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 2,574 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

Another plain puzzle, a 13×11 grid, and plenty of tricky clues to unravel. There were several clues where the break between the definition and the wordplay was nicely disguised, and a few others that featured slightly questionable definitions, either of the solution or of an element in the wordplay.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 27a, “A club having French art pinched – bad luck?” (7). It’s a while since I’ve seen ‘art’ used in a clue as the second person singular present indicative of the verb ‘to be’; it’s a device which needs to be used very sparingly, but it can be handy when dealing with the letters ES (‘French art’ or ‘art in French’) or a solution ending -EST. An example of the latter would be a clue along the lines of ‘Box art master?’ for TEA CHEST.

10a Host excitedly making room for marriage bed may be more welcoming with them (7)
An anagram (‘excitedly’) of HOST containing (‘making room for’) a three-letter word for ‘marriage’; I hope that Azed is suggesting that what might make one’s bed more welcoming are items filled with hot water, but he could of course be thinking of the alternative definition of the solution in Chambers…

14a Be full of conceit, as a regretful miss before end of romance (7)
A charade of a two-letter abbreviation for ‘[such] as’, the four-letter name of Cole Porter’s ‘miss’ who regrets she’s unable to lunch today, and the last letter (‘end’) of the word ‘romance’.

15a Quite a lot of table talk that’s beyond ripe (4)
The entry is hidden in the clue but how are we to interpret the definition? Since the solution can only be a noun or a verb, I think we must assume that in the definition ‘ripe’ is itself a verb, so the indication is ‘not just ripen, but go beyond’.

16a Primitive organism, reverse of type that’s undivided inside (7)
A reversal of a four-letter word for ‘type’, more often used in the sense of ‘authoritative standard’, has a three-letter word for ‘undivided’ put inside.

18a On twice heading for promotion, study repeatedly (6)
A two-letter word for ‘on’ or ‘concerning’ much used by setters appears twice, followed by an informal term for an instance of promotion in the marketing sense. This seems a rather weak clue, not least because I don’t believe that the solution means ‘study repeatedly’, but rather ‘study one more time’ – ‘repeatedly’ means ‘again and again’, not just ‘again’.

20a Nimbler restricting din in a way, I’ve very active drum (9, 2 words)
A nice oblique definition, with the wordplay involving a six-letter synonym for ‘nimbler’ containing (‘restricting’) an anagram (‘in a way’) of DIN. The solution has two alternative spellings, but the ‘nimbler’ word doesn’t.

23a A copy making a comeback after jack boot (6)
Here a combination of ‘A’ and a four-letter verb meaning ‘copy’ (or ‘imitate’) is reversed (‘making a comeback’) after the usual abbreviation for ‘jack’.

25a Punt’ propelled thus, we hear, suffering extremes (7)
A homophone (‘we hear’) of a (2,5) phrase that describes how [a] punt would be propelled; the agent noun which is the second word of the phrase is not explicitly given by Chambers with the meaning which Azed ascribes to it here, but that meaning is shown in OED (and it seems entirely reasonable).

27a A club having French art pinched – bad luck (7)
The letter A is followed by a four-letter word for a club (invariably complete with a liberal helping of large spikes in the children’s  comics that I used to read) around the two-letter French equivalent of the English ‘art’, specifically from the phrase ‘thou art’, ie the second person singular of the verb ‘to be’. The solution is hyphenated, (4-3).

30a Very old garment, only 50% well-organized (4)
A little care required here – it would be easy to conclude from the three checked letters that the missing letter was an ‘A’ and to move on. But there are two words which match the definition, one being an obsolete variant of the other; it is the obsolete form that we are looking for here (hence the ‘Very old’ in the clue, rather than just ‘Old’), and it forms the first half (‘50%’) of a word meaning ‘well-organized’ or ‘mentally composed’.

32a Was recording short of Welsh instrument of old (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘was recording’ (or ‘recorded’) without (‘short of’) the usual (but not regularly seen in puzzles) abbreviation for ‘Welsh’.

1d Jay presenting gig with John (10, 2 words)
An odd clue this one, a six-letter word for a light gig being followed by what was originally a diminutive form of the name John, but an alternative version of the term for a Canada jay has ‘John’ as its second word. I’m very surprised that Azed didn’t opt for something like ‘Jay presenting gig with Benny?’

6d Antelope of Nigeria is this i.e. if wild (5)
A composite anagram, and quite a neat one:  OF NIGERIA is a potential rearrangement (‘wild’) of the solution (‘this’) plus  IE IF.

8d Locks bull to cut up? (4)
I don’t know about you, but the wordplay here caused me a bit of head scratching before I worked out that it was a two-word (3,3) phrase meaning ’empty talk’ (ie ‘bull’) with the word TO reversed (‘up’) removed (‘cut’). I’m not quite sure what the surface reading is supposed to mean.

9d One with sponsor lacking crust? Criminy! (4)
A six-letter word for a male child with a ‘sponsor’ (responsible, in theory at least, for their religious education) has its outer letters removed (‘lacking crust’) to produce an obsolete interjection which sounds more like an acronym for something antisocial or even illegal.

19d A cattle-robber at large? Could be one such belter (7)
A composite anagram &lit: the letters of A CATTLEROBBER when rearranged (‘at large’) could produce the solution (‘one such’) plus BELTER.

21d Hotel abroad? It’s occupied by evil spirit (6)
The word IT contains (‘is occupied by’) a four-letter word for an evil spirit, which is given by Chambers as Shakespearean, but the examples given in OED don’t support this. It was also the first name of Kate Twinset’s brilliantly-portrayed character in the recent crime series set in the (fictional, thankfully) Pennsylvania settlement of Easttown.

26d Callisthenics round wood revealing Will’s codpiece? (5)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘callisthenics’ (often indicated in puzzles by ‘gym’) contains (’round’) a three-letter word for a type of wood (or the name of the tree whence it comes). While the definition is entertaining, I think it’s a bit of a stretch; the Shakespearean spelling of the word appears in As You Like It, where a timepiece is drawn from one (that would be worth seeing), and the word in its more usual form (without the ‘A’) is described as a bag that is ‘usually smaller than a sack’, which would probably accommodate a couple of dozen herring as well as a cod.

28d There’s nothing in a bit of sponge to nibble (4)
The usual letter representing ‘nothing’ is put inside a word for a bit of sponge on a stick…I really don’t think that ‘a bit of sponge’ on its own is sufficient here.

(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 2,573 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Another plain puzzle – this one seemed rather less tough than its predecessor, but I felt that it was of at least average difficulty, perhaps even a little bit above (all thoughts on the subject welcomed). I’d have to say that I didn’t think it was one of Azed’s very best (but even a slightly below-par Azed is a puzzle to be reckoned with), and it featured a few constructions that I wasn’t too keen on. No ‘spicas’ this week, but a brace of ‘leos’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 27d, “In hollow a dip through which river runs (4)”. No problem finding the answer, WADI is hidden ‘in’ holloW A DIp, but there are a couple of points of interest. Firstly, the definition: can ‘through which river runs’ indicate a noun? This is one of the few points on which Azed and I disagree – I would say ‘no’, but Azed has stated in the past that he does not have an issue with the solver effectively having to identify the subject of an otherwise subject-less verb. The example he has quoted in the past is “barks and is man’s best friend” for DOG: this requires the solver to infer a ‘one’ (or ‘it’ etc) as the subject, but here even the expanded ‘one through which river runs’ strikes me as a rather messy definition of WADI. There is another problem, though. ‘In hollow a dip’ cannot stand alone as wordplay, ie it doesn’t by itself deliver a substring from ‘hollow a dip’ – it needs a subject, as in eg ‘river valley in hollow a distraction’. That missing subject could perhaps follow, eg ‘In hollow a discernible river valley’, although I’d prefer to see a comma between the hiding place and the definition; but here we don’t have an implicit subject, which means that the clue has to be pre-processed to ‘In hollow a dip[, one] through which river runs’. That said, I expect Azed has had to clue the word many times over in the preceding 2,572 puzzles, and I applaud the fact that he doesn’t re-use clues, even if it means the occasional clue being a little below his usual standards.

1a Bruiser with power breaking additional window (8)
A seven-letter word for someone/something that bruises (or more commonly grinds to a pulp) has the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘power’ inserted (‘breaking’) to produce that devious sort of advertising window which pops up on your computer but is only visible when you close the window behind which it is lurking. The wordplay here strikes me as questionable; as it is written the participle of an intransitive verb is required to indicate the insertion, eg ‘entering’, so here the solver must infer ‘Bruiser with power breaking [it]’.

7a Seed covering ball is there? He belts it possibly (4)
A composite anagram, where the letters of BALL IS THERE can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form HE BELTS plus the solution (‘it’).

11a Positive German football team making money (4)
I’m afraid my knowledge of German cardinal numbers doesn’t go beyond ten, so I would have needed this to be a netball or ice hockey team in order to avoid the need to check that part of my answer. The usual abbreviation for ‘positive’ is followed by the appropriate German number, producing a word that originally meant ‘things pilfered’ or ‘booty’ and became a derogatory term for wealth or money, ie ‘filthy lucre’.

