A very satisfactory Plain Azed with no particular features, merely the sound clueing that you would expect.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | O F(FISH)LY |
| 7 | AMIS — the French for friends |
| 10 | REPOUSSAGE — (sea groups)* |
| 11 | SEA CAP — (a in paces)rev. |
| 12 | sUPRANationalism — although Chambers gives ‘uprun’ it doesn’t actually define it, so is Azed using something from another dictionary? If so, shouldn’t we be told, or is he just making an educated guess? I can’t find anything in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary |
| 14 | TACHYPNEA — achy in (pante{d})* |
| 17 | GERNES — eagerness with eas missing from the outside |
| 18 | PE(SAD)E — Azed’s penchant for lavatorial words in evidence |
| 19 | SAT A N{ice} S{avoury} |
| 20 | REDLEG — (gelder)rev. — ‘gelder rose’ is given in Chambers |
| 23 | SHAKTI — t{urban} in (a Sikh)* |
| 25 | ATROPA — (port)rev. in AA |
| 27 | NANOMETRE — (men are not)* — Azed tends to be very relaxed about anagram indicators, but ‘budging’ is not one I’d have dared to use in one of his clue-setting competitions |
| 29 | TENE{men}T — the men are the men in the previous clue, hence the ellipsis. But I can’t quite see how this differs from the crossword setter’s sin described in “Ximenes and The Art of the Crossword” — saying something like “I am removed from …” when what should be said is “I is removed from” (hence the “I must be removed from” fix). In this clue ‘men’ is (not are) evicted from ‘tenement’. |
| 30 | UNNAIL — nun* ail |
| 31 | LITMUS TEST — the competition clue word |
| 32 | ENSA — a nice play on the fact that CSE stands for both Certificate of Secondary Education (superseded by GCSE) and Combined Services Entertainment; ENSA stood for Entertainments National Service Association (or Every Night Something Awful) |
| 33 | PA’S STE({elusiv}E)EL |
| Down | |
| 1 | rebelliOUS Teenagers |
| 2 | FLEA-BEETLE — (leaf)* beet le{ft} |
| 3 | F(R)ACT |
| 4 | S(PAY)AD — ‘no longer’ applies to the answer, which is an obsolete word |
| 5 | HO(PP)LE |
| 6 | LUINGS — in in (slug)* — Chambers gives ‘Luing cattle’, which low and come from Scotland |
| 7 | AS PAR TAME |
| 8 | MARINA — (airman)* |
| 9 | SENUSSIS — (sen I suss)* |
| 13 | A VENT URINE — the second time in this crossword that Azed has used ‘water’ in this way |
| 15 | HYALONEMA — {toilett}e in (a holy man)* |
| 16 | S PRATTLE |
| 21 | DRANTS — a and d missing from (standard)rev. |
| 22 | GANESA — (a(sena)g)rev. |
| 23 | SPOUTS — (Toss-up)*, also pout in s{hark}s — an unusual device in that two bits of subsidiary indication surround the definition |
| 24 | HAM NET — this gave me some trouble since it was surely ‘Hamlet’, but also surely Hamnet (??); however, Google came to the rescue and told me that Shakespeare’s son (of whom I didn’t know and who died in childhood) was called Hamnet |
| 26 | STATE — (tats)rev. e |
| 28 | {r}E{a}L {g}U(i}L{t} — I think it just happens that the missing letters occur so regularly |
Thanks, John. Got all of this out except the E in GERNES, which is better than I have done lately. Thanks for the explanation of ENSA. Didn’t see what else it could be, but didn’t see why.
Recent discussions on the Guardian site re abbreviations helped me get SPRATTLE, with S an abbreviation for ‘succeeded’.
I couldn’t find any ref for UPRAN (UP-RAN?) either.
HAMNET got me totally. I was convinced there was a mistake, and it should have been HAMLET (but checked letter in 30ac was confirmed), and google too came to the rescue for me; I still do not understand the (HAM = actor) + ‘little talent’ bit though.
Ideas?
It is HAM + NET (to capture)
The def for HAM is “Actor with little talent”.
My first AZED solve. Googled ELUL- didn’t see the clever wordplay. The clue comp word has proved a challenge!
In general if Chambers gives a verb modified by a prefix then the verb is assumed to behave as the unprefixed version. Therefore if the pa. t. of RUN is RAN then the pa. t. of UPRUN is UPRAN by analogy, and no further reference is needed.
I’d always rather hoped that Hamnet Shakespeare had had a brother called Macbath or a sister called Jumiet. But no, alas.
Great puzzle, of ideal difficulty for me, taking two very enjoyable hours with the big red book. Hamnet had me stumped, but fortunately my better half was able to put me right. Have to admit I enjoyed the inclusion of both ‘pee’ and ‘unrine’ in the puzzle! Such a highbrow pursuit…
Phi my point in questioning UPRAN wasn’t that it was upran rather than uprun, rather that Chambers doesn’t say what the word means, so how can we tell? Evidently Azed has supposed that it means something like ‘run in the air’, but I wondered if he had access to some other dictionary that gave a definition.
I had hoped that the doubts I mentioned when blogging 29ac would lead to people jumping in on both sides with views on the matter. But so far no.
I’ll belatedly jump in on 29ac: I think it’s OK to say “men are removed…” because you can read it as “[the letters] M, E, N are removed…”.
According to the OED, “uprun” is an extremely rare poetic equivalent of “run up” (intransitive), though a Google search suggests that Webster offers “ascend” (presumably intransitive) as a synonym. The OED (mirrored by many other Internet sources) gives only one example in the last six hundred years, from William Cowper’s 1791 translation of the Iliad: “A son..[who] like a luxuriant plant *Upran to manhood” (allegedly Iliad XVIII.543) – which, apparently, a contemporary critic objected to as too literal a translation. Unfortunately, line 543 of Book XVIII of Homer’s Iliad contains nothing remotely like a Greek equivalent of Cowper’s words, but it’s fairly clear, I think, that the sense intended by Cowper was indeed something like “made an ascent” and perhaps even “made a rapid ascent”. Azed’s “made rapid progress aloft” is thus accurate, given that “aloft” can mean “to heaven” as well as (more usually) “on high”. He could just as easily have written “made a rapid ascent”, which would arguably have been fairer in relation to a very obscure word. This would, it’s true, produce a pretty nonsensical surface, but hardly more so than 12ac as it stands. Why Chambers sees fit to include such a hapax legomenon – and without indicating that it is essentially obsolete – is a mystery.