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 2,648 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

A 13×11 puzzle that was, I felt, a touch above average difficulty. There were several clues which featured relatively obscure answers along with an uncommon word in the wordplay, and a couple of parsings were not straightforward.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 11a, “Approach nurse about place of higher education (5)”. The two-letter abbreviation RN is put around an informal term for a place of higher education to produce a 3-2 hyphenated term for an approach (or an argument). What I want to focus on here is the use of ‘nurse’ to indicate RN, an abbreviation given by Chambers as ‘Registered Nurse (N American)’. It’s universally accepted that an abbreviation can be indicated by the expanded form given in Chambers, eg ‘River’ for R or ‘chapter’ for CH. In addition, abbreviations from other languages can be indicated by their meanings, eg ‘that is’ for IE, and I have no problem with this being extended to any abbreviation which can legitimately stand alone, so ‘computer’ for PC (“He’s got a new PC”) or ‘newspaper’ for FT (“I saw it in today’s FT”). But I struggle to accept indications for abbreviations which cannot appear by themselves in English sentences, such as ‘good man’ for ST (“She’s an absolute St”) or ‘way’ for RD (“It’s a lovely tree-lined Rd”). Even ignoring the fact that RN is given as specifically North American, I certainly wouldn’t myself use ‘nurse’ alone in a clue to indicate it.

Across

12a Toxic substance from timber, mostly sandarac, brought westwards (7)
A four-letter word for ‘timber’ with its last letter omitted (‘mostly’) is followed by a reversal (‘brought westwards’) of a four-letter word of Moroccan origin for the sandarac tree. The answer is one of many alternative spellings for the South American climbing plant strychnos toxifera; Chambers suggests that it might be the name only of the plant, but the OED confirms that it can also be applied to the poison derived from it, usually known in English by a slightly different name.

13a Genetic sequence, inflexible, not shortened inside (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘inflexible’ (as a will or a fist might be) has the two-letter shortened form of ‘not’ inside.

15a Smallest part of gene that can change back insect’s dorsal surface (5)
If you are not familiar with either the part of the gene which must be reversed (‘back’) or the answer, the bit about ‘change’ should get you to the first three letters of the gene and an educated guess will give you the last two. Those who are not entomologically savvy should turn the word round and check the result in Chambers.

16a Like a type of butterfly that is clear within wood (9)
The usual two-letter representation of ‘that is’ and a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] clear’ (often indicated in puzzles by ‘free’) are contained by a four-letter word for a particular sort of wood.

21a It’s describing e.g. reasoning aright about what’ll make harp go wrong (13)
The hardest part about this clue is probably understanding the definition. The wordplay involves a seven-letter adjective meaning ‘reasoning aright’ being placed around (‘about’) an anagram (‘wrong’) of HARP GO. The Chambers entry for the solution isn’t very helpful, but the answer actually means “consisting of characters or signs, each of which singly represents a complete word”, so it does indeed describe ‘e.g.’. Deciding whether the definition really ought to be “It’s describing e.g. e.g.” is left to the reader as an exercise. I’m not convinced by “what’ll make harp go wrong” – it seems to me a questionable hybrid of “what could make harp go” and “harp go wrong”. 

24a Church shelf to let, not new (7)
The answer is an interesting word (which looks more like a verb) formed by removing (‘not’) the usual abbreviation for ‘new’ from an eight-letter word meaning ‘to ‘let’ or ‘available for hire’.

29a Source of many good tunes playwright takes to heart? (5)
My immediate thought was that we would be seeking a specific playwright, but it is a generic nine-letter term which must offer up its ‘heart’ in order to provide us with the answer, the name of a famous family of stringed instrument makers.

32a Old avenue I omitted in excursion that’s over (5)
A five-letter excursion from which one instance of the letter I has been omitted is followed by the usual (cricketing) abbreviation for ‘over’, delivering an obsolete (hence the ‘old’) term for an avenue. I have a distinct aversion to forms of the verb ‘to have’ being used as juxtaposition indicators (here the apostrophe-s), and I’m not convinced that among the many meanings of the word given by Chambers is one that truly supplies justification.

Down

1d What’ll give computer buyer a sneak preview? A crew’s deployed to limit fret (11)
An anagram (‘deployed’) of A CREW is to be put around (‘to limit’) a word meaning ‘fret’ in the sense of ‘[to] disturb’. I worked in the IT industry for many years without ever coming across this term, although I was on occasion involved with releases of software which were described by paying customers in broadly similar terms.

2d Beefcake identifying aim in Hollywood? (4)
A double definition clue, where the ‘beefcake’ (although its definition in Chambers doesn’t quite tally with the singular solution) will probably be more familiar to most solvers that the US term for goal or base in boys’ games.

3d One touch that helps to counter gravity’s effects (5)
A charade of a two-letter word for ‘one’ and a word for a touch which many will know only because of the children’s game of that name. The solution is hyphenated, 4-1.

8d Allowance rarely in dotage a don’s forgone? (5)
A nine-letter word for ‘dotage’ (or ‘doting’) sheds the letters A DON from the outside (“a don’s forgone”) to produce a common word which is defined using an uncommon sense (shown in Chambers as ‘rare’).

9d Principal left to do up around course (7)
The standard single-letter abbreviation for ‘left’ and a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] do’ are reversed (‘up’) around a three-letter word meaning ‘run’ (verb or noun, take your pick).

10d Vatican treasurers working longer put in some lead for stained-glass windows (11)
An anagram (‘working’) of LONGER is put inside the five-letter plural of a word for ‘a lead rod for framing a pane in a leaded or stained-glass window’ which could be indicated cryptically by ‘humped ruminants avoiding lake’.

19d Some monocotyledons, a group bordering river (7)
Here we have the letter A (from the clue) and a four-letter word for a group or family containing (‘bordering’) a two-letter dialect term for a river much admired by crossword setters.

20d Intestinal parasites? Helper, fit, turning up with one inside (7)
A three-letter term for a helper and a three-letter verb meaning ‘fit’ or ‘equip’ are reversed (‘turning up’) around a single-letter word for ‘one’.

(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 2,647 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I felt that this puzzle, which didn’t strike me as being one of Azed’s very best, was of slightly above average difficulty. There were several clues where an unfamiliar solution was accompanied by an uncommon term in the wordplay, and a couple of others which were a little tricky to parse.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 14a, “Unit of money, ‘penny’ in Arabia (5)”. Nothing too difficult about this 1+2+2 charade leading to the name of a monetary unit in several countries, including some Arabian ones. Firstly, though, you may ask yourself why Azed has put inverted commas around the word ‘penny’. It’s because the word derives directly from the Latin denarius, which is translated in the New Testament as ‘penny’ – so it really is one. The clue could indeed have been written as just “‘Penny’ in Arabia”, which would have made it an &lit. The problem with this is that since ‘d’ is itself short for ‘denarius’, it would all be a bit incestuous, and the clue is much better as written, being an ‘offshoot &lit’ where the whole of the clue acts as the definition but only part of it constitutes the wordplay.

There is a second point – is ‘penny’ acceptable for D, given that it is over 50 years since decimalization? In a word, yes. There is a wealth of literature which contains the abbreviation and while it remains in Chambers it’s just as valid as ‘mark’ for M or ‘franc’ for FR.

Across

11a What Indian women may wear about festival in spring (5)
The single-character abbreviation for ‘about’ in the sense of ‘in the region of’ is followed by the name of great festival or carnival of the Hindus, held at the approach of the vernal equinox, in honour of Krishna and the Gopīs or milkmaids; coincidentally, it is also the first part of a very familiar seven-letter word for any religious festival (now more generally applied to any time off for R&R).

