A mixed bag of clues from Azed this week — some that were pretty easy, and a few that held me up for a while. I had to think hard about 31a, and I’m still not sure about 27a and 9d.
I seem to have typed ‘hidden in’ several times while blogging this, though I see it’s just four times — is that more than we’d expect of that type of clue in one puzzle?
We were warned on the Crossword Centre’s message board about a misprint that invalidated a compound anagram. So I was afraid I would fail to spot it, and I worried that it might be in 30a. But I think (I hope!) it’s in 25d.
My favourite clue in this one is 30a, because I like the way the definition is incorporated into the wordplay.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | DROW — ‘word’ backwards. Both drow and smur are Scottish words for fine misty rain (the Scots seem to have rather a lot of words for that). |
| 4 | CHEST — hidden in ‘much esteemed’. Both chest and thesaurus can mean ‘treasury’. |
| 8 | SPUE — an old form of ‘spew’. P = page; in ‘sue’, which once meant ‘court’. |
| 11 | EUPHAUSIACEAN — *(a sei aha un peu c), C being the ‘first of countless’. Rather a forced anagram, I think, though amusing. By coincidence, on the very day I am writing this, the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, is referred to in Wikipedia’s featured article. |
| 12 | LIBOR — hidden in ‘capital I borrowed’. LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate. No I’m not exactly fascinated, either. |
| 13 | HORST — ‘hors’ = outside; T = bit of tartine. Horst is a block of the earth’s crust that has remained in position while the ground around it has either subsided or been folded into mountains by pressure against its solid sides. |
| 15 | INCONDITE — *(cine), including ‘on dit’ (rumour). Incondite means ‘not well put together, poorly constructed, irregular, unfinished’. |
| 17 | REED PIPE — *(deed) in ‘ripe’. A reed pipe is an organ-pipe whose tone is produced by the vibration of a reed, the pipe acting as resonator. |
| 18 | EGEST — 50% of ‘colleges’; T = time. |
| 19 | BANIA — ‘ban’ = prohibition; ‘ia’ = even-numbered letters of ‘nipa’. Bania can mean ‘a Hindu trader, esp from Gujarat; loosely, outside India, any Hindu; an Indian broker or financier’. |
| 21 | RANDOMLY — *(lord many). |
| 24 | QUERCETUM — ‘query’ minus its final letter; *(em cut). A quercetum is a collection of oak trees. I never feel quite happy with clues that use abbreviations like ’em (or …in’ instead of …ing) to make an anagram work. |
| 26 | MEANY — ‘so-and-so without warmth’ is the definition. ‘Many’ = ‘a host’; E = ‘Earl’. |
| 27 | HASTE — Sorry, but I can’t work this one out. I shall doubtless feel very silly when someone explains it. |
| 28 | ANTIQUITARIAN — To be clued by competition entrants. |
| 29 | NEEM — hidden in ‘trainee medic’. The neem tree is extraordinarily useful, yielding, among other things, a medicinal oil. Useful tip: I strongly recommend neem-based mosquito repellent, which, unlike most others, neither stinks nor rots your clothes. |
| 30 | FREER — ‘One creating liberté’ is the definition. *(et fraternité) minus the letters of ‘it tante’. Clever surface reading, though the anagram is perhaps a bit forced. |
| 31 | YONT — N = new; inside (bottled by) ‘toy’ (miniature, as in poodles and the like) reversed. ‘Yont’ is a Scottish form of ‘yon’. |
| Down | |
| 1 | DELIVERYMAN — ‘named’ backwards (‘called up’) outside ‘livery’. |
| 2 | RUIN AGATE — I in ‘runagate’. Ruin agate, a variant of brecciated agate, is agate with irregular markings, apparently like ruins. |
| 3 | WHOOPS — double definition. |
| 4 | CARNY — double definition — ‘cunning, sly’ and ‘a person who works in a carnival’. |
| 5 | HUED — H = ‘first indication of hurricane’; *(due). If something is hued (coloured) it is not plain. |
| 6 | ESPIEGLERIE — *(piles e.g.) in [Lake] Erie. Espièglerie is roguishness or playfulness. |
| 7 | SINTERY — ‘inter’ = bury; in SY = central letters of geyser, reversed. Old Faithful is a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. ‘Sintery’ describes a deposit from hot springs. |
| 8 | SCOOP — hidden in ‘Tesco operative’. |
| 9 | PERJINK — another Scottish word, meaning ‘prim, finical’. A jink, in rugby, is a quick, deceptive turn — so it’s a sidestep that Jonny Wilkinson might make. And ‘per’ means ‘by’. But I think I must be missing something about how this clue fits together. |
| 10 | ENTREATMENT — *(art tenet men). Chambers defines entreatment as ‘the act of entreating; treatment (obs); perhaps discourse, verbal communication, or favours as objects of entreaty (Shakesp.)’. |
| 14 | SAPI-OUTAN — ‘piou’ (not quite ‘pious’) in ‘Satan’. A wild ox found in Indonesia. |
| 16 | SENSATE — ‘feeling’ is the definition. ‘Sate’ = surfeit; stuffed with ‘ens’ = being. |
| 17 | REMUEUR — M = Monsieur; in *(rue rue). Remuage is the process of turning or shaking wine bottles so that the sediment collects at the cork end for removal; a remueur is someone who carries it out. |
| 20 | AWEARY — ‘awry’ = cam (a Shakespearean word, more often spelt ‘kam’); ‘ea’ = a river often found in crosswords. ‘Aweary’ is an old word for ‘exhausted’. |
| 22 | DENIM — ‘mined’ backwards. |
| 23 | ACHAR — ‘a car’ (‘crate’ can mean a decrepit one); packed with H = hot. Achar is Indian pickle. |
| 25 | ROTE — a medieval stringed instrument. There seems to be an extra letter in the clue — *(rote scam) would give ‘most care’, not ‘most scare’. |
27Ac: can’t remember the clue exactly, but the wordplay was HAS (‘conveys’) + T, E (last letters of something-or-other).
As well as the faulty comp. anag. at 25Dn, I think Azed made a slight booboo at 11Ac by defining EUPHAUSIACEAN as if it were an adjective, not a noun.
Yes — 27a is HAS (‘conveys’) then last letters of ‘front line’.
And I just checked, and the adjective is euphausiid or euphausid.
PERJINK (9D)
I was equally bewildered by this until a friend explained it to me: it’s A = per (as in per diem), something that frequently catches me out.
Does Chambers give that definition of A? I can’t find it.
“Does Chambers give that definition of A? I can’t find it.”
Yes I think it does, under per(1), although the definition is a bit odd: “for each or a”. Certainly I can remember a clue in The Times which used this device (A university in the country – PERU).