Massive apologies for the delay in getting this blog out.
I totally forgot it was my turn, and was reminded on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, I had family commitments on Sunday, and then have been very busy at work since, so only just managed to complete the puzzle this morning, and get round to the blog this evening. Had it been a standard puzzle, I’d probably have finished it yesterday evening, but it took 3 sittings in the end.
I’m not entirely sure about some of the definitions, but think the puzzle is right.
The software won’t let me fill in 24ac, which is MODELLO.
Apologies again.
Loonapick
| Across | ||
| 1 | COACH | Broken-down train not in? Almost everything about that’ll indicate variable units (5) |
| *(tra) + AL(l), = ARTAL (entered at 25dn), being the plural of “rotl”, a “negotiable” unit of weight in some Muslim countries. | ||
| 5 | CHARACT | Part of nasty latex in a particular mode (7) |
| Hidden in “naSTY LATEx” (entered at 33ac) | ||
| 11 | ARAROBA | Low round valley featuring tree in early stage of artist’s work (7) |
| MOO (“low”) around DELL (“valley”) = MODELLO (entered at 24ac), a preliminary sketch. | ||
| 12 | WANZE | One in circus you’ll see diminish leaving US and turning up in pub activity (5) |
| A (“one”) in <=CIRC(us) = CR(A)IC (entered at 3dn) | ||
| 13 | PARA | Suitable head of state installed, showing punch (4) |
| FIT (“suitable”) with S(tate) installed = FI(S)T (entered at 27dn)- (Not sure where the definition of para is in this) | ||
| 14 | SPRINGAL | Start of youth and pals are playing – scram (8) |
| *(y pals are), where the Y is the “start of youth”) = PARALYSE (entered at 20dn) | ||
| 15 | STRIPE | Mostly unfeeling on the whole, the US kind is called a hooker (6) |
| HAR(d) (mostly “unfeeling”) + LOT (“the whole”) = HARLOT (entered at 6dn) | ||
| 18 | COVERUP | Estates gaining concealment in salient (7) |
| *(salient) = ENTAILS (entered at 32ac) | ||
| 21 | CRUSTATED | The French in Loire town, anything but crusty (9) |
| LES (“the French”) in ANGERS (“Loire town”) = ANGER(LES)S (entered at 8dn) | ||
| 22 | RACONTEUR | What storyteller offers following devious sophi in accommodation once (9) |
| TALE (“what storyteller offers”) following *(sophi) = HOSPI-TALE (entered at 4dn) | ||
| 2 | MODELLO | 4 Daily deed, one feature in Shakespearian sketch? (7) |
| This should read 24. CHAR (“daily”) + ACT (“deed”) = CHARACT (entered at 5ac) | ||
| 28 | BURSAL | Recharge biography turning up bagged in reference library (6) |
| <=LIFE (“biography”, turning up) in RL (“reference library”) = R(EFIL)L (entered at 22dn) | ||
| 29 | MILIARIA | Limits start of inflammation with peppery seeds (8) |
| CAPS (“limits”) + I(nflammation) + CUM (“with”) = CAPS-I-CUM (entered at 1dn) | ||
| 30 | TOBY | Kids into robbery perhaps, lives looked into by the Met? (4) |
| IS (“lives”) with MP (“Met”ropolitan Police) inside = I(MP)S (entered at 26dn) | ||
| 31 | PSALM | Tract of sleeplessness recalled for the record (5) |
| ELPEE (entered at 34ac) is hidden backwards in “slEEPLEssness” | ||
| 32 | ENTAILS | Excess in drinking vessel involves falsification (7) |
| OVER (“excess”) in CUP (“drinking vessel”) = C(OVER)UP (entered at 18ac) | ||
| 33 | STYLATE | Powder sandarach on fashioned boa (7) |
| ARAR (“sandarach”) on *(boa) = ARAR-OBA (entered at 11ac) | ||
| 34 | ELPEE | Song pal’s played, last from album (5) |
| *(pal’s) + (albu)M = PSAL-M (entered at 31ac) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | CAPSICUM | Plant artist among tangled root and I love composition (8) |
| R.A. (“artist”) among *(root) + I + O (“love”) = O(RA)TOR-I-O (entered at 2dn) | ||
| 2 | ORATORIO | Boy or girl naps after work (8) |
| *(girl naps) = SPRINGAL (entered at 14ac) | ||
| 3 | CRAIC | Shrink from weak end of fun filling in this setter endlessly (5) |
| W(eak) + (fu)N filling in AZE(d) (“this setter”, endlessly) = W-AN(Z)E (entered at 12ac) | ||
