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 2,636 ‘Christmas Cards’

Difficulty rating: (4.5 / 10)

As a Christmas ‘special’ this was quite a straightforward solve, both the normal clues and the wordplay in the gimmicked clues being very friendly for the most part. I must confess that I initially counted only 16 ‘card’ clues, and had to check through to identify the other two (both of which work to a degree without the ‘card’, but work better with it). Following the notes on individual clues I have listed the ‘card’ clues; I’ll be happy to indicated where the letters C-A-R-D have been removed in the mutilation process on request.

Note that the entries associated with several of the ‘card’ clues are ambiguous (1d being an example) so be careful when entering the solutions when the wordplay doesn’t uniquely indicate the sequence of letters and the unmutilated answer contains multiple instances of C, A, R or D in the right order (eg  CARICATURED).

One of the ‘card’ words/phrases not in Chambers was unfamiliar to me, while the other is formed from a common word; I’m quite surprised that Chambers doesn’t give the non-thematic two-word phrase, which I doubt anyone will even feel the need to look up.

May I take this opportunity to wish all readers a very happy festive season and to thank them for the comments which they have made through the year. The next Azed will not appear until 1st January (it will be another competition puzzle), so to ensure some cruciverbal activity next weekend I have printed off this week’s Enigmatic Variations puzzle (a scan of which a Telegraph reader has kindly made available to download) ready to be tackled then – it looks as though it will present a good challenge, and the setter’s alias suggests that it may have a seasonal flavour. Hints for the puzzle can be found on Big Dave’s site. Update: it didn’t, in fact, have a seasonal theme, and whist it presented a challenge it wasn’t one that I enjoyed…solving a puzzle like that is a reminder of just how good Azed’s clues are.

Clue Writers’ Corner: I would encourage solvers to have a go at this competition. You need to select any word or phrase of 12 or fewer letters (so not CHRISTMAS CARD) matching the pattern *C*A*R*D*, so ACARIDIAN would be an option, as would BENCHMARKED. There are several hundred possibilities – it’s ok to use one of the words that Azed included in the puzzle, but with so many options I’d be inclined to steer clear of them, and I’d suggest choosing a word that has enough letters to leave you several that will be indicated by the wordplay (CARDY, for instance, isn’t going to offer much scope). When writing clues of this type, be careful about using words to link the wordplay and the definition, particularly those that imply equivalence – “Match is put in box (4)” for CARTONED appears good, with ‘Match’ leading to TONE and ‘put in box’ giving CARTONED, but in effect the clue is saying TONE IS CARTONED, which it isn’t. I don’t expect Azed will disqualify such clues, but they are likely to be marked down. “Match put in box” would be absolutely fine. In Azed’s 18 card-carrying clues, 16 have no linking words and the other two use ‘for’ to join wordplay to definition. If you look at the successful entries in previous Christmas competitions, you will see that Azed tends to favour those with a seasonal theme, and you will also note that veteran competitors usually supply clues that deliver on that score. Certain of Azed’s CARD clues are ambiguous (eg 1d, 16d) in terms of the grid entry, so as long as the letters CARD appear in the right order in your word, and the wordplay indicates a valid sequence of letters remaining after C-A-R-D has been removed, there will be no problem, so ‘Hired three cooks’ is valid for CHARTERED even though the entry could be HTERE or HRTEE.

Across

5a Rapport that is following one, reverse of large quantity (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ follows both a single-letter word meaning ‘one’ and a reversal of a word for a large quantity, normally seen in the plural form referring to paper, or things that might be listed at length on paper.

15a What’s fed to cage-birds some observe (6)
I rather like this one, the wordplay consisting of two three-letter words, the first meaning ‘some’ and the other ‘observe’.

20a Taboos including rule for types of litter (5)
‘Taboos’ here can be either a noun or a verb, leading to a four-letter word which ‘includes’ the usual abbreviation for ‘rule’. The word thus produced might appear to come close to satisfying the definition, but it isn’t the answer.

24a Survive cargo: it’s popular with NZ players (4)
This clue is a triple-definition of sorts – each of the first two words leads directly to the grid entry, while the remainder indicate the answer (not to be found in Chambers). The enumeration should be (4, 2 words).

26a Old silver piece: Italian adventurer has one inscribed (5)
The ‘Italian adventurer’ is the family name of the Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled along the Silk Road in the thirteenth century. It has a single-letter word for ‘one’ put inside (‘inscribed’).

