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 2,749 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

A puzzle that seemed to nudge the needle of the difficulty meter just into the orange zone – not too many ‘gimmes’, but nothing really tough either, the relatively straightforward (5,8) anagram across the top potentially the key to a flying start. I detected signs of cryptic egocentric ubiquity from Azed, with him being found among herrings in 17a and in hollows in 4d, held in the middle in 7d, and (most worrying of all) caught in two bits of ladies’ underwear at 11d and involved in men’s ‘self-administered massages’ at 26d.

I suspect that this is not a grid that Azed has used before, since it breaks his own rules of ‘unching’ – the entries at 16a/29a have two unchecked letters, although no more than one ‘unch’ is normally allowed in a five-letter light.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 27d, “Harrow fern thicket”. This is a triple definition clue, each word in the clue indicating a different meaning of the answer. Here each definition leads to a different headword in Chambers, so the words indicated are entirely separate. This is the ideal situation in multiple definition clues, and is almost certain, even with only two definitions, to eliminate any possible ambiguity, as in “Put up with pain in the neck” for BORE [past tense of ‘bear’; noun].

However, as long as the meanings are different enough to pin down the answer, using senses that appear under the same headword is acceptable. So “Screen cricket match” for TEST [verb; noun = ‘test match’] is fine, as is the triple definition clue “Complete accurate model” for PERFECT [verb; adjective; adjective]. An example of a double definition that would not pass muster would be “Live with bear” for SUFFER [verb; verb], which could equally well be a clue for ENDURE or ACCEPT. 

Multiple definition clues are generally succinct and – in moderation – can enhance a puzzle. That said, it’s a near certainty that if you come up with a combination of single-word definitions that seems particularly appealing, eg ‘China tea’ for MATE [noun; noun], a Google search will confirm that there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

Across

11a Lake-shore mineral artist crated? (5)
Just as ‘having retired’ can indicate that another element of the wordplay is ‘in BED’, so here the ‘crated?’ tells us that the usual abbreviation equating to ‘artist’ is to be put inside a different three-letter word.

15a Devout prankster in Amazonian craft? (7)
A charade of a two-letter ‘informal’ word that always used to be indicated in cryptics by ‘sanctimonious’ and a term for a prankster or a rascal, leading to the French spelling of a word for a South American dugout canoe.

19a Rainy borders of Hungary and elsewhere (6)
The first and last letters (‘borders’) of ‘Hungary’ are followed by a (2,2) abbreviation for two different Latin phrases meaning ‘and elsewhere’ / ‘and others’, neither of which quite works in the surface reading, where something like ‘and other places’ is what’s really needed.

20a Stoup’s content? Namely ‘overflowing’, about to go fast (9, 2 words)
The usual two-letter (Latin) abbreviation meaning ‘namely’ is followed by a three-letter informal term (all capitals) containing (‘about’) a word meaning ‘to go fast’ (often round and round). Azed clearly acknowledges that ‘overflowing’ is a bit of a stretch by putting it in inverted commas – the first thing that it puts me in mind of is still Chris Tarrant’s short-lived (three months) ‘adult’ version of Tiswas, broadcast at 11pm on twelve Saturday nights in early 1982. A look at its Wikipedia entry suggested that the article’s author and I may have been watching different programmes – it does come with the caveat “This article may be written from a fan’s point of view, rather than a neutral point of view”, but I think perhaps ‘a fan’ should read ‘the fan’.

24a Like heavy type whenever included, of two kinds (6)
A four-letter word which could describe a heavy typeface contains a conjunction meaning ‘whenever’ or ‘provided that’ (ie ‘whenever included’). The required sense of the answer is shown by Chambers as ‘Shakespearean’, although Azed has chosen not to indicate this. Troilus says:

O madness of discourse, that cause sets up with and against itself!
?????? authority, where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason without revolt.

27a Sprinkle all over set scattered in beer? (7)
An anagram (‘scattered’) of SET is contained by the sort of thing that Brummies and yamyams of a certain age will associate with Mitchells & Butlers and their beer ‘for the men of the Midlands’, which went under the name ???? XI (“that’s the beer to hurry for”). I was one of many ‘boys of the Midlands’ who consumed a fair amount of the stuff, largely from the four-pint or seven-pint ‘bumpers’ that were regular attendees at parties back in the day. I think we’d have got drunk quicker on Vimto.

33a Take as a precaution (one might assume) what may run along river? (5)
Rather like the artist being ‘crated’ in 11a, here the position of the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘take’ is cryptically indicated by a (2,4) expression meaning ‘as a precaution’.

34a Abjure former race forever (5)
A variant spelling of a familiar word meaning ‘[to] race’ or ‘[to] go swiftly’, qualified by Chambers as ‘formerly’, is followed by a two-letter word meaning ‘forever’. Since I solved this clue, a Four Tops earworm, involving walking away (or not), has been my constant companion.

Down

2d Shoot on grouse moor? There’s nothing in what’s to cook (4)
The usual representation of ‘nothing’ is contained by the name of a vessel used for cooking. The answer is given by Chambers with the required spelling, although I think that in practice the verb is invariably spelt with a U.

5d Knock to indicate needing lift? Tapping noise (6)
Two three-letters words, one meaning ‘knock’ and the other ‘indicate’, are reversed (‘needing lift’) to produce the answer.

8d Tinware in its material, hot (6)
A four-letter word for painted or lacquered tinware is contained by the chemical symbol for tin (ie ‘its material’). The definition could relate to goods which fell off the back of a 29a.

10d Charm with minor switch, English copy (7)
A six-latter charm having two letters exchanged (‘with minor switch’) is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘English’.

13d Old gold coin to cheer buckaroo, not the first (9)
A four-letter word meaning ‘to urge on by shouting’ is followed by a six-letter ‘buckaroo’ deprived of its first letter (‘not the first’).

18d One travels via Amtrak, arrival affected, velocity becoming constant (7)
The letters of ARRIVAL, with the usual abbreviation for ‘velocity’ being replaced by the abbreviation for ‘constant’, are rearranged (‘affected’) to form the name of something that might travel on a railway line. The word is classified by Chambers as ‘US’, which is implied by the presence of Amtrak in the definition.  

21d Stiff rule in wood (6)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘rule’ is contained by a five-letter wood or dense thicket, with the definition putting me in mind of a definition of AUTOPSY on very similar lines which I used in one of my early puzzles (possibly my first blocked crossword).

(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 2,748 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

This struck me as being significantly easier than its immediate antecedents. Not too many obscurities and plenty of anagrams certainly helped the solver’s cause. It was a pleasant solve, though it did seem to lack the élan  of Azed’s very finest.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 5d, “Satellite can when housing volunteers (5)”. A straightforward wordplay, another word for a can containing the letters TA (‘volunteers’). However, there is a potential issue here. Chambers gives TA as an abbreviation for ‘Territorial Army’, so there is no problem at all in using ‘Territorial Army’ to indicate TA in a cryptic wordplay. The issue is that whilst the British Army’s volunteer reserve force was known as the Territorial Army until 2014, since that time it has been called the Army Reserve. For this reason, most editors now insist that if ‘volunteers’ is used to indicate TA it must be accompanied by a ‘not any more’ qualifier, eg ‘volunteers once’. The same applies to ‘teachers’ for NUT, the National Union of Teachers having in 2017 become part of the National Education Union. The Royal Artillery, by contrast, is very much alive and known to all as ‘The Gunners’, so there’s no problem with ‘Gunners’ for RA. I appreciate that there are other ‘Territorial Armies’ around the world, and perhaps other National Unions of Teachers, but I don’t think that has a material bearing on the situation, where I am broadly aligned with the current thinking – when indicating a defunct entity using a description other than the expanded form of its abbreviation, the solver should be made aware that the entity for which the abbreviation was created no longer exists.