| 4 | HOSPITALE | Country lodging in filth with crisp coating (9) |
| STATE (“country”) lodging in CRUD (“filth”) = CRU-STATE-D (entered at 21ac) | ||
| *6 | HARLOT | Strumpet (6) |
| STRIPE Entered at 15 ac | ||
| 7 | RANGED | Labrus properly aligned with regard to pouch (6) |
| *(labrus) = BURSAL (entered at 28ac) | ||
| 8 | ANGERLESS | Come about in calm, reverse of tense end to voyage (9) |
| EVEN (“calm”) + <=TAUT (reverse of “tense”) + (voyag)E = EVEN-TUAT-E (entered at 17dn) | ||
| 9 | CZAR | Order rent to go up, central element for ruler (4) |
| <=LET (“rent” to go up) + (ru)L(er) = TEL-L (entered at 10dn) | ||
| 10 | TELL | Zambia’s leader in limo? He commands utter power (4) |
| Z(ambia) in CAR (“limo”) = C(Z)AR (entered at 9dn) | ||
| 16 | ROUNDELAY | Romancer making courante dance, right? (9) |
| *(courante) + R(ight) = RACONTEU-R (entered at 22ac) | ||
| 17 | EVENTUATE | Love in progress to make things happen slower in song (9) |
| O (“love”) in RUN (“progress”) + DELAY (“to make things go slower”) = R(O)UN-DELAY (entered at 16dn) | ||
| 19 | UNUSABLE | No time for weapons etc? Itch it’s futile to scratch (8) |
| MILI(t)ARIA (“weapons etc” with no T(ime)) (entered at 29ac) | ||
| 20 | PARALYSE | Stun a blue tackled, first in team to go, non-functional (8) |
| *(sun a blue) = UNUSABLE (entered at 19dn) | ||
| 22 | REFILL | Sign of omission with litre bottled? Many welcome top-up thereof (6) |
| CARET (“sign of omission”) with L(itre) bottled = C(L)ARET (entered at 23dn) | ||
| 23 | CLARET | Red nag set free roamed at large (6) |
| *(red nag) = RANGED (entered at 7dn) | ||
| 25 | ARTAL | A choc’s bad for one? He may recommend training with weights (5) |
| *(a choc) = COACH (entered at 1ac) | ||
| 26 | IMPS | Not a vessel for spirits? Near, near (4) |
| TO (“near”) + BY (“near”) = TO-BY (entered at 30ac) | ||
| 27 | FIST | Small coin held in grip – a rappen? (4) |
| Hidden in “griP A RApa” (entered at 13ac) | ||
*anagram
13a Para is a state of Brazil.
The definition of ‘PARA’ (being a ‘city, state and estuary of Brazil’ according to Chambers) is I believe ‘state’.
The defn at 30ac is ‘robbery’, at 33ac it is (the IMHO faulty) ‘fashioned’ (see OED for clarification of the meaning of STYLATE), at 8dn it is ‘calm’, and at 17dn ‘happen’; for the competition word at 15ac it is ‘kind’.
I think there’s a typo in the parsing for the clue at 12ac (CRAIC), which is (A in (CIRC(us))<).
Thanks, DRC – I can always depend on the solving community to fill in any blanks. I’ll edit later if I get the chance. There’s always one typo in any blog I do, even when I have more time to write them.
As a former blogger myself, I always reckon one typo is pretty good going, particularly for a non-standard puzzle like this one…I could read the thing through a dozen times, but if I hadn’t spotted an error on the first check then I was never going to spot it!
Sorry loonapick that you had a race against time and may thanks for the blog. I think the definitions have to be one-word as DRC has pointed out. I did this one in a fairly leisurely fashion though did want to have a shot at a clue for Azed’s monthly comp. Thought his definitions were a bit kinder than sometimes in the past with “Wrong Numbers” .
As always the last thing one found out was the word you had to clue. You don’t give it away so earned yours!
I had a bit of fun trying out the cycles. All the four and five-letter words were swaps in pairs. Sixes and sevens had one swapped pair and a four-word cycle. But the eights and nines were complete cycles of six! I continue to wonder how he does it.
On a further read-through I realise that your “one-words” have got assimilated in the definitions a few times. Needed two kinds of underlining!
15ac the definition is ‘US kind’, so that puts the mockers on a one word definition. See C under STRIPE.