28a Fable maybe, quite bloody around its denouement (8)
Words for ‘quite’ and ‘bloody’ are placed around the last letter of ‘Fable’ (‘its denouement’).

30a Horse ran off: cause? (3)
A six-letter word for a small, inferior type of horse bred and used chiefly in Ireland and Scotland has the consecutive letters RAN removed (‘ran off’).

33a They perform at extremes, mark and dash around repeatedly (6, 2 words)
The standard abbreviation (before the days of the euro) for Deutschmark is surrounded by two instances (‘repeatedly’) of a two-letter printing term applied to a short dash (being the name of a letter having the same width).

35a Back away from nettle, receiving first sign of sting? (6)
Here we have a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] nettle’ containing the name of the first letter (‘first sign of’) ‘sting’.

40a Fitted with wheels exorbitantly, not ply (4)
A seven-letter word for ‘exorbitantly’ has the string PLY removed (‘not ply’); the answer is not in Chambers, or in any other dictionary that I consulted, but there are certainly examples of its use on the web and it seems perfectly sensible.

Down

4d Eyes Scotch with a dash of Evian ready on the side? (4)
The plural of a Scots form of ‘eye’ is followed by the first letter (‘a dash of’) ‘Evian’, and the answer is a nautical term.

6d I dropped Margaret shortly, professed happy (5)
One of the many diminutive (‘shortly’) forms of the name Margaret (though not the most obvious), this one contains two instances of the letter I – it is the second of these which must be removed (‘I dropped’). The answer is derived from a 19th century neologism meaning ‘to consider (someone or something) as blessed’.

11d Navy caught at sea? Against Scots mostly (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘navy’ is contained by a (1,3) phrase such that it could be cryptically seen as having been ‘caught at sea’ (or in a river).

23d Closure of passage in continent limiting endless journey, long (7)
The name of a continent is containing (‘limiting’) a four-letter word for a journey from which the last letter has been omitted (‘endless’); the ‘long’ is there simply to qualify the journey, there being a somewhat similar word which describes a journey of indeterminate length.

32d Insurgent succeeded in mounting ambition (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘succeeded’ is contained by a reversal (‘mounting’) of a word for an ambition.

34d Iberian duck in home of goose (not California) (4)
The six-letter ‘home’ of a particular kind of goose (and frankly I rather wish that they had stayed there) has an abbreviation for ‘California’ removed, the result satisfying a mildly cryptic definition.

35d Wretch? I should think so, having forsaken her (3)
A nice one to finish with. A six-letter word meaning ‘I should think so’ is deprived of (‘having forsaken’) the letters HER.

(definitions are underlined)

The clues which must have the letters C-A-R-D removed from their answers prior to entry are:

Across: 1, 5, 13, 15, 17, 20*, 24, 39, 40

Down: 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 16, 18*, 27, 32

*These are the two clues which I initially thought were normal

My thanks to Tim H for providing the scan of the puzzle which enabled me to produce these notes. The puzzle is now available on the Guardian web site so I have removed the link to the scan.

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 2,635 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

My enjoyment of the puzzle was not helped by its delayed appearance on the Guardian web site which denied me the pleasure of tackling it over breakfast – I held off until 10am, at which point the lure of the Toastie proved too great to resist. I’m jolly glad I didn’t wait, or I would have missed lunch and tea as well. My sincere thanks to the correspondent who sent me a scanned copy of the puzzle, which struck me as being a little below average difficulty, with plenty of misdirection but nothing too tricky.

Across
1a Builds on mouthful, formerly crumbled crust (12)
A three-part wordplay consisting of a three-letter word meaning ‘a mouthful’ (or ‘to drink’), a four-letter word for ‘formerly’, and an anagram (‘crumbled’) of crust, this last part being perhaps the starting point from which one will work backwards.

12a Source of fashion, No. 1 in spectacular bust (8)
The name of the place that precedes ‘fashion’ in a nautical expression which often also includes the word ‘shipshape’ is followed by the first letter (‘No. 1’) in ‘spectacular’, producing a mildly naughty(cal) bit of rhyming slang.

14a Dull old copper coin, penny (4)
A three-letter word for an obsolete Indian copper coin and the current abbreviation for a penny combine to produce a word that might be applied to a squib (or indeed a squid, if it had recently left the ocean), although here it is actually a verb.