13a Starts going at this speed one’s gift for traffic police (5)
A strange one this. There’s no doubt about the answer, but ‘starts’ on its own to indicate ‘take the first letters from’ isn’t something I’d expect to see from Azed. Even if you assume a preceding ‘it’, that still doesn’t work (‘It starts x y z’ surely can’t mean ‘It consists of the first letters of the words x, y and z’). There are some possible alternative parsings, but none that seems viable. Plus the surface reading doesn’t make any sense, to me at least. I’d be happy with “Starts to go at terrific speed – one’s gift for traffic police”.

17a Wolf maybe died having escaped from fair (5)
A six-letter adjective more often associated with frankness rather than fairness, without the usual abbreviation for ‘died’ (‘died having escaped’). The ‘maybe’ indicates that this is a definition by example, since the solution also applies to animals which are not wolves.

23a Holiday abroad, shortest one if there’s no Brie (5)
The combination of an eight-letter word meaning ‘shortest’ and a one letter word for ‘one’ has the letters BRIE removed (“if there’s no Brie”).

29a Republicans having a bit of a knees-up in lively dance (5)
This clue might prove tricky for solvers unfamiliar with the acronym GOP as used to describe the US Republican Party. It dates back to 1875, at which point it stood for Gallant Old Party, and has been given several alternative interpretations over the years (most notably Get Out and Push) but the accepted expanded form is now Grand Old Party. In 2009 the Wall Street Journal instructed staff to discontinue use of the term GOP on the basis (ostensibly) that readers might not know what it meant. Incidentally, the party’s elephant symbol dates back to an 1874 cartoon by Thomas Nast, showing the Democratic Party as a donkey trying to scare an elephant depicting the Republican Party. .

32a Sex symbol that is given leading part in India (4)
A rather wordy wordplay from which all but the first and last words could be removed without changing the outcome; a three-letter (poetic or Scottish) word for ‘that’ (as in ‘that x over there’) is followed by the first letter of (‘leading part in’) the word ‘India’. 

33a Certainly wood growth having nitrogen applied quite recently (8)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘Certainly’, a four-letter word for ‘wood growth’ (in a very general sense), and the chemical symbol for nitrogen.

2d King Cole in a bad way? Soon one’s out at the elbows (9)
An anagram of the monarchical (rather than chess) abbreviation for ‘King’ together with COLE, followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘soon’, producing a projection on the ulna. I’m not sure why Azed chose to use ‘elbows’ rather than ‘elbow’, which would have been more accurate.

3d Indian tree, one replacing millions of others (5)
A term applied to members of a large group of tropical and sub-tropical trees (‘others’, ie other trees) has its M (for ‘millions’) replaced by a single-letter word for ‘one’, producing a tree found in India.

15d Photo on lake that is showing Walter’s bird (9)
A three-letter colloquialism for a photo is followed by a four-letter word for a lake (of the sort that you might come across in the Lake District) and the usual abbreviation for ‘that is’. As is usual, ‘Walter’ is Sir Walter Scott, who is responsible for something like 140 words or distinct meanings in Chambers, including such gems as beflum and gumple-foisted.

22d Not strictly a Mohican cut for harvest celebration (6)
We’re into James Fenimore Cooper territory here, with specific reference to the protagonist of the five books that make up the Leatherstocking Tales, a child born to white parents and known as Natty Bumppo. After growing up among Delaware Indians, he takes various aliases including ‘Deerslayer’ (the title of the first book); in the second and most famous book, The Last of the Mohicans, he is a British scout known as ‘Hawk-eye’ and with his Mohican friends, Chingachgook and Uncas becomes part of the caravan transporting the two daughters of Colonel Munro to the safety of Fort William Henry. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce in M*A*S*H takes his nickname from the character, as apparently The Last of the Mohicans was the only book his father ever read. Incidentally (although completely irrelevantly), John Brunner’s brilliant 1975 sci-fi novel The Shockwave Rider features an intelligent dog called Natty Bumppo – the book  gave us the term ‘worm’ as a description of a malicious program that spreads through a computer network, and is one of the first works of fiction to feature computer hacking.

25d Region of SW France suggested by the French? (5)
The masculine singular definite article in French is suggested by the solution when it is read as (1,3,1). At first I thought that Azed had missed a letter off the end of the solution, but it is not a proper noun, rather a word given in Chambers as describing ‘a heathy plain or sandy tract (now forested) along the coast in SW France’. A ‘region’ is a ‘tract of country’, so this is absolutely fine.

26d Such a face suggests foolish cracksman, first to last (4)
This is what Ximenes called an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the whole clue acts as the definition while just a part of it forms the wordplay – here it is the last four words, an American word for a burglar or safe-breaker having its first letter moved to the end (‘first to last’). Since ‘Such a face suggests foolish’ is no good as the definition, we must re-use the wordplay in order to produce a satisfactory(ish) definition of a word which might describe the face of a foolish[-looking] cracksman. The example that Ximenes gave for this type of clue is “What a bishop may have had before getting a crook” for PREBEND, which is not dissimilar in structure.

(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 2,572 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

This struck me as a tough puzzle which newcomers to Azed might have struggled to get to grips with. Not as many straightforward anagrams as usual, and several clues where obscure (to my mind, anyway) words were involved in both the wordplay and the solution, something that I don’t like. If anyone (unlike me) managed to complete the puzzle without recourse to Chambers, kudos! There were some well constructed clues, but I did feel that the sense of fun that shines brightly in some Azed puzzles wasn’t on full beam, and whilst a single ‘spica’ in a puzzle is fine, the presence of two of them represents one spica too many.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 25d, “United in small island group, they’re not wholly divine (5)”. The wordplay here is U in AITS, but the point of interest is the use of ‘small island group’ to indicate AITS, which raises the question of how much the setter can ‘twist’ a straight definition to suit his or her purposes. Here Azed clearly didn’t want to use ‘small islands’, although it would be grammatically sound; I’ve no problem at all with something like ‘more than one small island’, or even ‘several small islands’, but I think ‘small island group’ is a bridge too far – it suggests a collective noun and frankly even as the definition in a clue for AITS I think it would be iffy. I suppose ‘rock group’ might be acceptable for STONES, but then rocks and stones are generally found in groups. When tweaking the indication of a word in order to improve the surface reading of a clue, the setter has to be careful not to stretch it to breaking point or to introduce superfluous words in order to make the clue ‘read’ better.

1a A dry cape’s inside – something supplying effective cover (5)
I initially thought that we would be required to put a ‘C’ inside A plus a word for ‘dry’, but in fact the clue is a charade of A, a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘dry’ in an abstemious sense, and the ‘inside’ of the word CAPE, producing a word for the leaves of a palm tree which are used for thatching.

7a What comes after lying in sun repeatedly? We’re often baked (5)
I do wonder whether ‘What comes after’ is rather too indirect for comfort; to infer ‘the main course’ seems a stretch, so our first step must be to ‘afters’, whence we proceed to the three-letter word which is placed inside (‘lying in’) two instances (‘repeatedly’) of the normal abbreviation for ‘sun’. 

13a It was fired from the saddle, oil coating more than half of one (8)
A six-letter word for a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons (‘oil’) which is hard to come by in England at the moment containing (‘coating’) two consecutive letters from the word ONE (‘more than half of one’). The solution is a short rifle carried by mounted soldiers in the 16th and 17th centuries.

18a A bandage applied to a very large place? Discernment required (12)
A three-letter word meaning ‘a’ in the sense of ‘for each’, a five-letter word for a bandage wound around an injured limb in repeated figures-of-eight, and a four letter word for a very large place combine to produce the solution.

28a Butterfly to free following rulebook (6)
The three-letter verb meaning ‘to free’ is a crossword staple, but to get to the answer you need to know either the butterfly or PIE, a book of rules for determining the Church office of the day.

29a Sandwiches: number in foreign bread set before one (6)
So accustomed does one become to misdirection that I immediately assumed that ‘foreign bread’ was going to be the currency used in some far-off land, but in fact here it is the French word for ‘bread’ which contains the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ and is followed by the Roman numeral for ‘one’.

30a Pair reduced to single in travelling interrail, moving slowly (8)
The ‘pair reduced to single’ is the double-R in INTERRAIL which must be reduced to a single letter before the remaining letters are shifted around (‘travelling’) to form an adjective which certainly doesn’t mean ‘moving slowly’ but which is decidedly tricky to define accurately.

31a Large tropical fish, American, revealing soft metallic element (6)
The four-letter name of a large marine fish of the mackerel family found in warm parts of the western Atlantic is followed by the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ (or ‘America’). Again, I think the definition is questionable – the adjective here describes the element in a combining form, certainly not something in which it is present in a ‘soft metallic’ form.

32a Countryman’s handle to lift on end of scythe (6)
The five-letter word which is followed by (‘on’) the last letter of ‘scythe’ (‘end of scythe’) means ‘to lift’ in the pilfering sense. The solution is shown by Chambers as ‘dialect’, hence the “Countryman’s” qualifying the definition.

