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 2,757 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

This was Azed’s last puzzle for the Guardian before the Tortoise takes the Observer under its shell, and perhaps not one of his very best. I felt that it lacked the élan of his finest creations, and some of the surface readings were, at least by Azed’s high standards, a little on the clunky side. At first I thought it might prove quite tricky, but by the end I felt that it was below the halfway mark for difficulty, with a relatively low obscurity count and wordplays which in general were straightforward to unpick. Note that the enumeration for 31a, shown as ‘(7)’, should be ‘(6)’.  The file available on the Guardian site at the time of writing is a JPEG; for anyone having problems printing it, I have uploaded a PDF version to this site.

I must say a word or two of congratulation to regular correspondent Tim C, whose clue in the latest Round Robin puzzle on the Crossword Centre site was (rightly) voted best by solvers. I write this with gritted teeth, since my own clue failed to trouble the scorers, but I blame the word I was given rather than my skills…funny how that always seems to happen! Well done, Tim. For anyone who enjoys themed crosswords, I recommend the monthly puzzles on the CC site (http://www.crossword.org.uk/) – plenty of variety, and available free of charge.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clues 1d, 2d and 12a, specifically their use of ‘woman’, ‘female’ and ‘female’ to indicate SHE, SHE and…SHE. Individually, these clues are all perfectly sound and entirely acceptable. However, two general rules for the clues in a puzzle taken as a whole are (i) that the same word should not be used with the same cryptic meaning in more than one clue, and (ii) that the same wordplay element should not appear in more than one clue with the same sense. The first of these means that if, for instance, ‘about’ has been used in one clue as an anagram indicator, it should not appear again in the puzzle for that purpose; it can, though legitimately feature in different clues indicating containment, reversal, C/CA, A or RE (once only for each interpretation), although most setters and editors would aim to keep the number of such repetitions within reasonable bounds. As far as the second rule goes, if (say) ‘cape’ were used to provide NESS as part of a wordplay, ‘head’ should not be used in another clue to similarly give NESS; it could potentially be indicated elsewhere in the puzzle by ‘name of Scottish loch’, although even that would be less than ideal. Solvers tend to pick up on such duplications, and while editors are normally very diligent in removing them before publication, the best course for setters is to eliminate them before submission.

Across

9a I rest relaxing, having smuggled in means of clearing customs (8)
An anagram (‘relaxing’) of I REST contains (‘having…in’) a three-letter word meaning ‘smuggled’, as one might have done with rum in times past. Think “Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by”, or substitute ‘Bedstead-Men’ for ‘Gentlemen’ if you prefer the Flanders and Swann version to Mr Kipling’s original.

12a Head of government’s aid, female assistant given run in (6)
A three-letter word for a female and a two-letter abbreviation for an assistant, such as might be employed by a senior executive, contain the usual abbreviation for ‘run’ (‘given run in’). 

13a French wine the local tax has backed (5)
The combination of a French word for ‘the’ (‘the local’, referencing ‘French’ earlier in the clue) and a three-letter ‘colloquial acronym’ for a tax that is ubiquitous within the UK is reversed (‘has backed’).

14a Mock title for woman from Belfast area immersed in cooking ingredients (7, 2 words)
Would we accept ‘London area’ for ENGLAND? I don’t think I would, but here a two-letter abbreviation for the country wherein Belfast is located is contained by (‘immersed in’) a word for a group of aromatic plants used in cookery.

18a Henry tucking into beer that’s favoured draw (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘henry’, the SI unit of inductance, is contained by (‘tucking into’) a (2,3) phrase which could perhaps describe beer that’s favoured or in fashion.

19a Company having left as a pair, given guidance towards the summit? (5)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘[joined together] as a pair’ is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘company’ (‘company having left’) to produce the past tense of one of those compound verbs  which Chambers ‘defines’ simply by reversing the order of the two parts. Well, duh! The good news for setters is that it gives them some latitude in terms of their own definitions, and the one that Azed has provided here seems as good as any.

25a Once scattered a short time, not cooked in tin (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘time’ (‘a short time’) and a three-letter word meaning ‘not cooked’ are contained by  the chemical symbol for tin.

31a Brighten shortly, that is round island from the east (6)
The two-letter abbreviation (‘shortly’) of the Latin phrase meaning ‘that is’ is put round the reversed (‘from the east’) name of a Scottish island whose main town is named after a Womble. It has been suggested to me that the ‘shortly’ is part of the definition rather than the wordplay, since Chambers shows the answer as a shortened poetic form of another verb. I wrote the notes by necessity somewhat hastily this week, and didn’t check the answer in Chambers – had I done so, I would probably have favoured that interpretation.

Down

4d One’s horny on becoming split up in vineyard (5)
The letters of the word ON (from the clue) are separately (‘becoming split up’) inserted into a word taken directly from the French language for a vineyard or a vintage.

5d Bill overcome by dejection with matrimony leading to bad temper (11)
Probably the hardest wordplay in the puzzle to resolve, a four-letter word for a bill or headland follows (‘is overcome by’) a four-letter word meaning ‘dejection’ (and a cause thereof for rowers) and a three-letter term for ‘matrimony’ which Chambers barely supports, the closest being a somewhat metonymic sense of ‘matrimonial rights and duties’. The answer immediately makes me think of Lucy van Pelt.

8d The old assemble providing endless comfort for the poor? (5)
A six-letter word for ‘assistance to the poor’ loses its last letter (‘endless’) to produce an obsolete word meaning ‘to assemble’ or ‘to collect together’.

11d Perfume container, long, held by mum (6)
When you see ‘mum’ in a wordplay, it is probably going to lead either to MA or to one of a pair of two-letter interjections meaning ‘be quiet!’. One of them is ‘sh!’, but it is the other one wherein a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] long’ is held here.

17d I dispensed with trick in lesson, unlikely to be scratchy (8)
One of those ‘virtual commas’ is required between ‘with’ and ‘trick’, since the letter I is discarded (‘dispensed with’) by a four-letter word for a trick or ruse before it is put inside a term for a lesson or a group of students.

22d Queen, female sovereign, lacking in millions to subjugate (7)
The single-letter abbreviation for Queen in the monarchical sense is followed by a word for a female ruler missing (‘lacking in’) the standard abbreviation for ‘millions’.

29d Game making a row with second dropping (4)
A four-letter word meaning ‘noisy’ (ie ‘making a row’) has its second letter moved to the end (‘with second dropping’).