22a It enables instant replay as opposed to a long time (4)
The wordplay involves the usual single-letter abbreviation representing ‘opposed to’ being followed by a word meaning ‘a long time’, but in truth ‘enabled’ might have been more appropriate than ‘enables’ as the only incarnation of the solution likely to be found in a modern TV studio is Brenda Blethyn.

25a German-English senior teacher, lacking of muscle (9)
The intention here is that two single-letter elements are followed by a nine-letter word for a senior teacher from which the letters OF have been removed (‘lacking of’), but D is the IVR code for Germany rather than being an abbreviation for German.

29a Bard’s energy misplaced in prod formerly (4)
A word which describes a bard, any bard, has the usual abbreviation for energy relocated within it to produce a word meaning ‘to thrust, especially with the foot’.

30a Rank and file’s heart going in complete reverse (4)
The middle letters of the word ‘file’ (“file’s heart”) are put inside a verb meaning ‘to complete’ and the whole lot is reversed. I’m not comfortable with ‘reverse’ here, as I think that for the wordplay to be grammatically sound it needs to be ‘reverses’.

33a Fashionistas creating eruptions, in tears? The opposite (12)
‘The opposite’ here means that rather than a word for ‘eruptions’ being placed inside a word for ‘tears’, it is the tears (in the ‘rips’ sense, a familiar five-letter word) which are contained by the eruptions (in the pustular sense, a word that I don’t remember coming across before).

Down
1d We had vehicle lifting old cow (6)
A contracted form of ‘we had’ and the word for a type of public service vehicle are reversed (‘lifting’), the result being an obsolete variant of a word meaning ‘to cow’.

4d Theologian’s disciple having bothy during stay in Scotland (4)
The bothy is a three-letter word archaic or poetic word for a small dwelling , while the ‘stay’ is a Scottish legal term. Azed treads on one of my cruciverbal corns here by using ‘during’ as a containment indicator – I don’t think that the Chambers definition ‘in the course of’ is sufficient, as it is used exclusively in a temporal sense, but since even the Listener editors accept it I may be in a minority of one.

6d Ten trees, on this, having to blend in, rising (12)
This is the sort of clue you’ll probably only see in an Azed puzzle (or perhaps an Azed competition clue) these days. The solution comes from a reversal (‘rising’) of a word meaning ‘to blend’ being put inside an anagram of TEN TREES, with the anagram indicator being…’on’ plus the solution itself. I seem to recall that when the competition clue word was OUT OF ORDER there were some clues which were constructed on similar lines (possibly including my own)

7d Abnormal droop? Beginning thereof observed in foot (7)
The first letter of ‘droop’ (ie ‘beginning thereof’) is contained by a word for a foot of two syllables (aka a trochee), and I have to say that Azed has been quite restrained in his definition of the answer.

18d Confusion involving drizzle for member of colony (7)
A three-letter word for confusion that is popular with setters (and with me, but only if it has pastry on top) contains a Scots term for fine misty rain, producing a dialect word for a specimen that is pretty certain to be part of a colony.

20d This pulse, i.e. as irregular…is a bother perhaps (5)
A composite anagram, where the letters of the solution (‘this pulse’) plus IE AS can be rearranged (‘irregular…perhaps’) to form IS A BOTHER.

21d What’s healthy, interrupting work, not OK? It’s after school (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘healthy’ inside (‘interrupting’) the word ‘work’ from which the letters OK have been omitted (‘not OK’), and a nice cryptic definition.

28d Baudelaire’s heading for section of his work? (4)
I can’t recall seeing a French double definition clue in an English crossword before, but that is effectively what this is. The second definition (the sort of thing that Baudelaire wrote) is in Chambers, while the first is the word that Baudelaire would presumably have used to mean ‘heading for’ or ‘towards’.

(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 2,634 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I got the feeling that Azed had enjoyed setting this puzzle, which I thought was close to average difficulty, perhaps just a smidgeon above.

