The Monthly Digest

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,709 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

The index page on  the Guardian website seems to have got a bit confused about numbering, having jumped last week to ‘2,798’ and clicked over this week to ‘2,799’; the number on the puzzle itself is correct, though. Perhaps I hadn’t fully woken up (which might explain why it took me a long while to spot the ‘hidden’ at 1a), but my progress on this one was less than spectacular. In several clues (eg 12a, 18a, 28d) the definition or wordplay included an uncommon word masquerading as a familiar one The limited linkage between the left and right halves of the puzzle didn’t make things any easier, so I’m inclined to put the difficulty of the puzzle at no lower than the middle of the scale. Those who had performed suitable mental exercises prior to tackling it may well disagree, of course.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 17d, “Endless fresh air in French region, what some of us regret leaving (8)”. The wordplay here involves OZONE (‘fresh air’, a loose sense of the word, given by Chambers) without its last letter (‘Endless’) being contained by the name of a French department. Since the latter ends with an E, the truncated OZON becomes whole again in the solution. Clearly it’s not an error, as the wordplay is entirely sound, but, rather like two answers in one puzzle which start with the same four or five letters, for me it seems mildly unsatisfactory. In my own clues I try to avoid this situation, and there are usually alternatives which include the ‘offending’ word in its entirety. Here, something like “Feel regret over fresh air, something British have left behind” would be fine.

Across

11a Mostly unforeseen rain damaged Aussie tree? (9)
It took me a while to think of the synonym for ‘unforeseen’ which must be deprived of its last letter (‘Mostly’) and placed in front of an anagram (‘damaged’) of RAIN – among the Chambers definitions, ‘relaxed’ and ‘off-hand’ would certainly have got me there quicker.

12a Trot, end of it? It may have obscured hoof (6)
This one may well require a consultation with Chambers, specifically regarding trot², at which point the first five letters of the solution will suddenly become clear. Is the last letter the end of ‘it’ or of ‘trot’? A question of purely academic interest, to which only Azed knows the answer.

13a Grand euphoria on leaving for Roman holiday treats? (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘grand’ is followed by a seven-letter word for ‘euphoria’ from which the consecutive letters ON have been lost (‘on leaving’).

18a Less of frequently broadcast Lewis! (5)
Azed has been just a teensy bit naughty here in deceptively capitalizing the word ‘Lewis’ – I’m sure that he would have preferred to ‘hide’ the initial capital at the beginning of a sentence, but it’s hard to see how he could have done that and achieved a surface reading which continued to suggest that Morse’s former sidekick was hogging the airwaves. If you ignore the capital and take advice from Chambers, you will see how the answer fits with the wordplay, where a five-letter word for ‘frequently’ with the letters OF omitted (‘Less of’) combines with a two-letter word for ‘[currently being] broadcast’.

20a Vamp, cocotte, favourite dropped (5)
An eight-letter cocotte has a three-letter word for ‘favourite’ taken away (‘dropped’) to produce a word which equates roughly to vamp² in Chambers – actually, the Chambers definition, emphasizing the inartistic nature of the latter, makes the two verbs seem closer in meaning than the OED does.

27a River level reduced? Chap’ll net that sort of yabby (5)
The usual abbreviation of ‘River’ and a single letter designating a particular exam, formerly taken by school students in England and Wales, are contained by a three-letter word for a chap (“Chap’ll net that”). Azed is clearly something of an expert on antipodean crustaceans, so I’ll take his word for it regarding the definition.

31a I exude strong odour – nothing against lives containing that (6)
The single-letter representation of ‘nothing’, the single letter for ‘against, and a two-letter word meaning ‘lives’ are put around (‘containing’) a two-letter abbreviation for a strong – and typically unpleasant – odour (‘that’, ie ‘strong odour’).

33a Slip-on, dry, puckering in the middle (6)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘dry’ in the abstinent sense has a word for puckering put inside; the solution is hyphenated, 1-5.

34a What’ll get such root veg in flourishing – dewiness? (6)
A composite anagram, though not perhaps one of Premier League standard, where the answer (‘such root veg’) and IN can be rearranged (‘flourishing’) to produce DEWINESS. The phrasing of the clue just about works cryptically.

Down

1d Exploit including Custer being trounced with soldiers in old uniform (singular) (12)
A three-letter exploit contains an anagram (‘being trounced’) of CUSTER followed by a familiar three-letter word for ‘soldiers’. The ‘(singular)’ is there because Chambers indicates that when having the required sense the answer is usually in the plural.

2d Rubinstein often includes it added to page in Bach’s score? (8)
The great Polish-American pianist liked to be known as ‘Arthur’ in English-speaking countries (as well as America 😉), but here it is the five-letter name given to him by his parents (ie ‘Rubinstein often’) which contains (‘includes’) IT (from the clue), the combination being preceded by (‘added to’) the usual abbreviation for ‘page’. Bach appears in the definition to show that the answer is the German form of a word for a musical score, being itself defined as “Zusammenstellung aller zu einem Musikstück gehörenden Stimmen”. So there.

8d Protection for warhorse farm fashioned in links (9)
An anagram (‘fashioned’) of FARM is contained by something which consists of multiple links.

10d A raincoat inside a vest is hiding dietary shortages (12)
The four-letter Japanese hempen raincoat last seen in 2,702 makes another appearance (a few days late for those living round here). Here it is preceded by A (from the clue) and contained by another A (also from the clue) and an anagram of VEST IS. There is only one possible anagram indicator, the intransitive participle ‘hiding’. I would suggest that Azed has chosen the ‘least worst’ option which allows the surface reading to work, but it is left to readers to decide where the sole Chambers definition of the verb, “to go into, or to stay in, concealment”, suggests any kind of rearrangement or disturbance.

14d Alchemist’s compound friar briefly included in hot meal, cooked (9)
The ‘friar briefly’ who is to be included in an anagram (‘cooked’) of HOT MEAL is not an abbreviation of ‘friar’ but of ‘brother’.

19d Barges, heavy weight, opening connecting part (7)
A three-letter ‘heavy weight’ is put inside (‘opening’) a word from anatomy for a connecting part, taken directly from the Latin for a bridge (which could in turn be ‘asinorum’ or ‘Fabricius’).

24d Something to recline on I chucked in quarry (6)
The letter I (from the clue) is ‘chucked into’ a word for the object of a pursuit (‘quarry’), more often used to describe the pursuit itself.

28d Harrow, as of old, finally ends off (4)
Another one which will repay a look at Chambers, the definition relating to harrow². The wordplay has both words in a (2,4) phrase meaning ‘finally’ losing their last letters (‘ends off’).

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,708 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

This wasn’t the easiest Azed, but it was a long way from being the most difficult, with several ‘hiddens’ and some straightforward anagrams helping to smooth the solver’s passage. Having considered the clue for 17a at some length, I can only conclude that it is faulty.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 14a, “Cry from anonymous boat (4)”. I very recently had an electronic conversation with a correspondent about types of &lit clue and – lo and behold – Azed has provided an example of one subspecies here. In the ‘true’ &lit, such as Colin Dexter’s “Item gran arranged family slides in?” for MAGIC LANTERN, the entire clue serves both as a cryptic indication of the answer (in this example CLAN ‘slides into’ an anagram of ITEM GRAN) and as a definition of it – due to the nature of such clues, this will rarely, if ever, be a succinct ‘dictionary-style’ definition, rather an indication of the solution. A top-notch &lit clue is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the clue writer’s art, but the intrinsic difficulty of producing them often manifests itself either in strained wordplay – the &lit can contain superfluous words as long as they do not adversely affect the cryptic interpretation – or extremely ‘loose’ definitions.

The clue here is not a true &lit, and indeed it could be considered to be a simple definition + wordplay clue, the definition being ‘Cry’. However, there is no doubt that the words ‘from anonymous boat’ enhance the definition, and the question mark at the end serves to indicate that the cry might or might not come from an anonymous boat. This is therefore a clue of the type which Ximenes termed an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the entire clue serves as the definition of the answer but only part of the clue leads cryptically to it.

Across

12a Wild Irish robber getting cut in loot (8)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] cut [the outer surface of]’ is contained by a word meaning ‘[to] loot’ or ‘to violate’.

16a Acid that ruins coutil (6)
My first thought was that ‘Acid’ was an inaccurate definition, but since Chambers gives a meaning of the answer as ‘containing [a particular] acid’, then I suppose that it could be argued that  ‘having the properties of an acid’ could come to much the same thing. In any event, I tend to be relaxed about slightly questionable definitions when the wordplay is as simple as the one here.

