A plain 12 x 12 puzzle this week with the usual mix of obscure and more well-known words.
There was a bit of a medical or anatomical theme to this week’s puzzle, with a number of answers coming perhaps from a medical textbook: SPHYGMUS, BUCCAL, TROCAR, VARIX and CYST. The only clues to give me real difficulty this week were, as usual, to the four-letter words. I couldn’t parse CYST or ZINE until I came to write the blog.
| Across | ||
| 1 | AVER | State conference pal’s left (4) |
| (Pal)aver. | ||
| 4 | SPHYGMUS | Special: pig’s tail in boiled mushy pulse (8) |
| SP (pi)G in *MUSHY | ||
| 11 | PAREOEAN | Mongoloid? Standard dawning’s around East (8) |
| PAR (standard) E in EOAN (dawning). | ||
| 13 | PREMY | Early arrival, Martin maybe, after parking (5) |
| P REMY (Martin, cognac brand). It’s slang for a premature baby. | ||
| 14 | ABUSE | A large vehicle in contact with bike’s rear, causing damage (5) |
| A BUS (bik)E. | ||
| 15 | LIFER | Stiff punishment to top up endlessly, being sent back (5) |
| REFIL(l) (rev). A lifer can be the sentence, as well as the defendant who serves it. | ||
| 16 | GARISH | Showy decoration, but heartless (6) |
| GAR(n)ISH. | ||
| 17 | DOGMATIC | I got mad working with college being overbearing (8) |
| *(I GOT MAD C). | ||
| 19 | BUCCAL | Cheeky, making one crumple by the sound of it (6) |
| Sounds like “buckle”. | ||
| 23 | TROCAR | Specialist saw carrot after treatment (6) |
| *CARROT. It’s a surgical instrument: “saw” here is a noun. | ||
| 24 | OILBELTS | They’re well drilled, so billet’s organized (8) |
| *(SO BILLET). And “well” here is a noun. | ||
| 26 | SLEAZE | Squalor has reduced local pastureland (6) |
| (ha)S LEAZE. | ||
| 29 | TEIAN | Anacreontic,’The Eruption of Etna’, I penned (5) |
| I in *(ETNA). Chambers defines this proper adjective like this: “Of Teos in ancient Ionia, or of the poet Anacreon, a native of Teos”. | ||
| 30 | STAVE | Verse, in poet, looking back, not his first? Could be (5) |
| V in (Y)eats (rev). | ||
| 31 | IMARI | Oriental porcelain – the author’s given something similar? No thanks (5) |
| I’M ARI(ta). Arita is another kind of Japanese porcelain. | ||
| 32 | ANTHILLS | Army’s quarters? If old, this is divide by lines (8) |
| AN (old form of “if”) LL in THIS. The clue should presumably read “divided“. | ||
| 33 | MEETNESS | Mestee’s troubled about name being appropriate (8) |
| N in *MESTEE’S. | ||
| 34 | CYST | Growth: modest boozer has pair separately excised (4) |
| I think that this is C(o)Y (modest) S(o)T (boozer), but I would be surprised if anyone was able to work it out from the wordplay alone without help from the crossers. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | APPLEBLOSSOM | Beauty of orchards casting endless spell with bosom pal (12) |
| *(SPEL BOSOM PAL). | ||
| 2 | VARIX | Lilting air: this in verse 10 shows vessel in a bad way (5) |
| *AIR in V X. | ||
| 3 | REMERCY | Show gratitude for old-style frangipane (say) served up in pastrycook’s centrepiece (7) |
| CREME (rev) in (past)RY(cook). | ||
| 5 | PERGOLA | Training frame, and therefore left in care of personal assistant (7) |
| ERGO L in PA. | ||
| 6 | HAKA | Husband with alias in pre-engagement dance (4) |
| H AKA. | ||
| 7 | GOBI | Desert brassica (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 8 | MOUSTACHIAL | Like e.g. Charlie and Malachi shivering round fire? (11) |
| OUST in *MALACHI. The reference (to be found in Chambers) is to Charlie Chaplin. | ||
| 9 | UNSHIP | Land language teacher with no money initially, needing pence? (6) |
| (M)UNSHI P. A munshi is a Hindi term for a language teacher. | ||
| 10 | STERCORANIST | Devout believer in evacuation succeeded in converting contrariest (12) |
| S(ucceeded) in *CONTRARIEST. According to Chambers, stercoranism is the belief that the sacramental bread is digested and evacuated from the body like other food. Azed is nothing if not educational. | ||
| 12 | REFOCILLATE | The old cherish discourse once including central points with lecturer (11) |
| FOCI (central points) L(ecturer) in RELATE. Another obscure word. | ||
| 17 | DAME | Principal player embraced by Radames (4) |
| Hidden in “Radames”. | ||
| 18 | MIRS | Wherein you could find muzhiks in Russia subsisting primarily (4) |