Prompted by a couple of comments from correspondents, I have put together a set of tips for writing Azed competition clues (linked from the home page and also the Clinical Data section) – I hope that they may prove useful to those relatively new to the comps, but this is very much a ‘work in progress’ and I would welcome comments on them in order that they can be expanded and improved (not to mention corrected!) over time. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 1d, “Right hand used in Pompeian artwork (not left) – unidentified material (6)”. Azed has included the word ‘Pompeian’ in the wordplay, thus enhancing the indication of MURAL (the city of Pompeii being famous for its frescoes), a word for which ‘artwork’ alone would be a little vague. The definition, ‘unidentified material’ might also be considered slightly nebulous, but since Chambers says that the material in question was introduced by the Roman general Pompey, and ‘Pompeian’ can also mean ‘pertaining to Pompey’, the adjective could also legitimately be seen as applying to the material. Is this what Azed intended? I suspect it may well have been.

Across
11a Sandy’s stated condition for hairstyle (5)
A three-letter Scots (“Sandy’s”) word meaning ‘stated’ (a shortened form of a five-letter archaic, but more familiar, term) is joined by a word for a condition or supposition.

14a A king swathes heart of château in ‘lumpy’ coating (5)
The ‘king’ here is not an abbreviation but the Latin title given to the reigning king of England. The lumpy coating will be well known to anyone who’s ever tried to remove it.

16a Carol and Jackie, maybe, offspring (7)
This particular ‘Jackie’ is an artist of the martial kind, known for his slapstick fighting style. Also an operatically trained vocalist, he has sung many of the theme songs for the films in which he has starred. I must confess that I’ve never seen one of his films, but I’ve known about him for a long while since he’s namechecked in the song Kung Fu by Ash, which I learn from Wikipedia was used in the advertising and during the bloopers at the end of the American release of his film Rumble in the Bronx.

18a Spiritual leader, one caught in heated criticism, making comeback (5)
The Roman numeral representing one is ‘caught’ in a reversal (‘making comeback’) of a figurative term for criticism derived from the initial elements of the German word for an anti-aircraft gun.

20a What was dizzying? Appalling cost – well I never (7)
An anagram (‘appalling’) of COST is followed by a (1,2) phrase meaning ‘well I never’, the result being an obsolete term for a sense of dizziness accompanied by dimness of vision.

27a Old horse with pedigree? See harness frame (7)
A three-letter archaic word for ‘an easy-paced horse’ plus a four-letter word for ‘pedigree’ as illustrated in a branching diagram, the solution being a frame of wood or metal giving shape and rigidity to a particular piece of tack.

30a Chemical combination – page includes it for support (5)
When the solution is put inside PAGE (ie when ‘page includes it’) the result is a word meaning ‘support’ or ‘sponsorship’.

32a Give animation to wild ones, duly free of curbs? (6)
An anagram (‘wild’) of ONES and the word ‘duly’ from which the first and last letters have been removed (‘free of curbs’) combine to produce a transitive verb, which is why Azed has been careful to include ‘to’ in the definition.

Down
2d There’s a smell endlessly round mobile lat or…this? (8)
Not exactly an &lit clue, but close to one. A four-letter interjection meaning “There’s a [nasty] smell”, from which the last letter has been omitted (‘endlessly’), contains (‘around’) an anagram (‘mobile’) of LAT OR.

6d By the sound of it you are in pub to prepare for tea (probably not!) (5)
The first of a pair of mildly outrageous clues. Nothing wrong with the wordplay, which has the two letters whose names sound like ‘you are’ being put inside a word for a pub. The definition, however, most definitely requires that parenthesized ‘probably not!’, because I for one would not like to sample the resulting beverage.

7d Azedders battling for preferment? It’s an old conspiracy (7)
And here we have a wordplay which could really only work in an Azed puzzle, leading as it does to a (4,3) phrase which might describe those who send in their clues for his appraisal.

9d Working at clothiers? Ah, toil with such snips maybe (5)
This is a composite anagram, where the letters of AT CLOTHIERS can be rearranged (‘working’) to form AH TOIL plus the solution (‘such snips’). You may say that these sort of ‘snips’ have nothing to do with clothiers, but because this isn’t an &lit clue that’s not a problem – the ‘snips’ in the clue is a conventional one-word definition of the answer.

17d Rusty flex around was annoying (8)
A four-letter word for a flex goes around another four-letter word meaning ‘was annoying’, the past tense of a colloquialism that originated in the US, meaning to annoy, worry or rile.