18a Throw with the intention of wounding, showing vigour? Not on once (6)
The wordplay involves a four-letter word for ‘vigour’ and the letters ONCE (from the clue) with ON omitted (‘not on once’, which frankly is stretching the English language close to breaking point).

19a Like many in the senate house, before not being allowed out (7)
The senate house here is that of ancient Rome, and the wordplay is a charade of a two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘before’ and  term applied to students at Oxford or Cambridge who have been confined to college, either entirely or after a certain hour of the day. Better, at least, than being degraded, rusticated, or (perish the thought) expelled.

23a Gossip, as female getting round lows (7)
A three-letter word for a female is containing  (‘getting round’) a word for ‘lows’ which has nothing to do with depression and everything to do with cattle.

25a Hooligan giving the old man back pain (6)
A reversal (‘back’) of a two-letter word for ‘the old man’ (such as Lonnie Donegan’s dustman) is followed by a word for a pain (such as in Bonnie Tyler’s heart).

26a Caught immediately before tea? Take that! (6)
A straightforward 3+3 charade leads to an informal interjection which will forever be linked with the headline in The Sun of 4 May 1982, about which editor Kelvin Mackenzie later wrote in his own inimitable style:

At one stage, the Argentine military regime was offering what looked like faux peace talks. The Sun’s response came via the headline: STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA. A classic, it became our catchphrase for the war.  We decided to put the whole paper on a war footing. News editor Tom Petrie became Commander Petrie for the duration. Reporters were given ranks from private to colonel. I stomped around the newsroom in sergeant major parody referring to colleagues as “horrible little people”. We invited readers to sponsor Sidewinder missiles. Joyfully it was reported that a missile fired from HMS Invincible with the words “Up Yours Galtieri” (the name of the Junta leader) had brought down an Argentinian plane.

The Sun journalists were a militant lot, and the day the Belgrano was sunk inevitably they were on strike. But the printers, a bolshie collection of overpaid and underworked half-wits, would allow me to produce the paper and turned a blind eye to a couple of execs giving assistance. It must have been around 10 o’clock on that May evening, while sitting on the news desk with assistant editor Wendy Henry, when it was reported that the Belgrano had been sunk. Hit with two torpedoes fired by our submarine, the Conqueror. On hearing the news Wendy, an excitable talent, shouted: Gotcha! With headlines I have always found that instinct trumps intelligence. So GOTCHA it was. 

30a American shrub from Haiti, its smell having a touch of arum (7)
The two-letter IVR code for Haiti is followed by a word for a smell, spelt in the American way (‘its smell’, ie the smell of an American shrub), and the first letter (‘a touch’) of ‘arum’.

32a Free literary style is associated with him in dialect (5)
A rather convoluted effort, a word for ‘literary style’ being placed after (‘associated with’) a dialect form of ‘him’. 

Down

1d Overseas bowler demonstrating turn on the way down (7)
If you aren’t familiar with either of the two definitions here then a dictionary trawl (physical or electronic) may be required. The answer is also the surname of the founder (in 1843) of a group of Minstrels whose facial decoration would today be wholly unacceptable.

2d Partial weatherproofing in north America (6)
Another double definition clue, and quite a neat one, with the ‘partial’ being used in its sense of ‘partisan’. I’ve no idea why ‘north’ isn’t capitalized.

4d The French forced out of Spanish city creating a rumpus (4)
The masculine form of the French word for ‘the’ is ‘forced out of’ the middle of a Spanish city famous for bladed weapons, the result being a hyphenated (2-2) answer.

5d One doing housework switching ends became inefficient (6)
The word that must have its first and last letters swapped (‘switching ends’) can either describe the person doing the housework or something they would use to do it. Or the mildly mysterious name of a car which seems to have no connection with the activity.

7d Shut up about number turning up in the old west (6)
There might initially appear to be several options for the ‘number’ here, but it is the two-letter abbreviation for it which must be reversed inside a past participle meaning ‘shut up’ in order to produce a word from the 16^th and 17^th centuries for the place or direction of the sunset, very much along the lines of ‘occident’.

12d Having money invested in real crackers for cheese (10)
An anagram (‘crackers’) of IN REAL has a four-letter word for (ready) money put inside (‘invested’), the outcome being a particular sort of cheese.

17d Activity in bakery, except with children involved (8)
The usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘children’ is ‘involved’ in a synonym for ‘except’ that is rarely, if ever, seen these days. Byron was familiar with it, though:

For, ?????? Covent Garden, I can hit on No place that’s call’d ‘Piazza’ in Great Britain

It can also be spelt with an extra ‘i’, thus describing something the noble lord would surely not have allowed to happen to the pet which he kept while a student at Cambridge.

20d Malay Muslim in Australia briefly in love (7)
One where I had to work back from the solution and the three-letter abbreviation (‘briefly’) for ‘Australia’ to identify (and check) the Malay Muslim from the Philippines contained therein.

28d Mountain goat or deer, tail aloft (4)
A word for a male deer, most often seen these days in pub names, has the last letter brought to the start (‘tail aloft’). Several years ago I remember looking into the goats in question when there was a clue which could have led either to this one or to TAHR.

Capricornis ???? (it seems) is the Himalayan serow, a goat-like mammal of the Himalayas and Bangladesh, whilst the Himalayan TAHR (also known as the common ????, you’re still following me?) is Hemitragus jemlahicus, the sole survivor of the Hemitragus genus and a large ungulate related to the wild goat found in, among other places, the Himalayas. So neither is truly a goat, but both are, shall we say, of a goatish disposition, and both make their homes in mountainous regions. Thar you are then.

(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 2,646 ‘Cherchez la Femme’

Difficulty rating: (4 / 10)

The last ‘Cherchez la Femme’ was 2,515 (PETRONELLA), although it was not a competition puzzle. On this occasion, I have to say that as soon as I saw that we were looking for an eleven-letter surname (which, it being the competition clue word, is almost certain to appear in Chambers) I correctly guessed the word. I find that solving a puzzle like this is simply a matter of proceeding as normal, entering answers as you get them (in pencil, with an eraser to hand), and then adding a second letter into the cells where clashes occur – so if the second letter of HALF clashed at its intersection with the third letter of STICK, I would put ‘A/I’ in the cell and write the ‘midway’ letter at the side of the grid (in this instance, E – AbcdEfghI). Once I’ve completed the puzzle and identified the name, I then  replace the double letters with the ‘midway’ ones, so in the example I would write in an E, thus making the non-words HELF and STECK. I could have written in an E from the outset, but that can get very confusing, particularly if you’ve gone wrong! When solving the puzzle, always bear in mind that no entry is involved in more than one clash.

I felt that the puzzle was a bit tougher than an average ‘plain’, but certainly one of the easier specials. Right until the end I thought there was only going to be one clash in any given row, but that proved to be incorrect. For anyone who wants to do a quick check, I have listed the row/column coordinates of the cells where clashes occur below the notes.

Clue Writers’ Corner: A correspondent who started writing clues for the competition a couple of years ago recently sent me his entries for comment. Several of these illustrate common traps for Azed competitors and will be the subject of a separate post, but one point that arose related to the presence (or absence) of a full stop at the end of a clue. Convention indicates that a full stop is not required, but if you include one Azed will simply ignore it, likewise if you include the clue number or an enumeration (letter count). Azed’s tolerance extends considerably further, as witnessed by this comment from the slip for AZ285:

…it’s worth sounding again my regular note of warning to those who submit clues entirely in capital letters. It certainly makes for greater legibility (messy scribblers, please note!) but occasionally disguises a proper name which has to be read with a lower-case initial to give sense to the clue.

