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 2,732 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I would put this one right in the middle of the difficulty range, and I got the feeling that Azed had enjoyed setting it. The general knowledge requirements were modest (just 16a and 11d, I think), but there was a high proportion of obscure, or at least unfamiliar, words as well as one or two tricky wordplays. The word ‘cheers’ appears in three clues, but each time it leads to a different word, albeit two of these words are rather similar.

Setters’ Corner: Two for the price of one this week. Firstly, I want to look at 31a, “In the mood for the Highlands traveller enters, resolute (8)”, and 14d, “This metal’s like pewter, a battered tin in a bar (9)”. In the former a three-letter term for a (commercial) traveller is contained by IN (from the clue) and a three-letter Scots word, while the latter involves an anagram (‘battered’) of TIN IN A BAR. There is an acceptance that definite and indefinite articles can be included or excluded in clues at the setter’s discretion when there is no effect on the cryptic interpretation, so ‘end of August’ and ‘the end of August’ are interchangeable for ‘T’. However, the setter must not include or exclude an article in order to deceive (rather than misdirect) the solver. In 31a, the Scots word is shown by Chambers as meaning ‘a mood’, so this clue should begin “In mood for the Highlands…”, while in 14d the ‘a’ following the comma is an unwelcome addition, “This metal’s like pewter, battered tin in a bar” being the fair version.

Secondly, we have 4d, “Money useful for competitor in Parisian paralympics? (6)”, a simple charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘money’ and a word meaning ‘useful’. The word lists that I use when getting electronic help to fill a grid are subject to pruning whenever the program suggests a word that I think it might be prudent not to include; beyond that, I personally always aim to use words that are verifiable in Chambers, although I have no problem with proper nouns being used by setters as long as they are not too obscure. I studiously avoid anything that requires a special note, such as the ‘It [Chambers] does not give the French word at 4’ here. It’s usually possible to get round a potential problem like this – here it would just have needed the entries at 1a and 3d to be changed such that a ‘Chambers word’ could have come in at 4d.

Across

1a Way of analysing a person’s speech? Copper’s given chief points (5)
The chemical symbol for copper is followed by a word meaning ‘chief points’ or ‘the whole’. I don’t recall previously coming across the answer before, and I’m not convinced that Chambers is accurate in its definition. As far as I can see, it’s a statistical technique developed by the computer scientist ES Page in the early 1950s which is still used today in a wide range of quality control and monitoring applications to provide early warning of (typically unwelcome) change.

12a Transport missing last bend in part of Sussex (7)
Flanders and Swann’s title Transport of Delight traded, as does this clue, on two significantly different senses of the noun ‘transport’. The wordplay here has a four-letter word for a bend deprived of its final letter (‘missing last’) being contained by the term for one of the six historical divisions of Sussex, each represented on the county’s flag by a martlet [the WordPress spellchecker suggested that I might have meant ‘tartlet’, which was a nice thought].

13a No longer recognize Tiny Tim? I’m excluded (4)
Nothing to do with Dickens or tiptoeing through the tulips (remember him?), a three-letter (Scots, but surely familiar to all) word for ‘tiny’ is followed by TIM from which the letters IM have been removed (“I’m excluded”).

16a Cheers speedster at the wheel I lapped? (6)
I seem to see more and more ‘missing comma’ clues in puzzles, and here’s another one – there needs to be something between ‘wheel’ and ‘I’, either a comma (indicating a pause) or a word such as ‘with’. The speedster was famed for his rivalry with Ayrton Senna.

17a Problem striking hour? It’s not typical of Big Ben (4)
The sort of problem that occurs in phrases like “There’s just one ?????….” has the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘hour’ omitted (‘striking hour’) to produce the sort of sound more likely to come from Tiny Tim(epiece) than Big Ben. 

32a Old duke? This duke misbehaving may be fined (4)
A compact and bijou composite anagram where the solution (‘this’) and the usual abbreviation for ‘duke’ can be rearranged (‘misbehaving…may be’) to form FINED. The ‘duke’ in the definition is one of a pair that those being invited to participate in fisticuffs would be advised to put up.

33a Raven, bloodied, tucking into pastry (7)
The definition here is not, as it might appear from the surface reading, a noun, rather it is a verb. The answer is produce by tucking a three-letter word meaning ‘bloodied’ into a word which is now associated with a paste, often involving meat, but formerly described a pie, pasty or patty.

35a One meandering widely in Asia cheers king (5)
A four-letter word for ‘cheers[!]’, a doubling of the one found in 15a, is followed by the monarchical abbreviation for ‘king’. I’ve heard quite a few epithets applied to Genghis Khan and his hordes, but I don’t remember ‘meandering’ being one of them.

Down

3d Half a day given over for follow-up to festival (4)
The first half of the name of a particular day is reversed (‘given over’) to produce a term which originally designated the eighth day after an ecclesiastical festival (both days being counted in the eight, so the ????, or ‘octaves’, would always fall on the same day of the week as the festival itself).

7d Water pot in India, inclined to crack, so it’s said (6)
The ‘crack’ in this homophone clue is of the prattly/gossipy sort.

10d For instance record university kept in the main turned up pastoral poems (9)
A two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘for instance’, a three-letter word for ‘record’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘university’ are contained by (‘kept in’) a reversal (‘turned up’) of a more prosaic word for ‘the main’.

11d White wine TV chef preferred to ale, reverse of gross bottled (11)
The surname of a TV chef particularly associated with what might be described (referencing the clue above) as ‘main dishes’ is followed by a four-letter word for ‘ale’ within which a reversal of the standard abbreviation for ‘gross’ is contained (‘bottled’).

19d Following a close trim, rising fashion (3)
Impossible without checkers to know what is ‘rising’ (reversed) here; it turns out to be the French fashion rather than the adjective meaning ‘with close-cropped hair’. My thanks to a correspondent for gently pointing out that in my original annotation I’d got it back to front, thus – one might say – proving my own point!

22d Conserve container for litter (6)
A three-letter word for a conserve and another one for the sort of thing that you might make it in combine to produce an Indian sedan chair which was carried by four men.

25d Drug kept in heroin pouches (5)
The word for heroin in which a single-letter drug is ‘kept’ has only relatively recently been introduced to Chambers, and it’s hard not to feel that we managed quite well without it.

28d Fish basket made of young animal skin on edge of watercourse (4)
One of those clues where both the answer and the key element of the wordplay may well be unfamiliar. A three-letter word for the skin of a young animal (which could also be indicated by ‘snooze’) is followed by the last letter (‘edge’) of ‘watercourse’. The answer is a dialect word for an osier basket used for catching fish.

(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 2,731 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I thought this was a little bit harder than last week’s puzzle, but still probably just short of the halfway line, helped by the long entries across the top and down the left side being familiar words with straightforward clues. I didn’t feel it was one of Azed’s finest, including as it did several repetitions, and it seemed as though there were more than ten anagrams, perhaps because each of the four long answers involved one. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 33a “Cultivated French composer incorporates little volume (6)”. The clue itself is covered in the notes below, but the point of interest here is the one-word definition, ‘cultivated’, when the answer is  shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’. There is a distinct lack of agreement among setters and editors over when it is necessary to qualify the indication of words to which Chambers ascribes certain classifications, eg ‘poetic’, ‘informal’, ‘slang’. On top of that, some believe that a qualifier is required for definitions, but not for words which have a cryptic role in the wordplay – so ‘beyond’ as a definition of ‘without’ would require qualification (this sense of the latter word being shown as ‘archaic’), but ‘x without y’ to indicate containment of y by x would be acceptable, despite this sense of ‘without’ also being archaic (this strikes me as inconsistent). However, I think there is a general view that words classified as ‘obsolete’ and ‘archaic’ need to be flagged in some way when used as answers, and I suspect that the lack of a qualifier here is simply an oversight. ‘Cultivated old French composer…’ would be absolutely fine.

Across

11a One with no respect for the law formerly, if old and cunning (6)
A charade of a two-letter archaism for ‘if’ and a four-letter word meaning ‘cunning’ or ‘roguish’.

14a Straight Scotch, outrageous with a dash of tonic (5)
The word for ‘outrageous’ which precedes the first letter (‘dash’) of ‘tonic’ is in this sense almost invariably seen in the expression “That’s ????”, often followed by ‘coming from you!’.

17a One convinced space is not a vacuum and is within endless abundance (7)
The letters IS (from the clue) are put inside a six-letter word for ‘abundance’ from which the last letter has been removed (‘endless’).

