Another excellent Azed with a twist. Omitted and added letters spell out: IT’S GOOD BUT LETTERS GET IN THE WRONG PLACES. The full quotation from Winnie the Pooh is:
Unfortunately, a line seems to have Wobbled its way out of the preamble, which could therefore have been misleading for anyone unfamiliar with this type of puzzle. It should have read something like: ‘Definitions in both across and down clues refer to untreated answers; subsidiary indications (such as anagrams) lead to treated forms as they appear in the diagram’.
| Across |
| 1 |
WINNIE THE POOH -I — The speaker with the Wobbly spelling. |
| 11 |
STEATITE -T — SEA = vast expanse; IE = that is. Steatite is soapstone. |
| 12 |
THRISSEL -S — An alternative Scots spelling of ‘thistle’. THRIL = endless thrill; E = English. |
| 13 |
GUNSLINGER -G — *(runs) = ‘runs amok’; about LINE. |
| 14 |
BIOTOPES - O — BITES holding P= power. A biotope is a region uniform in its environmental conditions and its biota. |
| 15 |
GOODWOOD -O — The race meeting is known as ‘glorious Goodwood’. Final letters of ‘camping abroad: New England’. I liked this clue. |
| 16 |
SEA DOG -D — SOG = get soaked; EA = waterway. In this case, the waterway is in ‘to get soaked’. |
| 17 |
AMIABLE -B — I taken in by A MALE. |
| 19 |
OUTPUTTING -U — *(got); about (surrounding) PT = part; TIN = cash. |
| 23 |
PEPPERPOT -T — PERP = a familiar term to those who read US crime fiction (for anyone who doesn’t, it’s short for ‘perpetrator’); in PEPO = a gourd. Pepperpot is West Indian dish of cassareep, flesh or dried fish, and vegetables, especially green okra and chillis. |
| 25 |
RULELESS -L — RUES, housing ES = second-person singular of être — so ‘tu es’ is the local (French) form of ‘thou art’. It took me a whIle to work out the ES part of this. |
| 28 |
ESSAYER -E — SR = sister; SAY = chance to speak, as in ‘have one’s say’. |
| 30 |
TATTLER -T — R after ALE (of which porter is a type). |
| 31 |
CHANTAL -T — H in CANAL. The woman’s name Chantal, according to Chambers, is ‘from the French family name, itself a place name, used in honour of Saint Jeanne of Chantal’. |
| 32 |
TELERGICAL -E — T = start of typhoon; *(call rig). As Azed points out, Chambers gives only ‘telergic’. |
| 33 |
AIR FORCE -R — ACE = skilled pilot, encapsulating I FO. A neat clue. |
| 34 |
GROSSNESS -S — GRONE is an obsolete form of ‘groan’. A beautifully concise clue. |
| 35 |
AGENTS GENERAL -G — ERA; after ‘nest’ reversed; all in *(lane). An agent general is a representative in England of an Australian state or Canadian province. |
|
| Down |
| 2 |
NEPIT +E — NET = difficulty; PIE = a book of rules for determining the Church office for the day. A nepit (also ‘nit’) is a unit of information equal to 1.44 bits. |
| 3 |
NAGAPIE +T — NAGA = cobra, swallowing T; PIE can also mean ‘a welcome luxury, prize, or spoil’, among several other things. A nagapie is a bushbaby or nocturnal lemur. |
| 4 |
EXPO +I — E = minimum of enthusiasm; *(i pox). I have mixed feelings about this clue — I like the deceptive surface reading given by the two meanings of showing; but I think using ‘in’ to get the I into it was not one of Azed’s more elegant efforts. |
| 5 |
HISTIE +N — HINS = plural of ‘hin’, a Hebrew liquid measures, containing about four or six English quarts; TIE = unite. ‘Histie’, also spelt ‘hirstie’ is a Scots word meaning dry or barren. |
| 6 |
ESDA +T — part of ‘broAD’S TEstimony’ reversed. ESDA is ‘electrostatic document analysis (or apparatus), a forensic test (or the equipment for this) used to reveal impressions on paper or evidence of amendments to documents’. |
| 7 |
PLUM +H — ‘Phylum’ (which can mean ‘a group of languages thought to be related’); with Y = variable, omitted. Chambers gives us one of its definitions of ‘plum’ somewhat extravagantly as ‘something choice that may be extracted (sometimes in reminiscence of Jack Horner) or attained to, such as one of the best passages in a book, one of the prizes of a career, or a government office as a reward of services, etc.’ Isn’t copy-and-paste wonderful? ;-) |
| 8 |
ORIGIN +E — I GIN (gin being a type of trap very familiar to crossword regulars); in ORE = a type of seaweed, also called ‘tangle’ (genus Laminaria). |
| 9 |
HEELS +W — L = line; WEE = a short distance; in SH (= silence) reversed. ‘Heel’ can just about mean ‘lift’ — maybe in the sense of ‘tilt’? |
| 10 |
OLDE WORLDE +R — OLRD = ‘lord‘ half raised; *(lowered). |
| 11 |
SUBSTRATAL +O — SOT = drunk; RAT = wretch; put into ‘LA bus’ upside down. ‘Substratal’ is an adjective from ‘substratum’. |
| 18 |
AERATOR +N — RAN TO; interrupting ER = Queen; after A = start of act. |
| 20 |
THERON +G — HER GO (‘her success’); in TN = Tennessee. Charlize Theron is a South African actress. |
| 21 |
NOCAKE +P — NAKE = incomplete ‘naked’, which can mean ‘simple’; holding ‘cop’ reversed. Nocake is meal made of parched maize. |
| 22 |
DULIA +L — ‘DULL’= cheerless; AI (ideal) reversed. Dulia, in Roman Catholic theology, is ‘the inferior veneration accorded to saints and angels (as opposed to hyperdulia, that accorded to the Virgin Mary, and latria, that accorded to God alone)’. So now you know. |
| 24 |
PYCNA +A — P = piano; YA = ‘ay’ reversed; *(can). Azed tells us that this classical plural form is not given in Chambers, which defines pycnon as ‘in ancient Greek music, that part of the tetrachord (chromatic or enharmonic) where the smallest intervals fall; in medieval music, a semitone’. |
| 26 |
SPIT +C — S = special; on PICT = ancient Briton. Chambers tells us that ‘spit’ has been used as jocular term for ‘sword’. |
| 27 |
SACS +E — ACE = 1; in SS (another crossword classic clued by ‘on board ship’). A sac is ‘a pouch or bag-like structure’. |
| 29 |
AYRE +S — SAY = speak; RE = about. ‘Ayre’ is an old form of ‘air’ — a tune or song, in particular an Elizabethan or Jacobean song for solo voice.. |