21d Crop in conveyance moved slowly (7)
A charade of a four-letter word for a crop entirely unconnected with harvesting plus a three-letter past participle of a verb which can mean ‘conducted’ and therefore (just about) ‘in conveyance’, and a surface reading which calls to mind a familiar autumn sight on the single-track roads hereabouts in rural Lincs.

26d Peak like this may be seen in Old Man (5)
A two-letter word meaning ‘like this’ is contained by the Latin word (hence ‘old’) for a man.

28d What’s left in loose earth raised in a fine stream once (5)
The solver has to address the question posed by the wordplay, the answer being the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘left’ inside a reversal (‘raised’) of a word for loose earth of the sort that horses or cars might race on in America. The solution is the Spenserian past tense of an archaic word meaning ‘to flow in a slender stream’.

Few drops, more cleare then Nectar, forth distild,
That like pure Orient perles adowne it ?????,
And her faire eyes sweet smyling in delight,
Moystened their fierie beames, with which she thrild
Fraile harts, yet quenched not; like starry light
Which sparckling on the silent waues, does seeme more bright.

(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 2,633 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

The puzzle only just arrived on the Guardian web site in time for my breakfast, and I thought that while there weren’t any particularly tough clues when taken as a whole it was of above average difficulty. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 26d, “Writer of poetry: listening releases bits of it near the end”. The cryptic aspect of the clue is discussed below, but the point I want to make here concerns the surface reading: Azed has come up with a wordplay which produces the surname of a poet, but the ‘it’ means that satisfactorily integrating a definition such as ‘poet’ is pretty much impossible (“Poet: listening releases bits of it near the end” makes no sense). In such situations, one needs to look at a definition which ‘hands over’ to the following clause a thing (that could be referred to with the pronoun ‘it’) rather than a person (which would require ‘him’ or ‘her’). Hence the ‘writer of poetry’, which solves the problem neatly.

Across
1a Scottish expert bagging fortune, making complete turn (7)
A four-letter adjective with a meaning of ‘expert’ north of the border, and a more widespread meaning of ‘second-hand’, containing (‘bagging’) a word for fortune, usually seen these days prefixed by mis- or suffixed by -less, results in a (1-6) hyphenated solution.

14a Fruit lad oddly planted in desert? It’s disappeared (6)
An anagram (‘oddly’) of LAD is placed (‘planted’) in a word for ‘desert’ from which the consecutive letters IT have been removed (“It’s disappeared”).

15a Approve belly? That depends(7)
A charade of a four-letter verb (more often encountered as an interjection) and an informal term for a belly, and a definition which is on the loose side – ‘That’ refers to the answer, while the word ‘depends’ needs to be interpreted as ‘hangs down’, a sense which Chambers gives as ‘rare’, although OED says that it is ‘now chiefly in literary use’.

17a Arrangement of psalms? Rev tries ’em out around Church (12)
It’s probably easier to work out the (7,5) result of an anagram (‘out’) of REV TRIES EM being put around the abbreviation for a church of a specific denomination than it is to find the solution in Chambers. As Azed says, it appears at the entry for its second element, but even there it is hidden under the entry for the alternative form whereof the first word is ‘common’.

21a Preparing eggs without fish in grate for locals (4)
A ten-letter word for a particular way of preparing eggs has the name of a  fish of the cod family much prized by crossword setters removed (‘without fish’) to produce a dialect (‘for locals’) word meaning ‘[to] scratch’. Azed has been a bit naughty here, as he is suggesting that the verb meaning ‘to prepare eggs’ is intransitive when it is not. Starting the clue with “Preparing (eggs)…” wouldn’t work, but I think “Way of preparing eggs without fish in grate for locals” would be fine.

22a Spicy sauce served with children for cruel deity (6)
Here the four-letter term for a Mexican sauce containing chilli and chocolate (and for a small furry animal – the term, that is, not the sauce) is followed  by (‘served with’) the usual abbreviation for ‘children’, the solution being the name of a Semitic god to whom children were sacrificed.

28a A large quantity poured out in small copper flask (7)
I could argue that this was an indirect anagram, since the fodder to be ‘poured out’ consists of FLASK plus the chemical symbol for copper. But I won’t. Azed appears to have included ‘small’ in order to indicate that the representation of ‘copper’ is a short one, but since it isn’t an abbreviation I’m not sure about this. I think that something like “Copper flask rattled a lot” would be clearer.

