Azed 2522

16 comments on “Azed 2522”

1. Thanks duncanshiell. I’m not sure about TAEL, thought it might be pan as in cooking measure.
   I did get a lot of answers before grid-filling started, I think Azed went easy on the clue difficulty.
   ARCH DUCHESS was first in, I took a punt on HYMENOPTERA being the mirror entry, and had SHINBONE, NAPPY RASH and PARACELSIAN to slide about thereafter.
   Thanks as ever to Azed.

2. Thanks for all the explanations.  I don’t get on with carte blanche puzzles, although I haven’t attempted that many.  I surprised myself by getting over half of it done.  Getting the three long down clues helped, after a false start.  But after a couple of days I hit a roadblock and lost interest.

   My normal solving style is rather haphazard.  I don’t have the discipline to go through the clues in order, but rather read them at random until I find one I can solve and then use the crossing letters to build from that.  Also, I find I rely heavily on the letter counts.  So there were too many unknowns to make these easy.

3. My experience is similar to Dormouse’s. I got down to 13A,16A, 25A, 3D, 4D, 19D, and 21D before I got fed up. SMASHUP, ABIDDEN, and HOSEL, I might have persevered to, but I don’t think I would have arrived at the others, even though they are fairly clued. Favorite clue = 30D.

4. Thanks for the detailed explanations – although the number “5” in the answer grid doesn’t need to be there.  Thanks also to the commenter last week who suggested that the central down clue should be “physician”, not “physicist”.  Before that, I had been struggling to make PARMENIDEAN fit.

   HYMENOPTERA was my first solve, which really narrowed down the degrees of freedom.  Then the other answers along the edges were also straightforward enough, and I could work inwards from there.

   I assumed TAEL was referring to a cooking measure, too (50g). I still didn’t parse it, though, as I wasn’t prepared for duplicate wordplay *and* definition.

5. Yes, I think a fair one from Azed. I had quite a lot of answers but still couldn’t fit them together so it took me longer than usual. It was the symmetry of romaji and hosel, and blatt and hosier which unlocked it for me. Because that surely had to lead to lisp and tael, so shinbones had to go…

   Unusual that Azed gives us four downs before the first across in a Carte Blanche but I’m not complaining. I’ve found some of the Plains recently quite challenging (getting old) so nice to have some clues which leap out at you with answers.

   Stefan

    

6. Does anyone know about how many people complete (or even attempt) this puzzle each week? I would consider myself just so-so with cryptics in general, and I find these puzzles difficult, although I have successfully completed a few (with lots of dictionary-bashing). The regulars on this forum seem quite nonchalant, however, so I figure either I am comparatively a dunderhead or the audience is pretty limited.

7. I was chuffed to solve a carte blanche for the first time. Like Gonzo@1 I got ARCHDUCHESS quickly, and eventually worked out where NAPPYRASH had to go once I had HYMENOPTERA which was also very gettable.  Many thanks to Azed and duncanshiel.

8. A reply to Cineraria.

   I recall you are fairly new to the forum. I’m sure all of us here bid welcome. And I think all of us would say: do not be intimidated. If you can do even the most straightforward Azed, you are more than a bit clever.

   Don’t give up on Cartes Blanches: once you get going, with a bit of guesswork, you find the path. They are by no means as difficult as you think. Azed usually gives excellent leading clues, as he did here. Some of the other Specials Azed comes up with are far harder. The previous Carte Blanche (Azed 2450) is worth having a go at.

   Some on here would probably be able to answer your questions about numbers. I can only guess. I’d say tens of thousands attempt them each week. It’s worldwide. I’m sure a thousand or two solve them. On an average week, how many send in the solutions? I don’t, but I live half the world away and today’s solution might make it only by Christmas. Azed has said that he prefers postal submissions, and good on ‘im. In my day (when I lived in the UK) I would send them in religiously. Never won a thing. Did get two HC’s though, and they mean more to me than prizes.

   Azed’s recent slips have indicated the number of correct entries for Competition Puzzles. They are usually in the low hundreds. Extrapolate this: loads of people aren’t going to bother trying to make up a clue. Loads more do try to make up clues then realise it’s so weak that it’s not even worth a postage stamp. There are also the people like me who live far from the UK. Our Sunday mornings wouldn’t be right if we didn’t have Azed but we aren’t going to send solutions in. If you look at the times solvers here are making posts, they must surely be overseas or up at two on Sunday morning, UK time.

   Bashing dictionaries is behaviour not only tolerated, but expected. Preferably the paper ones. App-bashing is not yet in the lexicon.

   Stefan

    

9. Thanks to Azed and duncanshiell.

   With a young granddaughter I got 1ac pretty quickly, and, once I had worked out where it fitted (helped by the two long down clues), found this a relatively straightforward solve. I enjoyed it like I enjoy the (not recently appeared) Guardian alphabeticals.

   Cineraria – I once won the Guardian prize, but since then have not submitted, and have never submitted Azed, though I enjoy the tussle every Sunday. It took me a while to get to Azed, after years of doing the Guardian every day. I find it enormously satisfying when you put together an obscure word from the cluing and crossers, look it up in Chambers, and there it is.

   Slightly disappointing that there are far fewer comments on Azed than other Guardian crosswords, though I am as guilty as any: quite often I have forgotten how I got to particular answers a week later.

10. As said by several this was a fairly straightforward solve. ARCHDUCHESS and NAPPY RASH meant that the top lest corner had to be an A and HYMENOPTERA placed the H of NAPPY RASH at the end of the line. Every word either began on the left (or top) or ended at the right (or bottom). When Carte Blanches are especially hard is when the is an “inside” word, especially if it’s a Down. The symmetry of the across numbers meant that the  nine-letter SHINBONES was soon in. As usual it was the 4-letter words, of which there were a lot, that took the time and the definition  for TAEL still seemed still seems odd, though it did have a double checker.

    Thanks to Azed and duncanshiell and welcome to all other bloggers,-nice to have a chat about something cheery.

11. My first period of regularly doing Azed, the early eighties, I posted my entry nearly ever week.  I was never any good at the clue writing, but I won prizes on the non-competition puzzles often enough to suggest that if the prize winners were picked at random from all the correct entries, then a few hundred entries every week was probably about right.

    As to persevering with a puzzle, this has to be put into context.  A couple of hours on Sunday doing Azed is one thing, doing several hours every day for a week is out of the question.  For any puzzle, not only Azed, there comes a point where if I haven’t finished it, I really want to do something else – read a book, watch television.

12. I thought the “pan” for the TAEL was one on a pair of scales.

13. I was just about to post the same thing Andrew.

14. Thanks Duncan and Azed.

     

    The “numbers not necessary for submission” note in the newspaper struck me as rather odd, as, in present circs, there are no prizes, and no addresses given to send entries.    Maybe it was just to reassure solvers that, had times been normal, there would have been no need to worry about working out the clue numbers as well as the answers.

15. Probably boiler plate left over from the last carte blanche.

16. Azed himself speculated in his last report that the lower number of entrants to the clue-writing competition could be a side effect of the suspension of prizes, and that seems quite likely to me.

    I know that these are difficult times and staff are under pressure, but I confess I’m a little sceptical about The Guardian and Observer’s stance on this. The Times and Sunday Times have continued throughout with awarding prizes for their crosswords. The Telegraph, after a period of suspension, is awarding electronic book tokens, and other publications – eg The Oldie – are continuing with their prizes. Meanwhile the Guardian continues to ask online subscribers for donations.

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