17a Falconer’s charge, one held in three lines (7)
I do my breakfast solve without Chambers, checking as necessary after (replete with Toastie) I retire to the blogging room. For this clue, I wrote in an answer ending in L, assuming that the result of the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ being ‘held in’ a six-letter word for a male hawk would turn out to mean ‘a group of three lines’. I realised my error when 13d produced a clash at the intersection of the two entries, but whilst the ‘three lines’ could potentially supply either the answer or an alternative six-letter spelling which would be ‘holding’ the ‘one’, there is no bird of prey which fits the bill (no pun intended). Chambers does offer a nine-letter hawk which could produce the required answer by the omission of EL (or LE), but the wordplay as it stands can’t account for that. Something like “Three lines – turned out one such has been released from falconer’s charge” would work [TIERCELET – L(in)E].

19a Carmen, say, individual life-force around opera’s denouement (4)
The last letter (denouement) of ‘opera’ is contained by the three-letter word from Chinese medicine for an individual’s life-force (as well as being a letter of the Greek alphabet). Bizet’s opera was based on a novella by Prosper Mérimée, who got the idea from a story told to him by the Spanish Countess de Montijo. He wrote to her, “It was about that ruffian from Málaga who had killed his mistress, who consecrated herself exclusively to the public. As I have been studying the Gypsies for some time, I have made my heroine a Gypsy.” She remains so in the opera, but is arguably only a heroine in the non-judgmental sense of ‘the central female character in a story, play, film, etc.’

21a Brilliant performer topping bill, taking wing with luminance (7)
A four-letter word for a performer who tops the bill contains a two-letter (US) term for a wing which gives a building a particular shape and the standard abbreviation for ‘luminance’.

26a Reticent nursemaid, thoroughly contained (8)
Both the solution and the nursemaid come from France, with the latter containing a three-letter word meaning ‘thoroughly’, or ‘completely’, as seen in phrases such as  ‘decked ??? or ‘rigged ???’.

28a Case, note, leading to jail (6, 2 words)
A five-letter word for a zoological, botanical or anatomical sheath and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘note’ produce a (3,3) slang term for jail. Incidentally, Azed will never use ‘note’ to indicate an arbitrary letter between A and G; I suspect that his view is similar to mine, that it would be akin to using ‘letter’ to indicate a single character between A and Z.

31a Necklace for Roman (4)
A neat clue, a familiar two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘for’ being followed by a two-letter abbreviation applied to people or things associated with a specific religion.

32a One applying pressure or trailing calamity? I’d back off (8)
The letters OR (from the clue) are here following (‘trailing’) an eight-letter word for ‘calamity’ or ‘extreme suffering’ from which a reversal (‘back’) of ID has been removed (‘off’).

33a Instalment as before controls a wee bittie mixed (old) (13)
The sort of controls that would be helpful when riding a horse combine with four-letter words for a small portion (Scots) and for ‘mixed’ (an old past participle of an archaic word). The ‘as before’ on this occasion does not indicate an obsolete term but is actually part of the definition.

Down

2d Chef after removing tail brought round hot salmon (4)
A rather prosaic term for a chef is deprived of its last letter (‘removing tail’) and put round the usual abbreviation for ‘hot’.

4d Estates of a kind, special, landed with time in a bundle (11, 2 words)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘special’ and a three-letter word meaning ‘landed’ are followed by a five-letter word for a bundle ( sometimes surgical, sometimes consisting of fruit) into which the usual abbreviation for ‘time’ has been inserted. The solution is (5,6), and the estates in question are the sort that would be the subject of a will.

5d Tough apparently, and long (6)
Another neat little clue, the two-letter abbreviation for ‘apparently’ preceding a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] long’.

6d Molluscs? There’s adult out in lake swimming with purpose (11)
The first part of the entry is an anagram (‘swimming’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘adult’, OUT IN, and the usual abbreviation for lake. A four-letter word for an aim or purpose brings up the rear.

9d What’s left of joint cut short? (5)
A double definition clue, where a misspent youth (or, indeed, misspent adulthood) could be helpful in identifying the rolled-up piece of cardboard, often culled from the flap of a cigarette packet, which would form the butt of a special, handcrafted cigarette.

10d Cheerful maestro lifts his stick for this (6)
Another double definition clue; the second word is hyphenated and the first is not, but there is rather too much etymological similarity between the two for my liking.

13d Being shy, one constant in make-believe, hiding head (9)
The Roman numeral representing ‘one’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘constant’ are contained by an eight-letter word for ‘make-believe’ from which the first letter has been deleted (‘hiding head’).

22d Musician as once found in catalogue (6)
The Latin word for ‘as’ (only found these days in phrases such as the one for ‘as above’) is contained by a familiar four-letter word for a catalogue.

26d Lancaster’s pierced by his first (rare) outburst (5)
Those ‘of a certain age’ shouldn’t have any problems with this one – it involves the first name by which a major Hollywood star from the last century was universally known containing (‘pierced by’) the first letter of ‘Lancaster’ (ie ‘his first’). The solution is a rare noun form of a common verb.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,707 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

Last week the biggest challenge was finding the abbreviation which (according to the instructions) was not given by Chambers. In hindsight, the abbreviation in question was either so obvious that everyone who read the blog felt that it was kinder not to point it out to me, or it wasn’t there at all. This week, there may not have been many really difficult clues in the puzzle, but there weren’t many easy ones either: no ‘hiddens’, and less straightforward anagrams than Azed often serves up, the result being a puzzle which I felt was past the middle of the difficulty range. There were several clues (1a and 21a, for instance) where familiarity with Azed’s little ways was a distinct advantage. 

Clue Writers’ Corner: With competition words of seven letters or more, anagrams are very much in play. With shorter words, such as this month’s, a ‘straight’ anagram is pretty much ruled out (even if it were a good one, it would be far too obvious). Subtractive anagrams and composite anagrams are still possibilities, but if you look back to the last time a familiar, five-letter adjective was chosen by Azed, you will see that anagrams are not prominent. I don’t think that multiple definitions will feature so strongly in this comp, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the published clues were to include several subtractions of the general sort which appear in many of the clues in today’s puzzle, and I suspect that &lit entries could occupy at least a couple of the podium positions. Hard also to imagine that The Wind in the Willows will not be represented in some shape or form.

Across

3a Female playwright’s in character, one producing rewrite? (10)
There’s just one female playwright who crops up from time to time in Azed’s crosswords, and that is Mrs Behn, Restoration playwright and poet, about whom remarkably little (even the identity of her parents and thus her maiden name) is known. Her forename (together with an S on the end) is contained by a familiar four-letter word for a character or a role. Be careful to put the correct (unchecked) letter at the end of the answer, as required by both the wordplay and the definition.

11a Change for Afghanis? Not quite a thrill (4)
Crossword setters have found many ways over the years of creatively indicating local currency (including ‘African rhino’), and here the ‘change’ is the sort that might be spent. The wordplay involves a word for a throbbing, which also has a figurative sense of a thrill deprived of its last letter (‘Not quite’).

12a Lurker of old, person with inner swagger once (7)
It’s easy to get this one wrong – not only is the definition an early form of a familiar word (as indicated by ‘of old’), but the four-letter word for ‘[to] swagger’ which is contained by a three-letter abbreviation for ‘person’ is itself obsolete (‘once’). If that ‘once’ were removed from the end of the clue, it would lead to a different answer…and yes, that’s the one I initially wrote into the grid before finding that 8d seemed to have a very odd pair of letters at its start.

16a Old pub sign, sheltered, bordering green, say? (7)
The ‘green’ bordered (‘contained’) by a four-letter word meaning ‘sheltered’ is an informal term for a politician or a political activist. The solution is hyphenated, 3-4.

21a Wallops old snobs, left out of place (8)
Azed aficionados will see the word ‘snobs’ and immediately say to themselves “********!”, since it is an old informal word for people engaged in a particular profession (see Chambers). The usual abbreviation for ‘left’ must be moved to a different position within this word (‘left out of place’).

24a Monster taking over central position in journalism, making headway (8)
A four-letter monster replaces the middle letter in a metonymic term for the journalistic profession as a whole.

25a Cancel note replacing central section in exercise (4)
The central letter of a word meaning ‘[to] exercise’ is replaced by a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘note [well]’, producing a strange sort of transitive verb, unsurprisingly obsolete.