31a Twit taking in Latin, a gentle youth  (6)
The ‘twit’ here is twit² in Chambers, meaning ‘to upbraid’, and the answer is inextricably linked in  my mind with Byron’s Harold.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.

32a USN battalion inquires about former president shortly (7)
A four-letter word meaning ‘inquires’ around (‘about’) a diminutive form of the first name of the sixteenth president of the United States, the battalion in question being of the construction type (hence the name by which its members are known).

34a Swelling? Doctor with ring cut half of it (7)
A seven-letter word for a particular sort of medical doctor has the letter of the alphabet shaped like a ring removed (‘ring cut’) and is followed by half of the word ‘it’. The ‘swelling’ relates specifically to rising or swelling in waves, as the sea might do.

Down
2d Mother, trim with ending of exercise (5)
Like the twit in 31a, the mother here is mother² in the big red book. A synonym for ‘trim’ is followed by the last letter (‘ending’) of the word ‘exercise’.

3d The old linger, brooding over losing ring (4)
An eight-letter word meaning ‘brooding over’ (an unfamiliar – to me, anyway – transitive form, the intransitive version meaning ‘remaining suspended in the air’ being  more common) loses a ring, but unlike that cut by the doctor in 31a this is the letters RING.

5d Naughtily pair recreate fun involving two pairs (12, 2 words)
The solution here is (6,6), and I think that the ‘fun’ in the definition is probably a bit of a stretch. The answer refers to a group comprising two pairs, as in this extract from Rolf Boldrewood’s A Colonial Reformer:

A ?????? ?????? composed of George, his mother, sister, and Mr. John.

9d Table loaded with extremes of largess, without a single weak part (7)
I thought at first we might be looking at the first and last letters (‘extremes’) of ‘largess’ being combined with an anagram (‘loaded’) of TABLE, but then realized that they were in fact to be inserted into a five-letter word for a table, particularly of the sort used in rituals.

11d Half’s rough team member, a Rugby thug? (8)
The capital R in ‘Rugby’ rather gives the game away here (but it would have been unfair on solvers not to include it). An anagram (‘rough’) of HALFS is followed by a word for a team member, and the thug was particularly hard on Tom and Scud. Despite being expelled for drunkenness, with a little help from George MacDonald Fraser he subsequently rose through the ranks of the British Army and received a knighthood, although his collection of unappealing character traits remained untrammelled. His success probably owed much to his three professed natural talents of horsemanship, aptitude for foreign languages, and fornication. Though not all at the same time.

20d Fine ladies taking off Dutch decking (7)
A nine-letter word for ‘fine ladies’ has the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Dutch’ removed, producing a word for the parallel planks of a pontoon bridge, always seen in this plural form. Incidentally, the chap who lays them is known as a ????? man.

26d Writer of poetry: listening releases bits of it near the end (5)
A seven-letter word for ‘listening’ has the letters I and T separately removed ‘near the end’, producing the surname of a major English poet of the twentieth century. The degree he received from Oxford may have been third class, but his mind was a couple of classes higher. His best-known poem is probably the one now usually known as “Stop all the clocks”, the reading of which in Four Weddings and a Funeral brought its author to the attention of a new audience. He was a very quotable author, among his best lines perhaps being “A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep.” and “Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”

27d It’s craggy in the Cairngorms, but climbing follows short section (4)
A word meaning ‘but’ is reversed (‘climbing’) after (‘following’) the usual abbreviation for ‘section’, and the solution is a Scots word for ‘steep’.

29d Soft down fluttered, as listeners perceive? (4)
A homophone clue finishes things off this week, the answer sounding like (‘as listeners perceive’) a word meaning ‘fluttered’.

(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 2,632 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

A 13×11 grid, and a puzzle that I thought was quite tricky in places, with very few ‘gimmes’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 3d, “French maybe having to accept rule, gutted? (5)”. “French maybe” leads us to the first name of a well-known comedienne; this is a device not infrequently used in puzzles, and one that I am fond of myself. However, there are a few points to be made. Firstly, if the puzzle is likely to be tackled by solvers around the globe, the person should be known outside the UK, so “Trump maybe” for JUDD would be questionable. Secondly, there should always be an indication that the definition is by example, since not all Dawns are French – “French” alone would be inadequate, although “French?” at the end of the clue would be fine. Finally, the name provided must be capitalized in the clue – with ‘French’ this is not a problem, but if one were using, say, “Musk maybe” to indicate ELON then “Male musk perhaps in fruit” for MELON would be unsound (the capital letter at the start of ‘Musk’ cannot arbitrarily be discarded). ‘Musk’ must come at the start of a sentence, eg ‘Musk, perhaps, accompanying male fruit”.