20a Change course, being slack (4)
Unless you are Ben Ainslie or your knowledge of Chambers is exceptional, you will probably get the answer to this double definition clue from the first part. As Arthur Young’s Nautical Dictionary tells us,

To ???? a buoy in a ship’s wake, means to slack out a rope to which the buoy has been attached, in order to let it go astern.

21a Where beer may be served before universal prohibition (4)
It would be easy with the first couple of letters checked to write in a more familiar spelling of the ‘prohibition’, but the wordplay makes it clear that the three-letter element which precedes the usual abbreviation of ‘universal’ is a term for a device through which beer can be served and, by association, the room where such service takes place.

24a Massage thigh in club, not new (7)
A three-letter word for a thigh is contained by the five-letter name of a particular golf club from times past (think brassies and cleeks) missing the usual abbreviation for ‘new’.

30a Twiggy, large scale, conveyed by artist, man mostly (5)
The word’ conveyed’ might suggest containment, but here it is simply there to link the definition to the wordplay, which has the usual two-letter artist (also flaunting his credentials in 22d) being followed by a four-letter word for a man from which the last letter has been omitted (‘mostly’). The definition is a little playful, suggesting that in fact the twigs aren’t twigs at all, but something on a significantly larger scale,

32a Shower not active? Charger required (8)
There are a couple of agent nouns here, both the nine-letter ‘show-er’ that must be deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘active’ and the answer. As Azed says, Chambers doesn’t give the 17th century spelling found here, but it can be readily verified in the online Collins Dictionary.

33a Cultivated French composer incorporates little volume (6)
The surname of the French composer and pianist Eric Alfred Leslie (who styled himself as Erik) contains (‘incorporates’) the standard abbreviation for ‘volume’

Down

2d Trio keeping melody in place (6)
You could be forgiven for thinking that it is the trio which should be ‘keeping’ a melody ‘in’, but in fact it is the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘place’ (actually, of course, ‘Place’, because it invariably appears in the name of streets, but that’s one for another day),

3d Creases I kept in place with pressing (6)
Does ‘place with pressing’ really suggest an anagram of PLACE, wherein the letter I must be kept? It’s one where the definitions in Chambers probably make it acceptable, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

4d One of lines on board, endlessly irritating (7)
The eight-letter word which must be shorn of its last letter (‘endlessly’) I would think of in its informal sense as usually meaning something more along the lines of ‘disconcerting’, but it’s clear that ‘irritating’ or ‘nettling’ are also valid.

9d Ballet position to follow step by step from below centre of entrechat (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to follow step by step’ or ‘to follow the outline of’ is reversed (‘from below’) and followed by the middle letter (‘centre’) of ‘entrechat’.

12d Moths, three fluttering over, are caught soaring (10)
An anagram (‘fluttering’) of THREE and the usual cricketing abbreviation for ‘over’ precede a reversal (‘soaring’) of the letters ARE (from the clue) and another cricketing abbreviation, this one for ‘caught’.

22d Bracken artist found climbing famous mountain (6)
The fern that appeared at 27d last week is here to be placed in front of the two-letter ‘artist’ and the whole lot reversed (‘climbing’). The mountain, a dormant volcano, features prominently in the book of Genesis.

26d Tincture, faint? Concentrated it was held to have curative powers (6)
A charade of the two-letter word for the heraldic tincture gold or yellow and a four-letter adjective with a number of meanings, including ‘week, faint, feeling a sinking sensation’ and, for musos, ‘in an inspired state’ – as Baloo says in the film of the Jungle Book, “I’m ????, man. Solid ????”. It must be nice to have a word in Chambers for which you can claim sole responsibility, and there’s no doubt that this one belongs fair and square to Wilhelm Reich. It may – or may not – be familiar from Dušan Makavejev’s film “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism” (which, incidentally, features shots of Reich’s last home, named The Orgonon).

(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 2,730 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Either I was in exceptional solving form this morning, or this was surely the most straightforward Azed in recent memory. Not that I’m complaining, as I was able to get started quickly on these notes, for which I’ve selected close to the usual number of clues for comment, although in another week several of them wouldn’t have made the cut.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at what is almost certainly the hardest clue in the puzzle, that for 23d: “Larval excrement? With this it becomes pertness (5)”. One of my all-time favourite Azed clues is “My letters could make lad sad” for LASS (LAD with L AS S becomes SAD); the clue here is constructed on very similar lines, but the change is applied not to a word appearing in the wordplay, but to the answer itself, so the wordplay translates to ‘with <the change suggested by the letters of the answer> <the answer itself> becomes <a word meaning> pertness’.

This is close to being the ne plus ultra of self-referencing, but how are we meant to get the first two letters of the answer? The second one is checked, but the first could be anything – we have to know (or look up) the word for ‘larval excrement’. In fact, the wordplay could be used as it stands in a clue for any word, of whatever length, which ends in the same three letters, so all you have to do is change the definition: thus the clue ‘Blundering? With this it becomes pertness’ gives a different word (beginning with CR) which would fit in the slot at 23d. Azed’s clue is clever (kind of), but I don’t think it’s fair, because the wordplay only delivers part of the answer.

Across

7a Have another go at doctrine lacking leader (4)
A five-letter word for a doctrine is deprived of its first letter (‘lacking leader’).

11a Shaft attached to front of favourite bit of gym equipment (7)
A four-letter word for the shaft of a barrow or cart (as well as a form of public transport which has been reintroduced to a number of UK cities) is followed by (‘attached to front of’) a three-letter ‘favourite’ (particularly of crossword setters).

14a Sound of band, not amateur, showing enthusiasm? (5)
The six-letter onomatopoeic word for the sound that might be heard from a  brass band loses (‘not’) the usual abbreviation for ‘amateur’. This word put me in mind of an expression ending in ‘jumper’ which was popularised by Jimmy Edwards in the 1950s and even appeared on the Beatles’ recording of I Am the Walrus, but I find that it was originally coined by Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes as the title of a 1936 song, available on a 78rpm disc coupled with the catchily-styled Miss Porkington Would Like Cream Puffs (who can blame her?). Sarony was a prolific writer of nonsense songs, his published output exceeding four hundred, among which are Jollity Farm and Hunting Tigers out in Indiah, both recorded by the great Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in their early days.

16a Metal worker, enthusiast about gold stone (8)
A three-letter enthusiast contains (‘about’) a two-letter word for the heraldic tincture gold and a term for a precious stone.

24a Female rarely round, once near (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘female’ is followed by a word meaning ’round’, shown by Chambers as ‘rare’ (hence the rarely), which might describe the earth or an eyeball. Chambers has the answer as obsolete, indicated by ‘once’.

29a Love-drug provided by blade according to hearsay? (5)
A homophone (‘according to hearsay’) for the sort of blade that might make pop fans think, depending on their age, of Jimi Hendrix’s Dolly or The Fratellis’ Chelsea.

Down

3d A nice walk? Eric’s last as leader maybe (6)
This is the sort of reference that may be lost on younger solvers. The author whose surname must have its last letter moved to the beginning (‘last as leader’) was well-known ‘back in the day’, and his influence was acknowledged by several other authors including Graham Greene, John le Carré and Ian Fleming, but I suspect that his fame has faded considerably since. He was perhaps the first writer of realistic spy fiction, and his early works such as The Mask of Demetrios (1939) are regarded as classics.

6d Old monarch covers self-confidence in warm coat (5)
The ‘old monarch’ leads to the cipher of one of the Georges, which precedes (‘covers’) a three-letter word for the self or self-confidence.

17d Pressure regulator to secure toast when it’ s done? (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to secure’ (as one might do to a big wooden door to keep out the rampaging hordes) is followed by an anagram (“when it’s done”) of TOAST.

19d Accountant having to accept a stigma as bitter tonic? (7)
The two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of accountant contains (‘having to accept’) the letter A (from the clue) and a familiar word for a stigma.

21d Source of river in Geneva? (6)
This clue wouldn’t meet with the approval of at least one crossword editor of my acquaintance, containing as it does two single-letter contractions where the lost letter is replaced by an apostrophe. The shortened form of ‘of’ (which Chambers in fact gives both with and without the apostrophe) is followed by the usual abbreviation for river, a contraction of ‘in’, and the sort of spirit exemplified by geneva.

