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6. Censure what should go clockwise going
the wrong way? STROP (ports, rev.) What should go round clockwise are the port bottles at dinner tables,
according to custom. STROP was a ‘Spoonerisms’ competition word in Azed
No 1528.
12. Clock, in case, went in SPEEDO (peed in so) Some lovely tricky wordplay here, and nothing
to do with budgie smuggling. Speedo and clock are slang terms for a
speedometer; ‘so’ and ‘in case’ both mean ‘in the event that’; and finally, if
you had to go, you went and peed.
21. Tea for one, all but the last muffin? CHAPERON (cha per on(e)) A
muffin, gooseberry, sheepdog, trout, spare wheel, etc., are all terms for an unwanted
third party at a date, several of which turned up in the competition clues for Azed
No 1216.
22. Savage (female?) may be addressed thus
rudely, or in unctuous fashion OILILY (oi Lily) It’s a while since Paul O’Grady’s alter
ego Lily Savage ruled the BBC schedules with shows like Blankety Blank, but she’s likely more Azed’s era
than Lily Allen or current fave Lily James.
27. Source of famous stone placed in course ROSETTA (set
in rota) Dr
Watson spent too long trying to work Scone into the solution, forgetting about
the British Museum’s prize exhibit, the Rosetta Stone.
30. Eddy up north, one recalling Simone? WEIL (2 mngs.) Another reference that should have been
closer to the front of Dr Watson’s mind than it was, but ‘recalling’ does
rather make it look like a reversal. Simone Weil was a French
philosopher associated with left wing activism and later mystic writing before
her early death in 1943.
33. Girl involved certainly recalled
significant engagement
PLASSEY (lass in yep, rev.) A beautiful decoy of a surface, banishing all
thoughts of military conflict. The Battle of Plassey,
fought in eastern Bengal in 1757, was a decisive victory in the East India
Company’s campaign in the days before the Empire.
4. Energy I put into place that feels special BRIO (l in bro2) It’s not so long since Azed used the more difficult “Where one feels specially at home? Therein I go” for the same solution, so Dr Watson was wise to the ruse, which involves the Welsh term for a place one’s attached to.
6. Like those old snaps, a jumble in the main SEPIA (pi in
sea)
One that’s obvious in hindsight, but it had Dr Watson searching for a
truncated word that could provide the solution.
16. Quarter of Kiev: pay is OK roughly
thereabouts – in these?
KOPIYKAS (K + anag., & lit.) The preferred spelling
‘Kyiv’ might have given Azed an even better &
lit. opportunity. The question mark is well merited, since kopiykas, at 100 to
the hryvna, itself worth about 4p today, wouldn’t be all that OK in a pay
packet.
17. An offer PROPOSAL Azed, and almost everyone
else, could be forgiven for forgetting that PROPOSAL was set by Ximenes as a competition word in 1959. Many of the
clues from that time are concerned the desirability of marriage to women and
its cost to men.
23. The old lose thread? Quite a lot by the
sound of it LEESE
(‘leas’) Dr Watson
assumed initially the thread’s length is measured in that favourite cruciverbal unit of distance, the
Chinese li,
but it’s far more likely that the homophone is lea3, a yarn measure of between 80
and 300 yards.
21. What Scots masochist enjoys, mistress
holding end of flail? LALDY (l in lady) Fifty
Shades of Muriel Gray, perhaps? A laldy
is some sort of thrashing meted out as punishment.
Other solutions:
Across: 1. PATIBLE (bit, rev., in pale); 10. ACROTERIAL (anag. inc. l); 11. TONK (knot, rev.); 14. CHIBOUK (BO U in anag.); 15. HAWKIT (hawk it); 17. PAPIST (p I in past); 19. PORTANCE (anag.); 24. PASTEL (a in anag.); 29. STOKED (OK in sted); 31. EMBASSADOR (anag.); 32. ROOSE (0 in rose).
Down: 1. POTCH (hidden); 2. ALOHA SHIRT (lo hash in airt); 3. TANIWHA (ani in anag.); 5. LOCUTORY
(o cut in lory);
7. TRESPASS (sap, rev., in tress);
8. RIEM (hidden); 9. PLOUTER (anag.); 13.
DISCRETIVE (disc + vite, rev., in re2); 18. SCORSER (corse
in s r); 20. NUTTERS (2 mngs.); 26. GOBO (B
in goo); 28. SODA (do, rev., in SA).