27a Discontinued award, English, received by painter, is forgotten (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘English’ is contained (‘received’) by a six-letter word for a painter without the consecutive letters IS (‘is forgotten’). The solution is obsolete, hence the ‘Discontinued’.

28a Young offspring casting on dry fly? (7)
A five-letter word for a young family member, lacking the consecutive letters ON (‘casting on’), is followed by a word meaning ‘dry’.

33a Puts a fresh flame to Jock’s chimney wreathed in endless smoke (his?) (7)
A three-letter Scots word for a chimney that has lang been reeking in crossword clues is contained by (‘wreathed in’) another Scots word, this time for ‘[to] smoke’, which has lost its last letter (‘endless’).

34a China trinkets prompting little chat (4)
My mother had a collection of little china ornaments bearing the crests of towns and cities, and the prized ones were made by a particular manufacturer, whose surname satisfies the first part of this double definition clue. The second word is an informal short (‘little’) word which perhaps relates more to scandalous rumours than to chat.

Down

1d Gentry leg it shortly after meal with no starter? (10, 2 words)
A four-letter word for a leg and a single-letter shortened form of ‘it’ (ie ‘it shortly’) follow a particular six-letter meal, taken late in the day, missing its first letter (‘with no starter’). The answer is (5,5).

6d Source of syrup in a pastry dish (Italian) when one pleases? (8, 2 words)
A four-letter genus of trees, some of which are a source of the syrup one might put on pancakes, is contained by A (from the clue) and a three-letter term for a pastry dish, the result being a (1,7) Italian phrase.

8d Mountaineer’s aid? Half causing one to itch when climbing (4)
Half of an eight-letter word meaning ‘having an unhealthy interest in sexual matters’ and (rarely, in a botanical sense) ‘causing itching’ is reversed (‘when climbing’)

10d Ageless jaunty? He’ll surely have them (7, 2 words)
The ‘jaunty’ in the definition is a naval master-at-arms, but in the wordplay it is an anagram indicator (and a slightly questionable one, truth be told). I’ve underlined the whole clue, because the (3,4) solution only makes sense in that context, although it’s the ‘them’ which equate to the solution.

14d Shilling and sovereign found circling street sewer (10)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘shilling’ and a seven-letter word for a sovereign (in the monarchical sense) are put around (‘circling’) the usual abbreviation for ‘street’. Be careful to enter the word that satisfies the definition and the wordplay, not the more familiar term which matches only the former.

18d Doctor treated rib, poorly inside? What MMR should deal with (8)
A two-letter abbreviation for a doctor (typically in the armed services) is followed by an anagram (‘treated’) of RIB with a word meaning ‘poorly’ inside.

19d Leafy old ferns arranged at fringes of party (8)
An anagram (‘arranged’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘old’ and FERNS contains (‘at the edges of’) a word for a party which should spring to the minds of all solvers.

22d Unploughed strip one leaves neatly arranged bordering church (7)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ is removed from (‘leaves’) an anagram (‘arranged’) of NEATLY which contains (‘bordering’) a two-letter abbreviation for ‘church’.

27d Evil demon making adult alarmed locally (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘adult’ is followed by a dialect word meaning ‘alarmed’, the result being not only an evil demon but also the pseudonym of Alistair Ferguson Ritchie, arguably the father of the modern barred puzzle and a prolific setter of Listener puzzles in the days where they frequently received no correct entries (and a prize was awarded for every correct solution).

29d Pupils once extracting nickel in chemical compound (4)
A term for former pupils (‘Pupils once’) is deprived of the chemical symbol for nickel (‘extracting nickel’).

31d Tea not found when going round bun place bar that mentioned (4)
It so happens that on Friday, for the first time in years, I had the pleasure of eating a bun of the particular type involved here. Very nice it was too. The seven-letter name of the part of London from which it hails has the three letters of a word for ‘tea’ removed from its outside (‘tea not found when going round’) to produce the solution.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,706 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I felt this puzzle was somewhere below the middle of the difficulty range, the only real headscratcher being not a clue but the information that ‘[Chambers] does not give one reasonably common abbreviation used’. There are plenty of common abbreviations overlooked by Chambers (L for ‘live’ and S for ‘small’ being just two), but I’m blowed if I can find the one that Azed is referring to here – I’ve gone through all the clues three times and, whilst I’m sure it must be hiding in plain sight, I’m stumped. What am I missing? 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 33a, “Follower of Libyan priest as in getting excited about a sanctus? (9)”. An anagram (‘getting excited’) of AS IN is put around A BELL (‘a sanctus?’), the result being the name given to a follower of a particular third century Libyan priest. The question here is whether ‘sanctus’ is a legitimate way of indicating BELL. Even with the question mark, I don’t think that it is – Chambers only gives the phrase ‘sanctus bell’, and I can find nothing to suggest that the word is used on its own in this sense.

There is a significant difference between using (for instance) ‘Labrador?’ and ‘Maltese?’ to deliver DOG: Chambers lists ‘Labrador dog’ and ‘Maltese dog’, but while under ‘Labrador’ it gives ‘a Labrador dog’, there is nothing similar under the entry for ‘Maltese’. The question mark is fine for flagging an indication by example (such as ‘Labrador?’ for DOG), but a ‘Maltese’ is not an example of a dog, and a sanctus is not an example of a bell. This is the sort of thing that many crossword editors will wave through (not least because it’s actually quite tricky to accurately indicate the relationship between, say, ‘sanctus” and ‘bell’), and therefore I wouldn’t generally warn setters off it, but if you are writing clues for a Listener puzzle then ‘Vera’ is no good for ALOE and ‘sanctus’ won’t do for BELL. There are usually alternatives – the follower here could equally well have been getting excited about a ring.

Across

6a Jock’s rent, beginning to stretch belief (6)
The first letter of (‘beginning to’) ‘stretch’ is followed by a word for a system of belief often sandwiched between race and colour. The result is a familiar word, but the sense required by the definition is specific to Scotland. As Burns once wrote, “Ye, for my sake, hae gien the feck Of a’ the ten comman’s A ?????? some day.” Indeed.

12a Short letter in pidgin revealing subterfuge (9)
The three-letter abbreviation for an epistle that forms part of the New Testament (possibly written by Paul the Apostle, possibly not) is contained by a term for a lingua franca which starts out as a second language (a pidgin) but then becomes the first language in a particular region; it is also part of the name of the nightclub at the heart of a 1958 musical drama which apparently gave Elvis Presley his favo(u)rite screen role. The solution is hyphenated, 5-4.

17a Buddy having a turn involving major artery (5)
The letter A (from the clue) and a two-letter word for a turn or an attempt contain a two-letter representation of a ‘major artery’ in the road transport sense, which memorably appeared in Norah Jarman’s Ximenes prize winning clue for CHEMIST, “I provide something you can rattle up and down in a box”.

18a Strip with lines inside corset (6)
I’m very surprised if Azed has deliberately chosen not to indicate that the four-letter word for a strip, which here contains the usual abbreviation for ‘lines’, is Scottish; I wonder if he has interpreted the Chambers entry as showing only the alternative spelling RUND as being geographically restricted.

19a See me, famous Lady, measure female reproductive cell (10)
Azed displays his knowledge of 21st century popular music, with the stage name of a particular Lady (taken from the title of a Queen song) being placed between the letters ME (from the clue) and a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] measure’, normally accompanied by ‘out’ and applied to punishment.

34a Story about Rechabite, idle chatter (6)
The only tricky bit about this one is translating the ‘Rechabite’ – a member of the Independent Order of Rechabites, a benefit society founded in 1835 to promote total abstinence from alcoholic beverages – into a two-letter abbreviation.

Down

1d Take off special cloak (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘special’ is followed by the Spanish form of a familiar synonym for ‘cloak’. The answer is unusual in apparently having two unrelated parents, an Italian verb and a bit of Cockney rhyming slang.

3d German in post-war period, not pro daring, I’ll follow (5)
A seven-letter word for ‘daring’ has the consecutive letters PRO removed (‘not pro’) and is followed by the letter I (“I’ll follow”).

7d Lick prune? (4)
The ‘lick’ here relates to speed, as in “that white van’s going at a fair lick”, while the ‘prune’ (as you might expect) has nothing to do with fruit.

9d Like oldie, lid drooping somewhat, maroon (6)
A word meaning ‘characteristic of old age’ (‘Like oldie’) has it’s first letter (‘lid’) moved downwards.

