Azed No. 2,512 Plain – Competition Puzzle

19 comments on “Azed No. 2,512 Plain – Competition Puzzle”

1. Thanks PeeDee.
   I took the COMPILER to be Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame. Agree about ATHENS.
   In METING, ‘meg’ and ‘posh’ are both words for a ha’penny I think – still not sure about the exact parsing.
   Thanks Azec as ever.

2. Doh ‘Azed”

3. This was the first Azed that I have ever completed. I am usually frustrated and ultimately just turned off by the unremitting obscurity of the majority of the answers. This one, for whatever reason, seemed relatively straightforward. I could not find that definition of PARIAL (my references saying “relating to a pair”), but I do not have a Chambers, and that seemed to be obviously how it was clued.

4. Congrats Cineraria 🙂 Yes, Chambers gives ‘pairial’,’pairal’ and ‘prial’ as variants of ‘pair royal’

5. I thought A then S referred to AS, a Roman copper coin. Many remember shillings surely—are we ancient?

   COMPILER and METING as Gonzo.

   Stefan

6. Ah, yes ‘as’ well spotted.

7. Oh, cribbage, I see. Not my game.

8. I had the coin for A THEN S too, but did wonder why a Roman coin would be found in a Greek city?

9. Thanks to PeeDee and Azed

   6d Def is “it”

   What’s “meg” about “tin”? “It” is a word that, “given” “out”, means “distributing”

10. Maybe I’m thick, but I don’t really understand Chambers entry for ‘All to’. The examples given are somewhat weird – how would you use the obscure words in that context, if any?

11. Thanks Dansar – ‘meting out’ means ‘distributing’. I had worked that out last Sunday – perhaps I should start making motes!

12. Nick, I think the meaning is that an ‘all-to’ is a class of mistaken words derived from mis-separating the ‘to’ from a word. Like a ‘mondegreen’ is a class of mistaken words derived from mishearing.

13. That’s a ‘Lady Mondegreen’, i.e. a fallen Knight that died in battle and when brought home they ‘laid him on the green’.

    A mis-heard lyric etc. But what does ALLTO come into it?

14. I found this explanation of the error:
    All to, or All-to. In such phrases as “all to rent,” “all
    to break,” “all-to frozen,” etc., which are of frequent
    occurrence in our old authors, the all and the to have
    commonly been regarded as forming a compound adverb,
    equivalent in meaning to entirely, completely, altogether.
    But the sense of entireness lies wholly in the word all
    (as it does in “all forlorn,” and similar expressions),
    and the to properly belongs to the following word, being a
    kind of intensive prefix (orig. meaning asunder and
    answering to the LG. ter-, HG. zer-). It is frequently to
    be met with in old books, used without the all. Thus
    Wyclif says, “The vail of the temple was to rent:” and of
    Judas, “He was hanged and to-burst the middle:” i. e.,
    burst in two, or asunder.

15. By definition, none of us here are thick (welcome, Cineraria), we just have the lapses some of us are entitled to.

    I thought 6 Dn was straightforward and it reads naturally: It [i.e. the answer] ‘s given [i.e. receives] out [i.e. the word “out”] for distributing [i.e. the answer is a word which, when accompanied by “out”, means “distributing”]. So ‘The answer accompanied by “out” indicates “distributing”.’

    And do we not all say “meting out” when we talk about dishing things out, distributing?

    Is that what you meant by “It” being the definition, Dansar?

    Stefan

16. The explanation of 23dn is incorrect because it gives two Is. According to Chambers, toze or tose means to elicit and so O (nothing) TOSE (to elicit) and I (shut up, i.e. enclosed in tose) gives OTIOSE.

17. Meting out actually means measuring out. The only thing I can actually recall being meted out is punishment, presumably measured so that the punishment fits the crime (as WS Gilbert famously reminded us).

18. Cineraria: There is a free to use online Chambers

    https://chambers.co.uk/book/the-chambers-dictionary/

    Not so useful for browsing but good for checking obscure words.

19. Thanks Tom – I think 23dn just had a typo, the I and O are neighbouring keys on the keyboard

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