Azed 2707

19 comments on “Azed 2707”

1. Thanks duncanshiell. Not sure if you missed the anagram in SEA LEGS, or just omitted to mention it.
   I had to resort to the dictionary quite soon for this one, the NE corner being blank. Tricky parsing of UPPER CRUST eluded me for a long time.
   Unfortunate that PROLLER also works for 12 – that made me doubt PARAPHRAST and RURP impossible until I checked for PROULER.
   Thanks as ever to Azed.
   PS This blog is Uncategorized at the moment.

2. Thanks duncan for the excellent blog as usual!
   MORBILLI
   Looks like you have inadvertently omitted the wordplay
   MO +ILL inside RBI

   PULS
   I recall that there was a discussion on Afghan and Afghani sometime ago
   somewhere (!).
   Afghani is the standard monetary unit of Afghanistan and Afghan, a native of Afghanistan.
   In that puzzle, Afghani was used in the sense of Afghan.
   Just shared. The clue here is perfect.

3. PROULER was a trap I nearly fell into. The “once” indicating the obsolete form ROUL (swagger) saved me at the last minute.
   Jaunty as the anagram indicator in SEA LEGS raised an eyebrow but it’s in the list in Chambers Crossword Dictionary.
   RATTY as a competition word had loads of possibilities and no doubt Wind In The Willows will figure in a lot of entries. I was tempted to go with a topical “Wretched Republican beside his lawyer” but didn’t.

4. TimC@3: fair point on the extra obsolete indicator for roul.

5. I was a bit surprised Azed did not choose AFRIT for the competition clue. I don’t recall Afrit being impossible as I worked my way (slowly, many years ago) through two volumes of The Penguin Book of Listener Crosswords. Perhaps his puzzles had been edited by then.

   Thanks for the blog: yet again there are a few clues this week I couldn’t work out but all clear now.

   Stefan

6. I was pretty sure I had previously seen Aphra Behn in an Azed puzzle, so I searched on fifteensquared and found Azed 2644 and Azed 2420. The latter was blogged by duncanshiell, but I also wouldn’t claim to remember everything about a crossword I solved five and a half years ago.

7. Thanks for the blog, PROULER is unusual having three words that fit the definition but only one fits the wordplay exactly. EEJIT is not in Chambers93 , I have heard it but only from the Irish students. AFRIT is given a lot of credit by Ximenes for introducing many crossword conventions, not as fearsome as Torquemada.
   GOSS I know as Gossware , my mother uses the term as an insult for any inferior pottery.

8. I only got to this yesterday and found it on the easier side compared to recent weeks. PROULER required some carful thought but the U was quickly confirmed with RURP. Aphra Behn new to me but one to remember.
   No offence to the redoubtable “Jock” but I’d love to see some rather more esoteric Scottish indicators in coming weeks.
   33a perhaps the blog omits to say that “his?” is there to indicate that REEST is also a Scottish word.
   Thanks to Duncan and Azed.

9. ELSE
   I wanted to add this @2 but missed it.
   Liked the precision of the clue in indicating the removal of the letters ‘cha’ as ‘tea not found when going round‘
   (a minor observation: ‘bun place’ rather than ‘bun’ for chELSEa).

10. Thanks to everyone for the comments so far. It’s clearly not been my finest hour in proof checking the blog.

    Gonzo @ 1
    Blog now categorized properly.

    KVa @ 2
    MORBILLI fully parsed now – I had seen the parsing but somehow omitted or deleted it at some stage when writing or editing the blog

    TimC @ 3
    Thanks – I had missed the anagram. I put in the cryptic definition and thought ‘that’s all there is’

    Matthew @ 5
    I can’t remember sometimes what I did last week, so something I wrote in a 5 year old blog is beyond me! I note that I indicated that APHRA Behn was new to me in 2018 as well.

    Jay @ 8
    You are right -‘his’ is relevant. I’d seen it when solving, but forgot to put it in the blog.

    KVa @ 9
    Bradford’s Crossword Dictionary gives Chelsea as a synonym for bun, but as the clue mentions ‘place’ I should have acknowledged that in the blog. Blog now updated.

11. Just one thing: STIMPMETER needs an extra ‘E’, not ‘T’, presumably from the centre of ‘green’.

    Stefan

12. Marmite Smuggler @ 11

    Oh dear! – if I’m going to have a blog with errors, I might as well get it spectacularly wrong.

    The parsing of STIMPMETER has now been updated – thanks

    Hopefully, there aren’t any more errors, but please point them out if you see any.

13. duncanshiell….. as they say where I’m a resident….. She’ll be right mate… no wucking furries (now there’s an Aussie Spoonerism for you). You’re blog is fine. If it isn’t, all us picky bastards will fill in the missing details. 🙂

14. Please, duncanshiell, don’t feel bad about overlooking the odd thing. I don’t look at the blog to pick out issues, but to help me clarify some of the parsing where I may not have fully worked it out and your blog did that for me admirably. Thanks for your continuing sterling efforts.

15. I found this harder than usual – didn’t finish till Monday – and also entered PROLLER which flummoxed me for 8dn.

    I don’t recall the earlier references to Behn but I think I’ve seen one of her plays back in the eighties at the RSC and she was the first playwright I thought of.

16. Sorry, Duncanshiell, one more comment – 19dn, the anagram is of FERNS+O, not LEAFY (the definition as underlined). Just a typo!
    I was delighted to see RURP; I came across it many years ago and just loved both the word and its origin – it’s an acronym for Realised Ultimate Reality Piton. Having fairly recently become a climber, I recognise typical climber humour in that!
    31dn – I couldn’t begin to work out the clue when I first read it; there seemed to be far too much for an answer of just four letters. In the end, I came up with ELSE when I had EL– and then the penny dropped.
    POL – in 16ac ALEPOLE – isn’t given in my C98 as an abbreviation for politician, but perhaps it’s in later editions.

17. Munro Maiden @16, thanks for the explanation of RURP. My dad dragged me up Route 1 on Tarn Crag in the Langdales with a rope, a rope sling and a carabiner. I don’t think he ever used a piton, let alone a rurp, in his climbing life.
    ELSE confused me for a long while as well.
    Pol is in C2016 as “pol (inf) n a politician or political activist.”

18. Thanks, TIm C. I’m actually off to Langdale tomorrow – without pitons, but I’ll be taking a full rack of protection gear, as well as helmet, harness and multiple carabiners!

19. Hello- too busy on 2708 (now complete) to join in. Delighted so many comments
    Thanks to Azed- he is already mentioning 2750, perhaps already compiled. Thanks too for duncanshiells’s blog.
    As an inveterate theatre-goer I recall seeing Aphra Behn’s “The Rover” at Stratford in 2016. Very jolly. I mucked up the grid by putting UPPER CRUST as the first across entry so it was a mess. I nowadays begin by picking longer clues at random and, as soon as I’ve one, working from its crossers.
    Re Afrit, he was the first codifier of the crossword laws, most notably precluding indirect anagrams.
    As one born the same year as Sir Jeremy Morse I don’t know why I’m still here! And still enjoying the tussle.
    Found RATTY a beast- short words present fewer possibilities.

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