On the subject of punctuation at the end of a clue, don’t forget about the value of a closing question mark in three related circumstances – when the definition or wordplay element at the end of the clue constitutes a definition by example (as ‘a dish?’ in 9d here, a dish being just one example of the solution), when the definition at the end of a clue is not one you would find in a dictionary (eg ‘describing handbook?’ in 2d here), and in &lit clues where the ‘definition’  is more of a suggestion (eg D P Shenkin’s ‘One to shake up trite profs?’ for ESPRIT FORT).

Note that a clue for this month’s competition doesn’t have to refer to the person; other meanings of the word can also be used (for illustration, see the list of successful clues for CLEMENTINE in 2,279). If you’re going to use the person’s first name as the definition, don’t forget that it will be a definition by example and needs either a question mark or something like a ‘maybe’ to accompany it. Since the word does not appear as an entry in the grid, Azed would allow it to be treated as either an across or a down solution (though personally I would avoid clueing it as if it were a down entry).

Across

1a Californian shrub maiden made room for in travelling carriage (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘maiden’ (the cricketing term) is contained (‘made room for’) inside a six-letter word for a ‘light open carriage for one or more persons’ or a ‘travelling carriage’.

12a RC brother making point about passion (8)
The answer is constructed by putting a four-letter word for a point (such as a fork might have) around (‘about’) a four-letter word for ‘passion’.

16a Maize patty rail spits right out (8)
The rail here is of the avian kind, and it is ‘spitting out’ the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ (there are in fact two instances of it, and it is the second one which is lost).

27a What’ll clean the decks? Apply for round nozzle, saving time (5)
A three-letter word meaning ‘[to] apply for’ or ‘prosecute’ is placed round a word for a nozzle from which the standard abbreviation for ‘time’ has been removed (‘saving time’).

29a What’s assumed to be valid? It’s introduced by chambers (5)
Nothing too tricky about this one, the letters IT (from the clue) following (‘introduced by’) a three-letter plural meaning ‘chambers’ or gazunders, but I’m a little puzzled as to why Azed didn’t write ‘Chambers introduces it’; the apparently plural noun governing a singular verb in the wordplay might look odd, but for the purposes of cryptic manipulation the noun is treated simply as a singular character string, regardless of number.

31a Antitoxin possibly or antivenom, name lost (8)
An anagram (‘possibly’) of OR ANTIVENOM from which a word meaning ‘name’ has been omitted (‘name lost’); because the letters of this word occur consecutively in ANTIVENOM, there is no need for a second anagram indicator.

32a ‘Blind’ pouches, each taken into account in turn (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘each’ is ‘taken into’ a three-letter abbreviation for ‘account’ and the whole lot reversed (‘in turn’).

Down

2d Pair up in moderation, describing handbook? (5)
A three-letter word for a pair is reversed (‘up’) inside a two-letter word for ‘moderation’ that is also an interjection indicating surprise. The solution is hyphenated, 3-2.

3d This is a kind of Indo-European ‒ do please read carefully (5)
The wordplay here leads to a (1,4) phrase which might seem to be exhorting someone to read carefully (or to use a photocopier). There is a clash involved which makes finding the answer trickier than it might otherwise have been.

4d Sport lifted spirits, hearts included (6)
The ‘spirits’ here are manifested in the five-letter plural of a name for ‘an aniseed-flavoured spirit of Turkey and the E Mediterranean’; this must be reversed (‘lifted’) before having the usual abbreviation for ‘hearts’ included (in position 2). The ‘game’ is an Anglo-Indian hunting term.

5d It traps river fish, lines aloft in flowing Tees (6)
The ‘lines aloft’ indicate an informal US term for an elevated railroad, which must be placed inside an anagram (‘flowing’) of TEES to produce the 3-3 answer.

7d Before those paying to attend turned up, stand required (7)
A three-letter ‘usually literary’ word meaning ‘before’ and a four-letter word used to describe the number of people attending a game (often seen followed by ‘receipts’) are reversed (‘turned up’).

9d Number taken in by tragic heroine, a dish? (7)
The tragic heroine who ‘takes in’ the three-letter written form of a specific cardinal number was created by Leo Tolstoy and has been portrayed by, among many others, Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh.

17d A stake placed inside tin may be plucked (7)
One of those clues with a relatively obscure answer and a relatively obscure element in the wordplay. The letter A (from the clue) and a four-letter word for a stake in gambling are contained by (‘placed inside’) the chemical symbol for tin. You may be surprised to see Azed indicating a noun using a verb, but as he observed in the slip for comp 354:

I’ve said before that an adjective is an inaccurate (because unfairly misleading) way of indicating a noun (and vice versa of course). I do accept however that a verb (in the appropriate person) can indicate a noun. ‘Barks and is man’s best friend’ defines DOG far more clearly than, say, ‘Furry and domesticated’.

18d Granular deposit ‒ it encases a sweetbread (7)
In something close to a re-run of the preceding clue, here the letter A (from the clue) and a four-letter word for the sweetbread or pancreas (and the surname of the actor who played Perry Mason on TV) are contained by the two-letter abbreviation for a certain sort of appeal much appreciated by crossword setters.

25d Fatty school gets reduced by 50% (5)
I thought at first that we would be looking at the ten-letter name of a school from which the last five letters would be lost, but in fact the wordplay leads to a three-letter term for the sort of school attended by whales or seals, followed by  the word GETS missing one half.

(definitions are underlined)

Clashes occur in the following cells

(row 1, column 4); (1,10); (3,3); (5,7); (6,12); (7,6); (8,9); (9,3); (10,7); (11,1); (12,11).

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 2,645 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle, with some neat clues. I would have placed it slightly below the middle of the difficulty spectrum, but the SE corner just nudged the level up a tad.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 27a, “I’m bowed, in rags, hobbling around Australia (7)”. When writing a clue for a word like this, one might look it up in Chambers and decide that the definition is going to be ‘instrument’ (or even ‘musical instrument’). This is fine, but it leaves very little scope for misdirection. The addition of ‘played like a fiddle’ in the dictionary entry should start you thinking, though. What about “One’s bowed” or “I’m bowed”? In the surface reading you can then get right away from the musical context, such that the definition appears to suggest someone who is bent forward with age. Azed has done this very nicely here, but it’s not that difficult if you know what you are trying to achieve – starting with a definition that allows you to lead solvers gently up the garden path is the key.

Across

1a Money going into drink, leading to depression (4)
There are a lot of three-letter words for ‘drink’ into which the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘Money’ could be inserted, including names of specific beverages (eg RUM), nouns meaning ‘a drink’ (eg TOT), and verbs meaning ‘to drink’ (eg LAP); it is one of the last type which is required here.

4a Negotiate screed, penning answer (8)
The wordplay has a five-letter word for a screed or long written passage (as well as a region or area) containing (‘penning’) a three-letter abbreviation for ‘answer’.

10a Gouty old French leader admits grip failing finally (9)
The leader in question was President of France between 1995 and 2007; having previously described the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as ‘Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism’, his own Gallic liberality clearly got the better of him, and in 2011 he was found guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public confidence. His surname contains (‘admits’) the word GRIP from which the last letter has been removed (‘failing finally’). My Ancient Greek O Level suggested to me that the resulting word had something to do with hands, and so it (a little surprisingly, since I had previously imagined that gout was specifically a ‘foot thing’) proved.