Across

7a Mass that’s sticky and avoided by food lover (4)
A seven-letter ‘older form’ of an eight-letter word for a lover of good food is deprived of (‘avoided by’) the consecutive letters AND.

15a Convent I’ll enter to divide out in proportion (8)
The letter I (from the clue) is inserted into (‘[wi]ll enter’) a seven-letter ‘mainly US’ verb meaning ‘to distribute proportionately’, derived from a familiar (3,4) Latin expression describing such a distribution. It occurs to me that Chambers uses both ‘chiefly’ and ‘mainly’ in classifications (eg ‘chiefly US’, ‘mainly US’). I would have thought that they came to the same thing (C gives the first meaning of ‘mainly’ as ‘chiefly’) – does anyone know if there is any significance in the choice of one over the other?

18a Mischievous spirit in river, sacred one, … (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘river’ is followed by the name of a particular sacred river (ie ‘sacred one’) which will be familiar to all Coleridge aficionados (or those who were ‘encouraged’ to read Kubla Khan at school). The ‘mischievous spirit’ is the imp of mischief in a printing house, usually to be found residing within the offices of The Guardian.

20a … Which with us leaving river may create such a fiasco (6)
The solution to the previous clue (hence the ellipsis), plus the letters US and without (‘leaving’) the abbreviation for ‘river’, can be rearranged to form (‘may create’) a (4-2) slang term for a fiasco. Note that if the preceding clue had not included a comma after the ‘one’, it is the sacred river, not the mischievous spirit, that would have been carried forward, There would then have been no requirement to eliminate the letter R from the anagram fodder, but “… Which with us may create such a fiasco” wouldn’t make any sense. I wonder if Azed started there but couldn’t produce a serviceable surface reading.

24a One exploring cellar, long, second to last (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘[to] long’, as one might do for nicotine or attention, has its second letter moved to the end (‘second to last’).

26a Scots downfall left to happen (6)
A two-letter word with many meanings is followed by a four-letter verb meaning ‘to happen’ or ‘to arrive’. Is one of those many meanings ‘left’? Only if you are a right-handed batter, I would venture to suggest. A similar issue arose in 2,588 with the clue “Last bit of lunch left for pet (3)” for HON [(lunc)H + ON]. This makes me suspect that Azed has it in his mind that because the right-hand side of a horse or vehicle is termed the ‘off’ side that the left side is ‘on’ rather than ‘near’. Incidentally, the OED confirms that the near/off thing started with horses, which apparently are (or were) “commonly mounted, led, or approached, from the left side, which is consequently the one near to the person dealing with them”.

32a See this roan or bucks in one horse race – Derby maybe? (6)
A composite anagram, where the solution plus ROAN OR undergoes rearrangement (‘bucks’) to form ONE HORSE RACE. The definition is by example, hence the ‘maybe’ (although the question mark alone would have been sufficient).

33a Veteran combatant; club admits dry alien, tottering (10)
A three-letter word for the sort of club that might be wielded contains (‘admits’) the two-letter abbreviation often indicated by ‘dry’ and an anagram (‘tottering’) of ALIEN.

Down

1d Give metal hull to vessel, dry within long beam (12)
A six-letter vessel in which water would have been heated precedes that ‘dry’ abbreviation again (see 33a) contained by (‘within’) a word for a long beam particularly associated with microphones (and Basil Brush).

6d In cheap style, not well cut in Indian mat (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘not well’ missing its last letter (‘cut’) is contained by a five-letter word for ‘a screen or mat, usually made of the roots of the fragrant cuscus grass, which is placed in a frame so as to fill up the opening of a door or window, and kept wet, in order to cool and freshen the air of a room’. The ads make Febreze sound a simpler option.

10d Falsify king in gambling stake on hand (12)
The usual monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’ is put inside a four-letter word for a stake in gambling (a sense of a word originally meaning ‘outlay’ or ‘expenses’ seemingly known only to the editors of Chambers), the combination being followed by (‘on’) a seven-letter verb meaning ‘[to] hand’.

12d Variety entertainments not following scripts (5)
There is (or perhaps I mean “isn’t”) one of those missing commas between ‘following’ and ‘scripts’, because a six-letter word meaning ‘scripts’ is to be shorn of the single-letter abbreviation for ‘following’ (ie ‘not following’).

16d Water buffalo tucking into Caribbean country palm (8)
There are believed to be less than 4,000  of these water buffaloes in the world, mainly found in Assam and cryptic crosswords. The four-letter term (derived from Hindi) for one of them is contained by the name of a Caribbean country which is famous for its boxers rather than its cricketers. The palm that forms the answer is associated, in my mind at least, with wax.

23d Reckon region must lose railway (5)
A seven-letter word for a region must be deprived of (‘lose’) the two-letter abbreviation for ‘railway’.

25d Typical of flasher, slurped ale in the course of meeting (6)
An anagram (‘slurped’) of ALE is contained by (‘in the course of’) a three-letter abbreviation for a particular sort of meeting. I wondered why I had never seen ‘slurped’ used as an anagram indicator before, and when I looked the word up in Chambers I was unconvinced by its credentials.

27d Some wines can make this islander sit up (5)
An eight-letter plural of a particular sort of wine (ie ‘some wines’) constitutes (‘can make’) the five-letter answer, a word for the inhabitant of a specific island, followed by the letters SIT reversed (‘sit up’).

28d Phenol suiting piggy not having exercise outside (5)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘piggy’ (ie like a pig) has a two-letter abbreviation for ‘exercise’ removed from the outside.

(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 2,747 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

Another plain puzzle that was quite tricky in places, particularly if you were trying to solve the version that first appeared on the Guardian web site. Yes, there were a couple of simple ‘hiddens’ and a ‘take every other letter’, but there were also a couple of clues where the wordplay for an uncommon word itself contained a word which is likely to have been unfamiliar, and neither could readily be deduced – I’m not keen on clues like this, because unless you know one of the words they can only be solved by brute force.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 7d, “Floppy disc I’m featured in (4)”. Nothing too difficult about the wordplay, the letters IM (from the clue) being contained by (‘featured in’) the two-letter abbreviation for a vinyl disc of the album variety, producing a word meaning ‘floppy’. I’m used to seeing clues in other puzzles where the cryptic reading is lacking a necessary pause, eg “I chucked out important chap” for MAN [MAIN – I], where the wordplay requires “I chucked out, important”. Similarly “Fellow general I chucked out” requires either a comma or the word ‘with’ after ‘general’ to indicate that the word MAIN needs to have the letter I ‘chucked out’. Azed has written in the past about the importance of respecting punctuation in clues; recently, though, he seems to have been producing a lot of ‘missing comma’ clues himself – 9d in the current puzzle is one, and this clue is another. For the cryptic reading to work without a comma after ‘disc’, the words following would need to be either “I’m is featured in” or “I’m features in”, neither of which makes sense in the surface reading. I don’t consider that punctuation which misleads the solver in this way constitutes acceptable misdirection, and it is something that I believe should be avoided by setters.