(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 2,756 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Having landed on the Guardian website rather tardily, this proved to be pretty tricky for a plain puzzle – no hiddens, and just two anagram-only clues, a very low number by Azed standards. There were some nice, ‘tight’ clues, which seemed as though they’d had a bit more polishing than a few that have appeared in recent times. The number of clues which I had marked out as being worthy of comment far exceeded my normal ‘quota’ (I generally aim to cover around sixteen), so I have omitted several strong candidates. If there are any other clues on which you would like me to comment, just let me know.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 29d, “Old time tart lowering her head somewhat (5)”. A word for a tart or poule de luxe has its first letter (‘head’) moved down a couple of places  (ie lowered somewhat), the result being an obsolete form of a common word for ‘time’ (or a unit thereof). The point of interest is the word ‘her’ in the wordplay; the clue would have worked without it, so Azed has included it specifically to enhance the surface reading. But is it valid? The general principle in cryptic wordplays is that once we have translated an element, the result is treated as a string of letters rather than something with residual meaning. So the wordplay ‘chaps are in advertisement’ for AMEND [MEN in AD] is not allowable – first ‘chaps’ is translated to MEN and ‘advertisement’ to AD, which gives us ‘the string MEN are in the string AD’, which is clearly ungrammatical. Let’s say that in the current clue ‘tart’ gave us TRAMP; the wordplay would then be pre-processed to ‘the string TRAMP lowering her head somewhat’, which doesn’t make any sense. If ‘tart’ provided FLAN, the situation would be the neither better nor worse. If ‘her head’ were intended to indicate T, that would be very different, because, in this instance, at the point that we identify her ‘head’, the tart is still a tart, so ‘her head’ could perhaps reasonably be the first letter of ‘tart’.

I don’t think that many solvers, if any at all, would have a problem with a clue like this, but it does highlight an inconsistency in terms of how the grammar of cryptic wordplays is assessed.

Across

2a What supports springs? Pole holding belt in – right, possibly (11, 2 words)
A four-letter pole (which I tend to associate with boats) contains (‘holding’) an anagram (‘possibly’) of BELT IN and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’.

10a Suicide? Not right – give ear, lilting air about one (8)
If you think that the ‘Not right’ is part of the wordplay, things are likely to get a bit sticky. A four-letter word meaning ‘give ear’ and an anagram (‘lilting’) of AIR are put about the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ to produce a 4-4 answer which Azed has qualified as being ‘not right’ because Chambers shows it as ‘an incorrect form’ of the anglicized version of a colloquial term from another language, the correct spelling of which has two letters swapped.

13a Hooded cape, capital when held by dancing girl (6)
The ‘capital’ which must be contained (‘held’) by a less familiar spelling of a word for an Egyptian dancing-girl is the two-letter abbreviation for ‘upper-case’.

15a Large part of inner hunger, not significant (5)
The answer constitutes all but one letter of the inner part (ie the middle six letters) of a familiar eight-letter word for ‘hunger’.

16a Tasteless water swallowed? It’s certainly not bitter (8, 2 words)
One of those ‘missing pause’ wordplays, where there needs to be either a comma or a word such as ‘with’ between the ‘Tasteless’ and the ‘water’. A five-letter word meaning ‘tasteless from age’ has a word for the sort of water that might be made by children contained within (‘swallowed’). “Your son’s been making water in the swimming baths.” “So what? Lots of children do that.” “Yes, but not from the top diving board.”

24a Crush middle of stomach in fine wool (5)
The middle letter of ‘stomach’ follows the sort of crush that some of her ‘special girls’ had for Miss Jean Brodie.

27a Sandal one’s in pained mostly, twice (8)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ is contained by a four-letter word meaning ‘pained’, deprived of its last letter…and a five-letter word meaning ‘pained’, deprived of its last letter.

30a School basics about over after English clanger (5)
The three letters representing the basics taught at school are put outside (‘about’) the usual abbreviation from the cricket scorebook for ‘over’, the whole lot following the standard abbreviation for ‘English’.

‘I couldn’t afford to learn it.’ said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. ‘I only took the regular course.’

‘What was that?’ inquired Alice.

‘Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,’ the Mock Turtle replied; ‘and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’

31a/32a Middle of round includes damaged gut and defeat in shooting, … (6)/ … Precluding need for one awkward ordeal? (6)
In Azed’s clues linked by ellipses there is usually a cryptic connection between them, rather than just a link between the surface readings. Here the first clue can be solved without reference to the second, the middle letters of ’round’ containing an anagram of GUT (with that ‘and’ joining wordplay and definition, I would have preferred ‘including’ to ‘includes’), but the second, an anagram (‘awkward’) of ORDEAL, needs to be read in a context where the shooting has been successfully completed.

33a Religious novice from part of the capital (not south-east) (5)
Solvers outside England may take issue with this one, where a seven-letter part of London (‘the capital’), famed for flowers and footy, is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘south-east’.

Down

1d Source of solar light, ardent in pop’s unwrapped present (11)
A three-letter word for ‘ardent’ is contained by an anagram (‘unwrapped’) of POPS, the combination being followed by a word meaning ‘present’. I’m not entirely convinced by ‘unwrapped’ as an anagrind, although I suppose that the sense of ‘unwound’ goes some way towards justifying it.

2d Showing taste, copy warm blanket (6)
A charade of a three-letter (Scots, but not flagged as such) form of the word ‘savour’ (‘taste’) and a word meaning ‘[to] copy’. The linking word ‘Showing’ sits a little uncomfortably at the start of the clue, particularly without any pause being indicated between the end of the wordplay and the beginning of the definition.

4d US footballers from eastern state clothed in e.g. cotton (7)
The two-letter abbreviation for the US state that I associate with Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote (not much help if you never watched it, I appreciate) is contained by a term which in modern usage is applied to articles which were originally made from a specific fabric, but may now be made from cotton or even artificial materials. The answer put me in mind of a Glen Campbell song, even though the person he was singing about had nothing to do with American football.

5d Wild root vegetable our lot shovel up (5)
A two-letter word for ‘our lot’ and a three-letter shovel, either for testing ore or for winnowing, are reversed (‘up’), the result being a name given to certain brassicas. The shovel could also be indicated by ‘commercial vehicle’.

9d Might one find Rome concealed with this, one miracle possibly (6)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of ROME and the solution (‘this’) could be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form ONE MIRACLE. The whole clue stands as an indication of the answer, the name for the small oval shield, curved inwards on either side, which was said to have fallen from heaven in the reign of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. In light of a prophecy that the stability of Rome was bound up with it, Numa had the workman Mamurius Veturius make eleven identical copies, to make it difficult for would-be thieves to nick the original (the assumption, presumably, being that they would only have brought a swag bag sufficient to hold a single shield, two tops). The care of the collection was entrusted to the twelve priests known as Salii, who paraded the shields (sacred to Mars) through the city during March every year.  They had a special song for the occasion (the Carmen Saliare), and they would beat with staves on a hide (or possibly on the shields themselves, though that would surely have invalidated the insurance) in imitation of a smith’s hammering, thus honouring Mamurius (who was, in fact, probably Mars himself).