25a An old-fashioned carriage, line scrapped for bishop? (4)
The indefinite article is followed by a seven-letter alternative spelling of the name for ‘an old four-wheeled covered carriage, with a seat at the rear covered with a hood’ which must have the consecutive letters LINE removed (‘line scrapped’). The solution is what you would expect to see at the bottom of a letter from a particular Scottish bishop, not that I have ever received one myself.

30a Reel sailor’s to tighten with rope (5)
A tricky double definition clue, with neither of the meanings being familiar, I suspect, to your average land-lubber. ‘Fleet’ would have been another possibility, but not in a nautical sense.

32a Rats etc? See one of them I dealt with round old lair (8)
An ever-so-slightly indirect anagram, where the the letters RAT (‘one of them’) and I must be rearranged (‘dealt with’) around the usual abbreviation for ‘old’ and the sort of lair frequently encountered by crossword solvers.

33a Joe maybe disheartened as Mac’s well off (4)
I must confess that Joe’s surname didn’t immediately spring to mind. It forms something of a counterpoint to the protagonist in 19d, and once it has been deprived of its central letter (‘disheartened’) if yields a Scots word for ‘well off’.

Down

1d Stupid one left with bungled prep right away after school (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘left’ plus an anagram (‘bungled’) of PREP missing the single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ follow the standard abbreviation for ‘school’.

3d Murphy that is discounted for seat (4)
An Anglo-Irish term for solanum tuberosum (‘Murphy’) has the usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ omitted (‘discounted’) to produce the solution. According to a 1972 edition of The Islander from Victoria, BC, 

We call them ‘spuds’. The Irish affectionately call them ‘??????s’ and they sometimes call mashed potatoes ‘poundies’.

4d Floor covering I’m lifting after so long (6)
A reversal (‘lifting’) of I’M follows an interjection meaning ‘goodbye’ (‘so long’) which originated in the nursery but passed into widespread (informal) use. It is also the name applied to Sir Richard Paget’s theory that language originated in an attempt to imitate the body’s gestures with the vocal organs. According to Wikipedia, Paget had a reputation as an ‘eccentric amateur’ scientist:

Sir Richard’s daughter, Pamela Paget (later Lady Glenconner), was often a subject of his experiments. Pamela’s nephew and Sir Richard’s grandson, Alexander Chancellor, wrote in his “Long Life” column in The Spectator that Pamela had broken her arm when Sir Richard encouraged her to throw herself backwards from the open platform of a London bus on Park Lane to demonstrate his theory that, due to air currents, one could fall horizontally from a bus travelling at a certain speed and land safely on the road. According to Lady Glenconner’s obituary in The Telegraph, Sir Richard had also filled his daughters’ ears with treacle (to simulate deafness) while testing his sign language system.

6d Drink, what teetotaller takes, giving up half? It may be painful for jogger (6)
As in 1a, we are looking for a three-letter ‘drink’, but here it is one of those tot-like nouns which must be followed by the six-letter word for a written promise to abstain from intoxicating liquor which has lost its second half (‘giving up half’).

7d Charm e’er denied a driver of pack animals (6)
The letter A (from the clue) and an eight-letter term for a driver of pack animals has the consecutive letters EER removed (“e’er denied”) in order to produce the solution.

8d Artist captivated by a Pacific climbing plant with bright blooms (9)
A very neat clue, where the usual two-letter abbreviation indicated by ‘artist’ is contained (‘captivated’) by a reversal (‘coming up’) of A (from the clue) and a six-letter word meaning ‘pacific’; the deceptive capitalization of a word, such as ‘pacific’ here, is generally considered acceptable, although setters try to avoid it where possible.

19d Trump (crucial) showing desire to catch up (7, 2 words)
The word ‘showing’ here simply links the definition to the wordplay, which comprises a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] desire’ (in an intransitive sense) and a reversal (‘up’) of a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] catch’. Azed clearly felt that ‘Trump’ alone was a little vague as the definition, given that we are looking for a specific trump which is a crucial element of the game in which it features.

22d State founder adorning flag (6)
The family name of the ‘state founder’ provided the first four letters of the name of one of the British North American colonies which he founded and which became one of the original thirteen states.

28d Wipe foredeck up (4)
The Chambers definition of foredeck, ‘the forepart of a deck or ship‘ (my italics), should help guide you to the plural noun which must be reversed (‘up’) to form 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 2,644 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

This was a bit like the curate’s steak – tougher in some parts than others. Overall, I thought it probably earned a difficulty rating just a whisker above the middle of the range. I am very grateful to Roslyn for providing the scanned copy of the puzzle which enabled me to tackle it, as tradition demands, over breakfast.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 10d, “Entering here wronged fool gets redress (8)”. OK, hands up everybody who was expecting a solution that meant something like ‘remedy’ or ‘atonement’. I was, and I’m always on the lookout for deceptive definitions. This clue illustrates one of the key areas where setters can entirely legitimately misdirect solvers, by using an ambiguous definition where the context established by the surface reading leads the solver straight up the garden path before the wordplay, and perhaps the checked letters, lead to the penny dropping. When setting a clue, one of the first things I look for is a synonym which offers the potential to mislead – if you are writing a clue for BETEL, a definition like “leaf that’s chewed” doesn’t leave much scope for trickery, but a little more investigation reveals that ‘pan’ is a synonym, and suddenly it becomes easier to mislead than not! ‘Empty bain-marie, check round pan (5)’, perhaps.

Across

12a Head of US college accepts university process for recycling fuel? (5)
A US college slang term for the president of such an institution contains the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘university’. The answer is a word made up from the first letters of the two chemical elements involved plus  bits from ‘reduction’  and ‘extraction’, I am reliably informed. Well, actually I got the information from Wikipedia, so it could be that the alternative explanation given by Chambers is correct.

15a Sandy’s extended shortened speech? (4)
An eight-letter word for ‘speech’ loses its last four letters (‘shortened’) to produce a Scots form (hence the “Sandy’s”) of a word meaning ‘extended’.

16a Wild canine about to die, put back in wretched quarters (7)
A five-letter wild dog indigenous to the Deccan plateau of India is put around (‘about’) a reversal (‘put back’) of a word meaning, inter alia, ‘to die’. I did refer to Chambers to confirm the answer, but frankly it just sounds so right that I probably needn’t have bothered.

20a One born to serve couple finding new position in Aussie tavern (5)
A familiar word which in Australia can, according to Chambers, be applied to a public house has a consecutive pair of characters (‘couple’) shifted to a different place (‘finding new position’).

23a Songbird, something heard circling over high place (8)
A five-letter word for ‘something heard’ is seen here surrounding (‘circling’) the usual cricketing abbreviation for ‘over’ and a two-letter adverb meaning ‘[on] high’. The three-letter verb from which the noun derives can certainly (and, in crosswords, often does) mean ‘to hear’, but is the noun actually ‘something heard’. The jury, as one might say, is still out.

26a SA antelope, one in circular path, tailless (5)
The Roman numeral for ‘one’ is contained by a term for the sort of circular path that might be followed by a planet, lacking its last letter (‘tailless’).

32a Fungus displayed by pimples, on inside (7)
You’ll probably need most of the checked letters in this unless you know either the fungus or the five-letter plural of a six-letter word for a whitish pimple inside which the letters ON (from the clue) are positioned.