23d Larval excrement? With this it becomes pertness (5)
See Setter’s Corner above for a discussion of this clue.

25d Gender, formerly, what may be hedged round say (5)
A three-letter word for something that might, in a familiar phrase using its plural form, be hedged contains (’round’) a two-letter abbreviation which can have the sense of ‘say’ or ‘for instance’. The answer is not an old word meaning ‘gender’, rather it is an old meaning of the word ‘gender’.

27d So-called fern I omitted from headdress (4)
The letter I from the clue is to be omitted from a word for a headdress or a richly-jewelled ornament for the head, which might have those who were moved by the sound at 14a now singing a 19^th century song of uncertain authorship which involves a lot of ‘Boom-de-ay’. I’m not sure why Azed describes the fern as ‘so-called’ – as far as I can determine it is, as Victoria Wood might have said, totally bona fido.

(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 2,729 ‘Give & Take’

Difficulty rating: (6 / 10)

Note: 34a should be enumerated as (8, 2 words).

I think this sort of special is probably rather less Marmitey that Printer’s Devilry, Spoonerisms or Playfair. Today’s offering struck me as being quite tricky, though – while the clues may have been a little easier than in an average ‘plain’, the gimmick more than made up for it, so I’ve rated the overall difficulty comfortably above the plain puzzle range.

In all instances the wordplay leads to the grid entry, while the definition leads either to a longer word (across clues) or a shorter word (down clues). Examples (from the last ‘Give & Take’, in February this year) are:

Across: “Preserve youth in wild area (9)” – [M]AR[M]ALADE, LAD in AREA*, grid entry ARALADE, omitted letter M.

Down: “Seeks newts around Austria (4)” – AASKS, ASKS around A, grid entry AASKS, extra letter A.

Some other things to note. Firstly, the great majority of the entries will not be real words. Secondly, the cryptic indication (wordplay) can simply be a definition of the grid entry (assuming that it is a real word). Thirdly, the extra letter added to each down entry will always be checked by a crossing entry – however, the point at which you can confidently enter a down solution will depend on how precisely the wordplay indicates the entry, so 4d (for instance) can be filled in as soon as the clue is solved, while 18d is likely to require at least a couple of checkers.

The quotation isn’t in my copy of ODQ (7th edition, 2009), but it can readily be found online. Tim C has raised a question in the comments regarding the identity of the competition clue word. For the reasons that I state there, I am in no doubt that the instructions lead to a word that is 13 letters long (update on 11/10 – this has been confirmed).

After the notes I have included a checklist showing the locations in the defined words where letters are removed or added.

Clue Writers’ Corner: If you look at the clues in this puzzle, you will see that Azed has in general carefully avoided including any ‘linking’ words or phrases between wordplay and definition (eg ‘making’, ‘from’), although he’s nodded a couple of times (in 32a and 2d). The reason for avoiding such links is that in each clue the wordplay leads to the grid entry but not the word which is defined, so any wording which suggests that it does so is faulty. Even in the ‘hidden’ clues such as 28d he has been careful to ensure that the wordplay and the definition stand apart. When it comes to judging clues submitted for puzzles like this, Azed veers between disqualifying clues containing linking words and just marking them down, but I would strongly advise avoiding them in your submission.

Across

1a Overhasty outburst of ire? Jock’s is worthless (9)
A four-letter word for ‘overhasty’ is followed by an anagram (‘outburst’) of IRE. The defined Scots word is a noun (ie “Jock’s this is worthless”).

6a Ball right out of place in merry frolic (6)
A five-letter word for a merry frolic has the usual abbreviation for ‘right’ moved within it (‘right out of place’).

11a Fitting clothes pair can name belonging (11)
A three-letter word for ‘fitting’ contains (‘clothes’) the usual abbreviation for ‘pair’, a three-letter synonym for ‘can’, and the usual abbreviation for ‘name’.

16a Posterior? Countess exposing outer parts (5)
The ‘exposing’ here is used in the sense of ‘abandoning’, indicating the some of the outer letters (‘parts’) of COUNTESS must be lost.

20a Superfamily? Fellow’s back in seat with one (10)
The sort of fellow that might be found at a university is reversed (‘back’) inside a four-letter word for a seat in the sense of a place or region where a thing is native, and a single-letter word for ‘one’.

24a Like dressing for fish, left off? Stale crumbs! (6)
A six-letter term which might describe a dressing, perhaps for fish, perhaps for salad, has the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ removed (‘left off’). The defined word is an obsolete (hence the ‘stale’) expression of surprise, which I don’t remember previously coming across in this form.

27a Plaster, something for the tank (5)
Here the ‘cryptic indication’ is a slightly oblique definition of a proper name, the ‘tank’ being the sort that might be found on a fossil-fuelled car.

30a Saivaite symbol, fish with head of antelope (6)
A four-letter word for a fish much prized by crossword compilers is followed by the first letter (‘head’) of ‘antelope’, but the whole thing seems mildly unsatisfactory, given that it works perfectly well as a normal clue. Solving it here means choosing the alternative, six-letter spelling of the defined word and then somewhat perversely removing the letter which turns it back into the form that tallies with the wordplay.

31a Beef piece? Play about, rolling it, ignoring recipe (7)
A seven-letter word for ‘play about’ or ‘frolic’ is reversed (‘rolling it’, ie ‘rolling that word’) and the usual abbreviation for ‘recipe’ deleted.

32a Former king among crowds making official journeys (10)
The former king is one of the Georges, and his cipher is contained by (‘among’) a seven-letter word for ‘crowds’.

Down

1d Oppose naughtiness in base (6)
A three-letter word for ‘naughtiness’ (often indicated in cryptics by ‘wrong’) is contained by a word for a base, in the sense of a stand for something, typically intended for intermittent use..

5d Rubbings out enclosed in arts seem misguided (10)
The abbreviation for ‘enclosed’ (or ‘enclosure’) is contained by an anagram (‘misguided’) of ARTS SEEM.

7d Bone up on taking in harvest wing (6)
A reversal of a three-letter bone, followed by the letters ON (from the clue), are put around (‘taking in’) a two -letter word meaning ‘[to gather in] harvest’.

12d Original root twisted in hard seed to endure (10)
An anagram (‘twisted’) of ROOT is contained by a three-letter word for a hard pip and and a four-letter word meaning ‘to endure’.

21d Hungarian academic, dramatist etc less seen around in Hungary (6)
An anagram (‘seen around’) of LESS, the letters IN (from the clue), and the IVR code for Hungary combine to produce the surname of the ‘Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term “theatre of the absurd” in his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd’ [thanks to Wikipedia].

24d Public showing direct from capital orchestra (4)
A two-letter word meaning ‘direct from’ (usually followed by ‘works’) precedes the abbreviated name of an orchestra based in the capital of England.

26d Primal stage of decapoda, early on, primarily found among cereals (4)
The first letters (‘primarily’) of ‘early one’ are contained by (‘found among’) a three-letter word for the genus of which maize is the only species.

(definitions are underlined)

Deletions/Additions

In the across clues, the letters are deleted from the following positions:

1: 1 and 6; 6: 3; 11: 4 and 9; 13: 1; 14: 4; 15: 4; 16: 2; 17: 4; 20: 4 and 7; 23: 7; 24: 1; 27: 1; 29: 3, 8 and 11; 30: 6; 31: 7; 32: 3; 33: 1; 34: 5.

In the down clues, the letters are added in the following positions:

1: 5; 2: 5; 3: 5; 4: 1; 5: 9; 7: 5; 8: 5; 9: 2; 10: 3; 12: 6; 18: 5; 19: 5; 21: 7; 22: 3; 24: 3; 25: 1; 26: 2; 28: 3.

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 2,728 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

There was certainly a lot of variety in this puzzle, which I felt that Azed had enjoyed putting together. I felt that it reached at least the middle of the difficulty range, and probably nudged a little above. I could have included notes on quite a number of the clues, but I have limited myself to the ‘standard’ 8+8, so if there are any that I have missed out which you feel warrant comment then please let me know.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look not at a clue but at the grid, where we have a feature which is rare in a plain Azed – at the NW and SE corners there are fully-checked lights of four letters. The Ximenean guidelines state that there should be no unchecked letters in a 3-letter entry, one ‘unch’ in entries of 4 and 5 letters, one or two in 6- and 7- letter entries, two or three in 8 letter entries, and no more than a third of the letters unchecked in entries of 9 or more letters. The ‘allowance’ of three unches in an eight-letter entry is something of an anomaly (more than a third of letters unchecked), and Azed has a self-imposed limit of two unches for such entries.