Nick
The need to qualify definitions in order to indicate locale, obsoleteness etc is suspended for ‘Wrong Number’ puzzles, hence ‘kind’ is ok for STRIPE, ‘diminish’/’shrink’ for WANZE [obsolete] and ‘youth’/’boy’ for SPRINGAL [archaic].
So what is US doing in 15ac? Hooker nor harlot in C doesn’t implicate US usage, but kind under does?
Nick
stripe (missing) does.
Loonapick, what software doesn’t let you type in MODELLO? I am intrigued.
Nick
As I see it, ‘the US kind is called a hooker’ is there in order to facilitate the inclusion of ‘kind’ as a definition of STRIPE; in the absence of ‘US’, the clue for HARLOT would make no sense, and if ‘US’ is included it must have a role in that clue. OED shows ‘hooker’ as ‘chiefly US’, the C Dict of Slang shows it as ‘orig US’, and I would suggest that it is generally thought of in Britain as an Americanism, so I think ‘the US kind is called a hooker’ is fine as a def of HARLOT. The juxtaposition of ‘US’ and ‘kind’ could be considered fortunate when it comes to the definition of STRIPE, but the preamble is explicit about all definitions consisting of a single word.
But we are using Chambers Dictionary (2014). Take the clue without the definition; “Mostly unfeeling on the whole is called a hooker”. The definition taken out is “the US kind”, i.e. stripe as per C.
To fluff it out using otherwise unreferenced works fails.
Nick
… else why even mention C (2014).
Forget the definition of STRIPE for a moment; Azed has written a clue for HARLOT which is “Mostly unfeeling on the whole, the US kind is called a hooker”. If you accept that in the US a harlot is called a hooker, there is no ‘fluff’, simply an extended definition/indication (as in ‘Kids into robbery perhaps’ for IMPS – C says nothing about robbery under the entry for ‘imp’, and I’m not sure that the forces of law and order would consider robbery to be ‘mischief’). If (unlike me) you don’t accept ‘the US kind is called a hooker’ as a definition/indication of HARLOT, then the clue for HARLOT is faulty.
Well, I hope he accepts my clue with ‘cow’ as a definition of ‘harlot’ under what seems like Aussie no rules football.
Nick
There usually seems to be a bit of extra latitude granted in Wrong Number comps, eg the winning entry for the last one had ‘term’ as the one-word definition of PATCH. Good luck with your clue (I’ve not entered so I can say that with sincerity!)
In defence of Mr Drever’s winning clue and Azed’s judgment I merely point to Chambers’ entry for ‘patch’. I see there the definition: ‘a period of time’. Good luck to all who have entered. I shall be interested in whether the ‘archaic’ tag has any bearing on the choice of synonym for ‘harlot’ in those clues published. I was careful to choose one similarly tagged. In a normal definition a qualifying phrase would be needed, but in a one-word definition that’s not possible.
I tried to write a clue that included “wagtail” for harlot. Didn’t quite come off, but I think it would have been allowable under the restrictions of this particular kind of puzzle, even though it ordinarily would have been flagged as obsolete (as Chambers has it).
Bob@18: I meant no criticism of Will Drever’s excellent clue or Azed’s judgment thereof, but the use of ‘term’ to indicate this transferred sense of ‘patch’ (which is invariably qualified – ‘bad patch’, ‘good patch’ etc) did prompt some discussion at the time which I think highlighted the fact that precise synonymity or interchangeability is not a fundamental requirement for the one-word definitions.
Regarding the use of an archaic or obsolete word in a clue to indicate an archaic or obsolete entry, I think the following extract from the slip for Azed comp 358 (where the word to be indicated was the obsolete NON-TERM) is helpful:
“One or two of you nobly tried to find a one-word synonym which was also archaic or obsolete, though given the special constraints of this type of puzzle I was prepared to ignore the need for such meticulous exactness.”
In relation to one-word definitions generally, and the use specifically of ‘kind’ to indicate STRIPE, Azed notes in the slip for the last Wrong Number puzzle:
“[With the one-word definitions] indications of currency, register, etc are naturally not possible unless an exact equivalent can be found.”
Nila@19: I reckon ‘wagtail’, ‘plover’ or ‘quail’ would have been fine as avian indications of HARLOT. I suspect though that no-one managed to include the rather fine ‘waistcoateer’.
DRC – how on earth did you find waistcoateer? Fantastic word.
Nick
Ah, I see. Bradford’s lists it under strumpet – I didn’t think to look-up that word but only harlot.
Nick
I don’t have Bradford’s but I do have the Chambers Dictionary on CD-ROM, which has (counterbalancing its faults) an excellent free text search capability 😉