11d Fixed engagement taking in East End, fashionable (11)
A four-letter engagement contains (‘taking in’) the usual abbreviation for ‘East’, a four-letter word for an end (now usually a portion of time having definite limits), and a two-letter word meaning ‘fashionable’.

20d Make round article of clay (7)
A nice compact clue, where a four-letter word meaning ‘make’ (or ‘bring in’) contains (’round’) an article in the grammatical sense.

23d Distinctive rabbit causing row with leaping mate (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘[to] row’ (or the thing you would do it with) is followed by a reversal (‘leaping’) of a word for a mate.

(definitions are underlined)

In the absence – once more – of the puzzle on the Guardian website, I have uploaded a copy of the scan to the Clue Clinic.

The notes on the puzzle will be available later. I will remove this post from the front page when the puzzle eventually appears on the Guardian site.

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 2,755 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle which, despite the easy starter at 1a, was quite tricky in places, hence my above-average difficulty rating. Setters will surely have noticed the presence of two unches in the entries at 12a and 31a – this is a breach of Ximenean rules that would see a puzzle rejected by most editors. A regular correspondent suggests that the ‘obsolete nautical’ answer at 19d should have been flagged; I completely agree, and I would suggest that the ‘rare’ word at 32a and the ‘Somerset etc’ one at 9d should similarly have been qualified – Azed seems recently to have become somewhat ambivalent when it comes to indicating such words.

Clue Writers’ Corner: With answers of six or seven or letters, a straight anagram is unlikely to win any prizes, since it will undoubtedly be found by other competitors; and there will surely be plenty of other relatively succinct ways of indicating the answer through wordplay. With longer words, particularly those with a tractable selection of letters, the situation is rather different. There will typically be a wide range of anagrams available, some involving the addition or subtraction of ‘bits and pieces’ to arrive at the desired result, while it may be hard using other constructions (eg container and contents, reversals) to get to the answer without prolixity. When it comes to words that consist of distinct parts, it is usually considered less than ideal to indicate the parts separately (eg ‘bird, one that glides’ for ROLLERCOASTER), which makes things tougher. Although this month’s word doesn’t present the very finest fodder, I expect plenty of anagrams, particularly given the number of synonyms and ‘interesting’ definitions available for the competition word; of course, anagrams can be combined with other elements, which could include definitions, such as of ASTER in ROLLERCOASTER. Incidentally, Azed is happy to allow abbreviations in anagram fodder, so ‘Kylie left devastated’ would be acceptable wordplay for LIKELY.

Across

10a Group creating fuzzy impression from puff book left off (4)
Two definitions for the price of one here, the first harking back to the heyday of Britpop. The wordplay has the usual abbreviation for ‘book’ being ‘left off’ a five-letter term for the sort of puff that is ‘a publisher’s commendatory description of a book’. There’s a bit in the film No Surrender where the character played by Bernard Hill is told “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. “I do.” he replies, “I can’t read.” When judging a book by those commendatory comments on the cover, I tend to be less influenced by what is said than by whether I’ve ever heard of the person that said it (I don’t know about you, but I find the ratio of unknowns to knowns increasing, which probably says more about my age than their status).

11a Jewellers’ stone presented by person that is including marriage portion (8)
A three-letter abbreviation for ‘person’ is followed by the usual two letters representing ‘that is’ containing a word for a marriage portion, or for a very small spot.

12a Playwright even if old-fashioned (5)
The playwright is Edward Franklin of that ilk, probably best known for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, first performed in 1962 and made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton four years later. Martha answers the question at the end of the play, saying “I am, George. I am.”

13a Scotsman’s great, leading ace – some bloke (5)
A four-letter word which can mean ‘cruel’ in England but ‘great’ in Scotland is followed by the usual abbreviation for an ace at the card table.

15a Malay travel that is returning during prohibition (8)
A three-letter word meaning, among many other things, ‘[to] travel’ and those two letters (again) for ‘that is’ are contained by (‘during’) a word for ‘prohibition’. I will never be convinced that ‘during’ is a valid insertion indicator – it appears often enough in puzzles that I’ve become somewhat inured to it, but my relationship with it remains frosty at best.

21a Brother Etonian must forgo outside foursomes for this (6)
The first two words of the clue must be mentally squashed together before the ‘outside foursomes’ are removed. When ‘for this’ appears at the end of a clue, the ‘this’ usually refers to the answer, but here the two words are actually the definition.

22a Heroine, divine lady outwardly, displaying budding protuberances (6)
The ‘heroine’ leads to a four-letter name which has the two-letter incarnation of the goddess of Earth outside (‘outwardly’). I am not sure that ‘heroine’ alone is sufficient to lead solvers to Miss Woodhouse; ‘titular heroine’ would be better, and ‘Austen heroine’ better still.

27a Effect of sun, absorbing ray by reason of this (6)
Something that is liberally produced by the sun (whether it is an ‘effect’ thereof is somewhat questionable) contains the name of the note in sol-fa notation which is anglicized as ‘ray’. The comment about the definition in 21a also applies here, their answers being rather too similar for comfort.

28a Urchin is second caught by wader (8)
The letters IS (from the clue) and the usual abbreviation for ‘second’ are contained (‘caught’) by a familiar wading bird whose dangling feet in flight are a trademark. The answer and ‘urchin’ are essentially the same word, but different.

32a Waving, inappropriate when former reputation’s involved (8)
A five-letter word for ‘inappropriate’ or ‘excessive’ has an obsolete word for reputation or praise (which in its alternative four-letter spelling could be indicated by ‘5 downs’) inside (‘involved’).

Down

1d Black music: mark query/answer dividing Indian city without lore (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘mark’ is followed by the nine-letter name of an Indian city, missing the consecutive letters LORE (‘without lore’), which has the usual single-letter abbreviations for ‘query’ and ‘answer’ contained by (‘dividing’) it.

3d Short pants, once straight? (4)
A five-letter word for pants, especially those made of tartan cloth, is deprived of its last letter (‘short’).

7d Minor joist needing to settle I instilled (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to settle’ has the letter I (from the clue) inserted (‘instilled’). I make no apologies for grousing repeatedly about missing commas, and there should be one (or an equivalent such as ‘with’ or ‘having’) here between ‘settle’ and ‘I’.

9d Dead removed from fortification found in ditch (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘dead’ is removed from a word for ‘a fieldwork of two faces forming a salient’ to produce a dialect word for a ditch (one of several possible spellings). The words ‘found in’ are there simply to join the wordplay to the definition, but the structure of the former is such that I don’t think the whole thing works grammatically.

17d Bird losing head in lift? (4)
I can’t help feeling that it should be the bird that loses its head to make a word meaning ‘lift’, but in fact it is an informal sense of the verb ‘lift’ which must lose its first letter.

18d Jumpers execute this early – they start with one (4)
An &lit of sorts, where the initial letters of the first four words form the answer, in other words ‘they [those words] start with [the letters that make up] one’, where ‘one’ is an instance of the answer.

