Azed No. 2,640 Plain

10 comments on “Azed No. 2,640 Plain”

1. Thanks Cineraria.
   Since ‘term’ can mean ‘end’ (see Chambers) I think vocaB is where the second B comes from in 5d.
   Thanks as ever to Azed. Quite a chewy one.

2. SCAB:
   ‘CABS’ for ‘rank’ seems fine for our purposes though these two don’t match exactly.
   ‘Shocker’ being the definition seems right too except that I do not know why. Could a
   contemptible person or one who refuses to join a strike be called a shocker? Maybe.
   Or does ‘scab’ mean ‘shock absorber’ in some way? No idea.

   Thanks, Plain and Cineraria.

3. Thanks for the blog , Chambers 93 has SCAB = scoundrel and shocker = any remarkably unpleasant person , so fair enough.
   I agree with Gonzo@1 , “term” often used to mean final letter, (vocaB) . In fact on that very day one of the prize-winning clues printed with this crossoword used term in this sense. BABUISM is in Chambers 93 , I suspect the whole clue may actually be indicating that the term is now offensive.
   Thanks for ” Wavy Navy” I was puzzled about that.
   GAUSS not really an outdated unit, the CGS system has been officially replaced by the SI system , but CGS units still widely used in many areas.

4. Never mind the CGS system Roz. In my working life I had to switch between SI and ‘Imperial’ units depending on the customer. Airbus and others worked in SI (sort of) and Boeing etc worked in lb, ft, in, slugs (lb x s^2/ft) and snails (lb x s^2/in).

   I found this one difficult. “Stale pud” was a great definition. I concur with the B in 5d coming from “term(ination) in vocaB”

5. Agree with others on the parsing of 5dn. On a pedantic note, I would query the appearance of “suffered in the” in 33ac, which seems to play no part in the parsing of the clue. I was also unsure about “signalling” in 27dn (though I would accept “showing” and perhaps they are broadly the same). I liked 24ac – complex but clever.

6. Tim@4 NASA lost the Mars Climate Observer because of a mix-up over units, very expensive. The CGS system works fine , only differs in powers of 10 from SI , mixing with Imperial units just becomes ridiculous.

7. MunroMaiden@5, in 32A you could perhaps add the “suffered” to the first definition. the “the” to the second, and use the “in” as a connector, but it feels like a stretch.
   [Do we have to detesla things to be properly SI?]
   [Does one of the VHCs for Azed 2637 involve subtraction of a synonym to make the anagrist? Either I’m misreading it or I’m surprised.]

8. Tesla is very SI , it was specifically defined to make the constant 1 in the Lorentz equation.

9. [TimSee@7: You may remember the discussion about anagrams that we had on Azed 2633, to which I made a belated addition once I had got hold of Azed’s actual published instruction: “The component letters of the anagram, or an unequivocal indication of them, must be given explicitly in the anagram-based clue”. Using a synonym of a clue word as part of the anagram clearly violates this and is the classic indirect anagram. However, subtracting a synonym from a clue word or a sequence of clue words means that the synonym itself must be visible in the clue. In my view this can be considered to be at least borderline unequivocal. I would be slightly more surprised if Azed did that sort of thing in one of his own clues, but I can understand him giving the benefit of the doubt in a grey area to a competition entry.]

10. [PelhamBarton@9, thanks for the reminder of the previous discussion. The term “unequivocal indication [of the anagrist]” leaves some room for interpretation, but Azed’s examples seem to suggest that it should be unique, at least in the setter’s intended interpretation of the clue. (A meta-argument then rules out anything other than the metal as an interpretation for “copper” in the root cause of that discussion, as the others require non-unique synonyms to complete the process.) In the current case, “grub without difficulty” is to be taken as “g” – I suppose you could argue that the only synonym of “difficulty” in “grub” is “rub” and so unique, but it is part of a larger anagrist. Something to add to the case lore, perhaps. ]

Comments are closed.