10d One hearty, sea rolling, chanting agreeably (12, 4 words)
A straightforward anagram which produces a (4,2,3,3) phrase, though I do wonder about that ‘chanting’…I can’t think of a sentence in which ‘chanting agreeably’ and the answer would be interchangeable, but I’m prepared to let the matter drop.

11d Within charge, string up female prisoner (7)
Inside a three-letter word for a charge, or something  owed, is a reversal (‘up’) of the word for the highest string of the lyre (one to remember, along with its companions mese and trite), the result being the feminine form of a French word for a prisoner, applied especially to the English subjects detained as prisoners in France and the French subjects detained in England in the period 1793–1815.

14d Sticky mass and disposed of by greedy diner (4)
Th seven-letter ‘older’ form (missing the U) of a familiar eight-letter word for a glutton has the consecutive letters AND deleted (‘and disposed of’).

19d Shift, the whole lot taken up for courtesan (7)
A four-letter word meaning ‘shift’ (in a nautical context) and a three-letter word for ‘the whole lot’ are reversed (‘taken up’) to produce a 4-3 solution which can describe a deer, a fop, or a courtesan – I suspect that Ben Jonson was referring to the last of these when he wrote “Hee sleepes with a ???? ??? euery night”.

22d Tie-dyeing technique that’s shown rearing rare wild horse (4)
The wording of the clue makes it clear that it is the tie-dyeing technique which must be reversed (‘rearing’) and the rare wild horse which forms the solution, but both are relatively uncommon words. An alternative clue would be “Rare wild horse overtaking bears”.

25d Discharge from limb in case similarly shortened? (5)
A three-letter limb is deprived of a single letter, and a four-letter word has the same letter removed from the same position (‘similarly shortened’).

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,705 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

There were some relatively tricky clues in this one, including a couple where an obscure wordplay element was involved in producing an obscure answer, but the three six-letter hiddens and several straightforward anagrams (albeit not always resulting in familiar words) served to keep the overall difficulty level close to the middle of the Azed spectrum. The clues were generally of good quality and made for an entertaining solve, although the across entries did feature a remarkable number of Scotticisms.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 24d, “Pieces in column are woeful (6)”. Putting a three-letter word for the pieces on a chessboard into a three-letter Indian word for an isolated pillar produces a familiar verb, which could be defined as ‘to wail’ or ‘to deplore’; indeed this clue could have been written as ‘Deplore pieces in column’. But Azed has taken the opportunity for the sort of misdirection which is often available when defining intransitive verbs. Take a verb like GRIP – apart from obvious ‘like for like’ verbs such as ‘grasp’, it could also be defined as (say) ‘are fast’, eg in ‘Those leading grand race in Paris are fast’; similarly ‘grips’ could be ‘is fast’. Don’t ignore the possibility of participles as well as adjectives: LEAVE could be defined as ‘are splitting’ and RUNS as ‘is dashing’.

Across

2a Moves from one picture to another, putting votes about strong personal preference (10)
A seven-letter word for the marks put on ballot papers by voters (not explicitly given by Chambers, although the entry for ‘X’ provides more than enough support) contains a word which I think of as meaning a temporary craze but is also defined by C as ‘an overriding personal preference or taste, esp trifling’. The solution is hyphenated, 5-5.

13a Weak Scotch removed from barrel? Jock’s may collapse (6)
A seven-letter Scots word meaning ‘weak’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘barrel’ removed, the result being another Scots word, this one describing a construction which is rickety or ramshackle, being (probably coincidentally) a blend of those two adjectives

18a Menial employee Jock’s present – something for his porridge? (6)
A term for the sort of menial employee who might be dwarfed by the large wheel wherein he finds himself is followed by a Scots word (good old Jock again – perhaps a different stereotypical Caledonian would have been good) for ‘[to] present’ (which Robert Burns hoped some power might do with the giftie to see oursels as others see us). The whole is a wooden bowl such as might be found in the kitchen of Hamish and Morag.

20a Venomous creature – overturned box on it (5)
The sort of box sought by Indiana Jones is reversed (‘overturned’) and followed by the letters IT (from the clue).

23a Part of stale dressing that is returned to trade (6)
For a moment this looked like it might be a fourth ‘hidden’, but in fact it involves a reversal (‘returned’) of the usual abbreviation meaning ‘that is’ being followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘to trade’.

30a The colour of Scotch? First denied in clink! (6)
A seven-letter slang word for prison (‘clink’) is deprived of its first letter (‘First denied’). And yes, the answer is another Scots word.

32a Childless one north of the border begging for wean there (5)
A two-letter abbreviation of the Latin for ‘without issue’ combines with a Scots form of ‘one’ to produce (you guessed it) yet another Scots word. Those of us who have a problem with relative geography of the ‘Kent = SE’ and ‘up north = Scottish’  kind should be fine with ‘north of the border’, as this relates specifically to the border between England and Scotland (although Chambers suggests that it should be ‘the Border’ when used in that sense).

Down

1d Deduction, concern agreed upon in time some way in the future (12)
A four-letter word for concern (typically now encountered only in the eight-letter word which describes a complete lack of such concern and might be applied to particularly bad driving) and a two-letter adjective meaning ‘agreed upon’ are contained by a word that Chambers defines as ‘a place or time some way off’ and which I believe I have only ever seen as part of the phrase ‘in the ??????’. The solution is hyphenated, 3-9.

2d Flying creature that makes murmuring sound catching worm (6)
The three-letter soft murmuring sound characteristic of certain birds contains (‘catching’) the sort of worm which is to be found, thankfully, in the sand rather than the ear.

3d Variegated stone, one pocketed by vagabond (9, 2 words)
The Roman numeral representing ‘one’ is contained (‘pocketed’) by an eight-letter word for a vagabond or (perhaps more helpfully) a turncoat, the result being a (4,5) term for a stone so called because of the markings which it exhibits.

6d Men denied food were striking (4)
The definition here is of the sort covered in Setters’ Corner above, while the wordplay has a seven-letter word for food being deprived of the consecutive letters MEN – this operation strikes me as being legitimately indicated by ‘Food denied men’ but not ‘Men denied food’, with (at the very least) a comma being required between ‘denied’ and ‘food’.

7d What’s suggested by iron making loss (8)
My immediate thought (presumably my long-distant Chemistry training showing through) was that ‘Fe’ would be involved, but in fact we have two definitions, one ‘straight’ and the other whimsical (‘iron’ turning out to be a verb rather than an adjective).

9d Gunners on post left in shifting scree, zigzag fortifications (12)
I think that the ‘Gunners’ here should be ‘Sappers’ – their two-letter abbreviation is followed by the sort of four-letter ‘mail’ that might be found in a 25 across and the usual abbreviation for ‘left’, the whole shebang being put inside an anagram (‘shifting’) of SCREE. The clue would, in fact, work if the ‘Gunners’ were simply omitted, since ‘On post left’ will deliver the necessary 2+4+1 combination. Interestingly, the original French form of the word for ‘a crook with a rack or notches for hanging pots over a fire’ which gives its name to the fortifications was spelt with the Gunners in positions two and three, but the modern spelling is the one which is given by Chambers, and which tallies with the last letter of 13 across.

21d This uni is overdrawn, one assumes (6)
To make sense of the wordplay here, you need to apply the answer (ie ‘This‘) to UNI, producing an anagram thereof, and then pre-process ‘overdrawn’ into a (2,3,3) phrase, which is where you put those rearranged letters. To understand the definition, you then need to replace ‘This‘ in the clue with the answer.

22d Strong stew Laplander is served around his capital (5)
A four-letter word (one of several alternative spellings) for a Laplander is put (‘served’) around the first letter of ‘Laplander’ (ie ‘his capital’). Had ‘his capital’ been ‘Los Angeles’, the result would have been a spicy sausage rather than a strong stew.

23d What sounds like key for small hole (6)
The ‘key’ in this neat homophone clue is the sort that might be found off the coast of Florida.