| Initial letters of “muzhiks in Russia subsisting” and lit; a muzhik is a Russian peasant and a mir is a peasant farming commune in pre-revolutionary Russia. | ||
| 20 | ATTESTS | Signs up old serving women receiving trial (7) |
| TEST in ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service, forerunner of the WRAC). | ||
| 21 | TOTEMIC | Regarded as fetish I came across in bed, upside down (7) |
| I MET in COT (all rev). | ||
| 22 | BISTRE | Love going for English in snack bar, warm brown in colour (6) |
| BISTR(o)E. | ||
| 25 | FARLS | Scottish cakes, mostly wrong with recipe for filling (5) |
| R(ecipe) in FALS(e). The only Scottish word in this week’s puzzle. | ||
| 27 | EVET | Amphibian to examine under either end of engine (4) |
| (E)ngine VET. It’s an alternative for eft, or newt. | ||
| 28 | ZINE | Specialist journal: look for gem that’s left to pa therein (4) |
| I think that this is a reference to (TOPA)Z, exploiting the fact that the answer could be written as Z in E. Again, well done to anyone who solved it from the wordplay alone. | ||
*anagram
Thanks bridgesong. I think 28d is TOPAZINE (the ‘look’ of topaz) – TO PA.
Thanks to both Azed and bridgesong. I couldn’t understand 28Dn.
I have a friend who really is a lexicographer—that is, he gets paid (not much) for playing around with words, something most of the rest of us do just for joy. He pointed out an oversight by me: STERCORATE, in Chambers, gets a “vt”. If it’s a transitive verb, what exactly, given their definition, does one stercorate?
Stefan
Sidey, thanks for that clarification about ZINE; I’m sure you’re right.
Thanks for this, bridgesong. The poet is 30A could, of course, be Keats. We’ll probably never know who AZ had in mind.
Marmite Smuggler@2: I think it is the definition for STERCORATE which is faulty – the OED and I believe that the meaning is very similar to that of the transitive verb DUNG, ie ‘to treat with manure’. The Chambers definition of UNSTERCORATED provides further evidence for this.
I couldn’t parse 28dn either, nor 26ac, so thanks for the explanations. Fortunately, ZINE is a word I know well from science fiction fandom, where it is a common abbreviation. Apparently, back in the thirties when professional SF magazines such as Astounding Stories were starting up, fans would communicate by producing their own amateur magazines. They called these fanzines and the professional magazines prozines.
May I thank, first of all, DRC. We do not expect authorities such as Chambers to be infallible but, when they do fail, I’m delighted. It means my own weakness is not unique. It so happens that I am in another language forum right now about where exactly in England and Scotland the word “busy” means what some of us understand “busy” to mean. So: are we “busy stercorating” or are we “stercorating busy”? Both, according to Chambers, grammatically acceptable.
I am not at all wishing to demean the august nature of commentary on Azed.
I think Dormouse must be a book collector. I am a bookseller. Yes, it’s all very well having those first editions, but give me some of those ‘zines. Have you seen the prices for OZ?
Stefan
Well, I don’t know about being a book collector, but I do seem to have a lot of books, but not as many as many of my friends. But then, compared to them I am a slow reader. I’m sure some of them must instantaneously absorb a book through their fingertips to get through the number of books they do.
I did work out CYST from the wordplay, but only because a few days earlier I had written (and then rejected) a similar clue for CYSTS, a horror of a word to deal with. At least the singular CYST lends itself quite well to a ‘hidden’, eg ‘A bit of indecency stunts growth’.
I’m not sure that a bistro proprietor would take kindly to his or her establishment being described as a ‘snack bar’ (22dn), but since I’m not a bistro proprietor it doesn’t unduly trouble me.
I went for KEATS in 30ac, I suspect because his name is pronounced similarly to the word that he produces when he loses his head. Keats and Yeats have both featured in Azed clues in the past, so it will be interesting to see which one appears in Azed’s notes…I make Keats the 4/7 favourite, with the Irish challenger Yeats at 13/8.
It was indeed the short-priced favourite that romped home!