Azed 2119

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The usual excellent crossword from Azed and as usual I won’t give detailed descriptions of all the very unusual words, in the knowledge that anyone interested enough in this crossword to look here will have a copy of Chambers.

Across
1 SLANGING-MATCH — (N ging mat) in (clash)*
11 LABURNUM — (a burn) in {c}lum{p}
13 {h}AUNT — agony aunt
14 SE(AG)RAPE
15 SWA(TT)Y
16 BANNER — 2 defs, one of them whimsical
19 NAVETTE — (an)rev. vette{d}
21 INFER{no}
23 SquiRE EVErdene
24 EFFENDI — “f nd”
26 UNITAL — (Latin u)rev.
29 GRAKLE — (e.g. lark)*
31 DECODING — def ‘cracking’ — (ecod in) in D[irector-]G[eneral]
32 Speyside? Comes Up Regularly
33 S(TEAT)ITE — this clue was made a little harder because both ‘teat’ and ‘tit’ are hidden in the answer
34 PREDETERMINER — (Emir pretender)* — look this word up in Chambers and all will be explained: ‘both’ is an example of a predeterminer
 
Down
2 L(AU W)INE
3 NUTTY — a comp. anag. where [youth turns] and [nutty hours] have the same letters — but I’m not absolutely sure how this works: ‘crazy’ seems to be the anagram indicator, and Azed has stated that only one anagram indicator is needed, indeed to have two is incorrect; what then is ‘besotted’ doing (quite apart from the fact that it comes between the words ‘such’ and ‘hours’, which in itself seems odd)? I can’t see that it is anything but an anagram indicator; or does it have some devious use that I am missing? [Youth turns crazy — in such besotted hours?]
4 GRIT — 2 defs
5 IN SYNC — “in sink”
6 NUÉE ARDENTE — den in (a tureen)* e
7 MEGAERA — me (a rage)*
8 {b}AIRN — a Troon (which is in Scotland) caddie will probably carry round some irons
9 TRANTER — tr (aren’t)*
10 COPE — devious of Azed, for the temptation is to think that it is meant to be C(o p)E, where p = poet, but of course there is no justification for this — it’s three definitions — ‘meet old’ [i.e. an archaict word that means ‘meet’], ‘poet’ [Wendy Cope] and ‘church vestment’
11 LASSITUDE — L.A. (studies)*
12 PERSEVERE — per s(ever)e
17 AFFICHE — (A1 chef)* around F
18 TREADLE — (lad)* in tree
20 EVOLUTE — (love)rev. ute
22 JIGGER — again a triple definition — damn, golf club and doohickey
25 F ASTI
27 fiNE ARt
28 TOED — t’ [short for the] OED — mishit in the past tense
30 REAM — (wee dram – we’d)*, McEwan’s being Scottish and this being a Scottish word

4 comments on “Azed 2119”

  1. Thanks for the blog, John.

    It did take me a while to realise exactly how 10d works.

    My interpretation of 3d was that ‘besotted’ is the definition (besotted=infatuated, nutty=foolishly amorous).

  2. Thanks all
    Not entirely convinced but could the definition be ‘crazy’ and ‘besotted’ is the sole anagram indicator.
    I think nutty for crazy is much more direct than nutty for besotted.

  3. RCWhiting,

    I read the clue as saying: You can take the letters of ‘Youth turns’ and rearrange them to make the answer, which is a word meaning ‘besotted’, plus ‘hours’.

    I can’t see how you could think that the clue works with ‘crazy’ as the definition (Why would the definition appear at that point in the clue?) and with ‘besotted’ as an anagram indicator (Why would an anagram indicator appear at that point in the clue?).

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