Beelzebub 1,292 – Fifteensquared

I’d hesitate to suggest that Beelzebub was getting easier, but it does seem like the last handful of weeks have been relatively painless. This one went in smoothly in one session, with a modest amount of dictionary checking needed to finish things off.

There’ll be a nice change for you next week, as Gaufrid takes over the odd-numbered Beelzebubs, which should very much help us return to a more consistently regular blogging schedule.

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed.

Across
1	AGUED – U in AGED.
5	ABREACT – CABARET*.
11	PENCILLED – (CILL + [fenc]E) in PEND.
12	SCARABAEIDA – (ARAB + IDEA) in CASE.
14	LESS – LESS[on].
15	DITZ – IT in DZ. DZ for Algeria was a surprise to me, but comes from its Arabic name, which WordPress won’t let me paste in properly.
16	TITANATE – TIT + AN + ATE.
18	EVITATE – EVITA + T[heatr]E.
20	STED – ST[opp]ED.
22	SECT – SEC[re]T.
23	ARACHE – A in (ARCH + NE).
24	CRUMENAL – CRU + MEN[i]AL.
25	USER – [m]USER.
26	OGLE – [go]OGLE.
30	WEATHERPROOF – A in (FOR THE POWER)*.
31	QINGHAOSU – Q + ([placeb]O in ANGUISH*).
32	STEEP-TO – TEE in TOPS*.
33	ENROL – (N in LORE)<.

Down
1	APSIDES – A + SIDES.
2	UNARTICULATE – (NATURAL CUTIE)*.
3	ECRU – [arachn]E + CRU[mental]. I found the interplay between the three clues quite helpful, here.
4	DIASTASE – (E + SATS + AID)<.
5	ALBS – B in ALS.
6	BLATTER – two definitions: a Scots word for “blast”/Sepp Blatter, who manages to get himself in the news a lot, so should be familiar even to non-sports fans.
7	REEF – RE + E[xclusive] + F[rench].
8	AT DEATH’S DOOR – (THE AORTA’S ODD)*.
9	CHASTENED – C + HASTENED.
10	THESE – THE S.E.
13	DIVERGENT – VERGE in DINT.
17	ACALEPHE – PELA< in ACHE.
19	TANGENT – (N + GEN) in TAT.
21	DERNFUL – NF in LURED<.
24	COWES – homophone of “cows”.
27	WHIP – W + HIP.
28	ERGO – ERGO[n].
29	BRAN – BRAN[k].

2 comments on “Beelzebub 1,292”

Can’t recall any difficulty completing this last Sunday night, but there were a couple I couldn’t parse: 22ac, which is obvious now that you explain it, and 29dn, which is less obvious – I’d never heard of “brank”.

Me neither. I think I spotted the answer early on, but waited for checking letters to confirm, and needed to browse the dictionary to figure out which letter to remove.

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