| 1 |
Complete unfinished narrow band on a silk scarf (7) |
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DOPATTA – DO + PATT[e] + A. Patte is a French word that acquired various meanings in English. |
| 6 |
Purgative? There’s spattering around indeed! (5) |
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JALAP – JA(LA)P. Jap is a variant spelling of jaup, a Scots word meaning spatter. |
| 12 |
Rightly stalling question about good art forgery (8) |
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TRUQUAGE – TRU(QU,A,G)E. |
| 13 |
Doubling endeavours checking territory for mozzies (8) |
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SKEETERS – SKEE(TER)S, where the enclosing letters are seeks backwards. Doubling as in doubling back. |
| 14 |
Maybe crack’s a little unsafe for a covered drain (5) |
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CUNDY – C(-a,+U)NDY. At the rave. |
| 15 |
Debar’s name for bit of bread? (5) |
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DENAR – An &lit: Debar us a city in Macedonia, and the denar is their currency; DE(-b,+N)AR. Very neat and clever. |
| 16 |
Daffy Duck’s leading tailed frequent fool? (8) |
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OMADHAUN – O + MAD + HAUN[t]. I created the answer from the cryptic, and said such a word cannot possibly exist. It does. |
| 18 |
Muscle protein not quite having effect (5) |
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ACTIN – ACTIN[g], a starter clue. |
| 20 |
Food includes large buffet (6) |
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SCLAFF – SC(L)AFF. One obscure word used to make another, in the best Mephisto tradition – sclaff is another Scots word. |
| 21 |
Planted in soil lupin’s a large plant (6) |
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ILLUPI – Hidden in [so]IL LUPI[n’s]. A tree, in fact. |
| 23 |
Freeman’s not at UK’s national gallery (5) |
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THETE – THE T[at]E. |
| 24 |
Reduced fines or compliance due to lord’s superior (8) |
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FORINSEC – Anagram of FINES OR + C. I can’t find C as a valid abbreviation for compliance, but it does appear in things like CoC for Certificate of Compliance. |
| 27 |
Established principles without manuscript volume (5) |
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CODEX – CODE + X. X is a valid abbreviation of without, as in ex-dividend. |
| 29 |
Spider perhaps holding end of cue in baulk (5) |
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REEST – RE([cu]E)ST. The spider you use at the billiards table, that is. |
| 30 |
Understand age computing’s brought about? That’s us (8) |
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DIGERATI – DIG + ERA + I.T backwards. The literal refers back to the rest of the clue. |
| 31 |
One-zero match’s covered in Russian news (8) |
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IZVESTIA – I-Z + VEST(I’)A. Kremlinologists will well remember this word as the name of an actual Soviet newspaper. |
| 32 |
Apparition? Charlie perhaps picking up electric current (5) |
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TAISH – TA(I)SH. Both Charlie and tash refer to a mustache. |
| 33 |
Augment limit to personnel applied to level in organisation (7) |
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ECHELON – ECHE + [personne]L + ON. English eche and eke come from the same IE root as Latin augeo, which give us augment. |
I too found this harder than usual, taking 1hr 24mins with aids and being left with several answers unparsed – 6A,
13A and 8D. Thanks Robert for the challenge and vinyl for the parsing of those I couldn’t.
Definitely harder than the previous two. Again the grid separates into four relatively isolated corners making the solve more challenging. I did manage to parse everything but four clues took a couple of days for the penny to drop.
Thanks for the blog vinyl1.
Well, I couldn’t finish this one without some dictionary help (plus Google, as my Chambers is far too old for the likes of “disco biscuit”). I thought there was some loose clueing here: “something round” for DISC, “large plant” for a tree and “with loose ends” when the ends actually had to be removed completely.
Following on from my comments last week on “happily” and “quickly” being used as anagram indicators, this week we had “reduced”, “waste”, and “to get hot”. Plus “spring” and “performing”, which were (by comparison, at least!) fairly normal. Yes, I find in Chambers that “reduce” can mean “to change to another form” and “hot” can mean “animated” – but I don’t expect to have to use Chambers to establish that a word is an anagrind; that’s a clue to a clue, which is a step too far in my book.
16a Omadhaun is the setter’s phonetic spelling of the Irish word for fool, amadán.
Omadhaun is listed in Chambers, so it is apparently the official English spelling.
See also Mike Oldfield’s album Ommadawn.
Agreed on the step up in difficulty, though I had everything parsed except ZA somehow meaning Hawaiian. Any enlightenment would be welcome.
I would think that my blog entry would have provided a clue – za is evidently a potent strain of cannabis from Hawaii.
Za is a slang word for pizza, which I assumed was the intended reference here. It’s not in Chambers but there’s nothing helpful in Chambers! It is in Collins for instance.
I thought it was slang for Pizza (za) with Hawaiian being an example (invented in Canada apparently). Admittedly za has not made it into Cambers but does seem to have reasonable currency as US slang.
Cross-posted!
Yes, a really tricky one but I never had the feeling I wouldn’t finish. Satisfying to solve.
C for compliance is in Chambers: another term for electrical capacitance.
I think C = “compliance” does come up frequently in Mephisto. It’s a commonly understood word in general English, so makes good clue surfaces, but has a specific scientific meaning and symbol, so is useful for wordplay.
As you say, Chambers has:
“C: symbol compliance (physics); electrical capacitance”
…but I think they are separate things, looking up the entries in Chambers:
“compliance: the linear displacement produced by unit force in a vibrating system (phys)”
“capacitance: the property that allows a system to store an electric charge; the value of this expressed in farads”
And we can also find:
“stiffness: in a mechanical vibrating system, the restoring force per unit of displacement (the reciprocal of compliance)”
Fun and challenging puzzle, and I wish I didn’t know this, but PIZZA and ZA are definitely slang terms for pot in the US, to the extent that there is a dispensary I drive past a few times a week that has a picture of a pizza slice on the billboard above it.
And SCLAFF is pretty much an everyday word in Scotland.