Very enjoyable! The puzzle looks intimidating but yields more easily than expected. Thank you Azed.
anagram (to be sorted out) of SEKT MATTER – I had confidently written MARKET TEST here (not in Chambers!) which caused a major delay filling the grid
OPEn (frank, mostly) contains HIT (striking success)
GO (success) then ALS (also, obsolete)
anagram (out) of RE-inHALING missing (when it has not…) IN (lit, of a fire)
SUN (star) contains (with…opening) P (piano)
SUIT (Diamonds, say) contains (with…put in) BM (The British Museum)
TIE (limit) N (number) inside TOT (sum) – I can understand Azed’s difficulties in finding a succinct definition for this
LET (permit) contains AN (one)
ROCK (music) B (book) I and ReaD (no middle, without substance)
anagram (crumble) of SLICE IS and christmaS (last letter)
sounds like (one hears) “cannon” (one of the big guns)
DESSERT (fool, maybe) reversed (performing turn)
ALL (entirely) missing last letter (almost) in TREE (corner, to trap) – at first I was a little unsure if I had this right as the rubric states categorically “Every answer is in The Chamber Dictionary (2014)” rather than the looser “Chambers recommended etc”.
SCANties (briefs) missing TIES (neckwear)
OK (certainly) inside anagram (variegated) of ORE BIT
R (rex, king) then AINE (plus agé, older, from French)
found inside (the place to go for these is…) duBLIN ISn’t
AD (notice) BAR (buttery, in an Oxford college) inside THREE (trinity)
TRICT sounds like “tricked” (deceived) inside (taken in by) CONSORt (partner, mostly)
anagram (fizzy) of A POP inside (lying in) SOL (the Sun)
anagram (distorted) of TRUTH then CH (China)
paSTIME (diversion) missing (…is taken) PA
found inside (some of) thE LETters reversed (turning up)
anagram (beating) of TIME AS with Rondo (first letter, beginning) – read the definition as Who will be beating time as…
RuBBERS (plimsolls) with U (university) replaced by (disposed of for…) O (nothing)
MAKAR (poet, old Scots) with MA and KAR (parts of) switched
S (section) inside NILE (river) reversed (rising)
SETTLED (landed) on NESS (headland)
OAK (tree) reversed (soaring, going upwards) then LINE (note)
CT (Connecticut) inside (with…outside) IE (that is) RID (set free)
PICINE (like a woodpecker) contains (pecking) Slat (first letter, a bit of)
anagram (demolishing) A LIE ETC
AR (army regulation) followed by RAH (cheer)
NAIR (people of Kerala) contains (receiving) Drought (first letter, start of)
A LOBE (part of lung) reversed (to heave, rise up)
OB (died) inside (cracking) CraB (outer letters, shell of)
Thinks PeeDee, I too suffered from knowing MARKET-TEST but not TEST-MARKET, leaving me scratching my head over a 5-letter wird starting RT. I left the end of NARGILEH blank to accomodate the various alternative spellings until I had the crossers, but I parsed it as you do.
Thanks as ever to Azed.
Thank you for the blog, very enjoyable crossword. More difficult because you do not the length of the answers initially. Fortunately the perimeter was quite easy to get.
NARGILEH has so many spellings and not a very good clue by Azed standards.
I did like SCANties but could not actually find a direct link between SCAN and RAKE in my Chambers 93, think it might be something to do with the old cathode ray tubes.
I am not clear if “re-healing” is allowable. I know I’m out of date but, if the clue was the other way round, not a single one of us would allow an indirect anagram: something like Ring Leah lit indicating that we are to make an anagram of Ring Leah in. But if it’s the other way round, we’re allowed to use lit for in, are we? I prefer to be out of date.
Market-test here, too. Azed gave us thrutch and tele simply, and basic maths told us it couldn’t be market-test. Even allowing for Chambers’ oddness, it took me a while to check that it was test-market. I bet there are few market-testers in the world who test-market.
Anyone posit vicar for Vickers? Ronners for runners? What is a “ronner”?
Still a good one, but this took me ages.
“Scan” used to mean something quite different in my day: you didn’t just cast your eye over a text, you went through it word by word. “Rake” means to go through something completely. They are synonyms.
Stefan
Roz, I thought I was out of date with my Chambers 2006 but I think you might struggle with your Chambers 93.
Stefan
Stefan, I try not to use Chambers at all for a usual Azed and just check my “educated ” guesses when I have finished. Does not always turn out that way of course. It does seem to be quite rare that a word from 14 is not actually in 93.
Thanks, PeeDee. I was dubious about Tralee as well; it’s annoying when the rubric is misleading in this way. Usually it’s because the word in question appears in Chambers Words but not the dictionary proper.
I was yet another who put in MARKET TEST initially – although TESTMARKET sounds more natural, I didn’t even think of it until it was clear things weren’t going to work out. The puzzle took me a considerable time, but was very satisfying to finish. Many thanks to Azed and PeeDee.
Not my thing at all. Last Sunday, after about an hour, I had four answers, two across and two down, and no idea of where to put them. (As one of them was MARKETTEST, that probably didn’t help.) I gave up and did something else and never got back to it.
Marmite Smuggler – I think of an indirect anagram as one where the letters are not explicitly present in the clue text.
For example “POSED and Left” is suitable fodder for SLOPED as the L is explicitly present (even though L=left is an abbreviation).
All of the letters of NARGILEH are explicit in RE inHALING. The subtraction is indirect, but that is common practice. The anagram itself is direct.
Roz’s comment in last week’s blog put me on my mettle and I actually completed this on the day, not always the case recently.
Fairly kindly though I’m pleased to see that MARKET TEST sent so many astray. The H at the end of NARGILEH also took a bit of wind from the sails..
The most useful find was SPA POOL which placed the entry, right or wrong at square three.
A masochistic streak set me at the end to numbering the answers!
Many thanks to Azed and PeeDee
P.S. Liked TRALEE clue. In days gone by Count John McCormack made a living singing, sometimes in opera but also “The Rose of Traleee” and other songs lauding places in the Emerald Isle. There never seemed to be such songs about English towns.
Constrictor helped me the most. Blank square right at the bottom left so threadbare pushed in to the edge and testmarket pushed to the right edge. Lots of first letters across the top and down the left side.
Roz @12 – Yes, I was late getting CONSTRICTOR, which held me up.
It had to be trict in the middle and lots of muscles end in tor and I had the o from ophite, it basically put the whole perimeter in, the other three long clues were quite easy.
Azed’s trick was to have two down clues before the first across clue, making the first row and the columns descending from it challenging. Usually one assumes that 1 Across and 1 Down start in the corner. Once that trick was spotted it became a steady and satisfying solve.
Thanks, PeeDee. Just finished this today (04/07/21), so very late to the party. Once the grid started to firm up, the clues were relatively straightforward. RAINE was a guess for me, but it looks Spenserian enough. I have done American diagramless crosswords, but this was a different-level challenge.