33a Acreage yokel turned over for cows out of service (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘acreage’ (I say ‘usual’, but I’m struggling to remember when I last saw it used in a puzzle) and a four-letter dialect word for a yokel are reversed (‘turned over’), the result being a Spenserian (‘out of service’) word meaning ‘subdues’. This verb is probably related the adverb ‘adawe’, meaning ‘out of life’,  which may have been mistaken for a verb in phrases such as ‘they did him adawe’, meaning ‘they did him out of life’, ie ‘they killed him’.

2d Ecstasy filling African people in some sacred places (6)
The African people ‘filled with’ Ecstasy are the TEMNE, now predominantly found in northern Sierra Leone, having left their original settlements in Guinea during the 15th century.

6d Company in flying to Mars go by direction finder (12)
The standard two-letter abbreviation for ‘company’ contained by (‘in’) an anagram (‘flying’) of TO MARS plus a four-letter verb meaning ‘to go by’ or ‘to elapse’.

7d Cause of disease forward fellow’s turned up (5)
The adjective meaning ‘forward’ (or ‘saucy’) is in common use; the associated noun less so. Followed by an [apostrophe-]S, it needs to be reversed ‘turned up’ in order to produce the solution.

8d Coconut oil product to preserve eggs soft? Reverse of that (6)
A charade of a three-letter word meaning ‘to preserve’, a pair of letters representing [duck] eggs, and a one-letter abbreviation for ‘soft’, with the whole thing being reversed (‘Reverse of that’). I believe that the solution is more of a by-product of the extraction of coconut oil, being the mass left after the oil has been removed from the pulp.

10d Osteal places may afford space to this (5)
A composite anagram &lit, and a succinct one at that, where the letters of OSTEAL PLACES can be rearranged to form SPACE TO plus the solution (‘this’). Too succinct, perhaps – I’m not sure that ‘may afford’ is sufficient to indicate rearrangement, even a potential one.

17d Feature of requiem to fade with soaring swell within? (8, 2 words)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to fade’ has a five-letter word (just about) meaning ‘[to] swell’ or (more commonly) ‘to come into being’ reversed (‘soaring’) inside (‘within’), the result being a (4,4) solution. The ‘swell’ meaning of the five-letter verb is obsolete, associated now only with the similar four-letter verb lacking the initial A. The required letter sequence could have been more accurately indicated by ‘a swell’, but this would have presented a problem in relation to the reversal – ‘a soaring swell’ reads very nicely but would deliver AESIR rather than ESIRA, while ‘a swell soaring’ doesn’t sound right at all.

20d Like e.g. US soldiers on parade, from Weald, leaderless, might one assume (6)
The idea is that when read as (2,2,2) the solution could (hence the ‘might one assume’) describe WEALD with the first letter removed, ie EALD. The solution is the North American spelling of a word which might describe the orderly arrangement of soldiers on parade. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but a great clue it ain’t.

21d Precise pointer at top of compass? (6)
When the pointer is at the top of the compass it would be indicating ‘north’ and therefore could perhaps be described as a (1,5).

23d Poison swallowed direct, dad dropped (6)
A concatenation of a five-letter word for ‘swallowed’ and a four-letter word for ‘[to] direct’ has the letters DAD removed from the outside. I question whether ‘dropped’ is sufficient to indicate that the word to be taken away has first to be divided – I don’t see why the relevant part of the clue couldn’t simply have read ‘dad dropped outside’ (or ‘dropped off’), which makes the instruction clearer..

24d Avian spur son observed on magpies (5)
The usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘son’ has the four-letter magpie genus added to produce a word which also features in the wordplay of 18a.

25d United in small island group, they’re not wholly divine (5)
Here the standard abbreviation for ‘United’ appears in a four-letter word for ‘small islands’, with demigods being the outcome for those fluent in Tongan, although those more familiar with the languages of other Pacific islands may ascribe a slightly different meaning to the word.

27d Check up about sign of what’s not right in Paddy’s bit of casual work (5)
A four-letter verb meaning ‘[to] check’ or ‘to restrain’ is reversed (‘up’) around (‘about’) a mark made by a teacher beside an incorrect answer (“sign of what’s not right”).

(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 2,571 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Another plain puzzle, which I thought was considerably easier than last week’s, albeit with a more generous helping of Scotticisms  than we have become accustomed to recently. There were a couple of tricky wordplays, but these were amply counterbalanced by the simple clues for the four ten-letter words around the perimeter.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clues 15a and 19d, specifically the definitions ‘They go up and down on catwalk’ and ‘We certainly won’t pull out’. Back in the day, clues which consisted solely of a cryptic definition were considered acceptable in barred puzzles, but by the early 1970s a subsidiary indication (‘wordplay’) had become a requirement. However, there is still a great deal of scope to use cryptic (or oblique, as I tend to call them) definitions in puzzles, and they can be particularly useful when indicating nouns which are difficult to define succinctly. Their use can make for very entertaining clues which provide a satisfying “D’oh” moment for the solver, but there are a couple of points to remember: firstly that although the oblique ‘definition’ will not be found in a dictionary it must offer a reasonable indication of the solution, and secondly that the  definition should combine smoothly with the wordplay – ideally the boundary between the two will also be disguised, although in the two clues here it isn’t. I can think of no better example for aspiring or improving setters than Richard Heald’s superlative clue for HACKETTE (AZ comp 2014), ‘Take the lead in Cinderella, playing girl who works in rags’, which ticks all the boxes quite beautifully.

11a Growing medium, not old, put out by inventor (4)
A six-letter word for an inventor (of words and phrases) has a two-letter word for ‘not’ – much used by barred puzzle setters but shown by Chambers as obsolete (‘old’) – removed (‘put out’).

14a Jock’s rolling wheelie, filled with energy (4)
See Drongo’s comment on this one below – the wordplay is straightforward, a three-letter word for a familiar site on British pavements commonly known as a ‘wheelie’ containing (‘filled with’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for energy, but there is a problem – that E could be placed in second or third place in the solution and in each instance would produce a valid spelling of a Scots word meaning ‘rich’ (ie “Jock’s rolling”). Those of us who applied the rule “I before E except after C” would have scooped the pool, but by luck rather than judgment. Anyone who entered the alternative version has my sympathy, particularly given that it is the ‘standard’ spelling.

16a Lock cleared of last fish (4)
The five-letter trademark for a type of high-security lock produced by a nineteenth century locksmith of the same name is missing its last letter (‘cleared of last’). Charles and Jeremiah Chubb started out as ironmongers in Portsmouth; in 1818 Jeremiah invented and patented the Detector, a near-impregnable lock. Any attempt to pick it resulted in the bolt being triggered in such a way that even the key would no longer open it, requiring the owner to release it with a ‘regulator’ key and then reset it with the standard key. The Detector became a byword for security, and was believed to be unpickable. Until, that is, an American locksmith, Arthur C Hobbs, turned up at the Great Exhibition of 1851 claiming that the Detector wasn’t half as secure as it was cracked up to be. In front of many witnesses, Hobbs picked the lock in 25 minutes; asked to do it again, he repeated the feat within 7 minutes, thus at a stroke destroying the absolute faith that the British public had placed in the Chubb lock. Hobbs subsequently (though with a great deal more effort) compromised a lock made by the other great English lock manufacturer, Bramah, thus opening up the British market to Hobbs’ employers, Day and Newell, and subsequently to a company that, trading on his overnight celebrity, he set up himself in the UK.

33a How-dye-do detected after school (7)
The usual three-letter abbreviation for ‘school’ is followed by the past active tense of a verb which can have a wide variety of meanings, ‘seize’ and ‘remove’ being two or the more obvious ones; the ‘detecting’ is in the sense of finding a fault or error in someone or something. Incidentally, I think an apostrophe is missing from the definition – it should be “How-d’ye-do”.

2d Sweet pastry, ornament in source of honey (7)
Azed doesn’t indicate that the (rather unlikely-looking) four-letter word for an ornament which is to be placed inside a three-letter ‘source of honey’ is archaic, but it is; a more familiar word with the same spelling is an interjection expressing pain.

4d Lead everybody after mounting skill in old game (8)
The chemical symbol for lead and a three-letter word for ‘everybody’ when placed after a reversal (‘mounting’) of a three-letter word for ‘skill’ produce the name of an old game in which the batsman has to strike a device which releases a ball into the air, whereupon the batsman must give the ball itself a whack.

5d Claw, not one found in part of French seaside town (8)
A five-letter word for the claw of an arthropod has a one-letter word for ‘one’ removed (‘not one’) before being put inside a four-letter word for a part in a theatrical sense. This clue is a good example of how the definition of a tricky proper adjective can be seamlessly integrated into a clue.

