Azed 1884/AE AE AE
Posted by ilancaron on 13th July 2008
At first I found this fairly easy going - in particular, several rather obvious anagrams (34, 28, 20…) were my way in, so that I swiftly filled in the bottom half. I was then pulled up short by some very obscure vocabulary and wordplay (e.g. 24, 22, 10…).
The last Azed triggered a discussion about lowering standards in Azed surfaces. Same applies here — not all surfaces are equally coherent. DHM’s comment was that one couldn’t expect uniformly high quality week in and week out. I think it’s interesting to note if there’s a trend however…
Across
| 1 | AB(SORB,ED DO)SE - SORB (ref. ’service’ tree), EDDO (’tuber’) in base*. I cheated a bit on this — at some point, I noticed that I had DOS? at the end, guessed a 2-word phrase with DOSE, and went to Chambers since the preamble indicated that the term was to be found under the 2nd word. |
| 10 | SO(KAI)YA - well, it’s a Japanese ‘extortioner’ and KAI is a Maori ‘food’. |
| 12 | P(OE)T |
| 13 | ONE-ACTER=carotene* |
| 14 | A,HEN,T - it’s Scots for AHINT which is Scots for AHENT which is Scots for AHINT which is Scots for ‘after’. |
| 15 | ANK(O)LE - a kind of Ugandan steer. |
| 16 | TI(MET,AB)LE - many kinds of TIMETABLE in our world, and so is a ‘tide chart’. Ref. TILE hat (Scots top hat), MET is “experienced” and AB is our able-bodied seaman. |
| 17 | NIFF - hidden in “biN IF Festing”, Brit smell. |
| 19 | S(END)AL[e] - it’s a thin silk. |
| 21 | B,ARRET - it’s a biretta (clerical square cap) and ARRET is a “tribunal’s judgement”. |
| 23 | TODO - Spanish for ‘everything’ and shemozzle is a mess in Yiddish thus a TO DO. |
| 25 | REPECHAGE - (preach e.g., [lif]e)* — it’s a way to let losers compete to regain a place in a competition. |
| 28 | IMPELS=simple* |
| 30 | A,BO(R)D - means “gone astray” to our poet Spenser. |
| 31 | CURS,ITOR=rev(roti) - archaic term for vagrant, thus “old tramp”. |
| 32 | [g]OOSE - Scots for fluff, thus down. |
| 33 | MODUL(A)R - A in (old rum)* and def is “in standard units”. |
| 34 | HEPATOMEGALY - (at my age? O help)*, sounds unpleasant (distention of the liver). |
Down
| 2 | BOO[r],HAI[r] - tough clue: obscure word and complex misleading wordplay. Def is “backwoods” (in some parts of NZ!) and I guess “uniformly cut” is telling us to remove the same thing from each wordplay component. |
| 3 | SKEER=”skier” - it’s a dialect form (in NZ??) of scare, i.e. ’shock’. |
| 4 | RIOT(I)SE - I in sortie* — archaic noun for ‘extravagance’. |
| 5 | BY,N,EMPT[y] - another tough clue (obscure, complex). The definition is archaic ‘mentioned’. |
| 6 | D(RAN)T - means drone and def is ‘hum’. RAN (’was current’) in DT=Data Transmission. |
| 7 | DUC(K,AN)T - K for ‘grand’ (1000) and it’s a kind of Jamaican termite. |
| 8 | OTTO[man] - alt. attar (’perfumed stuff’) and ottoman is also a ‘corded silk’. |
| 9 | STELLA - At first I thought Sheila (ref. oz) but couldn’t make it work. At some point, it was clear that only STELLA fit, but I needed an email friend for the explanation (PB): it’s TELL (’order’) in SA (sex appeal==’it’) and ref. Sir Phillip Sidney (aka Sydney) who wrote “Astrophel and Stella”. |
| 10 | S(PAWN,BR)ICK - PAWN (’pop’), BR[other) in SICK ('mortified'): fertiliser for growing mushrooms. |
| 11 | FREELOADER - it's the competition word... |
| 18 | FREESIA=faeries* - my first clue |
| 19 | SEA(ROO)M - ROO's our 'jumper' in SEAM. |
| 20 | EN GARDE=grenade* |
| 22 | AE,MULE - AE! another obscure tough clue: it means emulate according to Spenser (thus "lost") which is 'match'. AE is Scots 'very' and a 'mule' is a hybrid thus a 'cross'. |
| 24 | D(OR)SAL - same as dossal which is an altar cloth OR ('gold tincture') in (lad[ie]s)* |
| 26 | CLINT[on] - it’s a ‘rocky outcrop’. |
| 27 | MOOL=rev(loom),A - slang for money as is ‘dust’. |
| 29 | P,REP[echage] - it’s homework: P for ‘page’ and then the first 3 letters of 25A (REPECHAGE). |
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