Across

1a Gremlin that diverts English prof’s little (12, 2 words)
The wordplay here tells us that the answer is an anagram of (‘diverts’) a combination of the usual abbreviation for ‘English’ plus PROFS LITTLE, but the answer may not immediately spring to mind. It is divided (6,6), and has come straight off the Eurostar, the first word being the French for ‘spirit’. I gather that it describes a household spirit or goblin in the north of France, which  can be heard but never seen, and cannot be expelled by water, exorcism or Trump. Incidentally, based on the meanings given by Chambers, ‘diverts’ seems a bit of a stretch as an anagram indicator.

10a Spore cases getting to soak mostly when penetrated by start of rain (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to soak’ (as one might do when pickling a herring) deprived of its last letter (‘mostly’) contains (‘is penetrated by’) the first letter (‘start’) of ‘rain’.

11a Projecting angle, one in vaulted passage north of the border (5)
Very tricky if you know neither the outward-pointing angle (applied especially to a fortification or a line of defences) or the Scots word for a vaulted passage, into which the Roman numeral for ‘one’ must be inserted. An alternative wordplay would be ‘pastry dish not dated’.

13a Bright green stone filled with luminance dad’s set before mum (6)
The apostrophe-s in the wordplay transfers into the answer, where three letters equating to “dad’s” are ‘filled with’ (ie contain) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘luminance’, and are followed by two letters for ‘mum’. The answer will be familiar, but this particular sense of it may not.

15a Couple formerly exhausted tea (4)
There’s a three-for-two offer on definitions here, the order of their appearance in the clue matching the sequence in which they can be found in Chambers. The answer could also be clued as “China tea”, but the problem with double definitions like that is that they will almost certainly have been used before. I remember reading a piece by Dean Mayer where he neatly summarized the problem facing setters these days, observing that the number of clues published are growing at a much faster rate than the number of words in the dictionary. Increasing repetition of clues, particularly succinct ones, is an inevitable consequence.

19a Directed round old bear bent over (6)
A three-letter word for ‘directed’ or ‘guided’ contains (’round’) a Shakespearean word meaning ‘to give birth to’ (ie ‘old bear’). The answer is a familiar word.

22a Star with jinx goes round unplaced after run here? (10)
This &lit, where the whole clue stands as an indication of the answer,  seems a little bit strained. A three-letter word for a ‘star’ or ‘expert’ is followed by a five-letter jinx, containing (‘goes round’) the single numeral which, in a racehorse’s form figures, indicates a race in which the horse was unplaced (as opposed to 1,2,3,F,U,P etc). It is the ‘here?’ in the clue that points to the answer.

24a It protects driver in the outback, and sounds like rumpus without breadth? (6, 2 words)
One for the antipodean solvers, and a slightly strange one at that. A homophone for a word which is slang for a rumpus (and can also mean ‘nonsense’) gives us the seven-letter name of a green dog that those of a certain age will associate with a pink cat called Custard and the narration of Richard Briers, which is otherwise a non-word. This is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘breadth’, the result being a (3,3) expression.

25a Skene-dhu may be stuck in here – and what results when one’s stuck in? (4)
A three-letter word that could describe what results when a skene-dhu is stuck into someone’s ankle (the meaning of the Scots word which forms the answer) itself has the Roman numeral for ‘one’ stuck inside it. I do not have accurate figures from NHS Highland, but I suspect that the number of clansmen who have suffered ankle injuries as a result of carrying a skene-dhu in the top of their sock (where it is normally ‘stuck in’) is on the low side. Although the laws around knives in the UK are strict, wearing a skene-dhu in public is legal as long as it is worn as part of a highland outfit. Those of you who would prefer not to carry a real stainless steel skene-dhu can purchase a plastic bladed variant, thus reducing further the likelihood of ankle trauma.

32a Plunge into trough – baconers do? O, this boar possibly (5)
A composite anagram, where the letters of BACONERS DO can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form O plus the solution (‘this’) plus BOAR.

Down

2d Foreign cash I added to pay once (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is tacked onto the end of a four-letter Spenserian word for pay, which could also be indicated by ‘exchanged for money’.

3d Justice included in essential life force or understanding of Buddhism (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘justice’ is contained by a five-letter word for the breath of life, producing another word derived from Sanskrit, this one meaning ‘an understanding of the truth achieved directly rather than through reasoning’. The ‘breath of life’ word could itself be indicated by ‘Prince managed answer’.

6d Cabbage climbing in branch? It’s for plucking! (8)
A four-letter cabbage (and an old king) is reversed (‘climbing’) inside the sort of branch that might be found in a road. The appendage that forms the answer can certainly be pulled, touched or tugged, but I think that plucking it would  generally be considered excessively obsequious (and painful).

8d Gets tips around end of dinner (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘tips’ or ’tilts’ contains (‘around’) the last letter (‘end’) of ‘dinner’.

9d Sons going forward with a bit of learning, incessant (7)
Probably the trickiest wordplay in the puzzle, made harder by the lack of a comma between ‘going’ and ‘forward’. A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] forward’, with the usual abbreviation for ‘son’ (ie one of the ‘sons’) removed (‘going’), is followed by a seven-letter word for ‘portions of instruction’ (ie ‘a bit of learning’) from which the consecutive letters SON (the other ‘son’) have likewise been omitted.

18d Stone erected above US writer possibly, extremely rigorous (8)
The usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘stone’ is put above the first name of one of America’s most famous authors (A Farewell to Arms etc); it could equally well have been placed below the surname of an Irish novelist (Tristram Shandy etc).

26d Not a bad shot, something very impressive but missing wicket (5)
A six-letter word for something which is very impressive is missing the usual abbreviation for ‘wicket’. The answer relates to a pretty good shot in archery, and a very good one at darts (unless you were aiming for treble 20).

27d Part of hop, no good in a drinking session (4)
A five-letter drinking bout has the usual abbreviation for ‘good’ omitted (‘no good’).

(definitions are underlined)

In the absence – again – 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 2,746 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

The puzzle was late to arrive in a solvable form (ie with clues*) on the Guardian site, but thankfully the Guardian digital subscription does now give access to the version in the newspaper, so I was able to print it, scan it, upload it to this site, and tackle it over my Toastie and marmalade. From my perspective, it seemed very similar in terms of difficulty to its immediate predecessors – nothing really tough, but plenty of obscurities and tricky wordplays. It was something of a collector’s item in that it contained no hiddens of any kind! Some entertaining clues, including a couple that struck me as being not entirely accurate, and a few repetitions.

*Unsolvable unless you possess an apposite solving style. In a letter to the Guardian, Michael Feast wrote: “Many years ago I played Ariel in the Tempest at the Old Vic with John Gielgud playing Prospero. Every day in the rehearsal room during tea breaks and idle moments Sir John would sit quietly doing the Times crossword. Sometimes he would complete it and put it aside within 20 minutes or so. Everyone was terribly impressed. The Times crossword was, in those days, the toughest nut in the bowl. One afternoon after this had been going on for some weeks, one of the cast idly picked up the great man’s paper – he had finished for the day and had gone off to the Garrick Club or somewhere to meet Sir Ralph or someone. Suddenly the actor who had been looking at the paper gasped and showed us the crossword. It was indeed all filled in, but apart from one or two correct answers the rest were just words that happened to fit the spaces and had no bearing on the clues. Needless to say none of us confronted Sir John with the discovery and he continued to complete the Time crossword every day with consummate ease.”

