Reviews
index
| & lit. homepage | Try the
puzzle
|
I |
N THE END there’s nothing
too tricky in this competition puzzle, though a couple of the clues defy easy
parsing. Dr Watson has had to take a best guess at how OLD TOM at 5 down works.
One topical reference might pass some solvers by if they’re unfamiliar with the
name or role of Cressida Dick. The competition word CLEARING is an interesting
challenge. While it’s fairly friendly for wordplay,
it’s often difficult to define an -ING word without using another one – though
in this case there is the nounal sense of a woodland
glade to fall back on.
12. Cuddly toy?
Baby’s first, what one finds mother’s in front of BRUIN (b ruin) The parts needed
for this clever charade are both available in Chambers. Bruin is a rather
traditional familiar name for a bear, not necessarily a toy one, and mother’s
ruin is gin – it looks like a moralistic Victorian term, but OED’s earliest
citation is from the 1930s, suggesting it’s only ever been used facetiously.
13. When
high they show celebrating sport FIVES
(2 mngs.) References to high fives, and the squash-like
ball game, both requiring a firm hand.
14. Argument
to add when dividing … DISPUTE (put in anag.) Dividing what
exactly? Read on …
15. … Side
falling out including amateur plans IDEAS (A in anag.) … Azed shares the anagram of ‘side’ across the
ellipses. The joined-up surface of the two clues just about works.
20. One
passionate about tea, tense inside, downbeat-like THETIC
(t in theic) Theic is a rare name for a tea connoisseur.
‘Thetic’ from thesis means related to a downbeat in poetic metre. Azed used
essentially the same definition for this solution in No. 2547, four
competitions ago.
25. Requiring
more scratchings, I ordered thrice ITCHIER (I + anag.) Azed is careful
to use ‘ordered’ in the wordplay rather than the imperative ‘order’, which
wouldn’t fit grammatically with the preceding ‘I’. The surface refers, we
assume, to pork scratchings,
a less uniquely British snack than Dr Watson had thought before consulting wikipedia.
27. Cream cheese:
200 sandwiches a lad cut
CABOC (a bo(y) in CC) A nicely
misleading use of ‘sandwiches’ as a verb in the wordplay.
4. Regular
speed merchant – or not, one assumes TON-UP (i.e. ton, rev. = not) ‘One assumes’
should alert regular Azed solvers to the reverse cryptic wordplay, which takes
advantage of the solution’s vertical orientation.
5. Kitty
would do for this traditional gin regaining popularity OLD TOM (2 mngs.) It’s not obvious what Azed is alluding to here. The solution is a name for a
type of gin (archaic or not depending whether you find
it in Chambers under ‘old’ or ‘Tom’). A kitty could be a tomcat, and perhaps on
regaining popularity Old Tom would become just plain Tom again. Or would Kitty
do for an old tom in a scrap, while Old Tom gin “has
experienced a resurgence in the ‘Craft Cocktail’ movement”?
7. Junkie,
how one might describe Cressida?
ACID-HEAD (i.e. a CID head) A very topical and British
reference that might be difficult for solvers elsewhere. Cressida Dick is the
UK’s top cop as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and thereby head of
the Met’s CID.
8. Star of Oliver!,
say? I’ll give way to musical’s No. 2 in dance
JUVE (u for I in jive) The musical Oliver! necessarily
has a juvenile lead (you’d think, though with Ian McKellen taking on Hamlet at
82, who knows?).
16. Clapper
of course interrupting music coming up is thrown out CROTALUM (rotal in mu(si)c, rev.) Some unpacking required here. A crotalum is a type of
castanet. ‘Rotal’ relates to a rota in the sense of a
routine or course of activity. ‘Is’ can be be removed
from ‘music’, after reversal, to leave the required container.
17. My cousin’s a
husky hulk, one trained with little depth ELKHOUND (anag.
+ d) There’s no particular relationship between elkhounds, which are
hunting dogs, and huskies, though both operate at northern latitudes – but the
husky gives Azed a convenient adjective.
24. This, on
being processed, produces colorant CROTAL (comp. anag.
& lit.) A tidy & lit. The crotal
lichen’s name is unrelated to the crotalum of 16 down, being derived from a
Gaelic word.
26. Fixture in hob,
a silvery tool’s cutting edge
BASIL (hidden) A superbly hidden solution, benefiting from
the obscurity of basil2, a variant of bezel.
30. It’s pouched
– in more ways than one
EURO (2 mngs.) Azed exploits the
two meanings of euro as a currency and a large kangaroo, and their respective
pouches or purses.
Other solutions:
Across: 1. SPLIT-OFF (to in spliff); 11. COLLICULI (anag. in coli(c)); 18. ONSHORE (anag.); 19. PRELIM (re L I in pm); 22. LOOK-UP (2 mngs.); 24. CHAUNT (C + haunt); 29. ROADBED (ad in robed); 31. ALOUD (OU in anag.); 32. SOLUM (0 in slum); 33. TURNAGAIN (naga
in Turin); 34. KILLCROP (I’ll C in pork,
rev.).
Down: 1. SUBDUPLICATE (bus, rev. +
Duplicate (Bridge)); 2.
PURI (I R up, rev.); 3. LAUS DEO (anag.); 6. FLUENT
(flu + ENT); 9. CLEARING; 10. DISSECTED MAP (anag.); 21. TUMBLER ((i)t +
l in umber); 23. PEROGI (gore, rev., in
pi(E)); 28. BORD (Bord(eaux)).
Reviews
index
| & lit. homepage | Try the
puzzle