7d Sir H. Lauder’s turn? Not what he’s do round Scots city (4)
For the purposes of the definition, Sir Harry Lauder is there to indicate that the word is Scottish; in the wordplay, you need to remove (‘not’) a four-letter word for what Harry Lauder would do when on stage from the outside (’round’) of the name of a city ‘north of the border’. I don’t know why Azed has used ‘Scots’ here – in this situation ‘Scottish’ is surely correct, a view supported by Chambers. Younger readers may not know too much about Harry Lauder: born in Edinburgh in 1870, he spent ten years working in the mines but was already singing to entertain his fellow miners and performing in local music halls. He turned professional around 1894 and joined a touring concert party, but his journey to worldwide fame really started in 1900, when he appeared in London with an act which he had made comprehensible to a non-Scottish audience. His songs such as Roamin’ in the Gloamin and I Love a Lassie combined with his flair for comedy and his trademark Scottish costume – complete with twisty walking stick (cromack) – turned him into a huge worldwide star. Following a successful tour of the US in 1907, he returned the next year with a 15-piece orchestra, pipers etc who were taken around the country aboard a three-coach train, the “Harry Lauder Special”. He raised considerable sums for the war effort and set up a charity to support injured Scottish soldiers and sailors; he was knighted in 1919 for service to the Empire. It’s said that during the worst times in World War 2 Winston Churchill would repeatedly listen to Lauder’s recording of his song (Keep Right on to) The End of the Road in order to keep his spirits up. Lauder himself once said “I’m tellin’ ye, happiness is one of the few things in this world that doubles every time you share it with someone else.”

9d King with state requiring relief mostly? It’s given as solemn token (4)
A one-letter abbreviation of ‘king’ (in the chess sense) followed by a four-letter term for ‘[a] state requiring relief’ missing its last letter (‘mostly’).

19d Sprinter poorly dressed? We certainly won’t pull out (8)
The ‘poorly dressed’ requires a degree of pre-processing, just as ‘having retired’ in a clue might need to be translated into ‘in BED’; the sprinter is the four-letter surname of probably the only twenty-first century sprinter that most people could name.

23d Fate? One’s limited in preference when there’s no ice (6)
You might wonder whether this is some sort of &lit, but it is a conventional definition/wordplay clue where the wordplay references the definition – a three-letter word for ‘fate’ (‘one’) is contained by (‘limited in’) a six-letter word for ‘preference’ from which the letters ICE have been removed (“when there’s no ice”).

30d A wee bittie Scotch cheers – something with gin too (4)
Another Scots word, this one formed by putting a two-letter word meaning ‘cheers’ next to a two-letter informal term for a type of vermouth which is (or at least was at one time) often added to gin.

(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 2,570 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Quite a tricky puzzle, I thought, with not too many ‘gimmes’ and a solution across the top that took a bit of teasing out. I felt that Azed enjoyed setting this one, and there were some nice clues, although there were also a few where the surface reading didn’t quite convince.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 25d, “Military supremo at head of troops, rarely surrounded (5)”. The wordplay is straightforward, C-IN-C (Commander-in-Chief) being followed by T (‘head of troops’), and the solution is a word meaning ‘surrounded’ which is given by Chambers as ‘rare’ (hence the ‘rarely’). But there is another word in the clue, that ‘at’ between the two elements of the wordplay. We often see juxtaposition indicators in puzzles; on occasion they play a role in the cryptic reading, reversing the natural order of the elements in a charade (eg ‘is behind time’ to indicate TIS), but frequently they are there purely for the benefit of the surface reading and perform no cryptic role (eg ‘is on time’ to indicate IST). I don’t believe that there is any consensus on what juxtaposition indicators are acceptable – Chambers gives a meaning for many prepositions (eg ‘to’ = ‘beside’) that could be used to justify their use between wordplay elements X and Y to indicate either XY or YX. There are many such indicators that I am happy to employ, and a number of them are listed in the Clinical Data section of this site; there are others which I don’t like, in particular X ‘has’ (or X’s) Y to mean XY. The use of ‘at’ doesn’t appeal to me either – I suppose one could argue that the Chambers definition is so broad that it supports the usage, and someone who is “at the door” is in front of it – or are they behind it? – but you won’t be seeing it in a puzzle of mine.

1a Open fabric marker kept in series for amateur handicraft (12)
A five-letter open fabric is followed by a four-letter word for a marker (in the sense of a pointer) inside (‘kept in’) the usual three-letter abbreviation for ‘series’; having watched the Antiques Roadshow on many occasions I was familiar with a more common form of the solution, but can’t remember coming across this variant before.

10a Trouble getting in fish for tourist hotel (7)
My first experience of crosswords containing obscure words was gained by solving the Autolycus puzzle in the Birmingham Post each Saturday – I don’t know if the setter was a fisherman, but the various stages in the lifecycle of a salmon were very much front and centre. Here we have a three-letter word for ‘trouble’ contained by (‘getting in’) the term for a ‘young salmon up to two years of age, before it becomes a smolt’. I wonder whether the other salmon hold a party to celebrate the onset of smoltship? With cake…fishcake, of course.

14a Hawking may produce this subject in result (6)
A cryptic definition intended to misdirect the solver towards a famous physicist and cosmologist, and a wordplay that involves a three-letter word for ‘[to] subject’ (as you might subject someone to a test or a sword) inside a three-letter word for ‘[a] result’.

15a Spot roughly treated mostly round front of chin (6)
A six-letter word meaning ‘treated roughly’ without its last letter (‘mostly’) containing (’round’) the first letter (‘front’) of ‘chin’.

16a Wild buffalo? I appreciate that wafted aroma (7)
Here a two-letter informal interjection meaning ‘I appreciate that’ is followed by an anagram (‘wafted’) of AROMA.

23a Stomachs financial undoing, one involving millions (6)
A four-letter word for ‘financial undoing’ and a one-letter word meaning ‘one’ containing (‘involving’) the usual abbreviation for ‘millions’.

29a Old bird, one hiding its head, but not that one! (6)
The sort of bird which legend suggests might hide its head in the sand (which is not the bird that forms the answer to the clue – hence the ‘but not that one!’) does indeed ‘hide its head’ by having its first letter removed from sight.

3d Occasion, we hear, for a poet’s tears (5)
Azed thankfully uses homophones sparingly, and unless you are Inspector Clouseau you are going to be happy with this one, where the solution sounds like a word for ‘occasion’ (or ‘scope’, as in ‘there is scope for improvement’).

4d Mark, one seen on note becoming due (8)
This one may puzzle solvers outside the UK; the new £50 note issued by the Bank of England in June this year features a portrait of mathematician and WW2 codebreaker Alan Turing.

9d Light rain effective action cleared from street (4)
Here the usual abbreviation for ‘street’ is to be removed from a six-letter word meaning an ‘effective action, feat, achievement’ to produce a dialectal word for ‘light rain’. I remain unconvinced that ‘X cleared from Y’ can mean X with Y removed; ‘free from’ would I think be understood, or ‘cleared of’, but ‘cleared from Y’ means that something has been removed from Y, not the other way round.

11d Upright, active, this lot work making a point (11, 3 words)
A charade of a five-letter term for ‘upright’ (in the sense of a typeface), the usual abbreviation for ‘active’, and a five-letter word that could mean ‘this lot’, producing a (5,1,5) solution that includes a couple of accented vowels.

18d Old pavilions? Matches will include one (8)
Azed is not by any means averse to using a qualifier such as ‘old’ in a definition to indicate not that the solution is archaic or obsolete but that the particular meaning of the word qualified is itself antediluvian, so here the the solver should be looking at the entry for ‘pavilion’ in Chambers. The wordplay involves a six-letter word for ‘matches’ (in the sense of ‘reproduces’) containing a two-letter word for ‘one’.

21d Top lady exchanges lid for one to have a favourable effect (7)
A seven-letter ‘top lady’ (Queen Victoria, perhaps, but not the present Queen) has her first letter (‘lid’) exchanged for the Roman numeral representing ‘one’.

27d Salt cellar initially passed for junior cleric at bishop’s tea party (5)
The wordplay here is clear, the first letter of ‘cellar’ (‘cellar initially’) being removed from a six-letter term for a junior cleric, but what is Azed on about in the surface reading? Is he thinking of the cartoon published in Judy in 1895 featuring a bishop and curate at the breakfast table, or a remarkably similar one which appeared in Punch the following year? I can see that the salt would have been passed to the curate for him to apply to his egg (‘some parts of it are very good’), but where does the tea party come from? Please don’t say Boston.

28d Commotion with withdrawal of US has me mostly gripped in worries (5)
A four-letter word for a commotion has the letters US removed (‘with withdrawal of US’) and our setter’s name all but the last letter (‘me mostly’) put inside (‘gripped’). Seems topical, but it’s likely that the clue was written months ago unless Azed has had reason to rewrite it at the eleventh hour. I would have to say that the surface reading is pretty weak – have you ever heard anyone say that they were ‘mostly gripped in worries’? No, I didn’t think so.