26d Dram suggests this dish (5)
Rather like 17d, this seems slightly back to front. The answer when split 3+2 (in line with its hyphenation) and interpreted cryptically produces a word synonymous with ‘dram’.

28d Cry of derision unreservedly follows end of match (4)
Good news for anyone checking that the adverb which follows the last letter (‘end’) of ‘match’ can mean ‘unreservedly’ – it is the fifty-fifth, and final, meaning given by Chambers. Good news, that is, unless you started at the beginning of the list.

(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 2,754 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I thought this one was very slightly below the middle of the middle of the difficulty spectrum, largely because of the high proportion of anagrams (11 in 36 clues). There were some clues that read very nicely (eg 27a), although one or two did seem a bit weak (7d in particular).

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 19a, “E.g. worker bee buzzing in nut-tree timelessly?”. Seeing ‘nut-tree’ reminds me of one of my favourite Azed definitions, “Reason for infanta’s visit?”, but here it is simply anagram (‘buzzing’) fodder from which the letter T must be removed (‘timelessly’). The point of interest is that there are two Ts in NUT-TREE – should ‘timelessly’ properly indicate that both of them are to be extracted? It seems to me that, in general, if the solver is instructed to remove something from an operand, then just a single instance should be removed – ‘dining lacking in’ surely leads to DING rather than DG. Similarly with ‘setter lacking time’ for SETER, where ‘lacking time’ is shorthand for “having the abbreviation for ‘time’ removed” – there is no indication that the reduction should be repeated. ‘Timeless’ and ‘timelessly’ are a little trickier, not least because they are rather more whimsical and therefore more difficult to ‘translate’, but I am inclined to treat any such indicator as directing the solver to eliminate a single instance of a sequence of one or more letters. If the requirement is for multiple instances to be deleted, then the setter must make this clear, as Azed has done in 6d (‘without doubly active’) or as in, say, ‘idled, wasting every day’ for ILE. Or, indeed, as in the clue I originally wrote for comp 2,313, only to replace it with an absolutely rubbish one (d’oh!), “Face pater with trepidation after repeatedly blotting one’s copybook (7)”.

Across

1a Example of language misuse British university in such a mistaken … (7)
When Azed uses a pair of ellipses to join two consecutive clues, it usually has a purpose beyond simply continuing a surface reading, with the two clues needing to be considered together. Here the second clue can be solved independently of the first, but in this one the ‘such a mistaken …’ indicates an anagram (‘mistaken’) of the answer to the clue that follows (ie ‘such a …’). The usual single-letter abbreviations for ‘British’ and ‘university’ are contained by the resultant jumble. The definition is a bit of a stretch, since I think it refers to a culture rather than a misuse, but since Chambers gives the word without additional definition, it’s probably fair game.

14a Piece of timber, if old, forming rocker (5)
A three-letter word for the sort of timber that might go on the fire is followed by an archaic form of the word ‘if’, the result being a term for a large boulder that is so delicately poised that even a little push will cause it to rock.

17a Some seasoning I included for crust (4)
One of the less satisfactory clues in the puzzle involves a three-letter word for a salt (‘seasoning’) with the letter I (from the clue) inserted, producing the name given to the upper level of the earth’s continental crust. It has three distinct weaknesses: (i) the three-letter word is a term for any salt, not just the sort that goes with pepper; (ii) there really should be a comma between ‘seasoning’ and ‘I’; and (iii) the salt word is also an alternative spelling of the answer. Could ‘some seasoning’ mean SAL(t)? No, I think not.

20a Old townie accepting comb as distinction (6)
A three-letter ‘archaic slang’ term of contempt for a townsman as distinct from a countryman (or a tradesman/shopkeeper rather than a gentleman) contains (‘accepting’) the three-letter form of a ‘chiefly Scottish’ verb, much revered by setters, meaning ‘to make tidy’, ‘to clear up’…or ‘to comb’.

27a Tissues one kept in box (5)
A single-letter word corresponding to ‘one’ is contained by (‘kept in’) an informal term for ‘the box in the corner’, now more often ‘the enormous flat thing on the wall’.

29a Mate about to slip back part of rigging (6)
A three-letter ‘mate’ contains (‘about’) a reversal (‘back’) of a word meaning ‘to slip’ or ‘to go wrong’.

30a Like a very old breastplate ancient poet cut in convulsion (8)
The name given in the English-speaking world to Quintus H Flaccus, responsible for – inter alia – ‘carpe diem‘ and ‘aurea mediocritas‘, is deprived of its last letter (‘cut’) and put into a three-letter word for a convulsion or involuntary spasm, another “setter’s friend”. There’s no doubt that the noun from which the adjective here derives is a term for an Ancient Greek cuirass, but I think it unlikely that the adjective itself has ever been used in the suggested sense, so I feel that a ‘perhaps’ or a question mark would probably have been in order.

32a Transpire when it’s removed from bathroom? (5)
A (2,5) term for a particular kind of bathroom has the consecutive letters IT removed.

Down

1d Course, a slice of ham, lost heat (5)
A four-letter word for a course that is regularly followed (by George Dixon, in days gone by) combines with the first letter (‘a slice’) of ‘ham’ to produce an obsolete (‘lost’) word meaning ‘to heat’, specifically to heat unseasoned wood in order to straighten it (something that a recent purchase from Wickes would have benefited from). Some dictionaries. including Chambers, show the word as Spenserian – it does appear once in The Faerie Queene, although modern editions show it without the ‘e’, making a much more familiar word:

And in his hand a tall young oake he bore,

Whose knottie snags were sharpned all afore,

And ?????’d in fire for steele to be in sted.

2d Soul of ancient Egypt shed chest with ornamentation (5)
A two-letter word for the soul in ancient Egyptian religion, represented as a bird with a human head, is followed by a word for a shed.

5d Drunk, lacking power at heart, and without spirit (4)
There are a great many words in Chambers which can be used to describe people in various states of inebriation, and here a five-letter one classified as ‘old slang’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘power’ removed from its centre (‘lacking power at heart’), the outcome being a word meaning ‘without spirit’ or ‘listless’.

8d Most excellent gambler, German, in major business deal (10)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘Most Excellent’ is followed by a five-letter word for a gambler (or a devotee of Minecraft, say) and a three-letter abbreviation for ‘Germany’, producing the (4-6) answer.

18d Relax round pasture – while quaffing one? (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘recline’ and – just about – ‘relax’ contains (’round’) a poetic word for a pasture which may put you in mind of the sleepy village which Miss Marple calls home. Strictly speaking, the definition is just ‘one’, although the preceding words are vital in establishing the context wherein it is to be interpreted.

