Azed 2692

16 comments on “Azed 2692”

1. Aha, thanks Andrew for the parsing of HIVER – I was struggling for some compound anagram or the letters of the answer being in ‘the Riviera’ in the right order. I came to the same conclusion as you for KRAIT after being led astray by ARK being there reversed. ‘Kit’ for the container in which a set of tools is kept is in Chambers though.
   Thanks as ever to Azed.

2. I parsed KRAIT the same as you Andrew, although I thought ‘kit’ for chest was a bit of a stretch even though it can mean a container. I wouldn’t call a kit bag a chest. I wonder if the word “kist” (as in the lovely ‘kist o’ whistles’ for an organ) was what was in mind, in which case it would be a pretty rare error.

3. I agree on your parsing and comments. It took me a long time to see what was going on with OVERT. In general, I find these “synonym minus X” clues hard to figure out.

4. Thanks for the blog, 1Ac and 1D very friendly so easy to get started with lots of first letters.
   For AFRO I am not sure what the VERY is doing.
   I agree with you for FORMIC , the “crawling about” does not seem quite right.
   KRAIT I am happy with the KIT for the same reasons as Gonzo@1 , but the definition – It may kill you – hardly narrows things down.
   For POSTIE we have Glasgow for the Scottish reference but I agree it is not really needed.

5. Thanks for the blog which cleared up a couple of queries for me, including KRAIT. In 15 it didn’t occur to me to take OK away from WORK as the letters are not together in the fodder word. I had the same thought as the blog for 6d and also raised an eyebrow at “courtesan” in 9d given that it is an answer to another clue, 13a. For a wording ending in “n” following the artist theme “exhibition” might have served.

6. AFRO
   Does the ‘very’ indicate ‘genuine’/’real’ as the hairstyle involves naturally curled hair?

7. I would have thought that ‘very’ referred to the extremely curly (thick, bushy in Chambers) nature of an Afro KVa @6 and Roz @4

8. TimC@7
   Quite likely.

9. There were a few things in this puzzle that raised an eyebrow for me: the definition for FORMIC, as mentioned in the blog; the use of COURTESAN in the clue for 9dn, as Jay@5 mentions; the reference to RIOT in two consecutive clues at 16ac and 17ac; and the indirect definitions in both 26dn and 28dn, as well as ‘chest’ for KIT in 28, as per Tim C@2. And then there was the spurious capital on Whit in 35ac…. My Chambers ’98 only defines JOTA as a dance, so I was about to query the definition there (you can’t dance to a dance), but Wiki says it can also refer to the music, so that part is ok!

10. I nearly completed this with the help of word searches, but many I didn’t, or couldn’t parse. However, although TEXTURES did turn up on a word search, I couldn’t work out what the definition was. How is “tenors” a definition?

11. I have to admit I didn’t check kit=chest when writing the blog: I think I must have assumed it was a variant of the Scots “kist”. I wonder if Azed made the same incorrect leap.

    For AFRO, I thought “very” was part of the definition (as TimC says) – “characterized by thick, bushy curls”, as Chambers puts it.

    POSTIEs have been in the news lately (often that very word), with recent talk of reducing the number of deliveries.

12. I think Gonzo@1 has answered the problem with KIT , Cmambers basically says it can be a tool chest.

13. Thanks Azed and Andrew

    34ac: Chambers gives among the definitions of texture “the general quality, character or tenor of something”.

14. Wow, thanks. I must have read that entry in Chambers a dozen times and never spotted that bit. I’m getting old. 🙁

15. [TimC, I think the latest Azed slip has an indirect answer to your question on DBE in your clue. If so, congratulations. There is a similar approach in the VHCs, and quite a flock of Birds in various guises.]

16. [Thanks TimSee @15 I ended up with an HC]

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