Several clues where I’m not 100% sure, and one that at the time of writing quite defeats me. However, I’m sure that all will be explained.
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ORCHESTRATOR |
Speaker holding right box for composer (12)
|
| o(r chest)rator — Chambers has ‘an orchestral composer’ for this, so that makes the clue fine, but I don’t think of an orchestrator as a composer like Bach or Schubert — often one, but not necessarily; an orchestrator may just be a competent musician who orchestrates say a piano piece | ||
| 10 | WHEATMEAL |
Flour less some bran and grain we ate with ham mixed – little left (9)
|
| (we ate ham)*, then l | ||
| 12 | RINGSIDE |
Phone team for seating area (8)
|
| ring side — ring = phone, side = team | ||
| 13 | ANURA |
Amphibians, emanation gathering number (5)
|
| a(n)ura | ||
| 14 | GLEN |
Cheer without address? Resulting depression (4)
|
| gl[add]en | ||
| 15 | PELOTA |
Ball penetrates small shield in game for two (6)
|
| pel(O)ta | ||
| 16 | COHERE |
To be consistent, male takes central part in company (6)
|
| co(he)re — co for company might mislead: it’s core for company (seems odd but it’s in Chambers) | ||
| 17 | ROAMS |
Rambles over any moorland stretch? Leaders in ranges (5)
|
| R[ambles] o[ver] a[ny] m[oorland] s[tretch] | ||
| 19 | XEROTES |
Cross with stereo going wrong? Abnormal dryness (7)
|
| x (stereo)* | ||
| 21 | AUTEURS |
Directors from USA with time broadcast round Europe (7)
|
| (USA t)* round Eur | ||
| 25 | TUART |
Powerful house, not the first, showing strong growth? (5)
|
| [S]tuart — Powerful? I suppose so, in that some of them were monarchs | ||
| 27 | STERNE |
Writer taken to heart by westerners (6)
|
| Hidden in weSTERNErs | ||
| 29 | TATTLE |
Lie about abstaining – from such? (6)
|
| ta(TT)le | ||
| 31 | CANG |
Container with gallon? Chinese offenders have to bear it (4)
|
| can g — I should have thought that since Chambers says ‘Formerly’ it should be ‘had’ not ‘have’ | ||
| 32 | DROOL |
Such drivel lout of old is backing (5)
|
| (loord)rev. | ||
| 33 | APOSITIC |
Being averse to food one set in place, I see (8)
|
| a posit I c | ||
| 34 | ASAFETIDA |
Resinous medicine one twice swallows – reliable three times daily (9)
|
| (safe t.i.d.) in (A A) | ||
| 35 | HARVEST-FEAST |
Wherein you’ll see fat sheaves constructed with art – a ––? (12)
|
| comp. anag. & lit. — [fat sheaves art] … [a harvest-feast] — having done mostly Gemelo recently I’ve rather forgotten to look for comp. anags., but this is a good one | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | RHYNE |
Odd bits of whin interspersed with grass in west-country stream (5)
|
| r(h)y(n)e — I think we have to read ‘odd’ as ‘random’, rather than as ‘the opposite of even’ — seems a bit well, odd: you’d think Azed would direct us more definitely to h and n | ||
| 3 | CEDULA |
Promissory note strangely clued with first letter (6)
|
| *(clued) a — a is I suppose the first letter of the alphabet but when there are so many things in Chambers for which ‘a’ is an abbreviation we’d have had a more mainstream definition for ‘a’ | ||
| 4 | HADROME |
Elements of woody tissue esteemed capital (7)
|
| had Rome — have = esteem is there in Chambers, but I can’t think how | ||
| 5 | SMILAX |
Twining plant, treat mostly, as once, with chopper (6)
|
| smil[e] ax — it’s really ‘treat as once, mostly’ — also has ‘ax’ become accepted as a UK spelling of ‘axe’? Not according to Chambers | ||
| 6 | TENACE |
What one player may hold, a couple of cards (6)
|
| The two cards are a ten and an ace, and a tenace is a term in cards | ||
| 7 | RAGWORT |
Weed, wretched specimen, mostly grown wild inside (7)
|
| ra(gwor)t — gwor is (grow[n])* | ||
| 8 | TOILET |
Poet, rising but not special, in costume (6)
|
| (T.S. Eliot)rev. minus s | ||
| 9 | OLDER |
Not following circular, more out of date (5)
|
| 10 | WRAP-RASCAL |
Para crawls, chafing in loose old greatcoat (10)
|
| (para crawls)* | ||
| 11 | FENESTELLA |
Submerged by bog, (English) girl star in church opening (10)
|
| fen E Stella — fen is on top of the rest, so this is what ‘submerged’ means (I think) — the definition for FENESTELLA doesn’t mention that it’s star-shaped, so ‘star’ isn’t I think part of the definition, and the only reference I can find in Chambers for stella = star is under STELLAR’, where it says that the derivation is Latin stella = star, so I think that ‘girl’ and ‘star’ are both indications of ‘Stella/stella’ | ||