(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 2,569 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

A bit of a mixture – some straightforward anagrams and three hiddens, offset by some tricky wordplays and twelve entries with unchecked first letters. Overall I thought the difficulty was above average. As I solve a puzzle I mark the clues that I think worthy of comment; when I came to put the marked clues into the template for these notes I found that they exactly filled the available slots – I usually have three or four slots unused when the puzzle is of average difficulty or below, hence the relatively high rating.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 6d, “Bully waste, light brown at the edges” (7). The wordplay involves UREA (‘waste’) having TAN (‘light brown’) put around it (‘at the edges’), but the element of interest is the definition, ‘Bully’. TAUREAN means ‘of or relating to a bull’, but there is no entry in Chambers for ‘bully’ under the headword ‘bull’ (in the bovine sense). The definition is what I usually term ‘fanciful’, and relies on the solver understanding what the word would mean if it did exist. The rather overused ‘flower’ to indicate a river falls into the same category. Strictly speaking, all clues that rely on these ‘made up’ words are unsound, but they add a bit of variety and fun to puzzles and I enjoy coming across them from time to time. There is, of course, a risk that the idea can be taken too far – ‘detailed’ indicating the removal of the last letter of a word strikes me as borderline, and the use, say, of ‘ingest’ to indicate containment in DEED strikes me as something that has no place outside, perhaps, The Guardian.

10a Publish a prince penning chapter all about sanctuaries (8)
A three-letter word for ‘publish’ (or ‘broadcast’) plus A (from the clue) and a three-letter crossword staple for ‘prince’ containing (‘penning’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for chapter, the whole lot being reversed (‘all about’).

13a Knight formally clad? Something in wool (5)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘knight’ used by chess players is placed inside a four-letter word for a piece of formal attire (‘formally clad?’); when you read the Chambers entry for the solution you can understand Azed’s choice of definition!

14a ‘Would-be literary so-so’? Oscar’s chum stuck with that (7)
The nickname given to Lord Alfred Douglas (“Oscar’s chum”) by his mother is transfixed by (‘stuck with’) a two-letter informal term meaning ‘so-so’.

15a Aristophanes? Poet’s played about with his Frogs like these (4)
A composite anagram, where the word ARISTOPHANES can be formed from a rearrangement (‘played about’) of POET’S, HIS and the solution (‘Frogs like these’). Note that here the words ‘like these’ are necessary; without them there would be no valid definition as ‘Frogs’ is required as part of the wordplay. I can expand on this point if required.

22a Old reptile, all but calamitous when held back in Alabama (8)
A word meaning ‘calamitous’ missing its last letter (‘all but’) is reversed (‘held back’) inside the three-letter abbreviation for ‘Alabama’.

24a Ball not quite hitting target? End almost cut off, willingly (6, 2 words)
This one seems very tortuous. The word BALL (‘from the clue’) has a three-letter word for ‘quite’ removed from it (leaving just a single letter), then a two-word phrase (2,5) meaning ‘hitting [the] target’ in a golfing context has most of the word END (‘end almost’) removed (‘cut off’) in order to produce a (3,3) French expression. Incroyable!

25a Like some Chinese art, has been put up back to front (5)
Here a word meaning ‘has been put up’ (in the sense, say, of a picture in a gallery) has its last letter moved to the start (‘back to front’).

33a Be active on globe with backing guitar (5)
A two-letter word meaning ‘be active’ (a definition given by Chambers) is followed by a three-letter word for ‘globe’ which has been reversed (‘with backing’). The solution is the name of a resonator guitar manufacturer which, Hoover-like, has become a generic term for a wood-bodied single-cone resonator guitar (thanks, Wikipedia).

3d Uncertain weather? Something for the head mostly packed (5)
A three-letter word for the weather (or where it comes from) has a three-letter word for ‘something for the head’ without its last letter (‘mostly’) inside (‘packed’).

7d Permit’s required to catch local birds (7)
I find that crossword editors these days aren’t too keen on clues like this – it reads well, but the word ‘required’ is de trop; ‘Permits to catch local birds’ would be preferred. Anyway, the birds appear when a four-letter representation of “permit’s” ‘catches’ a three-letter word for [a] local.

8d Regional Spanish clubs superior to Italian one? No thanks (7)
Azed shows a previously-unsuspected knowledge of footy. The usual abbreviation for ‘clubs’ is followed by the eight-letter name of a Serie A club (‘Italian one”, ie Italian club) from which the letters TA have been removed (‘No thanks).

20d Like Hooray Henry’s girl, certainly uppish, pocketing debt (7)
A three-letter interjection meaning ‘certainly’ is reversed (‘uppish’) around (‘pocketing’) a word for ‘debt’. Well, I don’t really think it is a word for debt – ‘advance’ would be nearer the mark.

21d Sugar-making refuse such as is dumped in endless heaps (7)
A two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘such as’ is contained by (‘dumped in’) a six-letter word for ‘heaps’ (as in ‘lots and lots’) from which (something of a repeating theme in this puzzle) the last letter has been removed (‘endless’).

26d Ritual drink: state portions to be exchanged (5)
The name of a city in Nebraska (which was also the codename of a Normandy beach, but is not – as Davey points out below – a state) is divided into two portions, of three and two letters respectively, and the parts are swapped over (‘exchanged’).

28d Tickle? One doing this will get fish (5)
I really don’t think this word means ‘tickle’, and neither does Chambers – ‘fondle’ would be ok (although of course the clue would then only make sense to Troy McClure fans). Whatever, its related agent noun (ie someone who does the tickling/fondling) is also the name of a fish.

30d Logician finding link in even numbers (or consecutive odd ones?) (4)
Two wordplays, the first a simple hidden and the second also a hidden but in a pair of words which are suggested rather than being given in the clue.

(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 2,568 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

Perhaps a smidgeon easier than last week’s puzzle, but still I felt very close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum. Although 13×11 grid are certainly not the norm for barred crosswords, Azed uses them every few weeks in place of his ‘standard’ 12×12 size to give a bit of variety.

Hearty congrats are due to Richard Heald on retaining his title as the top Azed competitor – I make that the eighth time that he has been at the summit, either singly or jointly, in the past fourteen seasons. He consistently writes imaginative, entertaining and beautifully-constructed clues, and his success is well deserved.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 18a, “Pet having a suitable doctor brought in clipped as a proviso (6)”. Nothing too complex here: CAT (‘Pet’) has A VE(t) inserted (‘suitable doctor brought in clipped’) to produce CAVEAT. Slightly unusually, the insertion and last letter deletion indicators are effectively combined (‘brought in clipped’), but it was the ‘suitable doctor’, referencing the pet/cat, which got me thinking. This clue is fine, a vet is a suitable doctor for a cat, but what if the ‘pet’ had turned out, say, to be not ‘cat’ but ‘pamper’; a vet would be no more ‘suitable for a pamper’ than any other doctor (and possibly less so, depending on what their most recent work had involved, I’ve seen All Creatures Great and Small). If we evaluate the hypothetical clue serially, then ‘pet’ has already turned into PAMPER before we get to the ‘suitable’, so could the solver still be expected to associate the ‘suitable doctor’ with ‘pet’ in that situation? Think carefully, because if the answer isn’t ‘yes’ then there is a problem with 19d, as the ‘holy scriptures’ in the definition aren’t the same ones that are referenced in the wordplay. Poisonally (as Catarella would say in Stephen Sartarelli’s translations of Andrea Camilleri’s brilliant Montalbano novels) I think they could.

12a Gill spreading wings, with full range to pick from (8, 3 words)
It is only when you get to gill⁵ in Chambers that you find the “two- or four-wheeled cart for carrying timber”, which is ‘spreading’ (inserted into) a four-letter word (taken straight from the Latin) for ‘wings’.

21a Acute anaemia, not universal in expressionist style (6)
The seven-letter word for the ‘Wild Beast’ style of expressionist painting of which Matisse was an exponent has the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘universal’ removed (‘not universal’) to produce the solution.

26a Simon’s chance encounter I’ll abandon for possible primate once (6)
What Simple Simon met when on the way to the fair without the I (“I’ll abandon”) provides the missing link. I’m not sure that ‘encounter’ can represent the person or thing encountered rather than the event, but I can’t think of word which does!

28a Shelter after rain’s beginning, not the first for mowers (4)
The first letter of ‘rain’ (“rain’s beginning”) is followed by a word meaning ‘[to] shelter’, more commonly seen suffixed by ‘-ing’ and describing the thing that does the covering or sheltering; the solution is ‘a second mowing of grass in the same season’ and is an alternative spelling of a five-letter word.

31a Churchman abandoning work, a mistake (4)
Here a six-letter churchman ‘abandons’ the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘work’. Quite a lot of repetition in this puzzle, ‘abandon’ also appearing in 26, ‘colt’ in 15 and 29, and ‘old’ in 23 and 25.

3d Without extremes of cunning, such a situation is hopeless (5)
A seven-letter adjective meaning ‘cunning’ has its first and last letters removed (‘Without extremes’) to produce the hyphenated (2-3) solution.

4d Expert airman rising in foremost position, showing what’s distinctive on wing tip (6)
The wordplay here is straightforward, a three-letter word for an ‘Expert airman’ being reversed (‘rising’) inside (‘in’) a three-letter word for ‘foremost position’, but understanding the definition requires the knowledge that a wing tip is ‘a brogue shoe in which the toecap extends backwards and to the sides, suggesting the shape of a bird with outstretched wings.’ Prior to today, I did not possess that knowledge, and it is likely that within the week it will have left me again.