The upper limits are strictly  applied by editors, so if you are setting a barred puzzle make sure that the above guidelines are observed and there are (for instance) no five-letter grid entries with two (or more) unchecked letters; the rule is relaxed slightly in themed puzzles where there are unclued entries or a perimeter message – letters of clued entries that intersect with these are counted as ‘checked’, but be mindful when writing clues for such entries that the solver will have less help than usual from crossers.

The lower limits are less important, although a large number of fully checked entries is normally frowned upon, simply because the solver can complete the puzzle without solving them. As Azed noted after unwittingly producing a puzzle containing 5- and 6-letter entries with no unches, “I believe in making you solve every clue, the only exception being 3-letter words, which I don’t include very often anyway.” On another occasion, he remarked, “The number of unchecked letters should be neither too great (unfair to solvers) nor too small (unfair to Azed!)”

Across

1a Sexy topper builds to this (4)
The formal name for a ‘topper’ is made up of the letters TO (from the clue) followed by the solution (‘this’).

5a 2’s dreadful with maths usually, as before (8)
An anagram (‘dreadful’) of the word represented by the figure ‘2’ and MATHS. The answer (perhaps more like ‘to a considerable degree’ than ‘usually’, but you can see why Azed has eschewed the Chambers definitions) was in common use during the 17th century (Henry More: “That State‥being ????-???? supported by the Supreme Power of their Two Consuls.”) but unlike its ‘lesser degree’ brother it subsequently fell into neglect.

12a Foreign station in painting recalled sultan’s palace (8)
When you see ‘foreign’ in an Azed clue there’s a high probability that it will equate to ‘French’ (although ‘German’ is also a possibility), and here it is the French word for a station which must be put inside a four-letter word for a particular type of painting before the whole lot is reversed (‘recalled’).

13a Short stalk containing new appendage (8)
One of those clues where the construction (one word containing the usual abbreviation for ‘new’, thus producing another word) is easy to work out, but identifying the words themselves is trickier. The seven-letter one is derived from the Latin for ‘a little foot’.

14a Profitable but ineffectual head dismissed (5)
A six-letter word meaning ‘ineffectual’ or ‘pointless’ has its first letter removed (‘head dismissed’).

15a Country minnie will thus treat bairn (5)
I don’t remember coming across ‘minnie’ before, a familiar term for a mother in Scotland and the north of England. It’s origins are unclear, but there is a suggestion that it might be a childish version of ‘mammy’. As Burns has it, “My minnie does constantly deave [pester] me, And bids me beware o’ young men.”

27a Jaws of a glutton encountered as Shakespearean figure (6)
A charade of two three-letter words, the first for the ‘ jaws or gullet of a voracious animal or (facetious) person’ and the second a crossword regular for ‘encountered’, which produces a word originally applied to a false god, thence an idol, and subsequently a dressed-up figure, a doll or a puppet. This isn’t actually the spelling found in Shakespeare, but Chambers doesn’t make that clear.

28a Beethoven’s this in hint clued here (5)
A trademark Azed clue – if you take the letter of BEETHOVEN indicated by the answer (‘this’) and put it inside an anagram (‘clued’) of HINT, then you will arrive at the answer.

Down

1d Like computer-generated numbers, changing poem’s date around (12)
An anagram (‘changing’) of POEMS, the usual abbreviation for ‘date’, and AROUND results in a term which most programmers would probably like to think referred to certain computer-generated numbers rather than all of them.

6d Smelly Italian dish not swallowed by pa (5)
The wordplay involves removing the letters PA from the outside of a word for an Italian porridge, but I am very doubtful about ‘not swallowed by’ indicating such a manoeuvre. If you want to tell the solver to strip a group of letters from the outside of a word using a negative, the verb surely has to refer to the structure of the word itself, so ‘not fringed by’ would be fine while ‘not held by’ would not – ‘A not swallowed by B’ doesn’t suggest that B should be removed from the outside of A, simply that it shouldn’t be put around it.

8d Act as hunt assistant, creating confusion among the gorse (6, 2 words)
The ‘confusion’ is a two-letter word frequently spotted in cryptic puzzles which can also be spelt with three letters; this two-letter combination can also be indicated by ‘irrational’ or ‘transcendental’. It is contained by (‘among’) a word for gorse or furze, the result being a (4,2) compound verb.

10d On each side island reveals fish (5)
When the score in a tennis game reaches 15-15, the umpire will have recourse to the word here meaning ‘on each side’. When followed by a two-letter abbreviation for ‘island’, it produces the name given to a type of shad which travels up rivers to spawn and was once abundant in the river Severn. Apparently, “1776 to 1822 was the golden era of the Severn shad. They were plentiful and recognised as a superior commodity across the kingdom. Many books of this time referred to the Severn shad being without equal. By 1776 reference appeared of the shad harvest being sent to London and not just for royalty, but the new wealthy inhabitants. There is also a single reference in 1781 of them being ready stewed, put in barrels and sent to the Empress of Russia.” The industrial revolution, which led to the construction of weirs to facilitate navigation, was bad news for these ‘Mothers of Herring’. By 1844 they had disappeared from most of the freshwater Severn, although to this day a few are still to be found in the Severn below Worcester, returning each year from the Severn Estuary to spawn.

22d Picador e.g. in singular set of old dances (6)
A seven-letter name for a set of quadrilles which became popular in the early 19th century (and in which Joyce Grenfell was led by Mrs Tiverton) is turned into a (non-existent) singular, thus forming the name given to the sort of person exemplified by a picador (who, contrary to the impression which you might have gained from Flanders and Swann’s Los Olividados), does not have a pick of sharpened wood which he “holds at arm’s length and prods into the olive, trying to determine whether the stone runs true up and down, or whether it is set at an angle, favouring one side, the dreaded oliva revoltosa.”

23d It coats e.g. blood vessel eventually with adult replacing how it ends (6)
A (2,4) expression meaning ‘eventually’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘adult’ replacing its last letter (‘how it ends’).

24d Like a whistle in sound suggesting a trumpeter? (6)
The answer (with its mildly cryptic avian definition) is a homophone for the epithet applied to a certain type of whistle or flute with a side-plunger to vary the pitch, being the name of a US river which features both in ‘The Old Folks at Home‘ and an Al Jolson song (“I give the world to be / Among the folks in D-I-X-I- / Even though my mammy’s / Waiting for me, / Praying for me”).

25d What’s just above sends me, a spume whipped up (6)
An anagram (‘whipped up’) of A SPUME leads to the name given to a hobgoblin or spectre supposedly sent by…the person whose name appears directly above in the grid (“What’s just above me”).

(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 2,727 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

This puzzle seemed to sit somewhere around the middle of the difficulty spectrum. As you’d expect from Azed, there were plenty of inventive definitions and some neat clues, but there were also more things for me to quibble with than in recent weeks.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 27d, “Revolver, either end of it penetrating, making one snarl (4)”. The wordplay has the letter found at each end of ‘revolver’ (ie ‘it’) inserted into a three-letter word which describes a revolver, resulting in (‘making one’) a word meaning ‘[to] snarl’. There’s a problem, though – ‘revolver’ is a definition by example (DBE). ‘Dog’ on its own is a valid definition (or indication) of SPANIEL, but ‘spaniel’ alone will not do for DOG, because although all spaniels are dogs, by no means all dogs are spaniels. So ‘spaniel’ is an example of the class ‘dogs’, and in order to indicate DOG in a cryptic clue (whether solution or wordplay element) it requires a suitable qualification, either a question mark, or an expression such as ‘say’, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘eg’, or ‘for example’. Here the clue needs to be something like ‘Perhaps revolver, either end of it penetrating, making one snarl’.

Across

1a Stylish US player revealing beam making return (7)
A three-letter North American slang term meaning ‘stylish’ or ‘fashionable’ – as in The Offspring’s song ‘Pretty ??? (For a White Guy)’ – is followed by a four-letter word for a player in certain team games (rugby and gridiron for instance) having a particular position on the field. I think that ‘player’ on its own is barely adequate as an indication.

11a Antiquated backless couch chucked in lorry (10)
A six-letter word for a couch (which as it happens does have a back, though only at one end) is deprived of its last letter (hence the ‘backless’) and put inside a five-letter informal term for the sort of lorry with a flexible joint between its front and rear sections.