| 18 | SUNRISE |
What this stands for follows in USSR possibly (7)
|
| E (= East) is where the sun rises, and it stands for sunrise (?), and E follows (in USSR)* — I’m not quite sure what type of clue this is and I think it’s a sort of &lit., although ‘follows’ and the fact that USSR no longer exists casts doubt on this | ||
| 20 | OUTRATE |
Offer a better return than what’s fantastic? Cheers up within (7)
|
| (ta)rev. in outré | ||
| 22 | TENOUR |
Old singer, single, stuck in routine, given a lift (6)
|
| (ru(one)t)rev. | ||
| 23 | REATAS |
Ropes sea-rat running wild (6)
|
| (sea-rat)* | ||
| 24 | STRIFT |
Stone fissure causing struggle of old (6)
|
| st rift | ||
| 26 | ATOCIA |
Early letters, super, turning up, revealing a woman’s sterility (6)
|
| A to C (A1)rev. | ||
| 28 | TAPPA |
Bark of a kind, reverse of a soft stroke (5)
|
| (a p pat)rev. | ||
| 30 | LORDS |
Upper house in the place of the seal, beginning within (5)
|
| l.s. round (ord) — this defeated me until I found out that l.s. stands for loco sigilli, the place of the seal |
Re 9 dn: my Chambers has one meaning of ‘folder’ being ‘a folded circular’, whatever that is. So: ‘f’ (‘following’) removed from ‘folder’ gives you the answer.
I agree with LW@1 on 9D.
The names list at the back of Chambers gives “star” as the meaning of “Stella.”
I didn’t find this puzzle too hard, but didn’t know WRAP-RASCAL and need most of the checking letters to guess it, and I also wasn’t helped by knowing RHYNE and ASAFETIDA but now with those particular spellings and only know XEROSIS, not XEROTES. I liked the compound anagram at 35a and didn’t find it too hard because I quickly saw I could make HARVEST from some of the letters.
I seem to remember Azed previously writing clues like 18d where part of the wordplay refers to the whole answer and I suppose this clue is solvable but I feel it doesn’t have a proper definition. I also thought it was odd to use the spelling ‘ax’ without an American indicator, but I’m probably alone in having the word ‘Smilax’ remind me of the Pokemon Snorlax and so make me imagine that it’s a constantly smiling creature.
I had 9d the same as Luciano Ward@1, and like Cineraria@2 I thought ‘girl star’ meant a girl’s name meaning ‘star’ and wouldn’t like to think that part of the answer could be indicated twice by the wordplay.
Thanks, John and Azed.
Thanks for the blog . HARVEST FEAST was very good , FENESTELLA seems a bit over-clued , Estella also means girl/star so you can even ditch the English .
SUNRISE a common Azed trick , “this” is the definition which is then used to help with the wordplay .
Chambers gives “The East” as a synonym for “sunrise” and E as the common abbreviation for East, but that does not mean that SUNRISE (‘this’ in the clue) stands for E, it is E that stands for sunrise. The clue would need to read “what stands for this”.
I understand where Jay@5 is coming from, but I’m not sure it quite works; the east is where the sun rises, but that doesn’t mean east = sunrise. “Stands for” can mean represents and I think you could say sunrise represents east (since the definition is given in Chambers).
Roz@4: good point about Estella – maybe that’s why English is in brackets?
4dn: “esteem” can (apparently) mean consider or think, which perhaps brings it closer to “have”.
2dn: this didn’t strike me as peculiar when solving it – I guess I just took “odd” to mean alternate. It can mean “unpaired”, so maybe that was intended.
In the SUNRISE clue , definition (Ros @4) is surely not the right word. There is nothing in the clue that suggests the meaning of the solution- it’s a logical and conceptual mess.
James@7 – it’s simply a self-referential clue. The solver is being asked to solve an anagram in which the last letter of the answer is missing, but where we are told the answer itself “stands for” (and that, I agree, is a poor choice of words) the missing letter. It’s convoluted, and this example is not particularly well written, but it does have a logic.
My comment was OTT. I can see it works on one level. Sunrise is defined as ‘the east’, so E as ‘what this stands for’ after INUSSR*, is the structure of the solution, fair enough. But the two parts of the clue don’t cohere. ‘follows in USSR possibly’ seems to be just a random way of indicating the letters. That seems messy. Is there a way of reading it geographically so that it works as a whole? I can’t manage it.