21d Votes rising amid Parisian art for source of caviar? (6)
A four-letter word for an aggregate of votes is reversed (‘rising’) inside the French second person singular of the verb être, ‘to be’ (ie ‘Parisian art’). A regular correspondent asks whether ‘Parisian art of old’ would be better here. Given that ‘art’ is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic, esp church, formal or poetic’, I think it’s fine; Azed rarely (if ever) flags words classified in Chambers as ‘poetic’, and it’s reasonable for the setter to choose the qualification that best suits their purpose. In the classic wordplay ‘art master?’ for TEA CHEST, though, both sides of the ‘equation’ are pleasingly archaic.

25d One who sought solitude, famous, acting to the end? (5)
A familiar five-letter word for ‘famous’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘acting’ moved to the end. The reference in the definition is to the actress who spoke the line “I want to be alone” in the 1932 film Grand Hotel, echoing a sentiment that she expressed about herself many times before and after; in a 1928 interview, she said “As early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I’ve always been moody. I detest crowds, I don’t like many people.”

28d Timber tree? Right one will reveal venomous snake (4)
When the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ is placed in front of the answer (‘right one, ie ‘right’ plus the timber tree), the result is a word for a type of snake. I can only assume that Azed has suffered at the fangs of one of the ‘mildly venomous’ reptiles of this name on Galapagos, since Chambers and other sources suggest that most of the serpents going under this title are entirely harmless, unless you are a rodent or mammal of modest dimensions.

(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 2,753 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

A real mixture this week – plenty of straightforward clues, but a few pretty tricky ones. Overall, that probably puts it around the middle of the difficulty spectrum, but as always I’d welcome any views that support or challenge that assertion. It was an enjoyable solve, although I did feel that the surfaces in a few of the clues were a tad clunky and could have benefited from a little polishing. Note that, as correspondent Gillhumph has pointed out below, the word ‘deities’ in the clue for 20d should read ‘deity’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 2d, “A dozen Scotch cakes, say, consumed in west Wales (4)”. The answer, a Scots form of ‘twelve’,  is hidden in the wordplay part of the clue. The point of interest is those cakes, and the question of whether the definition is valid, in other words whether ‘a dozen cakes, say’ would be an acceptable definition for ‘twelve’. Since Chambers defines ‘dozen’ as ‘a set of twelve’ (my italics), I think the answer is surely ‘yes’. The word ‘dozen’ was formerly very much a noun, which would be followed by ‘of’, as in ‘a dozen of pencils’; it is only in the last 200 years or so that, like ‘hundred’, it has become a quasi-adjective (‘a dozen pencils’). Given this modern usage, I don’t think a clue like “A dozen Scots held in west Wales” could be faulted, but neither, given the Chambers definition, can the clue here.

Across

1a Lawyer (briefly) to question, with time, dubiously rebuked (7)
A three-letter abbreviation (‘briefly’) of an ‘especially North American’ term for a lawyer is followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘to question’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’.  In King Lear, Act 1 Scene 4, Goneril says:

Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
You are much more ??????? for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmful mildness.

…or does she? This is one of those ‘cruxes’ that gets Shakespearean editors excited – the only thing on which most of them seem to agree is that ‘alapt’ in the first folio isn’t what the Bard intended.

8a Old bird served by US restaurateur in his salad? (4)
The answer is both an archaic (‘old’) word for a gull and the surname of the owner of Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant in the 1930s, after whom a salad including lettuce, tomato, bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado and chives, with the ingredients laid out in neat rows, is named. Whether he invented the dish or it was named in his honour is a matter of conjecture. Note that the salad (though not the gull) is a relatively recent addition to Chambers.

15a Clubman Jock’s chatter takes in one with general intelligence (8)
A six-letter Scots word for idle talk contains (‘takes in’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘general intelligence’, producing a rare term for someone who bears a club (or a key).

19a Oriental tipple to quench – litre disposed of (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to quench’ is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘litre’.

21a Fortifying outwork? More than one of them could form salient (6)
Anagramming the plural form of the answer (ie ‘more than one of them’) could produce SALIENT.

23a Valve (obsolete) was trying, with nothing in it (6)
An obsolete spelling of a word meaning ‘was trying’ has the usual single-character representation of ‘nothing’ inserted (‘in it’). I’m not sure why Azed didn’t use something like ‘tested’ in place of ‘was trying’.

32a As of old, willingly in bar polishing last off (4)
A five-letter word for a bar used to impart pressure or motion has its last letter omitted (‘last off’).

35a Which chant suggests a degree of polish? (7)
To parse this one, you need to clearly separate the definition from the wordplay, wherein ‘which’ refers to the answer, and a familiar four-letter word (????) meaning ‘[to] chant’ could, when split into two parts, suggest ‘? AND ???’. The phrasing of the clue is decidedly ‘back to front’, but something like “A degree of polish that suggests chant?” would make very little sense.

Down

3d Major strike, event involving US eccentric (9)
A five-letter word for an event (or a mild obsession) contains (‘involving’) a word for an eccentric in the North American vernacular (or a mate in the Liverpudlian one).

6d Med port, depressed about end of affluence (7)
An archaic English – or a modern French – word for ‘sad’ contains (‘about’) the last letter (‘end’) of ‘affluence’. For seven years from 1947 the port was part of a Free Territory under the direct control of the UN Security Council. It comprised two zones; in 1954, one zone became part of Italy, while the other became part of Yugoslavia.

8d See ending of concerto and of grand opera, maybe (4)
A kind of ‘semi &lit’, where everything apart from the first word forms the definition and everything apart from the last word constitutes the wordplay. The letter of the alphabet represented by ‘see’ is followed by the last letter (‘ending’) of ‘concerto’ and the last letter (‘and [ending] of’) ‘grand’…as well as the last letter of ‘opera’. Of course, ‘endings’ wouldn’t work in the definition, the answer being singular, but I do struggle to see where the solver can legitimately find that final letter. Could the ‘grand opera’ be ‘Aida’, contributing its last two letters? No, I don’t think it could.

9d What includes British flier I’d seen flapping? (8)
A true &lit, where the answer is made up of the single-letter abbreviation for ‘British’ and an anagram (‘seen flapping’) of FLIER ID, and is suggested more than adequately by the entire clue.

10d Somewhat deformed by being guided round mine? … (11)
There is a similar device being used here to the one in 35a. Here the question mark belongs well and truly to the ‘by’, which must be expanded to ‘b and y’ before being followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘being guided’ (Chambers: ‘under leading or control’), this combination containing (’round’) a three-letter slang term for a bomb or mine, which will be familiar to all Azed regulars. I would have liked to see a more explicit whimsical indicator attached directly to the ‘by’.