5d Religious schools (hard to find!) were on edge? (7)
They are indeed hard to find in the printed editions of Chambers, because they are listed under the ‘cheder’, the singular form of a variant spelling. Users of electronic versions of Chambers should have no such problems. The wordplay is a three word phrase (3,1,3) loosely equating to ‘were on edge’.

7d Pair of stipules wild sorrel has on inside (5)
Solving this clue without checkers would mean being familiar with either the solution or OCA, a South American wood sorrel, which has a two-letter preposition meaning ‘on’ inside.

19d Holy scriptures: version thereof is Roman one (6)
The ‘thereof’ refers back to the ‘Holy scriptures’ which forms the definition, and the wordplay is thus a charade of a two-letter abbreviation for a version of the Scriptures (but not the ones which form the solution), a three-letter Latin word meaning ‘is’ (‘is Roman’) and a single-letter word meaning ‘one’.

20d Napkins to twist up (6)
The letters TO (from the clue) are followed by a verb meaning ‘twist’ or ‘swing round unexpectedly’ which is reversed (‘up’).

22d Paddy, soaked. succeeded coming first (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘soaked’ has the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘succeeded’ moved into the leading position (‘coming first’). The surface reading doesn’t work properly – it needs ‘in’ or a comma following ‘succeeded’, but either would render the wordplay unsound.

23d Old snake may be in this cage (5)
The letters IN when followed by the solution (‘this cage’) produce an archaic (hence the ‘old’) word for an ungrateful person, ie a ‘snake’.

25d Alms required endlessly – see the old assemble (5)
A six-letter word for ‘alms’ with its last letter missing (‘endlessly’) makes an obsolete verb meaning ‘assemble’.

27d Farmstead flourished – as fed with this salt beef? (4)
A composite anagram to finish off with, where the letters of FARMSTEAD when rearranged (‘flourished’) can produce AS FED plus the solution (‘this salt beef’).

(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 2,567 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle which seemed pretty close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum, generous helpings of disguise and misdirection (together with more than a touch of mischievousness) being offset by ten anagrams and a trio of hiddens. Some nice clues in there, including a couple of &lits.

Setters’ Corner:

Occasionally I have a look at the fifteensquared Azed blog, which I’m pleased to say regularly receives more comments now than it did four or five years ago. I noticed that the blog for AZ 2,564 had accumulated a generous helping of comments, which prompted me to take a squiz. I was gratified to see that many of the remarks related to a new solver joining the Azed ranks, but my eye was taken by a criticism of certain clues, in particular of 7d, “Junkie, how one might describe Cressida?”, the solution to which is ACID-HEAD.

The objections were that (i) an acid-head is not a ‘junkie’, and (ii) that Dame Cressida Dick is the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, and therefore not ‘A CID head’. Now, as regular readers will know, I’m not averse to a bit of nit-picking, in particular where I believe the wording of a clue is questionable; but points of grammatical accuracy and shades of definition are horses of rather different colours.

Errors do occur, of course – a recent Mephisto used ‘cashier’ to define ‘demote’, which is hard to defend – but in general setters have to be given a bit of latitude. Most &lit clues would fail if their definitions were examined closely, and sometimes a solver with expertise in a particular area will attach a meaning to a word with a precision beyond the scope of the setter’s knowledge or of dictionaries such as Chambers.

Going back to the Azed clue, the OED ‘s definition of a junkie is ‘a drug-addict’ and of an acid head as ‘someone who habitually takes the drug LSD’ which seems plenty close enough for a layman, while Cressida Dick not only has responsibility for the Metropolitan Police’s Criminal Investigation Department but was at one time head of the Specialist Crime Directorate. Of course the view of what’s fair in a crossword and what’s not will always be subjective, but I don’t see a problem here.

1a A hot slice of tart epicure cooked to feed healthily (12)
An anagram (‘cooked’) of A HOT T(art) EPICURE. There are those who would say that ‘slice’ is no more appropriate to indicate the first letter of a word than any single letter or group of consecutive letters from it. I would probably count myself amongst them.

13a Urgent – plump in the middle? See lens measurement (7)
A four-letter word for ‘Urgent’ (a meaning given by Chambers but not the OED, which restricts itself to the more familiar ‘dreadful’) in the middle of a three-letter word for ‘plump’ in the sense which I will forever associate with Arthur Marshall and Frank Muir making their selections from the three explanations of obscure words given on Call My Bluff (this will be lost on anyone who hasn’t seen the programme, and probably on many who have!).

16a Party provided warmth about start of evening (6)
Here we have a two-letter word meaning (inter alia) ‘provided’ followed by a three-letter word for ‘warmth’ (in the sense of anger) containing the first letter of ‘evening’. I don’t in truth think that ‘warmth’ is quite the same as anger- the OED goes no further than ‘a heated state of the temper approaching anger’ – but in view of my comments in the Setter’s Notes above I think I ought to let it pass… 😉

17a Colts accepting start of training? (6)
A nice little &lit, with a five-letter word for colts (or lambs) left by their mother(s) and brought up by hand containing (‘accepting’) the first letter of ‘training’.  The use of the same letter selection indicator in two clues in the same puzzle would normally be considered unacceptable by editors; here the same indicator (‘start’) appears in two consecutive clues, although one instance could readily have been replaced by ‘beginning’, say.

18a Heat meat for cottage pie, setting aside first three quarters (7)
A five-letter word for the meat that would go into a cottage pie has its first letter removed (‘setting aside first’) and is followed by the abbreviations for three cardinal points (‘three quarters’). Sneaky.

23a Experience taking in flash? One has no shorts! (7)
I worked out the solution from part of the wordplay and the definition, not knowing that the ‘flash’ that is contained by a three-letter word for ‘[to] experience’ is a pool or marshy place; the solution is a foot (of the prosodic variety) which contains just two long syllables – and therefore no shorts.

33a Vacated theatre and left only half set (4)
The first and last letters of ‘theatre’ (‘Vacated theatre’) and half of the word ‘left’ (‘left only half’) combine to produce the sort of set that might be seen in the corner of a room or, perhaps more likely these days, on the wall.

34a Mitre might be this indication of grade (12, 2 words)
The (5,2,5) solution when preceded by something like ‘one possible’ could indicate the letter sequence MITRE.

5d Old bungs foiled user opening special up (6)
An anagram (‘foiled’, ie baffled) of USER inserted into (‘opening’) a reversal (‘up’) of a two-letter abbreviation for ‘special’. The solution itself is not obsolete, but bung⁵, a bit of criminal slang from the 16^th/17^th centuries, certainly is – hence the qualification ‘Old’.

6d To recap, with it Roman somehow encapsulated….his admired philosopher (12, 2 words)
A two-word (2,3) phrase meaning ‘To recap’ has an anagram (‘somehow’) of IT ROMAN contained within it (‘encapsulated’), producing the (6,6) description applied by Cicero to Plato.

11d Chilled Scotch in Jock’s bar (5)
A double Scotch, as it were – the meaning of ‘a dam in a stream’ (‘bar’) is unlikely to spring to the minds of those south of the border (and perhaps even of some to the north of it), but the ‘chilled’ (or ‘chilly’) sense will be familiar to both Scot and non-Scot alike.

14d E.g. Christian doctor, just as timely (9)
A two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of doctor is followed by a two-word (2,5) phrase meaning ‘just as timely’; the ‘E.g’ is needed because this is a definition by example, there being many non-Christians who would associate themselves with the solution.

20d Lay about wandering male, minor luminary? (7)
A luminary is a source of light, so a minor luminary is a source of a small amount of light, yes? A three-letter verb meaning ‘lay’ contains an anagram (‘wandering’) of MALE.

22d Rolled up coat following guide (6)
This one puzzled me briefly, until I realized that the charade was made up of a three-letter word for ‘coat’ and a three-letter word meaning ‘following [a] guide’, a verb in participle form.

25d Banter (one might suppose) I introduced to restrain (6)
The wordplay involves the letter I being put inside (‘introduced to’) a five-letter word meaning ‘to restrain’ (or put off). The definition is fanciful (hence the ‘one might suppose’), based on the verb ‘bant’, itself a back-formation from Banting – not a participle but the name of a 19th century Londoner who wrote of his success with a dietary system devised by an ear surgeon.

William Banting was a five-foot-five undertaker and coffin maker who weighed over 200 pounds. By all accounts a good-humoured man, he said of his considerable consumption of sweets and fatty foods that “a big ship is not built with scanty materials”. A member of the family whose business handled the funeral of anyone who was anyone (including Prince Albert), he became less chirpy in retirement, suffering from a number of ailments apparently linked to obesity, and complaining “If fat is not an insidious enemy I do not know what is.” He tried many remedies for his condition (including at least 90 Turkish baths), but in the absence of a Victorian Jamie Oliver he was at the end of his tether when he was further afflicted with hearing loss; he consulted William Harvey, a well-known ear surgeon and a friend of Charles Dickens, who told Banting that his hearing issue was a result of excess fat blocking an auditory canal. He prescribed a diet low in sugar and starch, excluding such things as potatoes, bread, butter and beer. The regimen was a huge success – Banting lost 46lb in a year and his health (including his hearing) improved enormously. Wanting to share the secrets of his weight loss, Banting wrote a pamphlet which he entitled A Letter on Corpulence. It was a huge success, to the extent that within just a few years ‘to bant’ had become synonymous with ‘to diet’.