Clue Writers’ Corner: This month’s clue word raises an interesting point. There are two Chambers entries (with completely different etymologies) which share the spelling here, and there is no issue with choosing either as the answer to your clue. However, the second of them is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, and Azed’s view on the use of such words is very clear. In the slip for competition 735 (MALIGN), he wrote:

“Anyone choosing one of the obsolete senses of the verb without indicating this I marked down; at this level of competition such an omission cannot be overlooked”

There are in essence two ways that obsolete words (or obsolete meanings of words) can be indicated: the first involves suitably qualifying the definition. So for the obsolete word PEISE, meaning a weight, one could use definitions such as ‘old weight’, ‘weight once’, ‘former weight’, ‘neglected weight’ or ‘weight no longer’. Anything that suggests that the word is no longer in use is likely to be acceptable, and regulars will no doubt have seen plenty of possibilities in Azed’s own clues,  6d and 22d in this puzzle offering examples.

The alternative is to indicate the obsoleteness contextually. A good example of contextual qualification can be found in 25d, where the Scottishness of the answer is not explicitly indicated but is strongly suggested by the use of the word ‘claymore’ in preference to, say, ‘sword’. With PEISE, one might choose a definition like ‘what apothecary used?’. I think that as long as Azed sees that you’ve recognized that the word is obsolete by making some attempt to indicate the fact there will be no problem.

Should you choose the first Chambers headword, defined by Azed as ‘elders’, it will, of course, require no such qualification.

Across

6a Strong wine for judgement days (5)
The four-letter (sparkling) wine which follows the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘strong’ or ‘loud’ was once ubiquitous, both in the real world and the cryptic one, but has I suspect yielded to prosecco in one domain and fallen out of favour in the other.

11a Cellar enveloped by peculiar notes? It stinks when scoured (10)
The ‘cellar’ leads to a five-letter plural describing the things that might have been ‘laid down’ there, this word being contained (‘enveloped’) by an anagram (‘peculiar’) of NOTES. The answer is an early name for anthraconite, a variety of limestone containing bituminous matter, which emits a fetid odour when struck or rubbed. Tommy Cooper (raising right arm above head): “Doctor, it hurts when I do this”. Doctor: “Well don’t do it then.”

12a Actor not required, passive, in being left out (4)
A six-letter word meaning ‘passive’ has the consecutive letters IN omitted (‘being left out’).

13a Jock’s workload second after returning degree (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘second’ follows a reversal (‘returning’) of a four-letter word for, well, someone with a degree, but not, according to Chambers, the degree itself. The OED does give the four-letter word as meaning ‘one-hundredth part of a right-angle in the centesimal system of measuring angles, also called a ????e or degree’, but it’s not in Chambers, and I wonder if Azed has simply omitted a truncation indicator.

14a Conjuror’s offering at children’s party? A minor bit of drivel!
I suppose that the conjuror might offer a scaled-down illusion for the younger audience, the wordplay leading directly to an eight-letter whimsical term for something a little sleighter of hand. The ‘drivel’ in the definition is slaver rather than nonsense.

15a Line of verse son’s left, little ‘un (4)
A five-letter word for a line of verse has the usual abbreviation for ‘son’ removed (“son’s left”) to produce the solution, a word which owes its existence  to the stage name of the diminutive music-hall comedian Harry Relph (1868–1928). He was given the nickname as a child because of a resemblance to Arthur Orton (1834–98), known as the ????borne claimant, who claimed in 1866 to be the heir to an English baronetcy who had been lost at sea.

16a Ozzie batting, rest tumbled out (6)
One for regular correspondent from ‘down under’, Jim, where we have a two-letter word from the world of cricket (something we don’t talk about at the moment) with an anagram (‘tumbled’) of REST outside (‘out’).

23a Food containing nasty smell posed threats to many serving (6)
A four-letter colloquial term for food contains a two-letter abbreviation for a particular sort of nasty smell. The term was first coined in 1919 by a company that made a deodorant for women called Odo-Ro-No, but Lifebuoy subsequently popularized it. Their radio advertisement used a foghorn followed by a sound created using a Sonovox to represent the two letters. The definition of the 1-5 answer here is one of those ‘missing subject’ ones where you have to assume a pronoun, in this instance ‘they’, so that the definition becomes ‘they posed threats to many serving’. I’m not keen myself, but Azed has said in the past that he is fine with “barks and is man’s best friend” for DOG.

29a Canon’s maybe Roman Catholic? This man Chico in disguise (5)
A composite anagram of a slightly unwieldy kind, where the letters of ROMAN CATHOLIC are a potential rearrangement (‘in disguise’) of the answer (‘this’) plus MAN CHICO. The definition here is akin to using “ear’s” to define OTIC.

30a Scottish set move to the right and left (4)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to move to the right’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘left’. The ‘move’ word has two alternative spellings, both of which would fit, but the Scots word for ‘[to] set’ can only be spelt in one of the resulting ways.

32a Lower grade delivered, one from the middle coming last (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘delivered’, in the way that a blow or a playing card might be, has the single-letter word meaning ‘one’ in its centre (‘one from the middle’) moved to the end (‘coming last’).

Down

2d Starts to hearten one usually rather introverted? She may
Probably the easiest clue in the puzzle, the answer being made up of the first letters (‘starts’) of five consecutive words. But surely what the lady in question may do is ‘start to hearten’ the shy people rather than ‘starts to hearten’ them?

3d When to choose a cobra for a poet? (6)
A charade of a two-letter word meaning ‘when’ and a four-letter one for ‘to choose’ producing a chiefly poetic term for various types of venomous snake.

4d Army following whim – it’s followed by whoops (8)
A four-letter word for an army or a great multitude follows a four-letter word for the sort of whim that might have described Ray Davies or any of his bandmates.

5d Examination of data: one country’s is short of it (8)
A (2,5’1, 2) phrase meaning “one country’s is” has the consecutive letters IT removed (‘short of it’) from the name of the country.

7d Nicked Scotch right out of middle of trifle (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘right’ is omitted from (‘out of’) the middle of a five-letter word for a trifle of the sort that might be clutched at.

8d Oarsman beside river has a short swim turning up (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘beside’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘river’ and a reversal (‘turning up’) of a word for a short swim. The resulting word, which describes an eight-oar boat at Oxford University, can also be applied to the crew, but not, I believe, to an individual member thereof; the definition needs to be ‘oarsmen’. The word can be used in the singular with reference to a person, but only a boy who has been at Harrow School for less than two years.

9d Shakespearean sapper, by and large one left out (7)
A (2,7) phrase meaning ‘by and large’ has a single-letter word for ‘one’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ deleted (‘out’).

18d Dark brown, or dark blue, for being replaced in black WC (7)
The six-letter university city which gives its name to a dark shade of blue has the consecutive letters FOR replaced with the single-letter abbreviation for ‘black’ and a three-letter word for a WC. Is ‘replaced in’ the same as ‘replaced with’? I’m not convinced.

22d Antique overlay of excellent quality covering royal monogram? (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘of excellent quality’ is followed by the cipher of Queen Elizabeth.

25d What claymore may give guy, ay cut before death (5)
A four-letter word for the sort of guy that might hold a tent in position is deprived of the consecutive letters AY (‘ay cut’) and followed by a three-letter word for ‘death’. The presence of the ‘claymore’ indicates that the answer is Scottish.