16d Jewish period that finds Yemeni catching nasty rash (9, 2 words)
A five-letter term for an inhabitant of a famous port in Yemen contains (‘catching’) an anagram of (‘nasty’) RASH, producing a (5,4) answer. The Jewish calendar is lunisolar: while the years follow the sun and the seasons of the year, the months follow the lunar year, which consists of 12 cycles of the moon around Earth, amounting to a little over 354 days. To deal with the lunar year falling behind the solar year by approximately 10 days 21 hours each year, the Jewish leap year occurs every 2-3 years and adds an extra month to the calendar. This thirteenth month is inserted between  ????, the twelfth month of the year, and Nisan, the first month of the year. Since the leap month follows the month of ????, it was decided that the leap month should be called ???? ????? or Second ????.

28d Veteran rowers fell short (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘fell’ (as in ‘fell deeds’ and ‘fell diseases’) has its last letter deleted (‘short’), the result being a Miltonian spelling of a familiar word.

30d Cook removing stew from cooker, modern (4)
The combination of a five-letter word for a cooker plus a three-letter word meaning ‘modern’ has the letters STEW removed from the outside (two at the start, two at the end) to produce a word which after spending many contented years as a noun has, like ‘podium’ and ‘monster’, recently also been pressed into service as a verb that we probably could have managed without.

(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 2,752 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I was a little jaded this morning and probably made harder work of this than I needed to, but I would place it pretty close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum. It was a pleasant solve, though perhaps lacking the verve of Azed’s very finest.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 29d, “Failure just after being backed repeatedly (4)”. The wordplay has two instances (‘repeatedly’) of a two-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘just after’ being reversed (‘backed’), and the answer is hyphenated, 2-2. The point of interest here is the use of ‘backed’ to indicate reversal in a down clue. Some editors don’t like this, and I was very disappointed a few years ago when a down clue of mine, “Arsenal backs drank hard and often (5)”, was rejected for just that reason. It seems entirely reasonable to me that a reversal indicator like ‘rising’ is accepted only in down clues, but since all clues are printed horizontally, I see no reason why the answer cannot be assembled in the same plane before entry in the grid. I am confident that ‘left bit of broccoli’ would be accepted in a down clue for B, although it seems to me to have exactly the same ‘fault’, and I believe that the only limitations on reversal indicators should apply to across clues.

Across

10a Insinuate love in writing (5)
The usual single-letter representation of ‘love’ is contained by an informal term for handwriting (and a term for the hand itself in a particular configuration).

14a Dark blue adroitness to surpass in play? (6)
The wordplay here has to be read in its entirety, leading to a (2,4) phrase which might describe the sort of adroitness that is displayed in Azed’s (academic) neck of the woods. I thought that perhaps the question mark at the end of the clue was to be applied to the wordplay, but the digital versions of Chambers don’t include the answer. I’m away from home at the moment and don’t have access to the Big Red Book itself, but I suspect that it’s not in there either (though I did come across a word the other day which has got ‘lost’ from the digital implementation of Chambers). Please let me know if it does feature in the BRB, but otherwise there really should have been a note along the lines of ’14a is in Collins’.

17a Certain interference in constellation, a watery condition (8)
A three-letter abbreviation for interference of the electromagnetic kind is contained by the name of a large constellation, as well as the lethally halitotic, many-headed monster which Heracles was tasked with seeing to after successfully dispatching the Nemean Lion.

18a Bird limps back to front (4)
The last letter of a word meaning ‘limps’ is moved to the start (‘back to front’), producing an ‘old slang’ term for somewhere also known in certain circles as ‘bird’; based on the rhyming slang which gave rise to the latter, it would logically apply only to time spent in the place, rather than to the place itself, but it’s in Chambers with that meaning, so who are we to argue?

25a Euro we Scots will go after completely gripped by conflict (8)
A two-letter Scots form of ‘we’ follows (‘will go after’) a three-letter word meaning ‘completely’ contained (‘gripped’) by a word for conflict. The ‘euro’ here is less European, more antipodean.

28a Oriental without a name, fellow that’s very hard up (8)
A six-letter word for ‘oriental’ deprived of the letters A and the usual abbreviation for ‘name’ (consecutively) precedes a four-letter ‘fellow’, probably a decent type.

32a Fond couple displaying reverse of prudence mostly (4)
The answer, a familiar term, is formed by reversing a Greek ‘personification of prudence’ without her last letter (‘mostly’). The first wife of Zeus, she provided him with wise counsel, not to mention giving him a hand to release his five siblings from the stomach of his father, Cronus; he’d eaten them all in an attempt to defy the prophecy that he would be overthrown by his own children, but Zeus’s mum had got wise to what was going on and given Cronus a swaddled stone to devour rather than the baby Zeus. Litholologists will be relieved to learn that the stone was also disgorged, apparently unharmed, and placed by Zeus at Delphi.

34a Like a silky old dress? Far away from famous range (6)
A nine-letter obsolete word for a ‘dress of silk with wool or hair’ has the consecutive letters FAR removed (‘far away’) in order to produce the answer, a less common spelling of an adjective relating to a ‘famous range’.

Down

2d Hooligan that is found under gutter, block knocked off? (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ follows a six-letter word for a gutter, or a vessel in which water or food is provided for animals, from which the first letter has been deleted (‘block knocked off’).

5d Snobbish but not completely, a matter for regret (4)
A six-letter word meaning ‘snobbish’ is shorn (I’m starting to run out of synonyms for this process) of a two-letter word meaning, inter alia, ‘completely’.

7d Hazel’s bits, tons seized by Leo, causing wailing (11)
A six-letter word for catkins (ie “Hazel’s bits”) and the usual abbreviation for ‘tons’ are contained by a four-letter word equating to ‘Leo’.

8d Second-year student in theological college, missing second half (4)
An eight -letter word which could also describe the sort of place that three little maids unwarily came from surrenders its last four letters (‘missing second half’). The answer is a shortened form of a (4-5) ‘old’ term for a second-year student in Scotland. As James Fowler Fraser wrote about Aberdeen University in his book Dr Jimmy: Some Reminiscences:

First year students were bajans and bajanellas, second year students were ????s and semolinas, third year students were tertians and tertianas, and fourth year honours students were known as magistrands. The only class that had a name at Marischal [College] was the first year medicals, i.e. lambs.

9d Trickster that was displaying range in turn of work (9)
A five-letter word for ‘range’ or ‘extent’ is contained by a term for a turn of work which can also describe a period of military service in a particular location. The ‘that was’ in the definition is there because the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’.

11d Internal inflammation: chloride is restricting whistling sound with one (11)
A four-letter word for something of which a chloride is an example (or a term specifically for sodium chloride) and the letters IS (from the clue) are put around (‘restricting’) a four-letter ‘sharp ringing or whistling sound, eg of a bullet’ and the Roman numeral for ‘one’.

19d Wearing royal headgear, acted to contain an ancient township (8)
A three-letter word for ‘acted’ contains the letter A and a word for a Greek township.

23d Trees dad’s planted round another one child removed (7)
A four-letter alternative for “dad’s” is placed (‘planted’) round a five-letter tree (‘another one’, ie another tree) from which the standard abbreviation for ‘child’ has been lost (‘child removed’).