14a Inhabitant bagging trophy, exactly as required (6)
A familiar three-letter word which can be used in a transferred sense to describe geographical parentage (ie ‘inhabitant’) contains (‘bagging’) an informal word for a trophy of the cup-shaped kind (the sort of thing that was being hunted in PG Wodehouse’s first published novel). The solution is hyphenated, 4-2.

21a He may have splurged magenta round third of canvas (8)
I doubt whether those Italians who in the fifteenth century commissioned this artist – whose surname is produced by putting an anagram (‘splurged’) of MAGENTA around the third letter of ‘canvas’ – to produce altarpieces for their churches would have stood for any splurging, but I think we can allow Azed a little artistic licence.

24a Smelly insect intertwines back to irritate (8, 2 words)
A reversal (‘back’) of a five-letter word meaning ‘intertwines’ is followed by a three-letter word for ‘to irritate’, the result being a pesky (5,3) critter which emits a nasty smell when threatened. The marmorated (ie veined like marble) variety were accidentally introduced to the US in the 1990s and reached the UK a few years ago.

26a Jock’s faith proves heavy going by the sound of it (6)
The required Scots interjection is a homophone (‘by the sound of it’) of an informal word meaning ‘walks, heavily and wearily’. You’d hope that the answer wouldn’t start me singing, but I’m afraid I Can’t Control Myself…

28a Inner coat for those attending sheep? (6)
The wordplay leads to a (3,3) expression which whimsically suggests people who are connected with a sheep in its second year (continuing the pop theme, the sheep is cryptically suggested by the Beatles classic ‘Get Back’).

33a Fuss-free storm in bits (4)
A seven-letter word for the sort of windstorm which apparently passed through Aldershot last week has a three-letter term for ‘fuss’ removed (ie ‘fuss-free’) to produce a word which I suppose can mean ‘in bits’, though it would perhaps need to be followed by ‘up’ for that sense to be obvious.

Down

2d Run away to Scotland? Most tear northwards, filled with love (4)
A reversal (‘northwards’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] tear’ (or ‘pluck’, ‘drag’ etc) missing its last letter (‘most’) contains (‘filled with’) the usual single-letter representation of ‘love’ in the Andy Murray sense. I used to think that ‘most’ was ok to indicate the truncation of a word, but these days I feel that while ‘most of’ is fine (eg “I’ll drink most of the wine”), ‘most’ on its own would never be applied to a specific thing (eg “I’ll drink most wine”) and is therefore not acceptable.

3d Affliction of starving kid tucking into edible root, one forest-dweller (8)
A four-letter ‘destructive ulceration of the cheek, esp that affecting hunger-weakened children’ is contained by (‘tucking into’) a three-letter edible root like the potato, and the Roman numeral for ‘one’. I’ve no problem with ‘tucked into’ as an insertion indicator, but I don’t like ‘tucking into’.

4d Crude report we hear (5)
A second homophone, this one for a word which is pronounced quite differently in English than in French, where it has its origins and means (at least in my schoolboy version of the language) ‘noise’.

7d King presiding over tribe, one in NZ (4)
The chess-and-cards abbreviation for ‘king’ is followed by a Maori word for a tribe, with the answer being an informal word for a New Zealander, especially in a sporting context.

9d Pluto e.g. producing high-pitched cry, a row (8)
A charade of two four-letter words, one for a high-pitched note (or a tube) and the other for a row in the serial sense, results in something exemplified by PLUTO (I’ve rarely seen it spelt with just an initial capital), the sort of thing that was laid’ ‘Under The Ocean’ in 1944 to transfer fuel from from the UK to support the Normandy invasion.

10d One converts flats regularly, rentin’ space variously around Spain (12)
The tricky bit about this one, where an anagram (‘variously’) of RENTIN SPACE contains the IVR code for Spain, is understanding the definition, which relates to ‘flats’ of the sort which might be seen in the theatre.

18d Great novelist, first of three – one partner’s not enough for him (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘great’ is followed by the surname of either of two famous English novelists (which one you think of first probably depends on your age), and the first letter of ‘three’.

23d Nod head aiming for heart of agreement (6)
A three-letter informal word for the head, a common two-letter preposition which is hard to define but could certainly mean ‘for’ or ‘towards’ if not ‘aiming for’, and the central letter (‘heart’) of ‘agreement’ combine to produce the answer.

25d Lecherous acts with nothing on, removing top and bottom? (5)
You may well find yourself working back from the answer to establish the whimsical seven-letter word which (if it existed) might mean ‘with nothing on’ or ‘without clothes’ and that must be stripped of its first and last letters (‘removing top and bottom’).

29d Traces of fugitives seen? Posse reveals opposite of this (4)
The phrase ‘in posse’ is the opposite of ‘in ????’.

(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 2,726 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I thought that this one was definitely past the mid-point of the difficulty scale, and would have rated it higher still had it not been for a nagging feeing that my mental light bulb was a little on the dim side this morning. Some nice clues, though there did seem to be an awful lot of redundant words linking definition and wordplay or two wordplay elements, and a great many charades.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 10d, “Premature canine’s development (6)”. Not much going on here, with an anagram of CANINE producing a word which loosely equates to ‘premature’ (or ‘pre-mature’, at least). The question the clue poses, however, is whether “x’s development” is acceptable for an anagram of x. When we talk about ‘noun anagram indicators’, we are generally referring to the direct juxtaposition of a noun and the anagram fodder (which in the cryptic reading itself equates to a noun), eg ‘Eton mess’ for TONE. In the slip for comp 27, Azed wrote:

The most frequent fault, which spoilt many otherwise respectable entries this month, was the old one of indicating an anagram by means of a solitary noun. Thus many clues included the phrase ‘in grave trouble/mess/distress/pickle etc. to suggest an anagram of ‘in grave’. There is no grammatical or syntactical justification for this; ‘a grave pickle’ is not ‘a pickled grave’, toothsome though the idea may seem. The only instances where such a juxtaposition may fairly be said to indicate an anagram are phrases like ‘train crash’ or ‘gin cocktail’ which actually mean ‘a crashing train’ or ‘a mixed gin’ respectively.

In The A-Z of Crosswords, he adds, “I make it a personal rule to avoid noun anagram indicators at all times.” I think most barred puzzle setters would agree with him, and I would have been very surprised had today’s clue read “Premature canine development”. I would have had no problem at all with ‘development of canine’ here, but I am not convinced that ‘version of story’ (for, say, RYOTS) can be written as “story’s version”, and similarly I’m not too keen on “canine’s development” when what is meant is ‘development of canine’.

Note, though, that when the grammatical context allows, what might appear at first sight to be a noun anagram indicator may, in fact, be an imperative verb. So ‘Jumble sale in meadows’ is fine for LEAS. 

Across

1a Succulent cabbage stuffed with dried chilli pepper (9)
A four-letter variety of cabbage with open curled leaves, often described by the adjective ‘curly’, contains (‘stuffed with’) the name for a type of dried chilli pepper used in Mexican cookery, which is not in earlier editions of Chambers and which constitutes the first five letters of a salty little fish that I will put on any pizza whatsoever given the opportunity.

12a School finals, rather a filler? (6)
A charade of a (1,3) expression meaning ‘rather’ or ‘somewhat’ and one of those interjections used by hesitant speakers to fill gaps.

14a Amazonian monkey found on island (4)
A crafty segue between definition and wordplay in this charade where a three-letter ‘monkey’ of the pile-driving kind (a transferred sense from the original and more familiar meaning of ‘ram’) is followed by (‘found on’) the usual abbreviation for ‘island’.

15a Roman chariots, grand, of an appropriate age (5)
This charade has a three-letter word for ‘grand’ being followed by a two-letter abbreviation of the Latin (hence ‘appropriate’, referring to the ‘Roman’ in the definition) word meaning ‘of age (so many years)’.

17a Witch or priest assimilating the ego (5)
Here we have a four-letter Tibetan priest or monk taking in (‘assimilating’) a single-letter word representing the ego. The answer is a word for a witch, or a monster supposed to have the body of a woman, and to prey upon human beings and suck the blood of children.

18a Typical of mermaid in South Pacific (7)
A neat charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘South’ and a word meaning ‘pacific’ (without the capital). I wondered briefly about the definition, but a quick look at the Chambers entry for the five-letter noun from which the answer is derived served to allay any unease on my part. 