34a Fool in front of painting no longer puts blobs on? (7)
A three-letter fool who makes regular cruciverbal appearances is followed by a plural noun that Chambers gives as meaning paints or painting of a particular kind. The sense of ‘sully’ indicated by the definition involves a catachrestic usage which seems to be traceable to Benjamin Disraeli and specifically his novel Sibyl:

“Yes, I mourn over them,” said Sybil, “the deep convictions that made me look forward to the cloister as my home. Is it that the world has ??????ed my soul?”

Down

1d Amphibians born mostly abroad in half of great river (10)
The usual abbreviation for ‘born’ and an anagram (‘abroad’) of MOSTLY are contained by the first three letters (‘half’) of a great river and a dispatcher of many white vans.

4d/5d Stake on gee-gee coming in behindhand (but not last), … (6) / … One such, last in race, having pound on (5)
The first of these linked clues has a shortened (it couldn’t really be any shorter) form of ‘on’ plus the letters represented by ‘gee-gee’ coming into a word for ‘behindhand’ from which the last letter has been omitted (‘but not last’). The second has the final letter (‘last’) of ‘race’ being followed by an informal term for a pound, and the ‘one such’ refers back to the ‘gee-gee’. It’s interesting to see that Azed has used ‘on’ here to indicate that the second element follows the first; I believe that ‘on’ can legitimately be used to indicate any of the four possible juxtapositions (before/after in across/down clues), but I also feel that in down clues its use to indicate ‘B following A’ (as here) should be avoided since it is counterintuitive.

6d What’s the point of upending earth, scraping it for food? (8)
This is probably the hardest clue in the puzzle to parse. The answer to the question “What’s…?” is: a three-letter word for a headland (‘the point’), a single-letter shortened form of the word ‘of’ (‘of’), and a reversal (‘upending’) of a four-letter word for the den of a wild animal (‘earth’). The ‘it’ in the definition references the ‘earth’ in the wordplay.

8d Bum having to be persistent when denied work (4)
A two-word (2,4)  phrase meaning ‘to be persistent’ has the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘work’ removed (‘denied work’), yielding the sort of bum that originated in the US but can now be seen elsewhere.

9d Delicacy, bit left uneaten with section removed from goose’s head (7)
A three-letter ‘bit left uneaten’ combines with the name formerly given (somewhat confusingly) not to a goose but a gannet, from which the letter S at the beginning has been lost (‘section removed from…head’).

14d Literal translator came across early female playwright’s fragment of tragedy (10)
A three-letter word meaning ‘came across’ is followed by the possessive form of the first name of a Restoration playwright whose surname was Bern (not the first time Azed has featured her) and the first letter (‘fragment’) of ‘tragedy’. There is a similar word which would fit with the checkers but which satisfies neither the wordplay nor the definition.

21d Scot taking legal possession I’ll have to think about (7)
The letter I (from the clue) has a word meaning ‘to think’ outside (‘about’). The solution sounds like the sort of word that might be found in the works of Sir Walter, and so it proves.

24d What may be full of chocolates, some milk that one’s opened (6)
The five-letter term for ‘some milk’ calls to mind all those TV adverts from the Milk Marketing Board, in particular the ones with the catchphrase ‘Drinka ????? milka day’. Fresh milk also ‘had a lotta bottle’, and housewives were asked the telling question “Is your man getting enough?” They weren’t responsible for the milk-stealing Humphreys though – that was Unigate. A single-letter word for ‘one’ has ‘opened’ (ie split) the carton.

25d Charged particle ‒ what’s done when opening current is switched? (6)
A six-letter term for something that’s done (or something that film directors are supposed to shout at the beginning of a ‘take’) has its first two letters, which form the abbreviation for a particular type of electric current, exchanged (‘when opening current is switched’).

(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 2,643 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

There was nothing particularly tricky about this 13×11 puzzle, but I can’t say that my passage through it was akin to that of a hot knife through butter, so I reckon it was somewhere close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum. Plenty of deviousness and deception, as we expect from Azed, but none of those wordplays with mildly questionable punctuation which have popped up on a few occasions recently.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 29d, “‘Sunny’ fellow enraptured with removal of bottom half (shed)”. Nothing too difficult about this clue, an eight-letter word for ‘enraptured’ having its bottom half removed to produce a man’s name. There are two points of interest, though, both relating to Azed giving the solver a little extra help. There was no need for him to include the parenthesised ‘shed’, but by doing so he tells us what that ‘bottom half’ is. More importantly, the clue illustrates a point on which Azed and I are in firm agreement – it is simply not sufficient to use ‘man’, ‘girl’ etc to indicate a random forename of the setter’s choice, any more than ‘food’ is an adequate indication of ‘tomato’ or ‘krill’. Azed generally either uses definitions by example, so here he might have written ‘Shankar, perhaps’, or else he qualifies the indication by reference to the ‘Some first names’ section of Chambers, so ‘Dulcie’ might be ‘sweet girl’ and the fellow we’re looking for here is ‘sunny’.

Across

1a Once overworked crown’s somehow leaving king in a cleft (9)
I first encountered this word (in fact a variant spelling thereof) in an Azed a few years ago, and it’s one that’s hard to forget. In order to produce it, an anagram (‘somehow’) of CROWNS without (‘leaving’) the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’ must be put inside a four-letter word for a cleft or a pronged instrument.

13a Poet’s come down a glen grasping start of idyll (6)
A (from the clue) and a four-letter word for a glen are put around the first letter (‘start’) of ‘idyll’, the result being a Spenserian verb meaning ‘to come down’ or ‘to alight’. This is not Edmund’s sole contribution to the puzzle…

18a Pub atmosphere feeding stale crusts to hard-working creatures (9)
…as witnessed by this clue, where the solution results from ‘feeding’ (introducing) a five-letter word for ‘crusts’ shown by Chambers as ‘Spenser, etc’ (hence ‘stale’) to a word for the sort of creatures who are axiomatically busy.

22a I’m backing out of jogs yielding ruptures (5)
A reversal (‘backing’) of IM (from the clue) is omitted from (‘out of’) a seven-letter word that  isn’t actually synonymous with ‘jogs’ (’causes to remember’ is probably about as close as you could get), but which won’t, I think, give solvers too many problems.

23a Raw recruit returned to the French trenches (one of them) (5)
The ‘raw recruit’ whose three letters must be reversed (‘returned’) and put in front of the French for ‘to the’ will be more familiar to most solvers as a lout (although originally one was simply a boy or youth).

24a Endless sleep, drams drunk deep? (9)
An anagram (‘drunk’) of SLEEP missing its last letter (‘endless’) and DRAMS produces an adjective which could perhaps mean ‘deep’ when applied specifically to sleep.

25a A particular bean soup (5)
A double definition clue which is likely to demand recourse to Chambers, the ‘particular’ bean being a coffee bean (Collins gives it as ‘any of various seeds or dried kernels, such as a coffee bean’), but (much) more commonly a succulent fruit. Regarding the second meaning, the OED suggests that it is a corruption seen only in combined forms and does not list it on its own.

28a Labiate, unusually rich, suggesting type of bean? (7)
A three-letter word for catmint (‘labiate’) is followed by an anagram (‘unusually’) of RICH; the definition is a tad fanciful, hence both the ‘suggesting’ and the question mark, given that the adjective which results cannot strictly speaking be used to describe a shape.