27d Composer all besotted with love (4)
Classical music certainly isn’t my forte (I don’t know my arsis from my alto), and I wasn’t familiar with the surname of the composer here, Édouard-Victoire-Antoine of that ilk (presumably known as EVA to his friends). I understand, though, that his Symphonie Espagnole is still widely played by modern orchestras.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,704 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

After the problems of piecing together last week’s jigsaw, we return to normality with a standard puzzle which had the needle on my difficulty meter hovering around the middle of the scale. A pleasant enough solve, although it didn’t perhaps display the élan of Azed at his very best. Having said that, he’d given himself quite a few tricky words to deal with.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 31a “Poet’s racket to reverse penury (4)”. It’s pretty clear that we need to reverse one four-letter word to produce another, with the familiar one for ‘penury’ being the one that runs backwards and the Spenserian one for a clamour being the answer. But couldn’t it equally well have been the other way round? It certainly could, and I’m not at all keen on this sort of clue, where only the checkers tell you which is the correct answer. The ambiguity only arises in specific circumstances: if one half of the ‘equation’ consists of multiple words, then that must be the wordplay, so in ‘Course going round a hill (4)”, the answer can only be ROTA (A TOR reversed). Likewise, all is clear when the reversal indicator is at one end of the clue and can only apply to the element next to it, eg in ‘Prevent vessels overturning (4)” for STOP (POTS reversed), or when the indicator splits the two elements but can only apply to one, as in “Bar returns containers (4)”, for POTS (STOP reversed). But the clue “Mistake returning beer (4)” is equally valid for SLIP or PILS. When you write a clue where one word is reversed to produce another, read it over and decide whether it could reasonably lead to two answers. If so, it is not usually hard to fix the issue – the previous clue could be written as “Beer returned in error” (for SLIP) or “Beer decline reversed” (for PILS).

Across

12a King and prince showing symptom of disease? (5)
Well, it was either going to be an abbreviation for ‘king’ followed by the name of a prince, or the name of a king followed by the abbreviation for ‘prince’. It turned out to be the former, with the prince being one made famous by Alexander Borodin, with a little help from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.

14a Red wine – treat flooring behind where it’s served maybe (9)
A two-letter word meaning ‘treat’ and a four-letter type of flooring (an informal shortening of a longer word) follow a three-letter term for the sort of place where red wine might well be served. 

17a Lied to deviously, universal where love is thin (6)
An anagram (‘deviously’) of LIED TO with the single character  representing ‘love’ (in tennis and other sports) being replaced by the usual abbreviation for ‘universal’ (ie ‘universal where love is’).

19a Senile Scots finish vermouth, and same again (6)
The same two-letter verb that appeared in 14a, here indicated by ‘finish’, is followed by two instances (‘vermouth, and same again’) of the two-letter informal term for the sort of vermouth which, along with gin, was part of a popular combo in the 1930s.

21a African folk, name occurring in old crews (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘name’ is contained by (‘occurring in’) an old spelling of a word for crews or ‘sets of people constituting one side in a competitive game’.

28a Rhyme to learn hurriedly, favour on leaving (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘to learn hurriedly’, as one might do in preparation for an exam, is followed by a four-letter word for a favour or blessing from which the consecutive letters ON have been removed (‘on leaving’).

33a Soprano, see, with little or no accompaniment (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘soprano’ combines with a four-letter Italian interjection meaning ‘see[!]’ to produce another word taken straight from the Italian language and applied, according to George Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to recitative which constitutes ‘the simplest form of Declamatory Music, unrelieved either by Melody or Rhythm, and accompanied only by a Thoroughbass.’ Sounds lovely.

Down

3d Glutton getting bill in NY that’s taken in spin (9)
A five-letter informal word for a banknote of a particular denomination in the US (it has a very similar sense in the UK as well, but here it would be a ‘note’ rather than a ‘bill’) contains (‘[ha]s taken in’) a four-letter word meaning ‘spin’ (and the name given to type of a lively dance). The solution is (4-5), and seems somehow incongruous in ‘a person who freely indulges his or her appetite for eating and drinking’.

4d Water pot that’s inclined to crack in Scotland, we hear (6)
For the second time recently, Azed includes a homophone clue where the solution has an alternative spelling which is actually the same as that of the ‘soundalike’. I can see why he has gone down the Scottish route (inanimate objects are generally not inclined to gossip or talk idly), and a look at the definition of the intransitive verb ‘crack’ in Chambers will tell you all you need to know, but the clue didn’t leave me with a warm feeling.

6d Overseas conscript favoured most of service taking in Cuba (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘favoured’ is followed by a four-letter word for ‘service’ deprived of its last letter (‘mostly’) containing (‘taking in’) the IVR code for Cuba.

7d Like silky patterned fabric Jerry put round his middle (6)
The five-letter word indicated by ‘Jerry’ is shown by Chambers as ‘derogatory’, and is the sort of term that (regardless of my own views) I avoid in my puzzles. It is put round the middle letter of JERRY (ie ‘his middle’).

9d Holy objects possibly required as boy marries (7)
A 3+4 charade given by the last two words of the clue lead to a pretty horrible word to define. It occurs as various singular versions in 16^th and early 17^th century oaths, and in The Merchant of Venice, Gobbo uses this plural form “By God’s ??????, ’twill be a hard way to hit.” It seems likely that it is a corruption of saintite, an obsolete spelling of ‘sanctity’.

13d Led astray in serious self-denial, unlikely to be thrown (10)
An anagram (‘astray’) of LED is sandwiched between a three-letter word meaning ‘serious’ and a four-letter term for self-denial of the dietary kind. The answer is hyphenated (6-4) and is an adjective to which jockeys in the Grand National would undoubtedly aspire.

16d Specify number among left-overs and trimmings (9)
A four-letter word meaning ‘specify’ and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ are contained by (‘among’) a dialect word, popular with crossword setters, for fragments, particularly those left over after a meal.

23d Viol leading dance causing collywobbles (6)
Another setters’ favourite, this time the two-letter Shetland viol, is followed by the sort of dance that you might associate with turkeys in the 1900s, the result being an informal, and highly expressive, term for a funny tummy.

25d Supplier for old soldiers providing a packing case, second to last (6)
A (from the clue) is followed by a five-letter word for a packing case wherein the the second letter has been moved to the end (‘second to last’).

30d Spanish dagger disembowelled one roughly (4)
A three-letter word which is often interchangeable with ‘one’ has its central letter removed (‘disembowelled’) and is followed by a familiar two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘roughly’. The ‘Spanish dagger’ is unlikely to cause much harm to anyone except gardeners who take a closer look at one of its leaves than they ought to.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,703 ‘Jigsaw’

Difficulty rating: (5.5 / 10)

How to set a ‘jigsaw’ crossword:

1. Set a normal plain puzzle.
2. Rearrange the clues in alphabetical order of their solutions, and renumber them accordingly.

Job done, although it’s usual to remove the numbers from the grid. It’s also wise to check that the alphabetical order of the clues is correct, particularly where two answers start with the same pair of letters – note that here clues 25 and 26 are the wrong way round.

Azed throws in a Jigsaw from time to time, typically to break up a run of plain puzzles, although the last one was 2,463, the best part of five years ago. I think this one may well have started life as a ‘plain’, because very few (arguably, zero) concessions have been made in the clueing to compensate for the additional difficulty associated with the format. I thought this one was pretty tricky, and wouldn’t have been a trivial solve if it had been presented in the normal way.

When it comes to solving a puzzle like this, the only way to start is to ‘blind’ solve as many clues as one can. Every answer that you get helps to establish the initial letter(s) of others – so if the third clue gives you CHIPS and the seventh FISH, you know that the intervening answers lie alphabetically between the two; if the fifth answer is COD, then answer four begins with a C and its second letter is between H and O in the alphabet. When you come to start putting entries in the grid, the first letters of answers are very important. Look at that nine-letter entry at the top left (labelled 1d in the grid) – not only does it provide the first letters for six across entries, but the lengths of those entries are also relevant; if we had established that one answer was MARMALADE, for that to fit in the slot would require there to be a seven-letter answer beginning with M, a five-letter answer beginning with R and so on – even if you’ve only got a few answers, you’ll be able to work out whether this is possible. I would suggest that if you can get the two entries that share a first letter in the NW corner, you’ll be on your way; after the notes I have added a couple of hints which may help if you are struggling to get started.

Incidentally,  Azed has a standard note for Jigsaws which tells us that ‘Every entry is in the Chambers Dictionary (2016)’. Strictly speaking, this is not true, as some answers (eg plurals) are inflections of entries and not explicitly given; for this reason, editors generally avoid such a statement, hence you will see ‘Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended’ even when all the entries are, to all intents and purposes, to be found ‘in’ Chambers. This wording also ‘fits’ puzzles which contain proper nouns not in Chambers. For my own puzzles, I’ve settled on the wording ‘All entries are verifiable using Chambers Dictionary (2016)’ when every entry is given by, or can be inferred from, Chambers.