31d Heater turned up? It’s a gamble (4)
A vessel for heating liquids that is named after a famous volcano is reversed (‘turned up’) to produce a word that certainly describes a stake that is placed when gambling, although whether ‘a gamble’ (‘a transaction depending on chance’) is quite the same thing is perhaps a moot point.

(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 2,751 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

We’re back to a simpler formula this week: solve, enter, repeat. That’s not to say that this was a simple puzzle – plenty of obscurities and a few tricky wordplays seemed to elevate it a little above the middle of the difficulty spectrum. One or two repetitions of cryptic elements, and a couple of dodgy definitions, but generally an enjoyable solve.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 11a, “Variable computer program: essential part includes excursion mostly (9)”. A four-letter word for the essential part of something (which could be a CPU) contains a six-letter word for an excursion from which the last letter has been omitted (‘mostly’). The point of interest here is the definition; solvers with experience of computing will be aware that the indication of the (2-7) answer here is somewhat off the mark. From time to time we all see definitions in puzzles which our knowledge tells us are inaccurate. However, if such a definition is found in the standard reference (for Azed, Chambers Dictionary) that is not the setter’s problem. They cannot be expected to check every meaning given by Chambers, but – more importantly – even if they did, and thus came up with an accurate ‘real world’ definition, it would confuse all those solvers without the subject matter expertise who are reliant on the definitions given by Chambers. This instance is a little different, though, because the setter has tried to interpret the Chambers definition but gone astray. When in doubt, it’s best to play safe and stick closely to what is in the dictionary, so here something like ‘element of computer program’ could not be wrong.

Across

1a Female veil Islamic leader surrenders if attending wild party (8)
A five-letter Islamic leader gives up (‘surrenders’) the consecutive letters IF and is followed by (‘attending’) an anagram (‘wild’) of PARTY. If you choose the wrong alternative spelling of the leader (the one that begins with C), you will end up with a word which is in Chambers but doesn’t fit the definition – if you look at its etymology, you will see that derives from the correct answer.

14a Enfold prize in Cape cloth (6)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘enfold’ (or the sort of thing that Lewis Hamilton might complete every couple of minutes) and an informal term for ‘a welcome luxury, prize, or spoil’ (which might suggest niceness and easiness) leads to a South African (‘Cape’) word for a rag.

16a Old poems to learn taking turn round school (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to learn’ or ‘to understand’ is reversed (‘taking turn’) round a word for the sort of school attended by whales or seals.

19a Hanging garland in honour of local prince (6)
A two-letter word for ‘in honour of’ is followed by a word for a prince; the ‘local’ is there because both the garland and the prince are of Indian origin.

20a What groundsmen will look after, object of many examinations (5)
A double definition clue which most of us will get from the second def (although US solvers may feel that it shouldn’t have an ‘S’ on the end, and teachers may feel that it’s a subject rather than an object). A consultation with Chambers may be required to check the first def.

21a Sweet gets half put away? It may call for diet (5)
A clue that might appear at first sight a little trickier than it really is. A three-letter word for a sweet is followed by GETS (from the clue) missing one half (‘half put away’).

30a Suppose problem is in 26, possibly? (6)
A three-letter word for a problem of the sort that might be encountered in one of those exams at 20a is contained by an anagram (‘possibly’) of the second half of the answer to 26a. I can’t help feeling that while the clue is inventive it would have worked better without the word ‘in’, the presence of which means that the answer to 26 as a whole doesn’t quite fit.

31a Trite remark that’s right within apostrophe (6)
I got this from the definition rather than the wordplay, which involves the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ being contained by (‘within’) a word for ‘apostrophe’, ie the ‘sudden turning away from the ordinary course of a speech to address some person or object present or absent’.

32a Score 1,000, returning hard ball (4)
A word for a ‘unit of scoring in cricket’ (ie ‘score’), and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘1,000’ that might be associated with metres or grams, are reversed (‘returning’).

33a Inks start flowing, about to conclude (9)
An anagram (‘flowing’) of START contains (‘about’) a word meaning ‘to conclude’, often indicated in cryptics by ‘last word’.

Down

1d Infant feeding loaf to small horse? (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] loaf’ is contained by a two-letter abbreviation from the world of chess. I was at school with Tony Miles, and I remember that he used to call the piece in question a ‘horse’. I played him once. You can probably guess the result.

2d A church plate lying around, unexpectedly trouve with welcoming gesture (12, 3 words)
An anagram (‘unexpectedly’) of TROUVE has the letter A (from the clue) and a five-letter word for a memorial plate in a church (from the material from which it is made) outside (‘lying around’), producing a (1,4,7) expression which for some inexplicable reason makes me think of Charli XCX at the Brit Awards.

4d Prescribed dose is lifted out of place (6)
A reversal (lifted’) of the word IS (from the clue) is removed from (‘out of’) an eight-letter word for ‘place’ (noun or verb).

5d King in being ready to drive off, like Charles evading his pursuers? (5)
The monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’ is contained by a word meaning ‘ready to drive off’, as Tommy Fleetwood might be.

9d Box for rappee stirred sense with liquid measure to ponder (12)
An anagram (‘stirred’) of SENSE is followed by a three-letter Hebrew liquid measure and a word meaning ‘to ponder’, usually seen in a compound with ‘over’. The answer is hyphenated, 8-4, and is a Scots word, although this is neither indicated nor implied in the clue (‘rappee’ has nothing to do with Scotland).

10d US oak rising thus, slip planted (6)
A reversal (‘rising’) of a word meaning ‘thus’ (almost invariably seen, like the Irish in 1066 and All That,  living in brackets) has a three-letter word for ‘slip’, in the ‘mistake’ sense, inserted (‘planted’). Quercus laevis, called the ‘turkey oak’ because its leaves resemble turkeys’ feet, is sometimes referred to as the American turkey oak, to differentiate it from the Turkey oak, native to several countries in south-east Europe including…yes, Turkey. The tree here is of the latter type, so the ‘US’ in the definition should be ignored – Azed may have been hoodwinked by the entry in Chambers, which should, I think, read ‘Turkey oak’ rather than ‘turkey oak’.

22d Totty at St Andrew’s getting easy putt, right? (6)
A five-letter word for the sort of putt that you hope that your opponent will concede is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘right’. A regular correspondent asks if a collective noun can be used to describe a single member of the group. The answer is ‘no’, and it seems like a strange choice of word anyway.

24d No longer makes a fool of copper once holding jerk up (6)
A two-letter word for a Roman copper coin contains (‘holding’) a reversal (‘up’) of a word meaning ‘jerk’ or ‘throw lightly and carelessly’.

25d Pigmen denied wine or scraps (6)
A ten-letter archaic word for people who look after pigs is deprived of (‘denied’) the consecutive letters WINE.