27d Old soldier, last promoted to lead 20’s a slight one? (5)
The soldier dates back to Roman days, being the Latin word for same, and his last letter is moved to the start (‘last promoted to lead’). Probably only Azed could get away with indicating that a slight instance of the solution could be described by the answer to 20d.

30d Heading heavenward, maid leaves glittering stake (4)
A neat clue, with a reversal (‘Heading heavenward’) of MAID leaving an eight-letter word meaning ‘glittering’ to produce the solution. I did wonder whether Azed could have used an alternative term for glittering in order to make the surface reading even better, perhaps ‘flaring’, but on refection I think that ‘glittering’ is itself something of a stretch for an adjective which means ‘covered in glittery things’ rather than ‘glittering’.

(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 2,566 ‘Playfair’

Difficulty rating: (5 / 10)

Don’t be put off attempting this puzzle by the Playfair aspect – it’s perfectly possible to do what I did, solving the four clues without definitions, identifying the link between them, working out the code phrase, and simply encoding the thematic entries into the grid.

I’m not a fan of Playfair puzzles, which I don’t see as a good way of attracting solvers into the world of the barred puzzle. I think it is suited only to puzzles which might be described by aficionados as ‘erudite’ and by less enthusiastic solvers as ‘recondite’. Decoding the cipher has always struck me as tedious, and therefore I am pleased that in recent Playfair puzzles Azed has offered an alternative route by providing clues to the code phrase itself. At the end of these notes I have added a description of how I set about finding the code phrase from the clues, thus avoiding the the decoding process, including parsing for the four clues lacking definitions. After that, I have included the hints that I have given in the past for Playfair decoding where no alternative route to the code phrase is available; this can be ignored by anyone who goes down the ‘guess the code phrase’ route.

I felt that while there were a few simple clues in this puzzle, many made no concession to the extra difficulty associated with the  Playfair aspect, which made cracking the code by establishing the correspondence between clear and encoded forms even less appealing. Anyone who solved it without assistance did very well; if they did it by working back from the encoded entries to discover the code phrase, then they did even better – though I wonder why they bothered, since in order to crack the code they must have solved enough of the asterisked solutions to enable them to establish the code phrase with sufficient certainty to at least try encoding a couple of the thematic solutions.

8a Bishop in usually striped cloth? Not necessarily (4)
A low-tariff &lit, involving a single-letter abbreviation of ‘bishop’ inside a three-letter word for a Syrian cloth of goat or camel hair, usually striped. The ‘not necessarily’ is there to indicate that the bishop in the definition, who may be Syriac or Coptic, is no more likely to be seen about town wearing striped cloth than any other type of fabric.

11a Piano’s left out of tune, though not old, relating to a chord? (6)
An anagram (‘out of tune’) of PIANOS L (‘left’) without O (‘though not old’); the definition takes advantage of ‘chord’ being an old spelling of ‘cord’.

14a What implies Benin is swell (5)
The IVR code for Benin (formerly Dahomey) is DY, and the solution suggests this pair of letters.

17a Oil extraction centre, where you find youngsters, dropping out, in old breeches (8, 2 words)
YOUTH (‘youngsters’) without OUT (‘dropping out’) are found within an archaic Irish word for close-fitting breeches, producing a (3,5) solution.

18a Mark reef at sea: there’s bony fish (4)
A triple definition clue, the first (verb or noun) being the one of the three that is most commonly used by landlubbers.

21a Poet’s bar, supplying special, was out mostly (6)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘special’ is followed by a five-letter word for ‘was inaccurate’ (‘was out’) without its last letter (‘mostly’). The solution is a Shakespearean word, hence the qualification “Poet’s”.

33a Plastic resin: it was liquid (5)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘sex appeal’ (‘it’) plus a three-letter word meaning ‘was liquid’ (or at least ‘behaved like a liquid’). ‘It’ is that indefinable quality ascribed to certain female film stars, most famously Clara Bow. She starred in the 1927 film “It”, about which Variety said “You can’t get away from this Clara Bow girl. She certainly has that certain ‘It’…and she just runs away with the film.” Consequently she became known as ‘The It Girl’. Sadly it was not Clara but a character in Elinor Glyn’s novel ‘It’ that Dorothy Parker was referring to when she wrote in a review “And she had It. It, hell; she had Those”.

35a Wild gale or rain? Have this brolly fabric near (6)
A nice composite anagram, where a rearrangement (‘Wild’) of GALE OR RAIN can produce the solution (‘this brolly fabric’) plus NEAR. The material in question, also called zanella cloth, is a mixture of silk and wool or cotton in a close diagonal twill weave (so I understand). The material of choice for lightweight umbrellas in the nineteenth century, it also found favour as a dress material, and makes an appearance as such in Anne of Green Gables: “Oh, how pretty it was—a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves—they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon.”

2d Old manor: worried when it’s not included in deed (4)
The idea here is that when this four-letter historical word for a manor is put inside DE….ED it produces an eight-letter word meaning ‘worried’ (in  the US, or ‘seasoned highly and broiled’ in the UK), although you have to read the wordplay in the right way.

5d Treat youngsters cruelly, Squeers-style – protective garb needed (7)
Wackford Squeers ensured that both he and Dotheboys Hall lived up to their names, with his predilection towards beatings regularly leading him to ??? ????.

7d Shuffle letter sequence around (not hard?) (5)
Kudos to anyone who solved this without the help of crossing letters. The letter sequence which must be moved around is DEFGHI, but without the H (‘not hard’). I beg to disagree.

9d House denied love latterly, a heap of waste (4)
The sort of house that involves little ducks and obese ladies loses its closing O (‘denied love latterly’) to produce a dialect word for a pile of rubbish that shares its name, and some might say its qualities, with a search engine

10d After battle of the sexes perhaps following shrink? (7)
Not one of Azed’s finest – the battle of the sexes is a BED WAR, and it precedes the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘following’.

11d What might describe mineral fragments? Well, not these (8)
But this is better. A three-letter word for [a] well is followed by a five-letter word for the people or things that aren’t these (‘not these’).

16d Tennents? This aye disposes of watery beers (8)
Tennents produce Scotland’s best-selling lager, and they (or certain key individuals on their payroll, anyway) could be described by this ‘now mainly Scottish’ word. The wordplay involves a composite anagram, where the solution (‘this’) and AYE can be rearranged (‘disposes of’) WATERY BEERS.

21d Traipse south over clay, losing energy (4)
Solving this clue requires two pieces of knowledge – firstly that the clay which must have its E removed (‘losing energy’) is LUTE, and secondly that a traipse is a slattern.

22d Rarely grasp what was written about soil’s efflorescence (7)
Here we have an old four-letter spelling of a word for ‘written’ invariably seen today with six letters  containing (‘about’) REH, apparently ‘an efflorescence of sodium salts on the soil in India, etc.’ No, me neither.

29d Group of seven? Faces losing six (5)
A seven-letter word for ‘faces’ loses the Roman numerals representing six to produce the members of a group that appeared in the puzzle a few week ago, comprising seven philosophers, statesmen and law-givers of sixth-century Greece.

(definitions are underlined)

How I set about this puzzle

Completing a Playfair puzzle essentially depends on blind-solving the entries which are encoded in the grid, so that is usually the best place to start. Here it seemed the only sensible place to start, since Azed had told us that the solutions to the asterisked clues were linked, being described (collectively, it seemed reasonable to assume) by the code phrase. The most promising clue looked like 25, ‘Cask soak knocked back (6)’; surely this would involve a three-letter word for a cask and a three-letter word for ‘soak’, with either the whole lot or the second word alone reversed (‘knocked back’). I could only think of two three-letter words for ‘soak’ – one being SOT and the other that setters’ favourite RET. Since Azed used ‘soak’ in the sense of ‘drunkard’ in the surface reading, I surmised that his innate deviousness meant that it was more likely to be a verb in the wordplay, so RET was my choice. Between TER??? and ???TER, the latter seemed more promising, and adding TER to the end of a word for a cask (or a peg or nail) gave me the first themed word, together with a good idea of what the link to the others would be.

19, ‘Fish that’s not cooked inside, sent back (6)’ came next, a reversal (‘sent back’) of a three-letter word for ‘not cooked’ reversed (‘sent back’) inside a common three-letter fish, confirming my suspicions. I guessed 1 immediately from the ‘Pop, poorly’ anagram, and although the thematic item at 38 was slightly less familiar, the wordplay was clear enough – a five-letter word meaning ‘subordinate’ inside a three-letter acronym for a special forces unit of the British Army which shares its motto with Derek Trotter.

Since the Playfair code phrase can have no repeated letters, the eleven letter (plural) word that links the four thematic items sprang readily to mind. The abbreviation took a little longer, but when it came to me I was able to write the thirteen-letter (2,11) code phrase into a 5×5 square and encode the four thematic solutions into the grid. Happily they fitted with a few other solutions that I’d put in there while I was trying to think of that second word!