28d Chump from south I don’t understand as before (4)
It’ s an ‘obsolete or dialect’ word which must be reversed (‘from the south’) to produce the chump, but without a comma following ‘south’ it really should be the other way round. The answer might put you in mind of the Darling siblings’ somewhat unusual nanny, while the “I don’t understand” word immediately made me (if no-one else!) think of the Russian (male) giant panda who in the 1960s was introduced to London Zoo’s Chi Chi, object matrimony. Sadly, it didn’t work out for them, with Chi Chi preferring bamboo shoots to her Soviet suitor.

(definitions are underlined)

In the absence 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 2,745 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

Another puzzle which I felt pushed the difficulty meter through the orange and towards the red. A high proportion of relatively obscure words and some oblique definitions seemed to more than counterbalance the ‘gimmes’. There were some nice clues in there and, apart from the repetition of ‘page’ in 1a/17d and ‘mostly’ in 29a/22d, very little with which to take issue.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 31a, “One lives an austere life, being without a modicum of comfort (6)”. The wordplay here has a seven-letter word for ‘being’ or ‘distinctive nature’ losing (‘without’) the first letter of ‘comfort’, but the point of interest is the use of ‘modicum of comfort’ to indicate C. Setters use a variety of words and phrases to direct the solver to select the first letter of a word. Some of these, such as ‘start’, ‘leader’ and ‘opening’ (aka the ‘initials’) clearly refer to the first letter of the word. There is another group, which could be termed ‘the fragments’, which comprises phrases such as ‘a bit of’, ‘minimum of’ and ‘piece of’. These are often seen in cryptics as first letter selection indicators, but you could reasonably ask yourself why it should be the first letter that is to be extracted – why should ‘modicum of comfort’ not be O, M, F, R or T? I can’t answer that question, which is why I tend to avoid those indicators in my own puzzles, although I think it’s fair to say that when solvers see ‘a bit of cake’ in a clue they will immediately think ‘C’, so it’s hardly unfair. I am more kindly disposed to  the ‘glimpses’, such as ‘a hint of’ or ‘a suggestion of’, as they seem to evoke the start of something that is far from complete.

Across

7a After dinner, last of meal consumed ran (4)
A three-letter word that might describe a diner in their postprandial state has the last letter of ‘meal’ inserted (ie ‘last of meal consumed’). I can’t help feeling there’s a comma missing after ‘consumed’ – it isn’t needed by the cryptic reading, but it would surely improve the surface.

10a Bore, weak without money as introduction (5)
A six-letter word for ‘weak’ or ‘scanty’ is deprived of (‘without’) the usual abbreviation for ‘money’ at the start (‘as introduction’) . The ‘bore’ is the sort that I associate with the River Severn.

11a Pet has almost run in for a scratch? (6)
A four-letter informal word for a particular breed of dog (the most famous representative of which is surely the benefactor of ‘Uncle Herriot’ in All Creatures Great and Small, played in the Channel 5 series by Derek until his recent retirement, which has seen him replaced by Dora) contains the word RUN (from the clue) without its last letter (‘almost’). The definition requires the question mark, because a ‘scratch’ (see Chambers) is just one example of the answer.

13a Man leaving comfortable seat – it’s fragrant (4)
The consecutive letters MAN are omitted from (‘leaving’) a seven-letter ‘cushioned seat for several people’.

19a Crane maybe required to construct Greenwich abode (7)
A straightforward ‘hidden’, the reference in the definition being either to the main character in Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or an American military officer (after whom the character is almost certainly named, since Irving and Crane met in 1814). I’m sure he would have remembered the name – I first came across it in A Funny Thing Happened by Anthony Buckeridge (the squire of Little Moulting being Sir ??????? Moulting), and I have never forgotten it! The biblical figure is given the name (in 1 Samuel) because, according to his mother  ‘the glory has departed’ from Israel, because of the loss of the Ark to the Philistines, although it seems rather unnecessary to saddle one’s offspring with such a moniker. Thankfully, events such as Andy Murray’s retirement don’t seem to have prompted widespread repetition.

21a Resinous stuff? Vehicle its association filled with one (7)
A three-letter vehicle is followed by the two letter abbreviation for an association to which its owner might belong, containing a two-letter dialectal form of the word ‘one’, which is often seen preceded by adjectives such as ‘good’ or ‘big’.

27a Prepare to get hitched? Liz accepting tease (7)
This clue raises a subtle (some might say ‘pedantic’) question – someone whose name is Margaret could certainly be called Maggie, but would someone known as Mags also be called Peggy? I suppose they might… Anyway, a four-letter diminutive of ‘Elizabeth’ contains (‘accepting’) a verb meaning ‘[to] tease’ (or ‘[to] cause to decay’).

29a Cattle food not applicable for feeding to dog mostly (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘not applicable’ is contained by (‘for feeding to’) a five-letter informal term for a dog (typically one of dubious pedigree), from which the last letter has been dropped (‘mostly’).

33a Fungus like a sort of lozenge, not red (4)
One of those clues where – unless you are the Bluemantle Pursuivant or one of his College of Arms confederates – you are (like me) almost certain to have worked back from the solution (a fungus affecting plants) to the wordplay, which has a seven-letter word meaning ‘furnished with a charge having the form of a lozenge, with a round hole in the middle through which the field appears’ being stripped of the consecutive letters RED (‘not red’).

Down

5d What’s used in polish, unadulterated but with elements switched (7)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘unadulterated’ or ‘genuine’ has its first three letters exchanged with its last four (ie ‘with elements switched’).

7d Façade, fine blend of three? (7)
When setters refer to other answers in the grid, they generally use numerals to do so, but here Azed has somewhat sneakily chosen to give us the word ‘three’. The usual abbreviation for ‘fine’ must therefore be followed by an anagram (‘blend’) of the answer to 3d.

9d Like Carthage, according to old orator, consequence coming in endless deferral (7)
A three-letter word for a consequence is contained by (‘coming in’) a word for a deferral or pause lacking its last letter (‘endless’). Cato the Elder is said to have concluded each of a series of speeches with words along the lines of ‘Carthago ??????? est’, in other words just giving Carthage a bit of a going over wasn’t going to be enough – it had to be wiped from the face of the earth.

12d Ancient statue, with animals – it creates a buzz (5)
A term from ancient Egypt, not only for the spirit of a person which survived after death but also a statue in which it could reside, is followed by a word for a place where animals are kept (Gerald Durrell had such a thing in his luggage, according to the title of one of his books, which suggests that things were a bit lax at Heathrow in those days).

18d Boater maybe going round a fen, rippling – it can be full during ebb-tide (7)
A three-letter word for the sort of thing exemplified by a boater (of the straw variety) contains (‘going round’) an anagram (‘rippling’) of A FEN.

20d Garrison to house senior service, English (7)
The wordplay is a charade of a four-letter word meaning ‘to enclose in a container’, the two-letter abbreviation for the ‘senior service’, and the usual abbreviation for ‘English’.

22d The old king’s mostly laid up in postprandial periods in Perth (5)
A six-letter ‘archaic and poetic’ (‘old’) form of a familiar nine-letter word for a monarch missing its last letter (‘mostly’) is reversed (‘laid up’). The ‘in Perth’ could tell us either that the answer is Scottish or Australian; in this instance, it is the latter.