33a Precious stone, stone that is including a bit of tourmaline (9)
A six-letter word for a fruit-stone is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ containing the first letter (‘a bit of’) ‘tourmaline’. I’m glad that the clue didn’t read ‘Precious stone, one that is…’ since the second stone is not of the precious kind. ‘Stone, one that is…’ would have been ok, but the definition would then have been rather vague.

Down

1d Unreasonable old rumpus in remote department (7)
A three-letter word for a rumpus is contained by another three-letter word meaning ‘distant’, the combination being followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘department’. The answer is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’, hence the ‘old’.

3d Main character in epic plays, not the first (4)
A five-letter word for plays (of the theatrical sort) collectively has its first letter removed (‘not the first’). The character appears in a Sanskrit epic, traditionally ascribed to the Maharishi Valmiki, which narrates the life of Sita, the Princess of Janakpur, and ????, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala.

6d One caring for the sick to roll up with number during Passover feast (11)
A three-letter word for ‘roll’ (as film cameras might) is reversed (‘up’) and followed by a specific number expressed as three letters within (‘during’, not an insertion indicator that I like) a five-letter word for ‘the ceremonial meal and its rituals on the first night or first two nights of the Passover’. The solution is hyphenated 5-6.

9d Outlet for meal I call up in Maine (7)
Another hyphenated solution, 4-3 this time, produced by putting I (from the clue) and a reversal (‘up’) of a word meaning ‘[to] call [loudly]’ inside the standard abbreviation for ‘Maine’.

11d Feature of Ford westerns the old master located on centre of plain? (4)
A correspondent asked the other day what the term ‘&lit’ meant when applied to a clue. This is not an &lit as such, but could be viewed as what Ximenes called an ‘offshoot &lit’ and is sometimes termed a ‘partial &lit’, where the whole clue provides the indication of the answer but only part of it constitutes the wordplay. I haven’t underlined the wordplay part, which has an obsolete shortened form of ‘master’ being followed by the middle letter (‘centre’) of ‘plain’, but it could certainly be seen as part of the definition. Incidentally, I reckon that ‘Feature of Ford films’ would have been valid, since John Ford is remembered primarily for classics of that genre such as Stagecoach and The Searchers, but again Azed has gone out of his way to steer us in the right direction.

19d Blooming noise of e.g. US breakers with tide coming in (7)
A term for the tide (as in expressions such as ‘the ??? was in’) is contained by a four-letter word for the roar of the surf, shown by Chambers as ‘now US’, which appears in TS Eliot’s The Dry Salvages:

The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant ???? in the granite teeth.

20d Soft cloth one with money included in array (7)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ and a three-letter slang term for money much valued by crossword setters are contained by a  three-letter word meaning ‘[to] array’ or ‘put in position’.

26d East-ender’s reputed to sink Scotch? (4)
The East-ender here is assumed to be a Cockney, and true to type he is dropping the aitch from a word meaning ‘reputed’, the solution being a Scots word for ‘[to] bury.’ I think the question mark is intended as a nod to those from north of the Border who would suggest (gently, I have no doubt) that Scotch and Scottish are nae the same thing at a’.

(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 2,642 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

The number of clues which I marked as being worthy of comment as I solved the puzzle suggested that it was perhaps just a little north of average difficulty, but as I wrote these notes I concluded that it was probably bang in the middle of the range. There was quite a high proportion of archaic or obsolete words, although as one expects with Azed it was possible to work them out from the less obscure aspects of the clues combined, where necessary, with the checked letters.

Clue Writers’ Corner: This month’s competition word is shown by Chambers as being both an adjective and an adverb, which means there is no risk of defining it as the wrong one! I expect to see a lot of anagrams among the successful entries, so be a little wary of the most obvious ones. There will also be plenty of &lits, with the adverbial sense of the word lending itself to being indicated by ‘thus’, ‘as’, how’ or ‘so’ – as illustrated by these clues from Messrs Manley, Dixon, Henderson and Young for SUBORDINATELY from comp 1,967:

As in ‘B-role’ duty possibly [anag &lit]

How you might see drone busily at work [anag &lit]

Conform readily (no buts) thus [anag &lit]

Yank used Tony Blair so? [anag &lit]

Note, though, that two of the three prize winners and many of the VHCs for that comp were not &lits, so normal wordplay + definition clues still have a good chance of success. A top-notch &lit will beat all comers, but a top-notch conventional clue is the next best thing.

Across

11a Exercise position, one of healing abandoned by Tory (5)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ is followed by an eight-letter word meaning ‘of healing’ from which the consecutive letters TORY have been lost (‘Tory abandoned’).

12a King with prince exhibiting austerity? (5)
The king takes the form of his monarchical abbreviation, while the prince owes his fame to Alexander Borodin and the opera bearing his name, the libretto for which Borodin adapted from the fourteenth/fifteenth century Russian epic The Tale of ????’s Campaign. At the time of his death in 1887 the opera was incomplete – it was finished off by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov and received its première in St. Petersburg in 1890.

16a Non-speaking film star portrayed as twit in press (6)
A three-letter ‘twit’ is contained by a verb meaning ‘to lean’ or ‘to press’; the star comes not from the age of silent movies, nor is he Harpo Marx, rather (at least in his first incarnation) the son of Red Brucie and Bright Bauble (both of Glamis).

23a Artist muses, what one might call a bit down in the mouth (6)
The usual abbreviation indicated by ‘artist’ and the number of Greek Muses combine to form a word which is a real horror to define – I think Azed has made a very good fist of it, but I’m less happy about ‘Muses’ having been deprived of its initial capital letter.

29a Foreign agent in committee with gallery confronting king (9)
Here we have a charade of a three-letter abbreviation, the five-letter name by which a gallery in Madrid is commonly known, and the same king who featured in 12a.

31a Large predator accounting for duck on Scottish island (5)
The valid uses of ‘on’ as a juxtaposition indicator seem to provoke a good deal of debate, but it is I think universally accepted that ‘A on B’ can indicate BA in an across clue and AB in a down clue. The island is to be found in the Firth of Clyde and the duck in cricket scorebooks.

32a Engraving maybe daughter posted in Scotland (6)
Since Chambers is the primary reference for the puzzle, this clue is fine (the solution being found in the Big Red Book under a headword ending in ‘ll’), although it really shouldn’t be. The engraving is named after the artificially produced form of iron occasionally used for printing illustrations, and the solution is a past tense which as far as I can determine appears just once, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24:

Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath ?????’?,
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is best painter’s art.

In modern English, this is usually rendered as ‘engraved’, so in reality the wordplay and the definition are just variations of the same word.

33a Judge taking amusement after retiring in private room (6)
A three-letter informal term, a shortening of a word for ‘pleasurable occupation of leisure time; an amusement or sport’, is reversed (‘after retiring’) in a word for a private room which will be no stranger to solvers.

Down

2d Tree moss from New England in its native environment (5)
A two-letter abbreviation is contained by another abbreviation, this one representing the ‘native environment’ not of the moss but of New England.

4d Root layers, twisted, old, with endless imbalance (6)
A three-letter obsolete word meaning ‘awry’ (‘twisted, old’) is followed by a word for ‘imbalance’ (something that a partisan or a bowl displays) from which the last letter has been omitted (‘endless’). That ‘twisted’ word is to be found in Chambers under an alternative form beginning with a ‘k’, where it is shown as being ‘Shakespearean’, although he spelt it ‘kamme’.

5d Grand family manager employs ten mostly in grand family historically (12)
A four-letter word for ’employs’ and the word TEN (‘from the clue’) missing its last letter (‘mostly’) are contained by the name of an English noble house, among the estates owned by which is ‘Brideshead‘, as seen in the 1981 television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel.

