A lot easier than the run-of-the-mill. Almost as easy as this week’s Listener (OK — last week’s). And Paul’s awesome crossword utility automatically parses the (relaunched) Guardian site’s PDF once again which is nice too.
| Across | ||
| 1 | CAMASH | Member of hyacinth family in clay beside tree (6) |
| CAM,ASH – a lily which I expect is of the hyacinth family. CAM=clay. | ||
| 9 | MING | Lib Dem familiarly making mark in government (4) |
| M,IN,G – ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menzies_Campbell — had to look that up but the wordplay was pretty clear. | ||
| 12 | CACHOU | Cold cream bun stuffed with a sweetener (6) |
| C(A)CHOU – bit of a trap here with “gateau” which also fits being a cream-filled cake. But in this case CHOUs are cream-filled pastry. Definition is a breath sweetening lozenge. | ||
| 13 | LOONY | Crazy John hits Gotham? (5) |
| LOO,NY – Brit toilet meets US toilet. | ||
| 14 | CONTRATERRENE | Far from earthy carrot entrée, pureed with bit of nutmeg in (13) |
| N[utmeg] in (carrot entree)* | ||
| 15 | KROO | Noted seaman in fleece, back to front (4) |
| W. Africans noted as seamen. Take rook=fleece (con) and move the K to the front. | ||
| 16 | WOMANLY | Female in colourless fashion bagging major award (7) |
| W(OM)ANLY – OM=major award in wanly=colourless. | ||
| 17 | PUNALUA | Quibble with hall given backing for group marriage (7) |
| PUN=quibble and rev(aula=hall) — “system of group marriage” — backed into this answer. | ||
| 18 | MALAGA | Mum holds festivity back requiring sweet wine (6) |
| rev(gala=festivity) in Ma. | ||
| 24 | TOROSE | Extremity, end cut, came up, swelling (6) |
| TO[e],ROSE – swelling – thanks to Pelham below for pointing out that the wordplay was a lot simpler than my original over-wrought version. | ||
| 25 | DEBORAH | Girl getting clothed after retiring – what a surprise! (7) |
| DEBOR,AH – rev(robed) followed by ah! | ||
| 26 | COONCAN | A con twice fiddled card game (7) |
| (A con, con)* – sounds a bit racist to the American ear probably. But it’s just a card game. | ||
| 29 | GALL | Work off fast run, being sore (4) |
| GALL[op] – remove op=work from gallop=fast run where gall=sore. Last wordplay understood. | ||
| 30 | IMPERCEPTIBLE | Very small nipper bit peeler with canine badly (13) |
| IMP followed by (bit peeler + c=canine)*. | ||
| 31 | SPRUE | Worried re soup with no love for weedy asparagus (5) |
| (re s[o]up)* – thin asparagus. | ||
| 32 | SECKLE | Leeks cooked with a slice of conference pear (6) |
| (leeks + c[onference])* – kind of pear. Alternate spelling is seckel so needed 10D to disambiguate. | ||
| 33 | STOA | Visitors to Athens will take in this classical lecture site (4) |
| Nicely hidden in “Visitors to Athens”. | ||
| 34 | THRENE | Small number getting into Trinity? It didn’t sound cheerful (6) |
| THRE(N)E – archaic (thus “didn’t” instead of “doesn’t”) threnody (dirge). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | COCKPIT | Pile of dung on bed in greenhouse (7) |
| COCK=pile of dung and pit=BED. A greenhouse is an aircraft cockpit. | ||
| 2 | ACORUS | Pond plants, a body that’s not soft inside (6) |
| A,COR[p]US – type of lily. | ||
| 3 | MA NON TROPPO | Fellow onto tackling prop roughly, but not excessively (11, 3 words) |
| MAN=fellow,ONT(prop*)O – “but not too much” musically speaking. | ||
| 4 | SHRILLS | Sharp screams resulting from short time in rocky beds (7) |
| S(HR)ILLS – hr=abbrev(hour)=short time. SILLS=rocky beds. | ||
| 5 | HOAX | Gull in trees with aspiration, we hear? (4) |
| HOAX sounds like h,oaks which is how you’d pronounce “oaks” if you were to aspirate. | ||
| 6 | OUTWARDNESS | Not being subjective, used no straw for construction (11) |
| (used no straw)* | ||
| 7 | CLEOME | To arrive holding garland I cut tropical plant (6) |
| C(LE[i])OME | ||
| 8 | DORM | Mark housing the men in small bunkhouse? (4) |
| D(OR)M – abbrev(dormitory) thus “small bunkhouse”. OR=Ordinary Ranks thus Britspeak for “men”. And DM=abbrev(Deutschmark) | ||
| 9 | MORALE | Spirits to be taken by mouth swallowed by me (6) |
| M(ORAL)E – nice semantic shift of spirits between surface and wordplay. | ||
| 10 | INENARRABLE | ‘Beyond words’, not applicable in description of papal authority? (11) |
| I suppose this means “incapable of being narrated” thus “beyond words”. NA in inerrable=infallible (I don’t think the current Pope still believes that). | ||
| 11 | GOEY | Enterprising Gentile, charged with energy (4) |
| GO(E)Y – Describes a “goer” I suppose. | ||
| 19 | AMBATCH | Something like balsa, a near equivalent, black inside (7) |
| A,M(B)ATCH – a pith-tree which I guess is balsa-like. | ||
| 20 | ATHLETE | Runner maybe once obstructed in heat, stumbling (7) |
| ATH(LET)E – let=obstruction (archaic but still used in tennis in that sense) in heat*. | ||
| 21 | MONERA | Somebody cutting limb up reveals primal organism (supposedly) (6) |
| ONE in rev(arm=limb) but seems like shouldn’t be plural given definition: “(pl monera) the name given by German biologist Ernst Haeckel to his hypothetical simplest protozoan” | ||
| 22 | PEACED | Where fencing occurs, in audience Shakespearean was hushed (6) |
| Shak. verb to silence. Homophone of “piste=a strip of ground used for some sporting activity, eg fencing”. My second to last wordplay. I mentally reviewed possible homophones before guessing and looking piste up. | ||
| 23 | FALLEN | Ruined, as everyone in morass (6) |
| F(ALL)EN | ||
| 26 | CIGS | What have some giving in cravenly, initially given up? (4) |
| &lit – reversed first letters of “some giving in cravenly”. Ref. stopping smoking. | ||
| 27 | CR,UX | Cross wife after credit (4) |
| UX=abbrev(uxor=Latin wife) | ||
| 28 | SPET | What those hawking in the country do, regularly sapient? (4) |
| Alternate letters of “sapient” — spit (hawk) in dialect. | ||
*anagram
Thsnks Azed and Ilancaron
24ac: I think this works more simply as TO[e], ROSE.
Yes I overcomplicated the wordplay in 24A. Thanks for pointing this out.
Clues and printable version of today’s (2277) AZED are missing from thr website again
Thanks Azed and Ilancaron.
I suppose this crossword exemplifies why folk like Azed’s puzzles. Given a copy of the BRB, you can be pretty sure of coming up with the solution; though, for me, sans BRB, it would be impossible.
Being fond of cream buns (choux buns?), I was surprised to learn from Chambers that ‘chou’ is the singular and ‘choux’ the plural.
@norman: point taken – my comment should have been “CHOUx are cream-filled…”
What’s the BRB? Something after my time.
The Big Red Book (aka The Chambers Dictionary)