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HERE was never any doubt that this month’s competition
puzzle would be a Special to celebrate Azed’s remarkable
tenure as the Observer’s premier crossword setter. As noted in the
Observer’s recent article Jonathan Crowther’s
fifty years are made all the more notable by the knowledge that he has never
missed a single week in all that time, and has conscientiously delivered his
judgments and comments each month to his loyal band of competitors in the Azed
Slips now archived on the & lit. site. Long may he continue into the sixth
decade of Azed. The consistency and quality of his grid construction and clue-writing
are of course also part of the story, and so solvers will have looked forward
this week’s puzzle.
The preamble is brief,
referring only to solutions that are misprinted by one or two letters, with the
misprints making an appropriate message. Dr Watson assumed this would mean
letter clashes in the grid where one solution’s correct letter replaced that of
a crossing solution. About a quarter of the way in, it became clear that the entries
at checked cells put the same misprinted letter into both solutions, and that
some misprinted cells were unchecked. The next insight was that the misprints
were symmetrical and fell on the two diagonals of the grid. From here Dr Watson
quickly deduced the message (the Z in 9 down helped a lot) as ‘FIFTY YEARS OF
AZ CROSSWORDS’, and worked steadily through the
remaining solutions. The biggest hold-up was a result of the ambiguous wordplay
of 1 and 10 down, as noted below.
It’s arguable that Azed made
his own task easier by taking a standard, though clashing, grid and simply misprinting the
letters in the diagonals. This probably underestimates the skill that went into
selecting a grid that gave the right balance of misprints per solution, and
moreover into the clueing of the misprinted solutions so that the grid entries
could be solved with the right amount of struggle and entered with certainty (excepting
the two mentioned). Clue-writing competitors may have baulked at the
competition phrase FIFTY YEARS with its awkward letters and paucity of
definitions, but Dr Watson is sure they’ll rise to the occasion in quality if
not in overwhelming numbers.
The final grid is given
below, and in the notes to the clues, each misprinted solution is given first
in its form as entered, then in its unmutilated form as defined..
|
F |
T |
R |
A |
F |
F |
M |
U |
R |
A |
G |
A |
|
C |
I |
E |
P |
O |
L |
I |
N |
E |
P |
Z |
O |
|
H |
E |
F |
N |
I |
E |
X |
P |
S |
C |
O |
N |
|
O |
M |
I |
T |
S |
W |
E |
N |
R |
I |
G |
O |
|
L |
O |
N |
I |
Y |
E |
R |
O |
R |
O |
A |
D |
|
A |
L |
S |
S |
E |
Y |
S |
H |
A |
R |
R |
I |
|
R |
O |
T |
A |
R |
S |
E |
E |
I |
I |
O |
S |
|
S |
W |
I |
G |
W |
C |
O |
A |
N |
C |
U |
P |
|
M |
A |
R |
O |
H |
O |
R |
I |
R |
A |
S |
E |
|
A |
G |
R |
S |
T |
L |
S |
O |
U |
S |
A |
R |
|
T |
D |
E |
T |
R |
I |
A |
N |
G |
L |
O |
S |
|
S |
N |
S |
E |
E |
N |
C |
E |
R |
A |
T |
F |
1. Turkey
slicing, a troublesome bother to attack from above FTRAFF (TR in faff; STRAFF)
6. Tax for wall maintenance, strange when reverting
on chief officer MURAGA
(rum, rev. + Aga; MURAGE)
11. Fine fabric: piece unravelled round centre
of cloth falls CIEPOLINE ((cl)o(th)
lin2 in anag.; CREPOLINE) The wordplay is straightforward, and Dr
Watson even guessed at lin or linn
for falls, but as with many of the clues it was difficult to pin down the grid entry
and its correct version until the hidden message became clear.
12. NY bum, male knife wasted, head cut off HEFNIE (he + anag. less k; HEINIE) Bum
in the (New York) sense of ‘ass’.
13. Elementary particle, ingredient of drop scones
PSCON (hidden; PSION) Dr Watson had always associated the name Psion with 1990s personal
digital assistants, but it’s also the name of a type of meson. Chambers defines
it as ‘a particle with a very long life’, though at 7.2 × 10-21
seconds, that should perhaps be ‘relatively long’.
15. Flesh-eating monster, width weltering in gore WENRIGO (w + anag.; WENDIGO)
Wikipedia offers a description of the mythical wendigo and its misappropriation
by Hollywood.
16. Garden shrub, single one, ordinary, found
round fringes of Italy LONIYERO (I(tal)y
in loner O; LONICERA) One of the
last clues fully solved, simply because of the double misprint and the
abundance of possible shrubs.
17. Course, wide ‒ leader’s set off ROAD ((b)road) A nice easy solve that’s clearly not
misprinted.
19. Vehicle for hire has damaged expensive car,
one coming behind SHARRI
(anag. + RR + I; GHARRI) RR
for Rolls-Royce isn’t given in Chambers, but is familiar enough.