24d Paul’s correspondents out of gas, found in area round Rome? (6)
The ninth book of the New Testament is an epistle written by Paul the Apostle to a group of people identified by a nine-letter term, although exactly where they hung out seems to be open to scholarly debate (which rules out any contribution from myself). This term has the letters GAS removed from the outside (ie it is ‘out of gas’) to provide the answer.

26d One managing bovine stud (4)
Three definitions for the price of two, the relevant senses in Chambers coming under the first, third and second headwords, in that order.

28d No longer conceal nameless beauty (4)
The five-letter name of a famous beauty is shorn of the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’, producing a Spenserian (‘no longer’) word meaning ‘[to] conceal’. That the lady should be famed for lasting beauty is extraordinary, given that her face was involved in launching a large number of ships prior to the invention of champagne bottles.

(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 2,744 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

The needle on the difficulty meter certainly reached the mid-point of the range; part way through the solve I thought it was going to go significantly higher, but in the final analysis there seemed to be several tricky clues but nothing exceptionally difficult. In those clues where the wordplay included an obscure word, the solution didn’t, and vice versa. Generally an entertaining solve, with just a couple of minor issues.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 25a, “Theatrical entertainment? Take a tipple before one (5)”. A four-letter word for a tipple is followed by a single-letter word for ‘one’, but the point of interest is the definition. In this clue – and in those at 36a, 24d, 27d  and 30d – Azed has used a device which which he frequently calls on, splitting the clue into two sentences, with one sentence constituting the definition and the other the wordplay. The first of these ends with a question mark, thus establishing a connection between the two without requiring any further integration in the surface reading. This can come in handy when alternative single-sentence phrasings don’t work well, or where you want to reverse the order of definition and wordplay – Azed could have worded this clue as “Take a tipple before one theatrical entertainment”, but the ‘one’ then doesn’t make much sense; the best option, surface-wise, would be “Take a tipple before a theatrical entertainment”, but the ‘a’ in the clue is the same as the A in the answer. It’s a useful tool to have in one’s armoury, but I would suggest reserving it for special occasions.

Across

1a Put out about underwear once split from below? (7)
An anagram (‘out’) of PUT contains (‘about’) a four-letter plural describing items of underwear sometimes obliquely indicated by ‘supporters’, and on occasion by Azed as ‘at least four cups’.

13a Carriage, one strong wind overturned (5)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ and the name of a strong north-east wind in the upper Adriatic (etymologically linked to the Greek god of the north wind) are reversed (‘returned’) to produce one of three possible spellings for the Asian wheeled carriage.

17a Damn Highlander plotted cunningly? (8)
A three-letter euphemistic (and decidedly dated) substitute for ‘damn’ is followed by the word for a long piece of tartan cloth applied, by association, to a person who would have worn it. The answer is hyphenated, 4-4.

18a Dead-head around entry to cottage, neat (6)
You could well find yourself working back from the answer (a familiar word) to the five-letter element of the wordplay which surrounds (‘around’) the first letter of (‘entry to’) ‘cottage’, although if you start by looking up ‘dead-head’ in Chambers all will quickly be revealed.

19a Vocalize from bottom, cutting up (5)
As with 18a, you are much more likely to know the word which forms the answer than the obsolete seven-letter word for the derrière which must be deprived of (‘cutting’) the consecutive letters UP – it sounds rather like something that you might use to get money off at the supermarket.

28a Carp, English, no good in water (6)
The usual abbreviations for ‘English’ and ‘no good’ are contained by a three-letter word for the sort of water which is likely to be made or passed but, unless you’re Bear Grylls, not drunk. The answer is a nicely expressive Scots word.

29a Small distorted crystal struck in a jiffy (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘struck’ is contained by a five-letter word for a ‘jiffy’.

36a Set with stones? Almost half disappear from the back (4)
The first four letters of a nine-letter word meaning ‘disappear’ (ie ‘almost half disappear’) are reversed (‘from the back’). I had assumed that Azed’s definition was based on a word taken directly from the French language, where it has the necessary meaning; in English it can only be a noun, which would make the definition faulty. However, as correspondent Matthew points out, there is a familiar verb with the same spelling which could, on a good day, satisfy the definition here, particularly given the question mark.

37a Wary regarding most people turning weird inside (7, 2 words)
A reversal (‘turning’) of a four-letter word for ‘people’ missing its last letter (‘most’)  contains a four-letter word meaning ‘weird’ or ‘creepy’ (‘weird inside’). For the wordplay to work, there really should be a comma (or a ‘with’) after ‘turning’.

Down

2d Zealot does without brown bread, fried (4)
A seven-letter zealot is relieved of (‘does without’) a three-letter word for ‘brown’.

3d Wild bush, old, live, about erect (6)
A two-letter word for ‘live’ contains (‘about’) a verb meaning ‘[to] erect’ or, more commonly, ‘bring up’.

8d Fix with lashes following criminal charge (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘following’ precedes a slang word for a criminal charge, of the sort that a miscreant might ‘take’.

10d Philanthrope keeps this anteater in hut (5)
An eight-letter word for a philanthrope constitutes the solution contained by the letters HUT.

11d Rarely favoured Communist dividing fortune before court (9)
The three-letter word which usually answers to ‘Communist’ in a cryptic puzzle is contained by a slang term for a fortune, paradoxically more desirable in the singular than the plural, the combination being followed by the standard abbreviation for ‘court’.

14d Large bowl to spoil pet Spooner-wise? (9, 2 words)
Other than in his ‘Spoonerisms’ specials, Azed rarely has recourse to the device (also known as a marrowsky, although the 18th century Polish count is rather overshadowed cruciverbally by his 19th century Oxonian pountercart). Here a six-letter word meaning ‘to spoil’ and a three-letter word for a young pet have their initial sounds swapped over to yield a (6,3) solution.

22d American bluish cloth – it’s uniquely excellent (6)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ is followed by a word for a dark blue or bluish-grey cloth. The solution is hyphenated, 1-3-2.

27d Gadget? Force opening for one (5)
A four-letter ‘informal, chiefly US’ word for ‘energy’ or ‘force’, often spelt with a ‘j’ at the start, combines with the first letter of (‘opening for’) ‘one’.

31d Jumbled mess cheap paper abandoned – it’s a betting game (4)
A seven-letter word for a jumbled mass has a term either jocularly or derogatorily applied to a newspaper removed. The solution is a gambling game involving cards and a bank, the name deriving from the French word for an ancient Egyptian king, subsequently shortened. Popular in France – and, for a while, England – in the 18th century, the game spread to America in the early 1800s. The ‘edge’ for the bank was very small, the result being that games were almost invariably rigged; editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games began their section on the game with a disclaimer, warning readers that an honest bank could not be found in the United States. Playing the game became known as “bucking the tiger” or “twisting the tiger’s tail”, apparently from early card backs that featured a drawing of a Bengal tiger. Places that boasted several gambling halls were often called ‘tiger town’ or ‘tiger alley’. The game’s popularity faded during the first half of the 20th century, largely because of those small margins for the house in a fair game, and by the 1950s it was virtually extinct.

