Azed 2165

[hankir]

Struggling with top right hand corner:

6 Gap-filler in (fleeting) fashion? Scotch preferred (5)
???RD or F??RD

12 Topers’ll get drunk thus? (6)
P???TO or Presto fits. Anagram of Topers.
But drunkards get drunk faster? Seems far-fetched.

Help appreciated.

[TheFrogman]

6a UR (gap-filler in speech) in FAD = FAURD

12a Yes, it's PRESTO, with 'topers' I think intended in the sense of hard drinkers (ie those who tope) - I guess they would get drunk quicker than non-drinkers, but I take your point!

[hankir]

Thank you TheFrogman.
( I do enjoy your website)

OneLook dictionary does not define Faurd. But Google provided well-favored (US Spelling) as one of the meanings.

I am also unable to parse 6D and 7D.
For 6D, the only word that fits is Foretop. Appendage?
Dandy is FOP. But don't know how antique shoe applies to the answer.

For 7D, I am going with Aret. RET means soak and Aret is "soak absent".
But don't know how Dunes and sad loss are to be interpreted.

[TheFrogman]

Very kind!

Yes, FORETOP - RE ('on') TO ('to'!) in FOP, meaning 'an appendage to a shoe' (given as obsolete by Chambers, hence the 'antique')

And no, not ARET but AREG, being A REGRET ('a sense of sadness') without RET (as you say, 'soak') - the whole being 'a Saharan area of shifting sand dunes'

[hankir]

Thank you again.

I looked up Areg in OneLook and also googled it. No meaning close to dunes.
After your explanation. I googled "areg dunes" and got the meaning you referred to.

Do not have Chambers. I am looking at getting Chambers 12th from Amazon.
But you mentioned a CD-ROM on your website. Is that easy to use? Better than hard copy?


Thanks again.

[TheFrogman]

I think that Chambers is a virtual necessity for Azed (or Mephisto) - you are doing exceptionally well to get as far as you have without it. Not just for the definitions of the solutions, but also the indications in the word play, which normally match a definition in Chambers verbatim (eg 32a today - one of the Chambers definitions for 'dead' is 'without vegetation').

I have both hard copy and PC versions (the PC version comes on CD-ROM and is then installed onto the hard disk - but don't do what I did and throw out the box together with the licence key, a slight - £12.99 to be precise - problem when I came to reinstall on a new PC!!). I like the hard copy for use at the breakfast table, but the PC version is good for the wildcard search (for instance a search for '?reg' will return 'areg' and 'dreg'). I also like the full text search, where a search for Botswana will return 'pula' (the unit of currency) and 'kgotla' (an assembly of Botswanan elders); and the anagram finder is a boon when I know what the letters are but can't be bothered to work it out! Peter Biddlecombe's review on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chambers-Dictionary-Thesaurus-ed/dp/0550101918) is perhaps a tad harsh, but he's right about the punctuation thing (it doesn't handle accents too well either). I have to say that I wouldn't be without them both, and the electronic version (which includes a thesaurus) is particularly useful when it comes to clue writing - it dates from 2005, but very little has changed between that and the 'paper based' 12th edition. Hope that helps!

[hankir]

Thank you.

Now ready to buy a Christmas Gift for myself.