23a Lively dances? Further attempt is past (7)
Yet another charade, a four-letter word for a further attempt (probably more familiar in the verbal form, meaning ‘to attempt again’) and the equivalent of ‘is’ in the past tense (‘is past’).

31a Sudanese possibly in love, reverse of forward (5)
A three-letter word for ‘love’ as Jack Draper knows it is followed by a reversal of an adverb (but not an interjection) meaning ‘forward’.

32a Coffee maker, no longer brisk (4)
Long before the days of George Clooney, we had magical devices that used to make a range of loud bubbling noises and produce pretty ordinary coffee. The four-letter informal term given to one of these devices satisfies the first part of this double definition clue. The second meaning is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’ (hence the ‘no longer’), and the word is usually now seen only as a verb, compounded with ‘up’.

33a Jock’s bound to hold and be steadfast as once (7)
A Scottish word for a ‘bound or great stride’ contains (‘to hold’) the letters AND (from the clue), the result being a Spenserian infinitive form of a familiar verb.

34a Scottish Charley, left drooping locally (6)
One further charade, involving the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ and a Scots (‘locally’) word for ‘drooping’ (also spelt on occasion with an O or a U in position two), produces a Scottish word for a fox. In the nineteenth century, the name ‘Charley’ was sometimes given to a fox, after the politician Charles James Fox. In Tom Brown’s School-Days, Thomas Hughes writes of “A nice little gorse or spinney where abideth poor Charley, having no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and miles.”

35a Longing to return east in grip of craving, jealous (9)
The reversal of a three-letter ‘longing’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘east’ are contained by a word for ‘craving’. The solution is hyphenated, 5-4.

Down

1d SI unit, kelvin? Almost in any circumstances (5)
The abbreviation for ‘kelvin’ is followed by a (2,3) expression meaning ‘in any circumstances’ (typically used with a negative, as in “I don’t eat baked beans under any circumstances”) from which the last letter has been removed (‘almost’).

2d E. African patriarch, one clad in goat’s hair (5)
A two-letter dialect pronoun meaning ‘one’ is contained by (‘clad in’) a term for a Syrian cloth of goat or camel hair. This term doesn’t mean “goat’s hair”, but if you were wearing such a garment you could well be “clad in goat’s hair”; I think that a question mark at the end of the clue would have been nice.

4d Everyone basking perhaps turned up in Indian streams (6)
Just as ‘having retired’ often has to be pre-processed into ‘in BED’, here ‘basking’ needs to be translated into a similar (2,3) expression which is then applied to a three-letter word meaning ‘everyone’, prior to the whole lot being reversed (‘turned up’).

11d Flight from France for somewhere else to the east thereof (6)
A double definition clue where the second definition references the first, and is equivalent to ‘somewhere to the east of France’. The ‘flight’ leads to one of many spellings given by Chambers, all derived from old French, for a term applied to a group of steps.

19d Wee one’s Xmas present, parts of it missing? He’ll go through it (6)
In this one, it is the definition which references the wordplay – the letters of IT (not consecutive, but in the right order) are removed from a (5,3) term for a Christmas present that could be given by a big yin to a ‘wee one’, although it might be the former that’s hoping to play with it. The ‘he’ in the definition is a ‘wee one’, ie a small Scottish person.

22d I’ll be induced by free entry for cabaret (6)
The letter I from the clue is to be put inside an anagram (‘free’) of ENTRY. Chambers shows the ‘bring in’ sense of ‘induce’ as obsolete, so I’m not too keen on it here.

24d With which Paddy bemoans being single around house (5)
A three-letter word for ‘single’ contains a two-letter abbreviation for ‘house’, the result being an Irish or Highland Scottish interjection expressing lamentation.

25d A portion of strawberry ice cream, teatime treat? (5)
The first letter (‘portion’, which for my money could equally well indicate any part of the word) of ‘strawberry’ is followed by the alternative to a tub.

27d Ancient prayer from Galloway etc incorporating religious teaching (5)
‘Galloway etc’ here leads to a three-letter Scots word for ‘cows’, into which one of the two possible abbreviations for the religious teaching carried out in schools is inserted. 

30d Formless basis for braided material (4)
An eight-letter word for a basis has the consecutive letters FORM removed (‘formless’) to produce a term for braided material that is likely to be more familiar when the letter I is included.

(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 2,725 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

This was quite a tricky puzzle, I thought, with one or two playful clues that took a bit of unravelling. Overall, it seemed to be a little past the half way mark in terms of difficulty, and gave me the feeling that Azed had probably enjoyed setting it.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at a recent Mephisto clue that I saw on one of the forums, “Are Remain to rally no more? (5)”. The answer is RELIE [‘RE + LIE], the point of interest being the use of ‘are’ in the wordplay to indicate the short form ‘RE. I expressed unease about Azed using ‘Rhine’ in a clue from 2,713 (‘Modern trendy, joker in Rhine heading north’ for NEW AGER) to provide REEN, since these are not different words but two spellings of the same word. In the slip for competition 2,105, Azed notes:

…for some reason there were several instances of ‘a’ being used as a definition of ‘an’, which I can’t accept. Equivalent yes, definition no. 

Whilst I would view ‘a’ for ‘an’ as the worst of the lot, I think that both of the preceding examples similarly involve equivalents rather than definitions, and this is something that I would advise setters to avoid where possible.

Across

11a The main idea, dull but lacking depth (4)
A five-letter word, one of the meanings of which is ‘to dull’, is deprived of (‘lacking’) the usual abbreviation for ‘depth’. The solution is a French word, only the figurative sense of which has entered the English language.

12a E.g. TV reporting, short of introduction as surplus (7)
An eight-letter word which might describe the TV reporting of an event has its first letter omitted (‘short of introduction’).

13a What’s qualified dad to appear in Telegraph? (7)
I thought there was going to be something complicated going on here, but the only deviousness is the deceptive capitalization of ‘Telegraph’, since it is the sense of ‘to send a telegram’ which leads to the five-letter word into which a two-letter word for ‘dad’ must be inserted.

16a Scene of siege? Richard’s leader involved in one (4)
The first letter (‘leader’) of ‘Richard’ is inserted into a word for the one in cards or dice, producing the name of an ancient city, now part of Israel, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth. It was of great importance during the Crusades, and has been the site of several battles and sieges, in particular the siege of 1291, which resulted in the Crusaders losing their last stronghold in the Holy Land. After months of preparation, the Mamluks began their action against the fortified city on 4 April, culminating in a successful attack on the entire length of the city wall on 18 May.

18a Monstrous pile in progress? I’ll go to making it (6)
An anagram (‘monstrous’) of PILE is followed by a word meaning ‘in progress’ (as an exhibition might be), the result being the name of a Greek mountain. Back in the day, the Aload twins Otus (‘instatiate’) and Ephialtes (‘nightmare’) were strong and aggressive lads. They were regular customers at the local H&M, since they were over fifty feet tall when aged nine. Otus had a bit of a thing for Artemis, so the pair took it upon themselves to storm Olympus, their plan being to reach the gods by piling Mount Ossa on Mount Olympus, and then Mount ?????? on top of that. There are different stories about what happened to the twins, but none of them ends well. Their sisters Elate and Platanus got so upset about it all that they were changed into trees, a fir and a plane.

20a Bar, worsted inside, is French (9)
The French word for ‘is’ has a six-letter word (of French origin) for a thin worsted fabric inside. To add even more Gallic flavour, the small bar or café is also French. 

25a SI unit indicating pressure on a graduated measure mostly (6)
This can be treated as a straight definition plus wordplay clue, although it has some &lit overtones. The usual abbreviation for ‘pressure’ is followed by the letter A (from the clue) and a five-letter word for a graduated measure without its last letter (‘mostly’).

26a Old Scottish coin to issue with former monarch on (6)
A four-letter word of which ‘to issue’ is not perhaps the most obvious of its 96 senses given by Chambers (‘to revolve’ would be close to the top of my list) is followed by the cipher of our previous monarch.

28a Disturbed when recipe is lacking wine (4)
The wine that is produced when a five-letter word for ‘disturbed’ lacks the usual abbreviation for ‘recipe’ is nowhere near as popular now with sparkling wine lovers as it was in the 1970s (prosecco having long ago claimed its crown), but it still goes down well with crossword setters.

Down

2d Composer’s wife maybe wearing coloured bands in black stuff (7)
The composer is Robert Schumann, whose wife was a highly skilled pianist and a composer. Her first name is followed by a two-letter word meaning ‘wearing’.