Clue Writers’ Corner: Azed asks for ‘a brief explanation of your clue’, and it is important to include one. This should not only give a clear and concise description of how the clue ‘works’ structurally, but should also alert Azed to anything else which may not be obvious on reading the clue. This is particularly important for relatively new entrants without a ‘track record’ – if Azed can’t initially make sense of a clue, he is inevitably going to look more closely at an entry from a competitor who submits sound clues month after month than from an unknown. Apart from clarifying the wordplay, if you are relying on an unusual meaning of a word, eg ‘snags’ for Australian sausages, or on a reference to a particular person or place, eg ‘Mars?’ for BRUNO, you should always make that clear. So when submitting the clue ‘Street, also first of reds on board’ for STRAND, add something along the lines of “R(eds) in (ST AND), &lit with 2 defs, ref London street, Monopoly’. Azed knows a lot about clue structure, but don’t assume that he is an expert in pop music, manga, or street art. If you look at the explanations of successful clues in the Azed slips, you will get a good idea of the sort of thing that is appropriate. No need to go overboard, though, as he won’t have the time or inclination to read an essay.

1 Supply of food, first to last river fish? (5)
A five-letter word for a supply of food – and for the item on which such a supply might be presented to consumers – has its first letter moved to the end (‘first to last’).

4 Black crew maybe doctored barrows? (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘black’ (when grading pencil leads) is followed by a four-letter plural which could be applied to the crew of a human-powered craft (and to what they use to provide the propulsion). The definition seems wrong – ‘undoctored barrows’ or ‘barrows before doctoring’ would better describe the animals in question.

5 Aussie foreman, self-important when trailing dogie, say (9)
Here we have a five-letter word meaning ‘self-important’ or ‘annoyingly overconfident’ following (‘trailing’) an American word for a calf or cow (‘dogie, say’) which shares its spelling with both a leader and  a knob.

6 Wild feline that mostly plays with cubs (7)
An anagram (‘plays’) of THAT missing its last letter (‘mostly’) and CUBS. Nice clue.

9 Health reduced by half – but it may be double (4)
A (4-4) interjection meaning ‘Cheers!’ (‘Health[!]’) loses one half, it doesn’t matter which.

10 Undress as before? See where heart is in illness (7)
Be careful here. It would be easy to assume that ‘illness’ was the definition, and the checkers won’t tell you otherwise. But it is the word meaning ‘illness’ which must have its central letter (‘heart’) replaced by the letter whose name is written as ‘see’ (ie the illness word has ‘see where [its] heart is’). The answer has the slightly odd qualification in Chambers of ‘Shakesp etc’, which makes it unclear whether it is obsolete or not; Azed has played safe by adding ‘as before’, although OED does give examples of its use from the nineteenth century (but it sounds decidedly archaic).

11 Light rifle? Summer abroad taking in range with time (9)
The French word for summer (‘Summer abroad’) contains (‘taking in’) a familiar five-letter word for ‘range’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’.

12 One applies coating that may be repeated away from table put up (4)
A nine-letter word meaning ‘that may be repeated [from memory]’ has the consecutive letters TABLE removed (‘away from table’) before being reversed (‘put up’). The choice of reversal indicator tells you that this is going to be a down entry, another hint that the puzzle may have become a Jigsaw only during adolescence.

14 Not much of a rise? With one accepted he’s a clever dick (7)
A five-letter word for a hillock (‘Not much of a rise’) has the usual abbreviation for ‘with’ and a single-letter word for ‘one’ inserted (‘accepted’), producing a 4-3 solution.

17 Good behaviour displayed by monarch in writing (7)
If you see ‘writing’ in an Azed clue, it’s a fair bet that it will lead to the two-letter abbreviation for ‘manuscript’. Here this abbreviation frames the (4,1) signature of a particular British monarch whose state of extinction should come as no surprise to anyone.

21 Litre drunk I drained, one inside little old barrel (6)
An anagram (‘drunk’) of LITRE without the I (‘one drained’) contains a dialect form of the word ‘one’ (‘one inside’). The answer is in Chambers, but its entry refers you to a variant spelling which includes a D.

22 Fresh slice of sausage – try without a stuffing (5)
The first letter of SAUSAGE (‘slice of sausage’) is followed by a word for ‘try’ (as one might do to establish the proportion of precious metal in an alloy) from which the internal A has been removed (‘without a stuffing’).

27 Some coins amounting to pound found in Glaswegian drain (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘pound’ is contained by a Scots word for a drain which might put you in mind of a leading English woman cricketer before she got married and added her partner’s name to her own. Or it might not.

28 Handgun completely missing fawn (5)
An eight-letter (generic) word for a handgun has a three-letter word meaning ‘completely’ removed from it. The surface reading might suggest that the answer is a noun, but it isn’t.

29 Casts stop going on board steamer (7)
Like the ‘writing’ in 17, ‘stops’ often turn out to be organ stops, of which Chambers offers an impressive selection. Here the ‘stop’ in question is a fifth (hence the name) above the basic pitch, and it is contained by (‘going on board’) the usual abbreviation for ‘steamship’.

33 Self-consciously Scottish stuff, creative works in brown et al (10)
A three-letter collective term for ‘creative works’ is contained by a three-letter word for ‘brown’, with the combination being followed by an expanded form of the abbreviation ‘al’ in the expression ‘et al’ – probably best not to submit that last bit to close scrutiny.

(definitions are underlined)

Additional hints:

The entries across the top are clued by 6 and 22. The entry down the left hand side is clued by 5. All these clues feature in the notes above.

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,702 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

A nice puzzle that struck me as being a little above the middle of the difficulty range. Plenty of misdirection, as you would expect, several appealing surface readings, and some pleasing indications of wordplay elements (eg in 4d).

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 24a, “The old regretted being married again – sounds vulgar (5)”. This clue features two definitions and a (homophonic) wordplay. It is not uncommon for Azed to include clues with three ways of getting to the answer, rather than the usual two, and there are many successful competition clues in the archive which display similar generosity to solvers (eg the triple definition in the winning entry for TRICK in comp 2090). I once submitted a clue to Azed with three definitions and two wordplays (and an unfortunate misprint, but I don’t like to think about that) and a clue for the Sunday Times clue writing comp with five definitions (frankly, not one of my finest). In Azed competition clues, there is no reason at all not to submit a multi-wordplay clue (wordplay being any route to the answer beyond the first definition), particularly if you “can’t see the joins” between the components. However, in my experience modern crossword editors are rarely impressed by such clues, generally favouring brevity over complexity, and I would advise avoiding them when compiling barred crosswords.

Across

1a Subtropical fruit in small cake, firm (6)
The small cake is the sort that is soaked in a rum syrup, while the ‘firm’ is the two-letter abbreviation for a synonym of that word.

12a Fundraisers for German soldiers, number with endless disease (7, 2 words)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ is followed by a generic term for a disease from which the last letter has been omitted (‘endless’), the result being a (4,3) term (not in Chambers).

On 4 September 1915, the ‘Iron Hindenburg’ statue was unveiled in Berlin. It was 13 metres high and weighed 20,000 kg – and was made not of iron, but of wood. Many similar statues were erected in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War as part of a public fundraiser for the war effort, and depicted either military leaders (eg Admiral Tirpitz) or mythical heroes (eg Siegfried) – there was even an iron bear in Berndorf. Members of the public could demonstrate their patriotic spirit by paying to hammer a nail into the sculptures. The proceeds went towards the war effort, with the price of a nail varying depending on the material – for Hindenburg, the minimum donations were 1 mark for iron, 5 marks for silver-plated, and 100 marks for gold-plated nails. By late August 1918, the Iron Hindenburg had received at least 5,600 golden nails, 75,000 silver nails, and 780,000 iron nails. Most of the statues were dismantled after the war, with the Iron Hindenburg being taken down in November 1919 and sold to the public as firewood at an auction (nails and all, I presume).

13a Gives indecent treatment to turns, rare flop (4)
A four-letter word which can mean ‘handles indecently’ (as in Posy Simmonds’ description of an incompetent king with wandering hands – ‘he never reigns but he ????’) is reversed to produce a verb which has a ‘rare’ sense of ‘flop’

14a Close loose robe without need of tie (4)
A seven-letter word for a loose robe worn at bedtime has the consecutive letters TIE removed (‘without need of tie’). The nicely-disguised definition is of an adverb rather than a verb.