(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 2,743 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

I felt that this one was comfortably above the mean difficulty level. Yes, there were a few easy ones (as always), but there were also plenty of obscure solutions, and some tricky wordplays. There were several clues that I marked as worthy of comment but which fell victim to the ‘whittling down’ process – if there are any other clues that you would like me to comment on, just let me know.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 24a, “Collects earth in county briefly (5)”, and 30a, “Lowland stream returns alongside lake (6)”. In the first of these, the usual abbreviation for ‘earth’ is put inside the abbreviated name of an English county, while in the second, an Indian word for a watercourse is reversed after the usual abbreviation for ‘lake’; the point of interest, though, is the definitions. In one of Victor Mollo’s splendid bridge books, the unfortunate player known as Papa is described as being so determined to false-card that he would do it even with a singleton. That level of skill may be beyond all but the most resourceful of crossword setters, but we can still aspire to misdirect solvers wherever we inhumanly can. When I look at an answer to be clued, my first thought is “How can I define this fairly but deviously?”, and I suspect that this owes a great deal to Azed. He is a master of the sly definition – there are plenty of examples in this puzzle, but 24a is a good one. Surely we are looking for a verb that means something along the lines of ‘gathers’? The surface reading clearly indicates that…but in a good clue the surface reading is there to send you down the wrong road. In fact, of course, we are looking for a plural noun. The other side of the coin is shown to stark effect in 30a, where the definition is not only ‘straight’, it is the English form of the Scots word which forms the answer, which seems not only somewhat weak but also ‘back to front’. This is a rare exception, though – Azed’s definitions in general are as good as they get.

Across

1a E. Asian business conglomerates, each crooked boor backed (8)
An anagram (‘crooked’) of EACH is followed by the reversal of a word for the sort of boor that might be associated with obesity.

11a Child about to take meal time – she may be assisting (9)
A four-letter word for a small child contains (‘about’) a four-letter word meaning ‘to take [a] meal’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’. The definition references the ‘wordplay part’ of the clue (my remarks in Setters’ Corner notwithstanding, you can’t always ignore the surface reading), and the result is a word that I don’t think I have ever come across before, either IRL or ICL (‘in crossword land’).

14a Material for a warm coat requiring money John put on? (6)
The ‘John’ who must be put after (‘on’) the usual abbreviation for ‘money’ is the the one who, until 7 January 1972, was Reggie Dwight from Pinner.

18a Shortened, delivering a cut with both hands possibly (6)
Technically, this could be described as an indirect anagram, since the fodder consists of A CUT together with the single-letter abbreviations for the two hands; the ‘delivering…possibly’ indicates the anagram.

20a Double kite? It’ll take some beating (6)
The wordplay involves the repetition of a word which is often indicated by ‘corporation’, but is here designated (deceptively, of course!) by a ‘Scot and N Eng’ word for the same thing.

23a Like a victim of Heracles, loveless one, malicious (6)
The word ‘one’ (from the clue) is deprived of the standard representation of ‘love’ (‘loveless’) and followed by a word meaning ‘malicious’. The reference in the definition is to a rather large feral cat with impenetrable golden fur and very sharp claws. Heracles (or Hercules, if you share the preference of the performer at 14a) managed to whack it over the head and strangle it (no RSPCA or Cats Protection in those days), and returned wearing its skin. This rather freaked King Eurystheus out, to the extent that he hid in a wine jar. Having emerged from the jar, and despite his commission having been successfully completed, he told Heracles in no uncertain terms that he was never to pull a stunt like that again; he went on to say that the feral cat was just by way of an appetizer, labour-wise, and that Heracles should expect to be given some much tougher tasks like fixing the Greek economy. 

32a Such as Priam, first among the royalty of Ilian capital (5)
It took me longer than it should have to spot that the wordplay simply required the selection of a series of initial letters, although in my defence I’m not sure that ‘first among’ is quite the same as ‘first letters of’.

33a Greeting of old one received in US mass? (5)
The wordplay has a single-letter word for ‘one’ being contained (‘received’) by an alternative spelling of an American word for a large number or amount, but the definition seems faulty, since Chambers only gives the answer as a verb. OED does give it as a noun, but an ‘obsolete rare’ one, the only example of its use being taken from c. 1430.

34a Millet ground through being coarse (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘ground’) of MILLET is followed by a word meaning ‘through’, the result being a (3,6) expression. Sometimes setters have to be a bit creative when trying to fit a definition into the surface reading. One trick is to replace a noun describing a quality (eg ‘kindness’) with the gerund ‘being’ plus an adjective (eg ‘being kind’); this sometimes looks a bit strange in clues, but it passes the substitution test  – ‘Kindness is always appreciated’ / ‘Being kind is always appreciated’. In the surface reading, ‘being’ can function as a present participle. The Chambers definition of ‘coarse’ offers enough possibilities to make it suitable for indicating pretty much any undesirable trait of character.

35a Large number of birds die clutching old claw (8)
A four-letter word for ‘die’, now used in a somewhat euphemistic sense, contains (‘clutching’) an obsolete word for a claw which is also a poetic word meaning ‘dry and withered’.

Down

1d MO’s reinvented operation, in being divided into parts, world-forming (12)
An anagram (‘reinvented’) of MO’S and a two-letter abbreviation for ‘operation’ are contained by (‘in’) a term from biology meaning ‘divided into parts’. This is one of those times when finding a devious definition is a bridge too far.

3d Means of travel describing crack (not the first)? (7)
An eight-letter adjective which describes a certain type of crack loses its first letter (‘not the first’) to produce a means of travel.

4d Water bottle, maybe, to aim for in sale? (5)
The wordplay leads to a (3,2) phrase which relates specifically to a sale by auction.

6d It’s activated by electromagnetic waves on leaving graduate college (5)
Oxonians will have a distinct advantage here, the ‘graduate college’ being on St Cross Road in Oxford (not far from the Physics and Chemistry labs, as it happens). Anyway, its seven-letter name has that two-letter bit of commercial jargon for ‘on’ or ‘concerning’ deleted (‘on leaving’) to produce the contracted term for an apparatus which can, indeed, be electromagnetically activated, but whose purpose is to encourage atomic particles to get a wiggle on.

7d Legman, 45, taken in by conman (8)
When Cornershop sang about being ‘brimful of Asha on the 45’, it was this sort of 45 to which they were referring (although probably a standard 45rpm single rather than its ‘extended play’ counterpart). The two-letter abbreviation is contained by a  term for a conman taken from the Australian vernacular but not flagged as such by Azed.

8d Trouble, often in Glasgow, raised sign of impatience locally about rector (5)
A four-letter ‘chiefly Scots’ version of an interjection of impatience or reproof, often encountered in English literature in its three-letter form, is reversed (‘raised’) around (‘about’) the usual abbreviation for ‘rector’.

10d Be still losing head and being fidgety (12)
The wordplay is a cunning charade of three four-letter words indicated by ‘be still’, ‘losing’ and ‘head’.

21d State with cheek in America is getting detached (7)
The ‘state’ here is the only one in the US that I have spent more than a few hours in, since I travelled a few times to Charlotte, North Carolina. Its two-letter abbreviation and a three-letter slang word for ‘cheek’ (“none of your ???”) are contained by the usual two-letter representation of ‘America”. Azed expresses surprise that the answer is not given by Chambers, but it doesn’t surprise me – there are many participle adjectives beginning with ‘un-‘ which have no corresponding active form (note that the past participle given by Chambers relates to being uncut rather than unfastened, hence the absence of the active voice). Another example would be ‘unclued’, a term often seen in the preambles of themed crosswords, which has no active version – you can’t ‘unclue’ an answer; similarly, you can’t (unless you are Shakespeare) ‘unspeak’ something. Or unemail it, unless you’re quick.