6d ‘Anatomical “viaduct”’? Joins together lecture for audience (9, 2 words)
A homophone (‘for audience’ ) of a word meaning ‘joins together’ is followed by a word for a lecture, the outcome being a (4,5) phrase. I did wonder whether the lecture part not being a homophone was acceptable, given that the ‘for audience’ must also apply to it, but I suppose that any word sounds very much like itself. Perhaps.

8d Re such application of flavour – could be sprinkling sugar, nice (7)
A composite anagram, where RE plus the solution (‘such application of flavour’) can be rearranged (‘could be sprinkling’) to form SUGAR NICE.

13d Tapering bloomers: cover end of tear one got on upended stone (10)
I was briefly puzzled by the apparent ‘end of tear’ here, but the cunningly-constructed wordplay resolves itself into a three-letter word meaning ‘cover end of’, a three-letter ‘tear’, a two-letter word for ‘one’, and a reversal (‘upended’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘stone’. The answer should be shown as (10, 2 words).

15d Oily treatment for heart portion trapped in foreign river (9)
A four-letter word for a portion is contained by (‘trapped in’) a famous French river.

23d Island group: what’ll be paid for ferry circling ring? (6)
The five-letter word which is ‘circling’ the letter representing a ring is nothing to do with obols or the like but describes the prices paid for any forms of passage, whether by trains, planes or automobiles…or ferries.

27d One calling from Canada shortly? (5)
The region of which Canada makes up a large part is abbreviated to (1,4) in order to produce the answer.

29d Last of vessels heading for north island (4)
I’m not entirely convinced about the mixing of a relative position and a compass direction to indicate that the last letter of a word for vessels of the Noachic kind must be moved to the beginning, but I’ll let it go just this once.

(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 2,724 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

Having clearly underestimated the difficulty of last week’s puzzle, I would suggest that this week’s offering is at a similar level, so I have given it a rating just above average. It was an enjoyable solve, even if a few of the clues struck me as being a little lacking in inspiration.

I would strongly urge those who don’t usually enter the competitions to start having a go. The August comp received only 116 entries, of which 56 received recognition in the form of a prize, a VHC (Very Highly Commended) or an HC (Highly Commended). These days there are usually a few unfamiliar names in the lists, so it’s surely worth buying a ticket. I would suggest that with a word like this month’s, the key is to come up with an interesting definition (not necessarily cryptic, but at least somewhat oblique), and then support it with a sound wordplay which contributes to the overall story, which will ideally bear no relation to the actual meaning of the answer. If you were looking for a model, you could do no better, I think, than Richard Heald’s winning clue for HACKETTE (AZ 2014) – it’s a conventional wordplay + definition clue with a straightforward cryptic interpretation, so no pyrotechnics, just a clue that ‘ticks all the boxes’. I would suggest that for new or relatively new entrants, keeping the structure simple is a good plan.

Clue Writers’ Corner: When clueing answers which are hyphenated or consist of more than one word, such as MAIL-ORDER or HARD COURT, it is generally considered weak to simply indicate the component parts individually in the wordplay, eg ‘armour arrangement’ or ‘tough date’ for the foregoing. Similarly, where the answer is a derived form where the parent is followed by a suffix which is itself a word, eg MILDNESS, I would always try to avoid having the division in the wordplay coinciding with the natural division in the answer – better, I think, to treat this as, say (SEND in SLIM)<, rather than just MILD + NESS, which in a clue writing competition falls into the ‘obvious treatments’ category, with something like ‘head on beer’ likely to be a regular selection.

Across

1a Humourless plug after theatre? (6)
A nice little clue to get things going, a charade of a two-letter crossword staple for ‘humourless’ and a word meaning ‘[to] plug’ producing the word which answers the nicely deceptive definition.

14a Wine from Greek island on occasion? Not me (7)
A five-letter word meaning ‘from [a particular] Greek island’ (the fifth largest, known as ‘the Mastic Island’ on account of its principal export) is followed by (‘on’) a four-letter word for ‘occasion’ deprived of the consecutive letters ME (‘not me’).

16a Cat giving a bit of a hallo close to king (4)
I’m not convinced that ‘a bit of a hallo’ can equate to H, since ‘a hallo’ is quite different from ‘hallo’ on its own, but that’s what it does here, being followed by a two-letter word meaning ‘close to’ and the chess/cards abbreviation for ‘king’. The definition related to the last sense given in Chambers for the verb ‘cat’.

20a Enlarge spreading Indian tree? It denotes environmental acceptability (10, 2 words)
An anagram (‘spreading’) of ENLARGE is followed by a thorny Indian tree (often spelt with four letters) which you may need to work back from having identified the (5,5) answer.

21a What’ll go into the making of breakfast – toast mostly? (10, 2 words)
Could we be about to receive Gesg? Well, not quite, but in this companion piece the (6,4) answer tells us how the first four letters (‘mostly’) of TOAST might be cryptically indicated.

25a Hessian got from textile dealer without hesitation? (4)
The British secured the services of around 30,000 German troops to fight in the American War of Independence, the majority being from the state of Hesse-Cassel. As a result, the term ‘Hessian’ came in the US to describe a military, and subsequently also a political, hireling. The wordplay here has a six-letter textile dealer losing an abbreviation that will be familiar to all crossword aficionados.

27a What Puck gets up to in moderation after endless ill-will (7)
A two-letter word for moderation follows a six-letter word for ill-will from which the last letter has been omitted (‘endless’). The presence of Puck in the definition serves two purposes – both to indicate the sort of thing he got up to and the fact that the answer is a Shakespearean word. It occurs only in a single passage from Hamlet, “Marry this is Miching ???????, that meanes Mischeefe” in the original folio, with the first two quartos having ‘myching’ and ‘munching’ for ‘Miching’ as well as different spellings for the answer here. The expression is considered to be ‘of uncertain form, origin, and meaning’, but apart from that it’s all pretty clear.

29a Half of copies switching places in exedra (4)
A four-letter word meaning ‘copies’ has the second pair of letters reversed (‘half…switching places’).

30a Roofing suppliers, not generally viewable in French palace (8)
The palace here is a royal French one, originally the home of Catherine de’ Medici, which stood on the right bank of the Seine and had a somewhat chequered existence until it was gutted by a fire started by twelve members of the Paris Commune in 1871. Its name loses the single letter designating a film that is suitable for all audiences.

31a Tendril revel damaged in … (8)
Usually when Azed includes ellipses at the end of one clue and the start of the next, the two need to be considered together. In this instance, the second clue stands alone, but the first needs to share the word ‘trap’. Thus an anagram (‘damaged’) of REVEL is contained by a synonym for ‘trap’.

33a Cash joints, by the sound of it recipients of gifts? (6)
A homophone for a pair of words, each of five letters.

Down

1d Hole with siliceous rock containing scheme for growing type of insectivore (12, 2 words)
A three-letter hole (possibly leading to a seam of coal) is followed by a five-letter rock of cryptocrystalline silica containing a familiar four-letter word for a scheme. Note that helpful first word in the definition of the (7,5) solution.

5d Ploughman’s spade, dry, kept in enclosure (6)
There’s a pretty good chance that ‘dry’ in an Azed clue will lead to the abbreviation for ‘teetotal’, which here is contained by the sort of enclosure that forms a figurative boundary beyond which behaviour must not pass if it is to be acceptable.

6d Jest, according to hearsay, the latest from Ireland (5)
This is a very weak homophone clue, not helped by the fact that it is ambiguous.

8d Radical acid, denoting ornamental fabric first to last? (4)
A word meaning ‘of or like a particular delicate ornamental fabric’ has its first letter moved to the end, producing a term which perhaps more accurately is an acid radical rather than a radical acid, although the latter sounds more fun.

10d Church leaders, tense before spring festival with company in suits (12)
The usual abbreviation for tense, a four-letter Hindu festival, and the usual abbreviation for ‘company’ are contained by a five-letter word for suits of the legal kind.

15d Buses out of order, bulb once left over as before (9)
Hands up if you found yourself with all but one letter (the penultimate one) in the answer here. Yes, I’ve got my hand raised. The anagram (‘out of order’) of BUSES should be no problem, but the archaic (‘once’) term for a small bulb may prove trickier, being a variant spelling of the name of a familiar herb. The answer (itself ‘obsolete or rare’, hence the ‘as before’) seems to have appeared largely in combination with ‘hours’, the combination denoting spare time.