15a Rust got to lift (8)
The wordplay leads to a (4,4) phrase which could mean ‘got (something, perhaps bread) to lift’. The verb which constitutes the answer derives from the name of a particular wine with a rusty colour.

17a I’ll do a turn welcomed by king twice, or character representing him (5)
A three-letter word for ‘I’ or self is reversed (“‘ll do a turn”) within (‘welcomed by’) two instances of the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’, the result being a word used in signalling to represent that same letter (ie ‘character representing him’).

18a Otters swimming are exciting, endlessly snorting (10)
An anagram (‘swimming’) of OTTERS is followed by a word meaning ‘are exciting’ or ‘stir up’ without its last letter (‘endlessly’).

21a Grudge I held with chum around, rarely alert (10)
A six-letter word meaning ‘[to] grudge’ and the letter I (from the clue) are contained by a three-letter word for a chum (‘with chum around’). Chambers gives several meanings for the answer, all of them rare.

28a Total loss of appetite as before nurse accepts to assume as valid (8)
A three-letter waiting-maid or nursemaid who will be familiar to regular solvers contains (‘accepts’) a word meaning ‘to assume as valid’ or ‘to postulate’.

31a Twins dancing in do straighten out (7)
An anagram of TWINS is contained by the syllable which once represented the first note of the scale, largely replaced by ‘do’, ‘doh’, or, if you’re Homer Simpson, “D’oh”.

Down

1d Couples imbibing ten timeless nogs drunk as favour (12, 2 words)
A six-letter word for ‘couples’ that might be used of partridges, say, surrounds (‘imbibing’) an anagram (‘drunk’) of TEN without the usual abbreviation for ‘time’ (‘timeless’) and NOGS. The answer is the (6,6) plural of a (5,5) singular.

2d I’ll get installed in a room once satisfied (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is inserted into A (likewise) plus a three-letter word that started out life as a bundle of straw to lie on, then turned into a bed, and in the 1960s and 1970s was often used informally to describe one’s place of residence (frequently of the bachelor kind); it is also (apparently) US slang for a room frequented by users of narcotics. The solution is archaic, hence the ‘once’.

4d Part of old county division – I ask you about word (7)
A four-letter interjection meaning ‘[well] I ask you[!]’ contains (‘about’) a term for the sort of word that could, peut-être, be juste.

5d Love switching parts? Echo perhaps (5)
A five-letter word for ‘[to] love’ has its last three letters swapped with its first two (‘switching parts’). Sadly the Echo here is not the one associated with the Easter Bunnymen, rather a nymph from Mount Cithaeron who tried to cover up for Zeus and his nymph-mania, thus incurring the wrath of Hera, with the result that her erstwhile loquacity (in particular the originality of her utterances) was seriously curtailed.

6d Fuel not dried? Do this possibly (6)
A neat little composite anagram, where the letters of NOT DRIED can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form DO plus the solution.

20d Remove extreme pressure in draught (6)
A two-letter abbreviation (applied to lubricant additives which prevent metal surfaces from bonding in conditions of extreme pressure and temperature) is contained by a word for the sort of draught which describes a quantity of medicine taken at a single glug.

25d Simple bag down under, sounding foolish locally (5)
A homophone (‘sounding’) of an antipodean (‘locally’, ie ‘down under’) word meaning ‘foolish’ leads to one spelling of a word for an Australian bag made of woven grass or fibre. It is slightly unfortunate that the other spelling of this word is the correct (rather than the soundalike) form of the ‘foolish’ word,  so without the ‘sounding’ the clue would lead to a different answer.

26d See me with absence of sun in waterproofs (5)
Here we have a charade consisting of an alternative spelling for the third note of the Julie Andrews scale (ie ‘me’) and a (2,1) phrase describing the absence of the letter of the alphabet which is the abbreviation for ‘sun’.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,701 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Azed starts off his twenty-eighth century with a puzzle which I felt he had really enjoyed setting, featuring several nice clues and some imaginative constructions. Lots and lots of misdirection certainly helped to make for an entertaining solve. Had it not been for the two entries across the top being so straightforward, the difficulty rating might have pushed above halfway, but all things considered I felt that it was right in the middle of the spectrum. I suspect, though, that solvers relatively new to Azed may have found it quite tough, since it included a few elements that could either be labelled ‘only to be found in Azed’ or ‘only Azed could get away with that’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 28d, “Fate shortly enveloping king, overthrown (5)”. As a setter, there are times when you want to use a word in the surface reading of a clue (eg the adjective ‘nice’) which would not normally have an initial capital letter, but in the wordplay you need the solver to interpret it as a word which always has an initial capital (eg the city ‘Nice’). I’m thinking of a clue like ‘Holiday following nice summer’ for FETE [F + ÉTÉ]. Unfortunately, this clue is no good – while it is considered (just) acceptable to deceptively capitalize a word in a clue (eg writing ‘Trump’ when you mean ‘trump’), the reverse (eg ‘fate’ when you mean ‘Fate’) is a definite no-no. The way round this is to put the duplicitous word at the start of a sentence, where a capital is always required. So my FETE clue becomes ‘Nice summer after fine holiday’, and in the clue here, where a four-letter word meaning ‘shortly’ containing the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’ is reversed, Azed has ensured that the difference between Fate (definition) and fate (wordplay) is obscured by the need for a capital at the start of the clue.

Across

1a What’s netted in shallop, a herring? Yes and no (4)
You might think that ‘Yes and no’ is the definition, and wonder how a large sea-fish could be described as being anything like a herring. In fact, the ‘Yes’ is effectively part of the wordplay – “What’s netted in shallop, a herring? Yes [this is] and no [it’s not a herring]”. It could be argued that the underlining should extend beyond that single word, but in clues like this (and 9d) it’s a matter of personal opinion.

12a Homestead (unusually) taking on Italian physicist (5)
A variant (‘unusually’) spelling of a familiar four-letter word for a homestead is followed by…well, the letter I. Where does it come from? I suppose that ‘on’ could be a misprint for either ‘in’ or ‘one’, or the word ‘the’ could be missing (‘the Italian’ = I), but more likely the I is meant to be an abbreviation for ‘Italian’.  Anyway, the physicist in question was born in Rome and became a heavy hitter in the world of atomic physics. In 1934, he and some chums split uranium nuclei through neutron bombardment (as you do), thus paving the way to the discovery that slow neutrons were the best sort for initiating nuclear reactions. After receiving the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics, he moved to the US and built the Americans their first nuclear reactor.

15a Fix dodgy drain I found leaking in wharf (8)
An anagram (‘dodgy’) of DRAIN without the letter I (‘I found leaking’) is contained by a four-letter word for a wharf.

16a Drug for treating asthma, like 12 (briefly), name included (5)
A four-letter abbreviation for the nationality of our physicist at 12a has the usual abbreviation for ‘name’ included within it.

17a Ascetic getting drunk in place of debauchery? Rarely (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘drunk’ (probably confined pretty much to crosswords these days) is contained by a ‘rare’ spelling of a place of gross debauchery.

22a Classy lapdog, say, with brand implanted, more costly than most (8)
A single letter which was first used by the linguist Alan Ross in 1954 to indicate ‘upper class’ is followed by a generic term for the sort of animal that might be exemplified by a lapdog, into which a four-letter word for a brand has been inserted (‘implanted’).

26a Newspaper missing start of race (5)
Azed has been a little naughty with the wordplay here – we need to remove the first letter from a six-letter word for a race (of the Usain Bolt kind), but ‘missing start of race’ doesn’t actually tell us that. It should read something more like ‘Race initially covered in newspaper’.

30a Italian dish pa avoided as ‘smelly’ (5)
An Italian staple of boiled cereal (described by William Howells in Venetian Life as a ‘kind of mush or hasty-pudding’) has the non-consecutive letters PA omitted (‘avoided’).

32a Nark about tapsters causing hindrance? (9)
The six-letter tapsters are easy enough to identify, but the ‘nark’ which contains them is a bit trickier. You have to translate ‘nark’ into ‘policeman’, then into a particular sort of policeman, and then into the relevant three-letter abbreviation.