22d Slab in centre of Bury portraying estate holder (7)
The five-letter slab which is to be put inside the two middle letters (‘centre’) of ‘Bury’ is also the surname of French actress Béatrice, star of Betty Blue, who has something of a reputation for courting controversy. Hard to understand why, although she did say in a TV interview that when she used to work in a morgue with her friends they sold body parts of corpses, and, while on acid, they ate a dead man’s ear…

28d Lace trimmings cad cut for suits? (5)
An eight-letter word for lace trimmings has the consecutive letters CAD removed (‘cad cut’), producing a word for ‘suits’ in the legal sense.

(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 2,742 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

This puzzle contained several very straightforward clues, but there were quite a few tricky ones as well; overall, taking into account the number of clues that I picked out as being potentially worthy of comment, I have placed it just above the middle of the difficulty range (my thanks to the correspondent who pointed out that the ‘blobs’ in the difficulty rating haven’t been displaying properly, and my apologies for not spotting it myself). I made the mistake of initially writing in the more common variant of the competition word (they are actually different words, with differing etymologies), but the resulting ‘U’ at the end of 17d made me immediately suspicious.

Clue Writers’ Corner: It is not uncommon for the word to be clued to have just one distinct (ie not separated by semicolons) definition in Chambers, perhaps comprising – as here – only a couple of single words. It is absolutely fine to use either of these in your clue; Azed will always try to give a definition straight from Chambers to avoid any ambiguity, but that is no reason not to use the same definition in your entry. That said, you should never think of the definition part of a clue as a necessary evil to support a bravura wordplay; rather, it is the definition that should come first, and on which a really good clue hinges – the number of potential wordplays for any given word is enormous, but the number of viable definitions is not. Spend plenty of time considering possible definitions, ranging from simple synonyms, perhaps with two or more meanings, ideally different parts of speech (eg ‘light’ for DELICATE), through negatives (TOUGH could be defined as ‘no piece of cake’) to comparisons (these are taken from successful entries) such as  ‘like the dormouse’ for ASLEEP (creating the context for an Alice-themed clue) and ‘like Micawber’ for UPBEAT (in a Dickensian setting). If you visit the Azed archive and pick a word of the same type as the word to be clued (an adjective, in this instance), you will see how an original definition can lead to a clue which stands out from the crowd.

Across

1a Attempt sale deviously, involving more than 50% flattery (3)
The answer comprises 60% of a slang term for flattery.

15a If once lacking vigour, put on hot old cloak (8)
The wordplay here needs the comma to appear immediately before ‘vigour’ rather than after it, since it is a nine-letter word for vigour, lacking an archaic, two-letter word meaning ‘if’, that is to be placed after (‘put on’) the usual abbreviation for ‘hot’.

16a Clergyman briefly has spoken of God as ruler (8)
A four-letter abbreviation for a clergyman having a particular role is followed by a word meaning ‘spoken’.

20a Lenten period was approaching – recipe with bit of excess limited (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘recipe’ (in a medical rather than culinary sense) and the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘excess’ are contained (‘limited’) by a four-letter word meaning ‘was approaching’.

22a Pigment causing dash of eosin in earthenware pot (6)
The first letter (‘dash’) of ‘eosin’ is put inside a five-letter earthenware pot, producing a term for ‘white lead’, a complex lead salt formerly used as an ingredient in lead paint and a cosmetic called Venetian ??????, neither of which is – perhaps unsurprisingly – now available.

25a Doorkeeper is needed in both directions with lookout man around (8)
The two letters IS running forwards and then backwards (‘in both directions’) are contained by a term used in the Cornish pilchard fishing industry to describe a person who directs seine-fishers from high ground close to the sea, an agent noun related to a word now only commonly seen in the expression ‘??? and cry’.

29a Spear from a long time back, thrust into a monkey (8)
A four letter word for ‘a long time’ (as in “I haven’t seen you in a long time”) is reversed (‘back’) and contained by (‘thrust into’) the letter A (from the clue) and a three-letter monkey. The spear is more commonly found in a slightly shorter (though equally dangerous) form.

31a Complimentary quota not on when getting into G & S (6)
A six-letter word for a quota is deprived of the consecutive letters ON (‘not on’) and contained by (‘getting into’) the letters G and S.

32a Turn out former court star (5)
A double definition clue, the second referring to a three-time Wimbledon champion between 1974 and 1981, a player dubbed ‘The Ice Maiden’ who at first seemed a little too cool, calm and collected for the crowds over here (and who spent far too much time behind the baseline for the serve-and-volley fans), but whose popularity grew and grew over time.

33a Old measure reached in what’s associated with carpenter? (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘reached’ or ‘encountered’ is contained by a three-letter word for an insect, some species of which are commonly referred to as carpenter-???s, ie they are ‘associated with carpenter’.

Down

1d Porpoise I’m surprised to see in leaping spells (6)
A two-letter interjection meaning “I’m surprised” (better if it were “I’m surprised to see”, but the verb ‘see’ would need some kind of object, such as ‘that’) is placed inside a reversal (‘leaping’) of a plural noun meaning ‘spells’ or ‘turns’.

4d Bird like a partridge can love having tail clipped (7)
A three-letter word for a can is followed by a five-letter word for love (ooh la la!) from which the last letter has been removed (‘having tail clipped’).

8d Fijian sarong, universal in water channel (though it’s slipped off) (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘universal’ is contained by a five -letter South African word for a water channel lacking the consecutive letters IT from the end (ie “it’s slipped off”).

9d Lyric tenor? He departs, led astray (6)
HE (from the clue), the usual abbreviation for ‘departs’, and an anagram (‘astray’) of LED combine to produce the middle name of Mr Nash, an English lyric tenor; this was the name by which he was known throughout his career (rather than his first name, William), but I have to wonder whether this is a little bit too obscure, particularly given that the answer is a perfectly good Chambers word (albeit not an easy one to define). I didn’t know anything about him, but then again opera and oratorio are far from being my specialist subjects.

17d Old drummers err badly, in grip of wasting away (8)
An anagram (‘badly’) of ERR is put inside (‘in grip of’) a word from the world of pathology describing slow progressive emaciation of the body or its parts. That doesn’t sound good, but I don’t suppose many words in the pathologist’s dictionary describe anything very nice.

21d Moorland quarry in tale going round school (7, 2 words)
A four-letter archaic word for ‘advice’ (an old spelling of a much more familiar word whose meaning has changed over time) contains (‘going round’) a three-letter word for a school of large mammals often spotted in cruciverbal waters. The answer divides (3,4), with ‘quarry’ in the cryptic reading being quarry² in Chambers, not quarry¹. Note that the answer is to be found in Chambers under the entry for its second word, near the end of the subheads.

22d Holiday house, and what it often is after tea (6)
A three-letter word for tea, another crossword favourite, is followed by a word for what a holiday house (ie ‘it’) would probably be when it wasn’t vacant.

24d Foreign river in North Dakota? One often comes across this abroad (6)
A river of Belgium and France is contained by the standard abbreviation for ‘North Dakota’. The definition strikes me as somewhat inadequate, making no reference to the meaning of the answer, but simply to the fact that it is – or was – often seen compounded with ‘abroad’. In the Butcher-Lang translation of Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope says:

So dear a head do I long for in constant memory, namely, that man whose fame is ?????? abroad from Hellas to mid Argos.

26d Society misbehaved endlessly – press close in (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘society’ is followed by a five-letter word meaning ‘misbehaved’ or ‘sinned’ missing its last letter (‘endlessly’).

(definitions are underlined)