A medium-difficulty crossword from Azed. There seemed to me to be lots of answers where the parsing involves an anagram, but now I count them it’s not so excessive (25%).
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | UP-DRAUGHT |
Put off about hot watch returning and rising current (9)
|
| (Put)* round (h guard)rev. | ||
| 11 | ALOO |
It often accompanies Indian, one with office (4)
|
| A loo — an Indian meal — office is a euphemism for lavatory | ||
| 12 | COONCAN |
Wily thief is capable in card game (7)
|
| coon can — I wouldn’t be surprised if the card game, which I’d never heard of, now goes by another name | ||
| 13 | BAJRA |
Millet Middle-Easterner rolls round joint (5)
|
| (arab)rev. round J (which I hadn’t realised is in Chambers: a joint of marijuana (informal)) | ||
| 15 | YOLD |
With which youth starts early, once resigned (4)
|
| y old — y = with which youth starts, old = early | ||
| 17 | EMITTER |
Season returns, almost an end for transmitter (7)
|
| (time)rev. ter[m] — is ‘transmitter’ a satisfactory definition for ’emitter’ as it is defined in Chambers, or is Azed just saying that an emitter is something that emits, which so far as I can see isn’t there? | ||
| 18 | PIQUE |
Nettle giving pointed end, we hear (5)
|
| “peak” | ||
| 19 | ALTESSE |
Depth may reveal anything but this: see salt at sea (7)
|
| (see salt)* — seems a rather odd definition, but I suppose height and depth are opposites | ||
| 20 | INCANDESCE |
Glow from nice candles, flickering, left out (10)
|
| (nice cand[L]es)* | ||
| 24 | ELDEST HAND |
Leader uncomfortable in the saddle? Not I (10, 2 words)
|
| *([I]n the saddle) | ||
| 25 | ANGLERS |
Left in French city we go fishing (7)
|
| Ang(L)ers | ||
| 28 | RADGE |
Scots furious? What he’s in includes daughter (5)
|
| ra(d)ge | ||
| 29 | STAMMEL |
Ignoring ad Madam’s let out bright red underwear (7)
|
| (M[ad]ams let)* — the two definitions in Chambers are of the cloth used to make underclothes, and the colour. Azed seems to be combining them (OK I suppose; he tends to do that from time to time) | ||
| 32 | TOME |
Edison’s short version? It may take a lot of getting through (4)
|
| Tom E, as Thomas Edison’s friends might have referred to him | ||
| 33 | TANNA |
Excerpt from secret annals revealed in police station overseas (5)
|
| Hidden in secreT ANNAls | ||
| 34 | EMICATE |
In e.g. juillet mineral’s seen to sparkle (7)
|
| été (the French for summer, e.g. juillet, the French for July, surely Juillet [no, as I’ve just learnt from Matthew @1 juillet is correct]) round mica | ||
| 35 | DAUD |
Pa’s gone round the bend, causing thump (4)
|
| Da(U)d — is U OK for U-bend? | ||
| 36 | PRÉCIEUSE |
She likes to appear fastidious, and prim around European Union (9)
|
| preci(EU)se | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | PLATINA |
Dad’s pocketing Roman metal, precious (7)
|
| P(Latin)a — well-concealed definition | ||
| 3 | DOJO |
Place for work-out practice with beloved (4)
|
| do Jo — I’m not convinced that do = practice, because quite apart from the c/s matter of the spelling all the definitions which might at a stretch work are labelled as obsolete | ||
| 4 | RORQUAL |
Whale as seen entering right or left (7)
|
| R or (qua) L | ||
| 5 | AT AN END |
Andante in movement exhausted (7, 3 words)
|
| (Andante)* | ||
| 6 | GORMLESSLY |
Distasteful, smells awfully within, in vacant fashion (10)
|
| (smells)* in gory | ||
| 7 | HOP IT |
Work put into success? Get away (5, 2 words)
|
| h(op)it | ||
| 8 | SCOTS |
What may follow pound payments (5)
|
| Scots may follow pound in the term, new to me, pound scots | ||
| 9 | BALE |
Group of turtles making hoop by the sound of it (4)
|
| “bail” | ||
| 10 | END-READER |
Trembling, René admits fear – he’ll skip middle pages (9)
|
| *(René) round dread | ||
| 14 | LEADERETTE |
Brief editorial: unfinished missive including a wound of old (10)
|
| le(a dere)tte[r] | ||
| 16 | SPIRASTER |
Coiled spongey thing tears up flower (9)
|
| (rips)rev. aster | ||
| 21 | STRETTI |
Titters awkwardly fugal parts being closely grouped (7)
|
| (titters)* | ||
| 22 | CHAMADE |
Tea brewed as invitation to parley (7)
|
| cha made — this had to be charade, didn’t it. I was fixated on tea = char but couldn’t make it work despite inventing a drink charade along the lines of lemonade, so it was my last one in | ||
| 23 | INGENUS |
Callow youths belonging to class (7)
|
| in genus | ||
| 26 | GAMIN |
Impish youth playin’ at the computer? (5)
|
| gamin’, short for gaming (as indicated by playin’) | ||
| 27 | EMBAR |
Prohibition? No go – shut in (5)
|
| embar[go] | ||
| 30 | TOMB |
Monument in honour of doctor (4)
|
| to MB | ||
| 31 | UNAU |
Slow mover in university, being queasy after quitting sea (4)
|
| U nau[sea] — nausea = being queasy |
I felt like I breezed through this puzzle until I became stuck for ages with only 12a, 15a, 8d and 9d left. I eventually thought of YOLD and SCOTS, but I dislike this example of ‘guess the second word of a two word phrase’ even more than the one in the last Azed puzzle. I ended up hunting in Chambers for COONCAN and BALE and felt lucky that both words started with a letter early in the alphabet. Maybe I could have worked out COONCAN if I had thought more about it, but I didn’t know either of the meanings necessary for BALE.
I wouldn’t have known ELDEST HAND or PRÉCIEUSE if I hadn’t remembered seeing them recently in other crosswords, but maybe not as recently as I thought because I was remembering the latter from an Azed puzzle more than a year ago. I also thought of CHARADE first for 22d but decided that M was the only possibility for the unchecked letter that could fit the wordplay, and I was distracted by SPIRASTER containing an anagram of TEARS but that isn’t what ‘tears up’ means.
It surprised me when I first learned it, but French is one of many languages in which names of months and days of the week are not capitalised, except at the start of a sentence.
Thanks, John and Azed.
3dn: I think do=practice might just scrape by under the meanings of do=a swindle, hoax (slang) and practice = scheming, plotting or trickery. EMITTER/TRANSMITTER does seem to be a false equation, but in any case it’s unattractive to have two such similar words as clue and answer (I don’t think it would be commended in a clue-writing competition!).
I was familiar with “pound Scots”, but agree with Matthew that this isn’t a very neat style of clue. Also like Matthew, I had to go trawling for COONCAN and BALE and was relieved they came early. (According to Wiki, Cooncan is a corruption of the name Conquian.)
CHAMADE I knew, thanks to a novel by Francoise Sagan called La Chamade, which I read as a teenager – little knowing it would come in handy some 50 years later!
I’m another who had a question mark against the clue for EMITTER; I am a little surprised that Azed’s checker didn’t challenge it.