Down

3d Arabic ‘letter’, coarse alongside limits of ours, read backwards (5)
A three-letter word for ‘coarse’ is followed by (‘alongside’ strikes me as a bit of a stretch in a down clue) the letters at the start and end of our (ie the Roman) alphabet, reversed (‘read backwards’). The solution is ‘an orthographic sign representing an unvoiced glottal’, Ge’it? Go’it? Good.

5d Fail to follow suit, left without limiting doubleton in trick (6)
It would be easy to write in REVOKE, which fits the definition, but not the wordplay, where LEFT missing its first and last letters (‘without limiting doubleton’) is contained by a four-letter word for a trick. The answer is given by Chambers as a transitive verb, ‘fail to follow suit to’, which doesn’t tally with Azed’s intransitive definition. The OED doesn’t give it at all; I’ve read a good many bridge books and I have never come across it in this sense, only with the meaning of ‘decline to take (a trick)’. The related noun is a term used in écarté, but there it refers to the dealer not allowing a discard.

6d Crows working on inside of sheen mostly (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘working on’ is put inside a five-letter word for ‘sheen’ deprived of its last letter (‘mostly’).

8d Up-and-coming actress, last up twice, shy of horse (7)
A seven-letter word for an up-and-coming actress has its last letter moved up by two positions (‘last up twice’) to produce a word which, strictly speaking, ought to have been defined as either ‘shy’ or ‘shy (of horse)’, but either alternative would have spoilt the surface reading.

9d Magic herb from Olympia? Part of it anyway (4)
My parsing of this was as an anagram (‘anyway’) of part of the word OLYMPIA, but as Mike Thomas points out, it is almost certainly intended as a ‘hidden’. I could legitimately have underlined the  the entire clue, but it works fine as a conventional definition plus wordplay construction.

20d Anteater, cross about male partner, departs (7)
A three-letter word for St Anthony’s cross (on account of its shape) contains (‘about’) a word for the sort of male partner Tammy Wynette stood by at the altar on five occasions and the usual abbreviation for ‘departs’.

23d Like boorish types, exercise in sink? The opposite (6)
Rather than a three-letter word for exercise (as one might do to one’s trade) being inside a word meaning ‘[to] sink’, it is the latter which is inside the former (‘The opposite’).

24d It’s active in intrinsic quality of body passage’s opening (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘active’ is contained by a word for ‘intrinsic quality’ which also describes many elementary substances. The real item of note here is the way in which Azed has seamlessly integrated the definition of a particularly intransigent adjective into the clue.

29d More like liquid food, not pie, cold and wet (4)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘more like liquid food’ has the consecutive letters PIE removed (‘not pie’) in order to produce the answer.

(definitions are underlined)

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,700 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

With this puzzle, Azed brings down the curtain on his twenty-seventh century while furnishing us with the second offering of what is, quite remarkably, his fifty-third year. I couldn’t decide whether this one was in the middle of the difficulty range or just below – the high proportion of relatively obscure answers has persuaded me to go with the upper rating, although as usual the wordplays were such that all the unfamiliar solutions could at least be pencilled in without recourse to Chambers.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 27a, “Shoot up in academy cleverly (4)”. You might wonder why I have selected for comment one of the most straightforward clues in this week’s puzzle, a ‘reverse hidden’ (or ‘rekrul’, the reverse of ‘lurker’) leading to a botanical term for a young shoot. I see no problem at all with a section of text being reversed in a clue of this sort using a ‘down only’ indicator such as ‘up’, eg ‘Selection of horses I rode up slope’ for RISE [(hors)ES I R(ode)<]. In today’s clue, though, we are not being told to extract a substring and then reverse it, but to reverse ‘academy cleverly’ before extracting the substring. For ‘up’ to work in this instance, we would have to imagine ACADEMY CLEVERLY being written vertically before extracting the required four letters. Since the words appear horizontally in the clue, I see no reason why we should do that. Could the clue be saying that when the solution entered in the grid is reversed (‘up’) it appears within ACADEMY CLEVERLY? I’m far from being convinced. Therefore while I don’t think that the clue could be described as unfair, I don’t think that it’s entirely sound. So what about the down clue ‘Chap going west in Toyota Corolla’ for CAT [(toyo)TA C(orolla)<]? Absolutely fine as far as I’m concerned – the clue ‘as written’ leads to the answer, and whether it is then entered into an across light or a down light is surely irrelevant.

Across

5a Jock’s rusty old blade, very black, buried in clay rock (7)
As it happens, the two letters representing ‘very black’ could be applied to my ‘weapon of choice’ for tackling Azed (I’ve gone through a few of them over the years), although the designation would these days usually be written as ‘2B’ (or not, if you’re Shakespeare). The clay rock in which these letters are ‘buried’ is the sort that got fracked.

13a A biscuit a day (in short) limits ailment (6)
The shortened form of the name of a specific day of the week contains a familiar term for an ailment.

16a Sate e.g. spoilt sheik with barrels in wild bash (10, 2 words)
Here we have an anagram (‘spoilt’) of SHEIK followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘barrels’ contained by another anagram (‘wild’), this time of BASH. I’m not sure that sate³ in Chambers is an example of the (5,5) solution, as suggested by the ‘e.g.’, but the two things are certainly similar.

25a Type of clover range that includes an annual herb (10)
A five-letter word for a mountain range contains (‘includes’) A plus the name of an annual herb which might be used to flavour a pickle of the sort familiar to Ned Flanders.

31a Low old square, well worn at the edges (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘square’ has a five-letter word meaning ‘well worn’ (or ‘hackneyed’) surrounding it (‘at the edges’).

33a Sacred shrine one came across about rear of naos (7)
The letters ONE (from the clue) and a three-letter word meaning ‘came across’ are reversed (‘about’) ahead of the last letter (‘rear’) of NAOS.

Down

2d Darkness coming up, hold navy or stop (8)
A four-letter ‘literary and figurative’ word for ‘darkness’ is reversed (‘coming up’) and followed by a two-letter interjection meaning ‘hold[!]’ and a two-letter abbreviation for a particular navy. Chambers offers thirty-six varieties of organ stop, many (like the one here) named after a particular instrument.

3d Ballet movement is dismal with leg slipping around (8)
The letters IS (from the clue) and a three-letter word meaning ‘dismal’ have an anagram (‘slipping’) of LEG surrounding them (‘around’).

4d Look tired after Scotch? Mater, squiffy, left off scolding (4)
The wordplay here involves a nine-letter adjective meaning ‘scolding’ (and a noun broadly equivalent to ‘harridan’) having an anagram (‘squiffy’) of MATER removed from it (‘left off’). There are various ways to interpret the definition for a Scots word for ‘yawn’, the intended reading probably being something along the lines of ‘Look tired, perhaps, according to Scots’.

7d I’m typical of small fry and may get attached to pop (or art) (4)
Attaching the answer to ‘pop’ and ‘art’ will produce seven-letter words coined in the second half of the last century which could put one in mind of Damon Albarn/Noel Gallagher and Tracey Emin/Damien Hirst respectively. 

8d Alibi broken, dividing cake up? Bob has two of them (9)
An anagram (‘broken’) of ALIBI is inserted into (‘dividing’) a reversal (‘up’) of a term for a large, thick slice of cake (mmmmm). ‘Bob’ does indeed have two of these, and those who remember Carry on Camping would probably say the same about Babs.

9d Most of boodle needed for lounge (4)
All but the last letter (‘most’) of an informal term for money (ie ‘boodle’) is needed to provide a word meaning ‘[to] lounge’.

22d Argument for not running hot-foot (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘argument for’ and an anagram (‘running’) of NOT combine to form an informal term meaning ‘hotfoot’ (no hyphen, according to Chambers) or ‘quickly’. 

23d Husband aiming for rising sun’s rays (6)
A three-letter word for a husband and the reversal of a two-letter word meaning (among other things) ‘aiming for’ are followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘sun’. I saw a comment on a crossword forum the other day where a solver said that they ‘quite like clues with a bit of clever misdirection’. For me, it’s close to being an essential element of a good clue.

28d What Caribbean cook often turns to, a minced beef ma left out (4)
The wordplay here involves the letter A (from the clue) plus the five-letter word from Indian cookery for minced beef deprived of the consecutive letters MA (‘ma left out’).

29d Seabird? One mariner is disturbed by this, roamin’ (4)
A composite anagram, where ONE MARINER is a rearrangement (‘disturbed’) of the letters of the solution (‘this’) and ROAMIN. In an ideal world, the ‘by’ wouldn’t be in there, but the surface reading demands it.

(definitions are underlined)