The usual very satisfactory offering from Azed. I have learned not to look too far for wonderful surfaces, but to admire the faultless construction of his clues.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 2 | J ASS — one Jack is J, the other is as in jackass, and this is an old spelling of jazz (although I have a niggling doubt about ‘traditional?’, which I can’t understand: I suppose it refers to the fact that jazz originates in black American folk music) |
| 6 | S MASHER — had to check that a masher was a flirt |
| 12 | ABLUTIONS — (Usain Bolt)* — an &lit. resulting from this nice find |
| 13 | TUNE — very clever and it held me up for a while: to tune is to get working smoothly and a fortune is a lot of money |
| 14 | FLAM — 2 defs |
| 16 | THUSWISE — us in (whites)* |
| 17 | ROCHET — ch in (tore)* |
| 18 | ArDEN RECently — hidden rev. |
| 19 | MO(ON)RA KING |
| 21 | FISH-TROWEL — (this flower)* — Wheelers is an Oyster Bar in Whitstable, Kent |
| 24 | NARDOO — (ran)rev. do 0 |
| 26 | D’OU AN’ E{nglish} — refers to Henri Rousseau, also known as le douanier — he was a douanier and a douane is a custom house |
| 27 | SLOWBURN — (blows)* urn |
| 29 | HIRE — “hire” |
| 30 | Leaders In Diamond States — first letters — a lid is another word for an eyelid |
| 31 | ELEMENTAL — (leme n) in (tale)* — to my surprise there is a nounal sense of elemental |
| 32 | P(ENS)ILE |
| 33 | DAIL{y} |
| Down | |
| 1 | WATERMANSHIP — the clue word, which means the same as oarsmanship, the word I initially intended before seeing that it didn’t fit |
| 3 | ALNICO — a L (coin)* |
| 4 | SUE T — Sue Townsend, creator of Adrian Mole — Azed justifiably likes this sort of clue — the crossword I blogged seven weeks ago had a play on S Will and J Ben (Shakespeare and Jonson) |
| 5 | STATE RS |
| 6 | SIGHT — 2 defs, one of them an old spelling of sighed |
| 7 | MO(CU)CK |
| 8 | ANISE — (Siena)* |
| 9 | EcHO LINGers — hidden — refers to golf |
| 10 | ERASEMENT — semen in (tare)rev. |
| 11 | REMEDILESSLY — (Silly me reeds)* |
| 15 | LOO (KALI) KE{pt} |
| 20 | IRON-RED — on in (Rodin)* |
| 21 | F(RO-R{o})EN — an old version of frozen |
| 22 | HO(USE)L{y} |
| 23 | W(A PIT)I |
| 25 | OB(E)LI{ques} |
| 26 | hyDROMEchanics — hidden, indicated by ‘department of’ — well I certainly wouldn’t have dared do this in one of Azed’s clue-setting competitions |
| 29 | DUbLiN BAy — hidden alternate letters |
Thanks for the explanation of OBELI.
It couldn’t have been anything else, since so although I hadn’t understood it, apart from E(nglish)’s having to be in it, I got on with trying to write a clue, knowing I could rely on this blog to elucidate!
I must be getting lazier.
Some very good clues here: ABLUTIONS, DOUANE, SUET, THUSWISE, ELEMENTAL.
I look forward to the ‘plains’. I’m out of my depth with the ‘specials’
Perhaps the “traditional” in 2 across is just a reference to traditional, or trad, jazz?
I’ve seen the Usain Bolt/ablutions anagram in a Guardian crossword recently (No 24950, by Arachne, according to the superb search facility on this site), but I’m sure that is just a coincidence.
There are several other fish restaurants by the name of Wheelers: in fact it used to be a chain. My difficulty was finding fish-trowel in Chambers: it is there, but under fish-carver!
I completed this very quick this week, one of the easiest for a while. Took me ages to come up with a clue to ‘watermanship’, though.
29dn in the blog isn’t very clear: it should be ‘dUbLiN bAy = ULNA’.
Nick
Very much liked this one, which was made a good deal easier by correctly guessing that the competition word running down the LHS would end ‘…manship’. Look forward to seeing the winning clues in a couple of weeks’ time!
Thanks, John. I didn’t have to resort to aids quite so often with this one and then more to confirm than to solve. But annoyingly still managed to get a letter wrong: I had PENDILE at 32ac, after having PENDANT for a while. Of course, that was the one I didn’t check!
Re 2 Ac: I think ‘traditional’ is simply Azed’s way of indicating that the spelling of JASS is an obsolete one.
I favour a reading of trad as a possible and most likely type of jazz at the time when ‘jass’ was in currency. However, I’m now feeling a bit of a jackass myself, having used ‘jack’ in my own competition entry. Short-term memory getting worse.
liz – snap! (nearly): I had PENTILE for 32ac, which I put in without checking, thinking ENT was a form of “entity”. My brilliant clue (ha ha) is all for nothing 🙁
I’m glad to see that Azed rates the USAIN BOLT/ABLUTIONS anagram as his favourite clue in the slip for this puzzle:
http://andlit.org.uk/azed/slip.php?comp_no=1971
I’d also love to know when he (and Arachne) first thought of it and whether or not it pre-dates me sending it to John Halpern in late 2008:
http://cryptica.co.uk/the-archive281208.asp
I’m still claiming the first public use of it!