15d Novella that is distinguished by blue ribbon in shop (9)
The usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ and one of the same length for ‘teetotal’ are put inside a word for a shop. The ‘blue ribbon’ was a small strip worn by certain abstainers from alcoholic beverages, as a means of mutual recognition, and as a public indication of their principles. ‘To take the blue ribbon’ meant ‘to abstain from alcoholic drink’, and the ‘Blue Ribbon Army’ was the name given to an association of such Total Abstainers. Those last two words immediately make me think of Dr Jock McCannon, memorably played by Graham Crowden in the BBC’s A Very Peculiar Practice, but that will only mean something to those familiar with the programme.

19d Abstract pictures, daubed, central couple disposed of (6)
The word PICTURES has the two letters in the middle removed (‘central couple disposed of’) before being rearranged (‘daubed’). The wordplay does rather suggest that the rearrangement takes place before the loss of the central characters, but even if interpreted that way it can still arguably deliver the solution.

22d Mite unpacked present in course of Christmas, getting up (6)
The word ‘present’ is deprived of all but its first and last letters (‘unpacked’) before being put inside a reversal (‘getting up’) of a synonym for ‘Christmas’.

24d Fragment of ancient poetry’s measure, stirring (5)
At first glance I thought there might be two wordplays here, but in fact it’s just the one – the first letter (‘Fragment’) of ‘ancient’ being followed by a term for a division of a line of poetry (“poetry’s measure”).

26d Old swindler regarding set up (5)
That familiar piece of commercial jargon meaning ‘concerning’ and a word meaning ‘[to] set’ are reversed (‘up’), producing ‘a cant term for a Londoner who formerly bought coals of the country colliers at so much a sack, and made his chief profit by using smaller sacks, making pretence he was a country collier.’

27d No longer observe special rule book (4)
The standard single-character abbreviation for ‘special’ plus a word for a book of rules for determining the Church office for the day combine to form an archaic spelling of a familiar word meaning ‘[to] observe’.

(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 2,641 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle that I felt was just a scintilla above average difficulty, with the parsing of several clues requiring a bit of thought.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clues 24a, “Parisian I love, or having left untrustworthy woman (4)”, and 33a, “Part of pre-history, not the first by-name (4)”. Both these clues involve subtractions, of OR from the ‘Parisian I love’ and of the first letter from the ‘by-name’, but it’s worth looking at the way in which the deletions are indicated. In the first instance, the comma gives us an expression of the form ‘X, Y removed’ – the intention here is clear, and solvers can be expected to infer the word ‘with’ following the comma. In the second instance, though, the equivalent expression is ‘not Y X’. This surely does not tell the solver to remove Y from X; a comma is needed after Y, whereupon ‘not [having] Y, X’ can justifiably be inferred. This second clue as written clearly instructs us to remove the first letter from the ‘Part of pre-history’, which makes it (mildly) unfair. When writing clues, one should try to ensure that the solver can reasonably be expected to interpret the wordplay in the intended way.

Across

11a Care for old poet creating effect for listeners (4)
The ‘effect’ for which a homophone is required is a verb meaning ‘to bring about or cause (harm, havoc, damage, etc)’, and the old poet is Mr Edmund Spenser, affectionately known to many setters, if not to his chums, as ‘Ed’.

13a Nut shell? Get nasty pain cutting coarser part (8)
An anagram (‘nasty’) of PAIN is contained by a word for the coarser part or refuse of anything, most commonly applied to the husks of grain removed from the flour, and the definition is slightly whimsical (hence the question mark).

15a Minimal boundary marker one removed (6)
One of those clues that is likely to involve the identification of the cart that is the definition before the wordplay horse. A nine-letter dialect word for a lump of rock marking a boundary has the consecutive letters ONE omitted (‘one removed’) in order to produce a much more familiar (to me, anyway) word meaning ‘minimal’.

21a Bat is on 50 when trapped by spin going back (7)
The usual abbreviation for ’50’ and the letters IS (from the clue) are contained (‘trapped’) by a word meaning ‘[to] spin’ which has been reversed (‘going back’). You can see how competition entrants tackled this word back in 2003.

23a Sword causing any wound with a touch piercing (7)
An anagram (‘wound’, as in ‘twisted’) of ANY has the letter A (from the clue) and a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] touch’, which evokes a simple children’s game, inserted (‘piercing’).

24a Parisian I love, or having left untrustworthy woman (4)
A French expression meaning ‘I love’ has the consecutive letters OR omitted (‘or having left’).

30a What may be applied to point that is insignificant in law? (5)
What Azed is telling us here is that placing the solution in front of (‘applied to’) the word POINT produces a term which will be familiar to seamsters, being ‘tapestry work using small stitches diagonal to the canvas threads.’

34a Stern of frigate below the water-line, one assumes – if it is (5)
The last letter (‘stern’) of ‘frigate’ is put inside the part of a ship used for cargo (so if it’s in there we can assume that it is below the water-line). I would have preferred ‘if it’s this’ as the definition, rather than ‘this’ being implied.

Down

3d Trinity to arrange university in term’s odd characters going up (8)
A four-letter word meaning ‘to arrange’ or ‘to dress’ is followed the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘university’ and a reversal (‘going up’) of the odd characters from IN TERM.

5d Wine offered in popular bar before expansion (7)
The ‘popular bar’ first saw the light of day in 1932 in Slough (I am tempted to add ‘of all places’, but a nagging concern that some readers of this blog may live in, or have  a particular affection for, the town militates against so doing), while the ‘expansion’ is a botanical term for a leafy expansion running down a stem. The bar took its name from its inventor, who was also responsible in whole or part for Snickers, Milky Way, Maltesers and M&M’s, not to mention Uncle Ben’s Rice and Pedigree Petfoods. In an act of pure altruism, he introduced Peanut M&M’s in 1954, despite suffering from a lifelong allergy to peanuts.

6d Collection of 20 characters master is dominated by since turning up (4)
The standard single-letter abbreviation for ‘master’ and a word meaning ‘since’ (as in expressions like ‘he long since gave up smoking’) are reversed (‘turning up’), the result being an ancient alphabet of 20 characters, from ailm (A) to straif (Z), along with five supplementaries.

8d SI unit? Those lacking faith have no initial ardour for this (5)
A nine-letter collective term for people who have no religion has a word meaning ‘ardour’ removed from the start (‘no initial ardour’) to produce the SI unit of inductance named after the American physicist who discovered the phenomenon of self-inductance (which, despite rumours to the contrary, cannot damage your eyesight).

9d The lady’s restricted by precedence – I’ll be bound (7)
A three-letter pronoun for ‘that lady’ is contained (‘restricted’) by a four-letter word for ‘precedence’, such as an athlete might take in a race. The ‘I’ in “I’ll be” refers to the solution, but I don’t think it would go down well with most crossword editors.

17d Microphone (old) to stop function in fleapit (8)
A word that I don’t remember coming across before, constructed from a three-letter word for a (concealed) microphone, an obsolete (hence the ‘old’) word meaning ‘to stop’, and a three-letter word for ‘function’.

27d Driver taking look round zone (5)
A four-letter word for a ‘look’ or ‘air’ is put round the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘zone’, while the driver will not be found in a car or a golf bag, being originally “a large sail formerly used at the aftermost part of a ship in fair weather, set ‘square’ (i.e. transverse to the ship’s length) on a yard at the end of the spanker-boom” and  now ‘applied to the spanker, a fore-and-aft sail at the same part of the ship; sometimes distinguished as a sail smaller than the spanker, but set on the same boom and gaff.’ So there.