17d Bird spotter in Scotland interrupting one starting game? (8)
I got a little concerned when three consecutive, identical checked letters appeared in this light, but I needn’t have worried, the (3-5) hyphenation making this possible. A two-letter Scots form of ‘eye’ (‘spotter in Scotland’) is contained by (‘interrupting’) someone employed to rouse game from their hiding-places.

22d Lacking colour inside, cook up what’s iridescent (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘lacking colour’ is put inside a reversal (‘up’) of a word meaning (among many other things) ‘cook’.

24d Old soldier, last sent to the front as a favour? (5)
The ‘Old soldier’ takes us back to Roman times, and appears in Chambers only as part of an expression describing a vainglorious soldier. Its last letter must be moved to the beginning, the result being a familiar word, albeit perhaps not the most obvious sense thereof.

26d Good spirit States wasted is shocking (4)
A ten-letter word meaning ‘is shocking’ has the consecutive letters STATES removed (‘States wasted’).

28d Pigment, topping subject (4)
One of those wordplays where we must imagine either the answer or the solver being the actor removing the first letter from (‘topping’) a five-letter word for a subject.

(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 2,723 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

There were several straightforward anagrams in this puzzle, which contributed to a rating a little below the middle of the difficulty spectrum. I didn’t spot any problems this week, and it was an enjoyable solve, albeit some of the surface readings were perhaps not up there with Azed’s best.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 29d, “Hide in shower (4)”. This is a double definition clue, where the solution answers to both ‘hide’ and ‘shower’. The point of interest is that little word ‘in’ which joins the two definitions: it is accepted that words and phrases can be used to link definition and wordplay (eg DEF coming from WP, WP is DEF), but what about two definitions? While I prefer to see double definition clues (and clues generally, truth be told) without such links, I think the key here is that the two words defined are not the same word – they are different words which happen to share the same spelling. While this may sound a bit like Eric Morecambe’s description of his piano playing, it justifies one of the definitions (indeed, either of them) being treated as wordplay, which is exactly how they are viewed in themed puzzle with gimmicks which affect the ‘wordplay’. So while I might have preferred ‘Hide bucket’, I think that the clue as written, or the converse form ‘Hide from downpour’, are absolutely fine.

Across

1a Songbird died, old, in a flash (8)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘died’ and a single-letter one for ‘old’ are contained by a word for a flash or momentary gleam. The bird’s unusual name derives from a free rendering of its call, originally written as 3-1-7.

7a Limestone once universal in English river (4)
The English river which contains the usual abbreviation for ‘universal’ is to be seen flowing past The Backs, while the answer is an obsolete sense of a Scots word, and should, strictly speaking, therefore be indicated by ‘Scottish limestone once’.

10a A Muslim leader almost unravelled the soul of the cosmos? (10, 2 words)
A (2,4) phrase for ‘a Muslim leader’ (an officiating priest of a mosque) is followed by a five-letter word for ‘unravelled’ missing its last letter (‘almost’). The answer is (5,5).

17a Crumbs I caught acting in cuirass (6)
A 3+1+1+1 charade comprising an interjection of surprise, a word from the clue, and two abbreviations.

21a A prince accepts his father hanging? (5)
Here you have to convert the prince’s father (ie ‘his father’) into a singe-letter abbreviation which is contained (accepted) by A (from the clue) and a three-letter word for a prince which is commonplace in cryptic crosswords if nowhere else, and can also be indicated by ‘head’.

25a Scottish speaker introducing fashion for faux fur? (6)
The ‘Scottish speaker’ translates as a Scots word for the part of the body through which speech emanates, and it is followed by (‘introducing’) a three-letter word for ‘fashion’.

28a Unusual stage device to get discussion going (8, 2 words)
A (5,3) phrase in the wordplay leads to a (4,4) solution, which sounds as though it might be a pitfall for a leading member of the cast, which I suppose it could. The device in question would seem to resemble a giant version of those tea-towel holders that grip the material using several wedge-shaped segments, placed on its side with the (giant) tea-towel removed.

32a A musical group and how it stands, for rock of a kind? (10)
The second part of the wordplay here has similarities to the old favourite ‘having retired’ meaning ‘in bed’ and thus to be cryptically interpreted as ‘contained by BED’. Here the ‘how it stands’ leads to a (2,1,4) phrase describing how the band might stand (think Steps performing 5-6-7-8) that tells you where a combination of the letter A (from the clue) and a four-letter term for a musical group are to be placed.

Down

1d What Gandhi was for many, soul fully soaring (4)
A pair of two-letter names are given to the two elements, believed by the Ancient Egyptians to make up the soul, which separated after you died. One part flew off every morning to keep watch over your living family, while the other part flew happily away to enjoy life in the Land of Two Fields. At night, they returned home to your tomb to rest up for the next heavenly day. It is the family-watching half which is required here, to be followed by a reversal (‘soaring’) of a two-letter word meaning ‘fully’.

2d Plant with medicinal properties? Yellow nettle also reared (10)
A two-letter word from heraldry for the tincture gold or yellow is followed by a five-letter word meaning ‘[to] nettle’ and a reversal (‘reared’) of a synonym for ‘also’.

4d A threat to e.g. lettuces, top topped? (5)
A six-letter word meaning ‘culmination’ or ‘top’ is deprived of its first letter (‘topped’) to produce the name given to one of them slimy critters that attacks your flowers and vegetables with a vengeance but leaves the weeds completely unscathed.

5d Fine pottery from Italy, found near the sea, timeless (5)
In 2,694 we had this clue: ‘Oriental porcelain I found by the sea, timeless (5)’. This close relation has the usual abbreviation for Italy being followed by the same eight-letter word for ‘found near the sea’ without the consecutive letters TIME (‘timeless’).

8d What may afflict US patients? Nurse holding employees up (6)
Another crossword staple, a three-letter word for an Indian waiting-maid or nursemaid, contains (‘holding’) a term for ’employees’ which has been reversed (‘up’). Has the nurse also been reversed? We shall never know. The condition affects people outside the US, of course, but the spelling here is specific to that region.

16d Philippic boosting assistance set before family (8)
A three-letter word for assistance is reversed (‘boosting’) and put in front of a word for a family. The transitive form of ‘boosting’ is required, so it’s one of those clues where the subject has to be either the solution or the solver – I’m not overkeen on the idea that it is either.

22d Kid still crawling, Arthur? Oddly good for husband (6, 2 words)
An anagram (‘oddly’) of ARTHUR with the usual abbreviation for ‘good’ replacing that for ‘husband’ leads to a (3,3) term which is shown by Chambers as ‘North American slang’ but which has, I think, made its way across the water.

24d One with splendid hat in story, normal to behold (6)
A 3+3 charade of words meaning ‘normal’ and ‘to behold’ produces the answer. Rudyard Kipling used to tell his daughter Josephine bedtime stories; these had to be told ‘just so’ (exactly as she remembered them) or she would complain. In 1902, they were published as Just So Stories for Little Children. The artist Pestonjee Bomonjee (1851-1938), a ??????, was the first Indian student to study art under Kipling’s father, John  Lockwood Kipling, at the Sir JJ School of Art and Industry, where Kipling senior was working when Rudyard was born. Bomanjee (the only ?????? student at the time) was well acquainted with the adorable little lad, who apparently enjoyed going into the compound at the School of Art and pelting the artists with clay pellets as they worked on their paintings. It is the very same Bomonjee who appears in the story of How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, where he possesses a hat from which ‘the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour.’ He was far from happy when a rhinoceros ate his giant cake (a Superior Comestible), but he got his revenge when the rhinoceros took off his skin on a very hot day to take a dip in the Red Sea.

Presently the ?????? came by and found the skin, and he smiled one smile that ran all round his face two times. Then he danced three times round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the ?????? never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on.

Having duly donned his skin, and following a lot of scratching and rubbing, the rhinoceros ended up with a wrinkly skin and a very bad temper. Which shows that not only is it wrong to eat people, but also to eat their cake.

The ??????’s name was Pestonjee Bomonjee, and the Rhinoceros was called Strorks, because he breathed through his mouth instead of his nose.

26d Salad served up – daughter introduced Scottish dyes (5)
A four-letter word for a salad based on a particular vegetable is reversed (‘served up’) and the usual abbreviation for ‘daughter’ inserted (‘introduced’).

(definitions are underlined)