22. Roundabout abroad is booming ‒ about time ROTARS (t in
roars; ROTARY)
24. Pin disposed of in knocking of drink SWIG (swi(pin)g) Azed uses
no connecting words in this puzzle’s clues, and certainly wouldn’t use ‘of’.
And as ‘of drink’ can’t be the definition, Dr Watson assumes it can only be a
misprint for ‘knocking off’.
25. One of bases for mast with cap on shaped
with copper lining WCOANCUP (w + Cu in anag.;
ACORN-CUP) An altogether tricky
clue, with a double misprint and a misleading use of mast2 meaning
various types of forest nuts.
28. Wild goat I’m surprised to see in bitter herb
dish MAROHOR (oh
in maror; MARKHOR)
30. JM’s appalled at having to hug girls regularly AGRST (g(i)r(l)s in at; AGAST)
JM is John Milton, to whom Chambers attributes ‘agast’,
though it’s a common earlier spelling that, like ‘ghost’, was probably modified
by Caxton’s Flemish typesetters.
31. Scottish snob mostly irritated about the States SOUSAR (USA in
sor(e); SOUTAR)
32. Awful slog, train to develop figures TRIANGLOS (anag.; TRIANGLES)
Not too difficult, but it’s a longish anagram for which anagram solvers
won’t have been much use.
33. Translation exercise, three quarters English,
held in Senegal SNSEEN
(N, S, E + E, all in SN; UNSEEN)
Held up by having mistakenly put the F from 1 down in the first cell, Dr
Watson took far too long to understand what ‘three quarters’ referred to, and
indeed to find the IVR of Senegal.
34. Ointment made with egg on inside, all over CERATF (tar3 in fec., all rev.; CERATE) Two obscure components make up this reversed charade: ‘fec.’ is an abbreviation of ‘fecit’ meaning ‘he/she made (it)’, and the ‘tar3’ is a Shakespearean word meaning to goad or egg on.
DOWN
1. March so fast, deployed round line: it
results in quick and easy win FCHOLARSMATS (l in anag.;
SCHOLAR’S MATE) The clue is easier
to solve than the other long entry at 10 down, but equally difficult to fit
into the grid without checking letters. Dr Watson solved it with only the S from
SWIG in place, which gave a feasible entry of SCHOLARSMATF. Having only one
misprint, that looked like the correct answer, which caused trouble in finding
a solution to 33 across.
2. Venetian painter replacing bit of paint with
mark having quivery effect TIEMOLO (Tiepolo
with M for p; TREMOLO) A good
penny-drop for the solver who knows, or discovers, the painter Giovanni Tiepolo.
3. Kidney secretion on hand
REFIN (re fin; RENIN) A minimalist wordplay that was too good to
pass up. Could Azed have made his clue even shorter by defining RESIN instead?
4. One affecting stealthy introduction is entering
entrance hallway FOISYER
(is in foyer; FOISTER)
5. Typical of old hound to move swiftly catching
sheep FLEWEY (ewe
in fly; FLEWED) The solution is Shakespearian
word that means having a pendulous upper lip like a bloodhound.
6. Troublemaker, one good at cocktails? MIXER (2 mngs.) Another simple clue to a non-misprinted solution
that helps the solver to get something into the grid.
7. Control is near with three Rs being disseminated RESRRAINR
(anag. inc. RRR; RESTRAINT)
8. A copper initially is often right in
arguing from cause to effect APCIORI (a PC + initial letters; A
PRIORI)
9. Rum ration, gallon set before Albanian monarch
GZOG (g + Zog; GROG) The monarchy of Albania started and ended with
Ahmet Zogu (who hopefully titled himself King Zog I), and crosswords
are all the richer for it.
10. Professor and I not right, in a mess regarding
colloidal system AONODISPERSF (anag.
less r; MONODISPERSE) Like 1 down, the wordplay
depends on an anagram of the misprinted solution, which allows for several possible
grid entries that replace the M and one of the E’s with a combination of A and F.
14. Make-up expert, I droop
in midst of set-to, disturbed TISAGOSTE (I sag in anag.;
VISAGISTE) The definition helped
this solution to fall into place more quickly than the other doubly-misprinted
solutions.
18. Make a mistake dividing bears, looking up pedigrees STIRRES (err
in sits, all rev.; STIRPES) Solvers could
be forgiven for not bothering to search for ‘stirp’ and its plural ‘stirpes’
after solving the wordplay.
20. Wild ass, male, one admitting sloth HEAIONE (ai1
in he one; HEMIONE)
21. Uncle Sam going into origin, rising like a bird ROUSAOT (USA in root;
ROUSANT) Azed’s
second use of USA in a wordplay after 31 across.
23. Asian fox, gold or yellow, in cabinet erected EORSAC (or2
in case, rev.; CORSAC)
26. US bird favoured following pass COLIN (col + in) The last unmutilated entry, quickly inked in.
27 Poisonous plant left in Italian mansion CASLA (l in
casa; CALLA) Another clue that needed
less time to solve the wordplay than the definition.
29. Struggle, confused and involving Greeks initially AGDN (G in anag.; AGON) Azed adds a little & lit.-ish colour to the final clue.
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