29d Lizard we lost in searches (4)
The letters WE are lost from a six-letter word for ‘searches’ ( as in ‘their radar searches a wide area’).

31d Inch maybe was trifling largely, viewed from below (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘was trifling’ or ‘trifled’ has its last letter removed (‘largely’) before being reversed ( ‘from below’) to give a word which probably covers a slightly narrower range than ‘inch’, hence the qualifying ‘maybe’ as it could thus be seen as a form of definition by example.

(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 2,640 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I thought this one was of significantly above average difficulty – no particularly tough clues, perhaps, but quite a few that required teasing out.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 10d, “Be subjected to officer commanding rude men being drilled (9, 2 words)”. Nothing too tricky about this clue, the wordplay involving a two-letter abbreviation for Commanding Officer followed by an anagram of RUDE MEN, but the point of interest here is the definition. The answer is a phrasal verb which can only be used in a transitive sense, just like many others such as ‘get over’ – you have to get over something, you can’t just ‘get over’. It might at first glance appear that ‘be subjected’ would serve as an acceptable definition, but this cannot take an object – in order to adequately define the solution, ‘be subjected to‘ is required. There is a very easy test when you are setting puzzles, which involves substituting your proposed definition for the answer in a meaningful sentence. Is ‘gave preference’ a valid definition of ‘favoured’? Try replacing ‘favoured’ in “He favoured his younger son” with ‘gave preference’ and you will readily find out.

Across

2a Ultimate in rank assuming first place, a shocker (4)
The wordplay here requires the solver to move the last letter (‘ultimate’) of a (loose) synonym for ‘rank’ to the start (‘assuming first place’). You might think of ‘rank’ in this sense referring to a particular location, but Chambers confirms that it can also describe the vehicles that are waiting there.

12a Edible fish, maigre churning mud with rain (10)
A three-letter word for the maigre (a large Mediterranean food-fish), and also a place where you might get a drink, is followed by an anagram (‘churning’) of MUD and RAIN.

17a Like some windows, crumbled, one on inside (9)
Like me, you may well get this one from the definition rather than the wordplay, which has the Roman numeral for ‘one’ and ON (from the clue) inside a word meaning ‘crumbled’.

18a Piece of parchment, variable length? Old one (4)
The first letter (‘piece’) of ‘parchment’ plus a three-letter word for a variable measure of length (probably most often seen in the expression “give him an inch and he’ll take an ???”) produces an obsolete (hence the ‘old’) term for a roll of parchment (the ‘one’ referring back to the ‘piece of parchment’ in the wordplay).

23a Mother recalled a Spanish broom, for instance (6)
A five-letter word for ‘mother’, as used by ancient Romans and boys at public schools, is reversed (‘recalled’) and gets an A (from the clue) tacked on the end, yielding ‘a name for various desert switch-plants, either papilionaceous or caesalpiniaceous [fine words both], including Spanish broom.”

24a Like RNVR, open to attacks fended off (4)
A ten-letter word meaning ‘open to attacks’ has the consecutive letters FENDED removed (‘fended off’). The Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) is known as the ‘Wavy Navy’ on account of the rank stripes (rings) on officers sleeves being wavy rather than straight; the answer here is strictly speaking solely a heraldic term, but I think the definition is perfectly fair.

28a E. Anglian birds fiddle with wings over the Atlantic (7)
A charade of a four-letter word for a fiddle (of the dishonest kind) and a three-letter word from ‘across the Pond’ for a wing of a building which gives the overall structure a specific shape when viewed from above. The answer is a Shakespearean hapax legomenon, found in The Tempest, where Caliban says:

I’ll bring thee
To clustering filberts and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young ??????? from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?

It has been suggested that this is a Norfolk name for the bar-tailed godwit, although there appears to be little evidence to support this (and how, you might ask, would Shakespeare have known the term). It could supposedly also be a misprint for ‘staniel’, a kestrel. I would have thought that ‘sea-mell’ (a sea mew or a seagull) was an equally likely candidate, and at least one ‘translation’ of the play into modern English gives “I’ll catch seagulls for you on the rocks.”

31a Severe colic suffered in the trenches in places (6)
I got this one from the first of the two definitions, a complaint which I associate with a particular sort of water administered to infants in order to relieve its symptoms. It is also a dialect (hence the ‘local’) version of a word for a small ditch. The restorative water was invented in 1851 by William Woodward and initially marketed with the slogan “Granny told Mother and Mother told me.” Prior to the removal of alcohol (3.6%) from the recipe, Woodward’s maximum recommended dose of the stuff contained an alcohol content equivalent to five tots of whisky for an 80kg adult. It was only in 1992 that Britain mandated that alcohol be removed from the product, which I imagine gave boozy ankle-biters a cause to, er, complain.

Down

1d Contest among varied rose beds made flat in a way (12)
A four-letter informal word for a contest (only in more recent editions of Chambers, but a contraction that has been in common use for many years) is contained by an anagram (‘varied’) of ROSE BEDS, the solution being a botanical term meaning ‘flattened from front to back.’

3d Police officer that’s lost her leg (4)
A seven-letter slang term for a police officer (dating back to the nineteenth century) has the consecutive letters HER omitted (“that’s lost her”) in order to produce the leg.

7d Large salmon tavern served in country spot (7)
The usual three-letter cruciverbal synonym for ‘tavern’ is contained by a dialect word for a pimple (ie ‘country spot’), the result being a name for the king-salmon as well as the Californian, Columbian, or Chinook salmon of the North Pacific coast.

8d One interested in lumber once, grubby, but not if old (5)
The wordplay here involves a familiar seven-letter word meaning ‘grubby’ having an archaic form of ‘if’ removed (‘not if old’). The definition hinges on the archaic slang sense of ‘lumber’ (see lumber⁴ in Chambers), ‘pawn’, as in the shop with the balls outside…

9d Stale pud, still turning up, I swallowed (5)
…and the definition in this one refers to pud² in Chambers, a paw, fist or hand. A word meaning ‘still’ (or ‘yet’) is reversed (‘turning up’) around the letter I (‘I swallowed’), producing an archaic word for a fist. This clue is ambiguous, since that ‘I’ could potentially slot into the second or third position, thus making alternative spellings of this word, but to fit with the crossers it must go into position 2.

15d Tea-time treat – creating intense shudder for Spooner? (9)
Azed uses Spoonerisms sparingly, but here we have a small, heart-shaped (5-4) delicacy containing currants that the reverend gentleman might have turned into a sharp tremor.

21d See one former Persian ruler leaving university in his royal headgear? (7)
The letter of the alphabet with the name ‘see’ is followed by the Roman numeral for ‘one’ and the name of a ruler of Persia from which the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘university’ has been omitted (‘leaving university’). There were three of these chaps, but the most famous is the first of them, accorded the epithet ‘the Great’, who ruled the Persian empire from 522BC to 486BC. 

25d Outdated unit not fit for purpose in fuel (5)
 A two-letter abbreviation for ‘unserviceable’ (‘not fit for purpose’) is contained by a word for a fuel (or indeed various broadly similar fuels) in common use. Whether the unit is ‘outdated’ is perhaps open to question, but it does belong to the CGS (centimetre-gram-second) system, which has largely yielded to SI (the International System of Units), wherein the tesla fulfils a similar role.

(definitions are underlined)