No code cracking required, thankfully. Incidentally, the unchecked letters in 1 are B and U, in 19 GK, in 25 EC, and in 38 A and F.

Playfair Puzzles

The only real option with a Playfair puzzle that provides no hints to the code phrase is to solve the non-Playfair clues to get all of the checked letters in the Playfair solutions (or at the very least the pairs of letters which are both checked in the grid, but don’t forget that you can draw conclusions even from an incomplete quartet), work out the non-encoded answers to the Playfair clues, and then create quartets by relating the checked letter pairs from the encoded answers to the corresponding pairs in the non-coded solutions (eg solution = SOLVED, part completed light in grid = J?TPAG, LV encodes to TP and ED encodes to AG, while SO encodes to J?).

There are probably lots of ways to move forward from there, but I tend to look at the pairs of letters that (assuming the quartet represents a rectangle) are going to be in the same row (in my example L and T, V and P, E and A, D and G, S and J) and those that will be in the same column (in my example, L and P, V and T, E and G, D and A, O and J) and then link with other pairs (so if I find that L and P are in the same column and P and S are in the same column, I know that L, P and S are all in one column). And if I find that a group of letters (L, P and S, say) appear to be in both the same row and the same column? Then we are looking at a line and not a rectangle, so wherever any two of those letters appear as a pair on either side of an encoding, all four letters in that encoding are in the same row or column – so if L, P and S appear to be in the same row and the same column, and LP->IK, then L, P, I, K and S are all in the same row/column and I is (cyclically) to the right of or below L, K to the right of or below P. Oh yes, and Z is probably in the bottom right hand corner!

To which I will add a couple of points:

1. If a letter appears on both sides of an encoding, ie DR encodes to RI, that means that the letters (here D, R and I) appear consecutively in a specific sequence (cyclically) in the same line (could be either a row or a column) – for AB->BC the sequence is ABC (so in the example, DRI), for AB->CA the sequence is BAC.

2. If you can find all the letters in cyclic sequence within a column, eg SBLYU, remember that the letters which don’t appear in the code word are listed alphabetically at the end of the square, so it is likely that at least two, and potentially three, of the letters in the column will be part of this ‘remainder’; therefore they will occur in alphabetical sequence at the end of the column. And not only is Z likely to be in the bottom right-hand corner, but some of its near neighbours at the end of the alphabet will also be on the bottom row.

For a Playfair puzzle to be solvable, the encoded solutions must be obtainable without the help of any checked letters, and the clues for the intersecting words (showing the coded letters) cannot be too difficult (particularly if they only have one checked letter apart from the coded ‘checks’). There was nothing in this crossword that broke those rules.

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 2,565 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

A plain puzzle with a generous dollop of tricky wordplays and a couple of solutions that I don’t recall encountering previously. I think that a newcomer to Azed would have found this a tough introduction.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 8d, “One’s anti being badly treated in centrepiece of will being restricted to some heirs only” (6, 2 words). A particularly nasty phrase to define, but the point of interest here is in the wordplay, where an anagram (‘being badly treated’) of ANTI is contained by the letters in the middle (‘centrepiece’) of ‘will’. But what, you might ask, is the “One’s” at the start of the clue doing? In terms of the wordplay, the answer is nothing; although it is superfluous (the clue works perfectly well without it) Azed has included it in order to improve the surface reading. It is deceptive, too, in that the surface reading suggests that it should be interpreted as ‘One is’, but the cryptic reading requires it to be read as ‘One has’, ie ‘One [the solver] has ANTI* in (w)IL(l)’. This is dangerously close to the type of verbiage prohibited by Ximenean principles, and I know at least one editor who would remove the first word in this clue as soon as look at it.

1a Sailing by most direct route, I’d moor with short cable (not like a seaman!) roughly (12)
To get things going, an anagram (‘roughly’) of I’D MOOR and SHORT CABLE without ABLE (‘not like a seaman!’).

13a Large mouldings on front of Ichikawa temple gateway (5)
The first letter (‘front’) of Ichikawa follows a four-letter plural of a five-letter word for a large moulding, but unless you know that word you may be reliant on crossing letters to reach the solution; it is perhaps more familiar as the shape associated with doughnuts (the sort beloved of Homer Simpson, not the kind memorably described in song by Bob Marley as “Wi’ jam in”).

15a Alternative to test, no good – excessive snorting! (5)
An Azed favourite for the first part of the wordplay, ‘Alternative to test’ being used in a cricketing context to indicate a one-day international, specifically the usual three-letter abbreviation thereof. I felt that the definition required a question mark rather than an exclamation mark in order to indicate that excessive snorting was an example of the solution.

17a A wee dram? Likely to refuse one whenever received (4)
Chambers offers two words for ‘dram’ which fit with the checked letters. Azed has given an indication of which should be selected by his addition of ‘wee’, suggesting the Scottish variant. And the wordplay confirms this, a two-letter word meaning ‘whenever’ being received by a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘abstaining totally from alcoholic drink’ (‘Likely to refuse one’, ie likely to refuse a wee dram).

18a Moony by nature, embracing skittish Elaine (8)
The skittish Elaine is embraced by a two-letter abbreviation for secundam naturam (‘by nature’), which by ornithological analogy might be termed a rare migrant – one reason for this being that  when Seneca wrote Idem est beate vivere et secundum naturam, he surely meant something along the lines of ‘It is the same to live happily and in conformity with nature’; it seems quite a stretch to interpret the phrase – ‘according to nature’ according to Chambers –  as ‘by nature’.

27a Diver heading off to sniff behind shipload? (8)
The first letter must be removed from (‘heading off’) a four-letter word meaning ‘to sniff’ (or the thing you do the sniffing with) that follows a five-letter word for a ship’s load.

29a Wild Asian ox? Could be 6 such (4)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of ASIAN OX can be rearranged to form (‘could be’) SIX (‘6’) plus the solution. I think that most crossword editors would insist that the ‘6’ in the clue should be written as ‘six’ on the basis that all the elements of an anagram should be visible to the solver.

34a Contents of jazz mag, piano number about squaddies (5)
‘Jazz mag’ as a slang term for a pornographic magazine appears only in recent editions of Chambers; Wiktionary suggests that it is specifically Northumbrian slang (!). The wordplay involves three abbreviations – a two-letter one for non-commissioned soldiers (‘squaddies’) inside shorthand forms of ‘piano’ and ‘number’.

2d It adorns garden? Right, what Horace urged us to pluck (6)
Had Horace wanted us to ‘seize the day’, he would surely have written ‘cape diem’, ‘carpe diem’ means ‘pluck the day’, presumably because it is ripe. Which comes to pretty much the same thing as ‘seize the day’, but Azed, with his lexicographer’s regard for detail, has opted for the more precise translation of Horace’s words. The R for ‘Right’ is therefore followed by the Latin word for ‘today’.

4d Measure? Opener missing, preserve Scotch (4)
A five-letter measure of distance, equating to the length of a cricket pitch, has its first letter removed (‘opener missing’) to produce a Scots word which means ‘to preserve’ or ‘to spare’.

7d A lost Mennonite book of scripture (short) – it’s observed by rabbis? (7)
Azed is inclined on occasion to miss out punctuation where I feel the wordplay demands it. Here the solver must infer a comma between ‘lost’ and ‘Mennonite’, because a five-letter adjective relating to a strict US Mennonite sect must have its A removed (from the start); the three-letter abbreviation for [the book of] Nahum follows.

9d See Times holding a payment up for purveyor of old news? (6)
The letter of the alphabet represented by ‘See’ and the single letter used as the symbol of multiplication (‘Times’) are the bookends for (‘holding’) a reversal (‘up’) of A plus a three-letter word for ‘payment’. The old news purveyor is no more, but indelibly etched on my brain are the page numbers 301 (sport headlines), 302 (football) and 340 (cricket).

12d Pheasant and so on we butchered? Could be this, what? (10, 2 words)
Another composite anagram &lit, here a rearrangement (‘butchered’) of PHEASANT and SO ON WE could produce the solution (‘this’) plus WHAT. The whole clue provides a rather satisfactory definition of the solution.

21d Like forks, defective, wife left out in hamper (7)
A five-letter word for ‘defective’ with the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘wife’ removed (‘wife left out’) is contained by a three-letter word for a hamper, rarely observed in the wild but often to be seen within the captivity of a 12×12 grid.

25d Is it in part dealt with (bit of pile going) before end of day? (6)
An &lit, albeit not of class 1 quality. The wordplay is a charade of IN, an anagram (‘dealt with’) of PART without the P (‘bit of pile going’), and the last letter of ‘day’ (‘end of day’). The solution is hyphenated, (2-4); the fact that the IN taken directly from the clue forms the first part of the compound is a long way from ideal.

26d Number without verve I’ve abandoned to do with agent? (6)
The same abbreviation for ‘number’ that appeared in 34a is followed by a seven-letter word for ‘without verve’ from which the letters IVE have been removed (“I’ve abandoned”). The question mark is necessary because the definition is by example.

(definitions are underlined)