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Archive for December 17th, 2006

Azed 1,802 - Vocabulary 7 down.

Posted by michod on 17th December 2006

michod.

I did most of this on the tube, without Chambers, which is an interesting exercise - you have to make quite a few educated guesses and then corroborate them via the dictionary later (I came unstuck doing this in the competition puzzle a few weeks ago when I forgot to check one guess, which was in fact a word of my own invention!) Fifteen words that were new to me - more across than down - which is why doing Azed’s so good for your vocabulary. His clueing is beautifully concise, and a lot of the wordplay’s actually very straightforward once you work out how to split the clue.

ACROSS:

1. PLASTRON. LAST in PRON(e). Never worn one myself - apparently it’s a shirt front.

8. SAM. Surface-to-air missile/ Spenserian word for together.

11. YAUTIA. Compound anagram of ‘Paraguayan tuber I” without “a burger pan”. This is  my least favourite type of Azed clue - often you eliminate all the other letters to be left with an obvious anagram, though not in this case (except for Paraguayan greengrocers perhaps).

12. BIOTA. B=breadth, + iota.

13. ANTABUSE. TABU in ANS + (sentenc)E. Isn’t antabuse when you pull their legs off?

14. PARTICIPATES. SEAT* after ARTIC in PIP. As in give someone the pip, old-fashioned slang for offence. Nice to get ‘artic’ in there.

17. TORANA. To + RANA.

18. PIOTED. IT + DOPE*. Means piebald, as does pinto.

19. EPICAL. PICA in (b)EL(t).

20. OUTRAN. OU (Oxford Univ, dark blues in boat race) + TRA(i)N - dropping fourth letter.

23. ISCHIA. Ref. island in the Bay of Naples - literally isolated.

25. TRIOSE. IE SORT anag. You can get away with short, obvious anagrams when the word is likely to be unfamiliar.

27. LEVOROTATORY. LOT OVER* + A TORY. Great word, deceptively simple clue - to the left of just refers to position within the word.

28. SCARIOUS. S(quad) + CARIOUS.

30. SITED. I in STED. “I’ll be” is used so that I can be the personal pronoun or just the letter - “I am fixed in place” would not be allowed by Azed.

31. CROUTE. C + ROUTE. Very straightforward wordplay.

32. SAE. Stamped addressed envelope/ Scots for ’so’. 

33. INTENDED. TEN in IDDEN*. I’m not keen on ‘veiled’ as an anagram indicator. In the sense of ‘disguised, obscured, but it doesn’t suggest mixing the letters to me.

DOWN

1. PYA. PYA*. Simple anag, obscure unit of currency.

2. LANAI. Hidden < in “HawaiIAN ALteration”. This word popped up in another puzzole recently, so came quite easily.

3. STATE TROOPER. TREAT* in STOOPER.

4. TIBIAE. I BIT < + A(varic)E. I put ETAIAE before thinking better of it.

5. RAUCID. CU < in RAID. Another good word. “(At dawn?)” seems unnecessary.

6. ONSITE. TENSIO(n)*.

7. DIVARICATION. DIVA + RITA ICON*.

8. SOUTACHE. S (’is’ shortened) + OUT + ACHE. Barred setters will also use s for is without indicating shortening.

9. ATHENA. A THEN A. Very nice clue.

10. MARSALAS. MARS + ALAS.

15. SPOTLESS. PLOT* in SESS. Sess is an obsolete word for a local tax - obsolence is sometimes indicated by ‘old’ etc, but not consistently.

16. MOTIVATE. MOT + VAT in IE.

21. UREDIA. RED I in (q)UA(t). Quat being a dialect word for pimple - but since a pustule is a pimple too, how do you get one on the other?

22. NEOCON. ONCE* + ON. The one that’s not in Chambers, but familiar enough.

23. INTACT. IN T(he) ACT. Nice treatment, but doesn’t ‘wherein’ demand the reply ‘the act’  rather than ‘in the act’ - I’d have thought ‘where’ would work better.

24. SPARRE. (bee)R in SPARE.

26. BRUTE. TUBER*.

29. SED. (o)DES <. Milton this time.

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Everyman 3141 – quoit easy

Posted by ilancaron on 17th December 2006

ilancaron.

One of these days I’m going to miss a theme in an Everyman. I’ve stared at this one but no joy. Though I always enjoy solving Everyman – which typically takes about 1/2h to 45’ for me.
Across

3 WORDS+WORTH – having WORDS is a way to argue.
10 LA(N)TER+N – Not a bad clue: the juxtaposition of “light” and “northern Norway” had me thinking about the Aurora Borealis which slowed me down. N is abbrev once for “Norway” and once for “northern”.
11 OMNIBUS – double meaning: tough clue for me because PSV is a well-known Dutch soccer team (albeit with an unsavoury fan base) – in this case though it’s Public Service Vehicle!
12 S+HOCK – Last clue to solve: in my view quite nicely constructed and misleading: SHOCK is the verb to “jar” and HOCK is a kind of white wine, and “drop of sweet” gives us the S.
13 PE(S)T+O – Instead of a “drop of sweet” we have a “piece of savoury” for the S. Remember that duck means to score nothing in cricket.
16 DEMOLITION DERBY – what passes for entertainment in highly sophisticated western societies.
18 WISH YOU WERE HER+E – (why rewire house)*+E. The clue is clearly an anagram given the incongruous fodder. “Dilapidated” a perfectly good anagrind. I liked the “message on a pc” because of echoes of Sting’s message in a bottle and because pc had me thinking of the thing I’m writing this on and not a postcard.
19 QU(O)IT – Actually not really containment but take the O (“round”) from Quito (Ecuador’s capital – not E in this case!) and move it to the middle and end up with a word meaning ring: QUOIT.
24 A+VOCA(l)+DO – I wonder if people still get invited to DOs – I only ever get invited to parties. And even that’s rare.
26 SCAREDY-CAT – (cry as cadet)* — not sure about “condemned” as an anagrind: perhaps hinting at a building that is condemned to be demolished?
27 STIR – double meaning: I suppose the people who go to dos and make too much of a stir might end up in the stir.

Down

1 SPLASHDOWN – not a bad cryptic definition: though once I had the leading S, I kept looking for sea???????.
2 CONFORMIST – (scorn motif)* — good clue with great surface, fodder and anagrind.
4 O(W)N UP – So I’m going to make a giant leap and say, without checking, that in cricket (like soccer) there are two sides ON and off.
5 DROP S+C+ONE – British pancake. Had to look this up.
6 WINDOW DRESSING – One nounal meaning of “light” is WINDOW.
7 ROBE – Hidden in “CaiRO BEautician’s”. The possessive apostrophe is supposed to indicate this: I wonder if this isn’t just a little too pithy.
8 HASH – double meaning: if this was a 3-letter light, the same clue could also produce pot.
9 BERKELEY SQUARE – Busby BERKELEY was the canonic Hollywood musical choreographer. And someone “following tradition” is a SQUARE. At least was when I was boy.
14 GREEN BER(E)T – BERT’s our boy this time, short for Albert: interestingly if we parsed this as B(E)RET we’d end up with Bret as our boy but it’s not a diminutive so I vote for BERT. And GREEN BERETs are American “commandos” so “English” serves to mislead which is nice.
15 TYP(EWRI)TER – (pretty)* contains (wire)*. Nice choice of topical anagrinds: “faulty” and “loose” in the context of “wire”.
22 B(AS)S– Outskirts of BownesS contains AS (when).

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