Solving time 27 mins without books, then about 20 mins with Chambers to clear up the resulting mess.
Doing Azed without books is an interesting challenge but sometimes you invent a word that doesn’t exist and get yourself in a real mess. This happened at 1A where I put the cute-sounding HUGBED – GB in HUED, rather than the correct PIGBED. This messed up the H in plume * at 1D where I had HELPUM (help me!), and 11A where I put in EFLORAGIA in ‘hit and hope’ mode. I’d also made two careless slips – TORSET for TORSES at 10D, which messed up 19A, and leaving a blank square in 29A.
This is a stand-in blog for linxit who’s busy with real life, so I’ll just write about the clues I found hardest or which included new material for me – in the wordplay in particular, as working out new answer words like URETHROSCOPE is pretty routine. Ask if something else caused you trouble.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PI(GB)ED as in pig-iron – I’m sure I thought of pig-iron briefly, though before I thought of inserting GB. Oh well… |
| 11 | HALO(RAGI)S – it’s some plant genus. ragi/raggy/ragee/raggee for millet is worth remembering |
| 13 | ONAGER = orange* – a perrier (stoner, he just realises from his own name!) is a medieval gizmo for flinging stones. So is an onager. |
| 19 | RUNS – this one is still a bit hit and hope – I checked the other R?NS possibities that I could think of and found nothing. I haven’t found all the necessary meanings for ‘runs’. |
| 20 | STYE – tyes are troughs for washing minerals |
| 22 | P(RIM)ED – a ped is a pannier/hamper |
| 29 | S.I.,LANE – “system that includes mole” is very good for SI |
| Down | |
| 1 | PHLEUM – H in plume* |
| 4 | ERYTHROPENIA – I knew that the blood-doper’s drug EPO = erythropoietin, so had the ERYTH end straight away as a very likely shared word-chunk. |
| 6 | A,GO,ROT – pl. of agora = 1/100th of a shekel |
| 9 | SWEEPNETS – “ten p” rev. in swees which I assume must be swings. Much time wasted trying to fit in POI = “10 p” rev. |
| 10 | TORSES – hidden word – file under heraldry … |
| 17 | C(age),RICE,T.I.D. – t.i.d. = ter in die = three times daily, on prescriptions. I knew CRICET- would be at the start, from a daft nickname for a business acquaintance years ago – a toothy and bearded gent from Argentina who got called “cricetus argentinus” = “silver hamster” – I’d thought this was a real biological name, but apparently not on Googling. The things that help with xwds … |
| 21 | (e)PICENE – epicene = common to both sexes |
| 27 | BLUR(bed) – I didn’t know about the verb ‘to blurb’ – a bit of poetry to end with. |
20 STYE – tyes are troughs for washing minerals
Chambers gives both STIE and TIES as alternative spellings, so presumably the unchecked Y could just as well be an I.
The only thing that tips the balance in favour of Y is that STIE is described as “an old spelling”, and Azed normally gives an indication when using obsolete forms.
19A – Scour is “diarrhoea in cattle” and RUNS is “diarrhoea”. I suppose that the other definition is easy enough to find.