27d This old stoop to take food around afternoon (5)
A four-letter word meaning ‘to take food’ (probably not in the afternoon) contains (‘around’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘afternoon’. The answer is a Shakespearean form of a familiar word meaning ‘stoop’ or ‘condescend’. What the word ‘This’ is doing at the beginning of the clue I don’t rightly know.

(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 2,750 ‘Mixed Foursomes’

Difficulty rating: (5.5 / 10)

First and foremost, huge congratulations to Azed on reaching yet another extraordinary landmark. A quite remarkable achievement.

To mark the occasion, we have a special, and it is one of those that looks rather more daunting at first blush than it really is. For starters, we can immediately identify all the Letters Latent clues, because the lengths of their grid entries don’t match the letter counts in the clues (I went through the puzzle and marked them as LL1 or LL2 depending on whether they would be losing one letter or two). Secondly, as soon as we can identify the ‘golden’ letter in any clue from a set of four, then we know that the letter for the other two special clues in that set will be the same – so if the DLM provides a superfluous N, then the letter to be omitted from the Letters Latent entry wherever it appears will be N, and the correct letter in the Misprint clue will be an N, eg ‘heat’ in the original definition could become ‘neat’.

I have included hints on selected clues, followed by a checklist of clue types. I’ll be happy to provide hints for other clues on request.

Clue Writers’ Corner: Our challenge is to write a DLM clue for the nine-letter word at 14d with an extra U in the mixture. There is no precedent when it comes to a competition DLM clue for a single word (with or without extra letter). In this puzzle, the DLM s are generally very concise, but as long as the ten-letter sequence starts or ends at the beginning or end of a word in the non-definition part of the clue, it is acceptable to include verbiage which contributes neither to definition or letter mixture (as in 2d and 16d, which look as though they might have started life as ‘wordplay delivers an extra letter’ clues). Ximenes’ DLMs were based on advertising slogans (and involved lots of cryptically redundant words), while the two Azed DLM comps have required multiple words to be clued, as in AZ comp 1810. I would suggest producing a definition which stands out from the crowd (and may consist of several words), keeping redundant words in the letter mixture part to a minimum, and remembering to include that extra letter. Although there was no ‘2,750’ theme to the puzzle, I wouldn’t be surprised to see clues being submitted which make reference of some sort to Azed’s cruciverbal longevity. Theoretically, the extra letter could come at one end of the string, eg in ‘IN VATs’ or TIN VAse’ for VAIN, extra letter T, but having it at the ‘open’ end (as in ‘in vats’) doesn’t strike me as being desirable, and you will note that in Azed’s DLM clues the extra letter is always to be found somewhere inside the mixture. I have never seen an ‘&lit’ DLM clue, although the description of the clue type as given in the preamble doesn’t preclude such a thing (this is an observation rather than an incitement).

Across

1a Islamite, a rake with bronzed skin (9)
The wordplay in this LL2 clue is a charade of A (from the clue), a three-letter garden implement akin to a rake (or a three-letter verb for what you do with such an implement) and a familiar three-letter word for bronzing of the skin.

7a Fronts of shirts pressed, usually dirty – one may end in wash (4)
In puzzles like this it’s easy to overlook a straightforward ‘take the first letters’ construction, here introduced by ‘Fronts of’.

10a Overly refined lady who’s complicated recipe to follow once (9)
An anagram (‘complicated’) of RECIPE is followed by a word with an archaic (‘once’) sense of ‘to follow’ but  a range of current meanings including ‘[to] employ’.

15a Add too much filling in extreme dentistry (5)
A three-letter informal word (all capitals) meaning ‘too much’ is contained by (‘filling’) the first and last letters of (‘extreme’) ‘dentistry’. I am surprised to see the adjective ‘extreme’ used in this way; it seems little different to ‘central’ on its own indicating that the middle letter of a word should be selected, which is very much a no-no. Noun forms  like ‘extreme parts of’ or ‘extremes of’ would be fine.

23a Astronomical unit accompanied by windy blast inspiring warship? (6)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘astronomical unit’ is followed by a four-letter word for a windy blast.

25a To err yet have a second test (5)
The extra letter in this DLM clue is, technically speaking, ambiguous, but if Azed had wanted it to be an E he would simply have omitted the word ‘To’ from the beginning.

27a Piece of ballet, benefit including ten dancing (8)
A five-letter word meaning ‘[to] benefit’ or ‘[to] be of service’ contains (‘including’) an anagram (‘dancing’) of TEN. The corrected word in the definition describes an item of medieval armour; a regular correspondent tells me that in fact the piece in question didn’t form part of this item, its use being confined to earlier versions, but we won’t begrudge Azed a bit of anniversary licence.

Down

2d A submariner, ahoy, turned around (9)
The word ‘around’ plays no active part in this DLM clue.

3d Rendered slat, i.e. to pad out (7)
An anagram (‘out’) of IE TO PAD produces an adjective which can mean something along the lines of ‘dulled’.

5d Reduction to a fixed sum, deficient, always contained (10)
A term from the world of psychiatry for ‘a person who fails to develop mentally’ (ie [a] deficient) has a three-letter contraction of a four-letter word for ‘always’ inside (‘contained’). The answer is an archaic term which generally refers to the fixing of penalties or fines.

9d Run in wild speeds resulting in crash (7)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘run’ is contained by an anagram (‘wild’) of SPEEDS. I had a brief concern that this group contained two normal clues (which would have made the competition interesting)  before I spotted how ‘crash’ could be modified to produce a much better definition of the answer.

17d Nice dish, reek strangely circling rim (8)
An anagram (‘strangely’) of REEK contains (‘circling’) a familiar four-letter word meaning ‘rim’. The word ‘Nice’ at the start of a clue would normally set the ‘French word coming up’ lights flashing, but the presence of misprints in the puzzle opens up another possibility (thankfully not involving lice or mice).

20d Papal officers filling terms with sloth (8)
A five-letter word for ‘terms of life’ or the times of particular events contains (‘filling…with’) the sloth of two letters and three toes with which all solvers should have at least a passing acquaintance.

28d Mist approaching, but not cold at first (4)
A five-letter word for ‘approaching’ or ‘near’ is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘cold’ at its beginning (‘not cold at first’).

(definitions are underlined)

Clue Types:

Across

1:Letters Latent, 7:Misprint, 10: Normal, 11: DLM, 12: DLM, 13: LL, 15:M, 17:N, 19:N, 21:LL, 23:M, 25:DLM, 27:M, 29:LL, 30:DLM, 31: N, 32:M, 33:N.

Down

 1:LL, 2:DLM, 3:M, 4:N, 5:LL, 6:DLM, 7:LL, 8:N, 9:M, 14:DLM, 16:DLM, 17:M, 18:N, 20:LL, 22:N, 24:DLM, 26:LL, 28:M.