While many of you were watching England’s unfortunate demise in South Africa last Sunday, I was sitting on the top deck of an almost deserted Lord’s pavilion, watching a T20 match between the Pakistanis and an MCC side featuring Brian Lara and a rather entertaining chap aptly called Blizzard, and captained by Sourav Ganguly. I think I made the better call.
At the same time, I was solving this Azed, which is perfectly sound (apart from a letter-count misprint at 9d) but not one of his more inspiring or challenging efforts. A pleasant enough solve, though, especially with some cricket to multi-task on. I needed to check a few words in Chambers when I got home, for the purposes of this blog.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ABSTERGE | [d]ABSTER = expert, minus D (‘day off’); GE = 50% of ‘gets’.. In a medical context, to wipe; to cleanse; to purge. | |
| 12 | MUCOR | MUC[k]; OR = before (entry 3 in Chambers). A mould of the Mucor genus of zygomycete fungi, including some of the commonest moulds, giving name to an order or family. | |
| 13 | LORICAE | *(calorie) | |
| 14 | TRANSLITERATE | *(Steer Latin art). To write (a word) in letters of another alphabet or language. | |
| 15 | RANGY | RANG = proclaimed; Y = yard | |
| 16 | CLARET | E = English; CLART = Scottish mud. Old slang for blood. | |
| 17 | ENTRALLES | Hidden in ‘Central lessons’ | |
| 19 | KHOR | H = hot; KOR = Korea minus ea (running water). A dry watercourse; a ravine. | |
| 21 | AZTEC | AZ = Azed, briefly; TEC = eye, in the sense of private eye, or detective. | |
| 22 | DENY | Compound anagram — of ‘Yes and no’ minus ‘as on’. | |
| 24 | SUGARALLY | *(agar) in SULLY | |
| 27 | ERRANT | TERRAN = earthling, with T moved to the end. | |
| 30 | NAHUM | AH = I’m surprised; NUM = the book of Numbers | |
| 31 | TRADING ESTATE | TRA = reverse of art; DINGES = (S Afr inf) an indefinite name for any person or thing whose name one cannot or will not remember; TATE = gallery | |
| 32 | BACONER | CONE = solid figure; BAR = court | |
| 33 | POTIN | POT = kitchen utensil; IN = consisting of. An old alloy of copper, zinc, lead and tin. | |
| 34 | CESTUSES | USE = regular habit; *(sects). A girdle, esp that of Aphrodite (Venus) in classical mythology. (Also, an ancient Roman boxing glove loaded with metal. One would do well not to confuse them.) | |
| Down | |||
| 1 | AMTRAK | A; MT = mountain; RAK[e] (entry 3 in Chambers) | |
| 2 | BURAN | BURN = stream; A. A violent blizzard blowing from the NE in Siberia and central Asia. | |
| 3 | SCANT’-O’-GRACE | SCAN = scan; TOG = dress; RACE = stock (as in breed) | |
| 4 | TONGA | Compound anagram — of ‘Teeth agony’ minus ‘yet he’s’. A Fijian toothache remedy made from an aroid root (genus Epipremnum). | |
| 5 | RELENZA | REZ = reservation; LEN; A. I got this immediately, having done rather a lot of work on information about Relenza; for those unfamiliar with it, here’s more info: Relenza | |
| 6 | GLIS | Hidden in ‘English. A division of mammals including the typical rodents (e.g. the genus Glis, Old World dormice), etc. | |
| 7 | PRELACY | PREACHY; ‘restricting’ L = length; minus H = hearts | |
| 8 | MIRA | MIR = a Muslim ruler or commander; A. A variable star in the constellation Cetus. | |
| 9 | SCARLET HATS | *(cash rattles). In the online version, there was a mistake in the letter count for this clue. | |
| 10 | SATEEN | Sat[urday] e’en precedes Sun[day] morn. | |
| 11 | MEETS | MEET = appropriate; S. The Boxing Day meet is a big event in the fox-hunting calendar. | |
| 17 | EARNING | N = name; in [h]EARING = news | |
| 18 | RELIEFS | *(I feel); in RS = Royal Society | |
| 20 | HURRAY | A = amateur; in HURRY | |
| 23 | YAMENS | SAY = e.g., reversed; MEN. The offices and residence of a mandarin. | |
| 24 | SET BY | *(Bytes) | |
| 25 | TATOU | TAU = cross; TO = at. The Giant armadillo | |
| 26 | CUTIE | CUT = rake-off; I.E. | |
| 28 | ADOS | AS = e.g.; DO = party | |
| 29 | OGRE | ERGO, reversed | |
Finished this before 11-00 last Sunday morning. My quickest AZED so far. Thanks for explaining the wordplay for TRADING ESTATE- I’ve never heard of DINGES until now!
My first AZED. Great fun. Had TONGS instead of TONGA for 4d, never having heard of a “compound anagram”.
Thanks jetdoc. I am very late for this puzzle.
4d & 22 make no sense to me. Whatever ‘compound anagrams’ are, we need to know how they work. They seem to mean take away some letters from a string and find an anagram. But, why does ‘refuse thus as on’ mean take away ‘as on’ and anagramize ‘yes and no’ to get refuse again? And why ‘thus’ & ‘forms’? I put ‘deny’ in anyway.
For 4d, there is no ‘s’ (from “yet he’s”) to take away from ‘Teeth agony’ – there’s only ‘yet he’ to subtract.
The rest were OK, with the usual AZED dictionary words.