid.
   (G)EMONY had a brilliant use of crumbs.
   PINI(H)ON , I do not see the need for harvest .
   Saivite is in Chambers93 , like Tim@2 I suspected a misprint .

4. Roz @3, Don’t you need harvest to give IN in pINi(h)on, with “taking in” (not just “taking”) being the containment indicator? That’s how I parsed it (as I think the blog does).

5. It does work , as in the blog , but you could just have PIH ON taking IN .

6. This was certainly a tough puzzle to solve, not made any easier by the failure to indicate that TEA FIGHT was two words. I couldn’t find the quote in the current edition of the ODQ, although it was easy enough to find it online.

   Strangely, I found nothing unambiguous in the instructions, and had already submitted my clue to “interchanging” before becoming aware of the doubts expressed by others. The announcement of the clarification to the preamble and the consequential delay to the competition came in a post to a Facebook group by Richard Heald, to which I was alerted by my fellow blogger Andrew. I presume that Richard must have contacted Azed directly to draw his attention to the ambiguity and that Azed had then authorised him to publish the information that subsequently appeared in last week’s Observer. I took it on myself to republish the information on Derek Harrison’s Crossword Centre website (which hosts the Azed Slip) and Kenmac suggested that this blog needed to be delayed by a week and a placeholder posted. I am just glad that I hadn’t wasted time and effort on devising a clue to the wrong word (not to mention the cost of the stamp!)

7. Yes, understood Roz @6. Dr Clue has ‘taking’ on its own as a containment indicator but Chambers Crossword Dictionary only has ‘taking in’. Maybe Azed has his reasons for not just allowing ‘taking’. I continue to be surprised at what test solvers and crossword editors do and don’t consider to be acceptable. Barred crosswords seem to have a lot stricter rules!

8. Tim@7 I do not care about “official” lists and rules etc. If you look at TAKE in Chambers there are at least 10 examples of containment indicators .

9. Yes, good luck with getting a crossword published then. 🙂 Unfortunately, rules are what a setter has to consider, even with the fairly lax Grauniad.

10. bridgesong @6, I saw your post on Derek’s pages after I had sent an entry. I did mention what I thought was an apparent ambiguity in my email entry. I’m fortunate that being overseas I can submit by email, but given my final choice didn’t have to resubmit.

11. Rox and Tim C, I think Azed is fine with ‘take’ alone as a containment indicator. I had a VHC for ‘A series of changes from United after match official takes Ferdinand’s name’ for VARIORU[M] in a Letters Latent competition, and I’m pretty sure I would have checked the Azed archive first to see if he’d ever used it.

12. Not my type of puzzle. After three days, I hadn’t got a single answer. And, checking back, I had a similar problem with 2695.

13. Thanks Twmbarlwm@11 . Take = seize, catch, capture, adopt , accept , receive , swallow etc . If any rules or lists refuse take/takes/taking then they are stupid and petty.
    Nice clue .
    .

14. ^ Thanks, Roz. And sorry for the autocorrected Rox!
    I think Doctor Clue (and his Clue Clinic) is a highly reliable source, especially regarding Azed – he’s won prizes in the clue-writing competition, including some Firsts.

15. Hadn’t spotted this was now posted.
    No-one seems to have thanked Azed for a magnificent puzzle- kept me going for three longish sessions but cheered me no end when I completed it. One advantage was that Esslin was a familiar name. I certainly did the obvious thing and took “last” to refer to the entry. I did wonder why HOLMES replaced “PRAISE” and suspect that Azed made the change to complete the tricky SE corner.
    Now to 2731. I note that it is a PRIME number (399th)!

16. And so is 2729. They are so-called twin primes (consecutive odd primes) such as 17/19. There are only three such pairs between 2700 and 2800. Wow!

Comments are closed.