Across

1a Being worse off, I’d returned wretched vehicle, cross, old (13)
A five element wordplay, with a 2-3-3-1-4 composition.

11a Father leading service with unction, by which one may be guided from aloft (8)
A charade of a two-letter familiar word for ‘father’, the abbreviated name of one of the three UK military services, and a common word for ‘unction’.

15a Local barge clad in tin dispersed roughly (6)
A trap for the unwary here – there are three possible answers which fit with the definition and the checked letters, but only one of them has a dialect word for ‘any of various small boats or barges, usually flat-bottomed’ sandwiched inside the ‘tin’, so it is an O which must go in the unchecked cell.

16a Eleven characters in a row? That’s quite a stinker! (4)
The eleven characters start at the beginning of the alphabet, while the ‘stinker’ is a skunk which regularly appears in barred puzzles but hasn’t been seen (or scented) in an Azed for a while.

18a One called backward, with minimum marks? (6)
An &lit, where the Roman numeral for ‘one’ is followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘called’ which has been reversed (‘backwards’) and the character representing the lowest number of marks that one could receive in an examination or contest.

25a Type of cement wears out, high explosive shifted (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘high explosive’ must be removed (‘shifted’) from a word with the sense of ‘wears out’ (or ‘harasses’), more familiar as its homograph meaning ‘criticizes as worthless’ or ‘vandalizes’.

30a Showy plant from Italy king avoided put in danger (4)
The IVR code for ‘Italy’ is followed by a verb meaning ‘[to] put in danger’ from which the chess abbreviation for ‘king’ has been removed (‘king avoided’). There should really be a comma between ‘avoided’ and ‘put’.

36a Awkward places he has to negotiate round? (13)
Another &lit, and quite a neat one. An anagram (‘awkward’) of PLACES HE has a word meaning ‘to negotiate’ put outside (‘around’).

Down
1d Terms for heavy conditions at Murrayfield? (4)
A double-definition clue which, like me, you will probably get from the first definition (the present indicative of a verb). The solution is also a Scots word for mud.

4d What dalit’s denied, as opposed to water buffalo! (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘opposed to’ or ‘versus’ is followed by the term for an Indian water buffalo, and the result describes the social classes from which a dalit (or untouchable) would be excluded.

6d In practice I scored run (6)
Not a difficult clue, but the presence of ‘scored’ qualifying the definition (see Chambers) makes it a little trickier; the wordplay simply has I (from the clue) being put inside a five-letter word for ‘[a] practice’ or an occupation.

7d Drop of medicine, thick milky stuff (5)
Another double definition, with the entrée  this time likely to be the second part, which will probably be more familiar when suffixed by ‘-percha’.

8d With little energy, one woozy drunk, here, registering copper’s time? (10)
The usual abbreviation for ‘energy’ is followed by an anagram (‘woozy’) of ONE, a three-letter adjective meaning ‘drunk’, and a three-letter Latin word meaning ‘here’, usually seen as the first word of a phrase. The “copper’s time” refers to a period when, according to Chambers’ ‘copper was already in use’.

10d A little child swallowing most of what’s mistaken for xerophyte (10)
The wordplay here has three-letter words for ‘a little’ and ‘child’ containing (‘swallowing’) a five-letter word for a mistake from which the last letter has been removed (“most of what’s mistaken”).

22d Chum holding girl up, not authentic (6)
A word for a chum containing (‘holding’) a reversal (‘up’) of a dialect form of ‘girl’; the definition will be clear to those using Chambers, possibly less so to others.

24d Follows on, as in courts (4)
A two-letter abbreviation equating to ‘as’ is contained by a word nowadays used to mean ‘prosecutes’ but which has an archaic sense of ‘courts’.

26d Little Alice? I am still after answer (5)
The wordplay here, a (1,3) phrase meaning ‘I am still’ following the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘answer’, should get you to the solution easily enough, although a visit to the ‘Some first names’ section of Chambers may be needed to confirm that it is indeed an anglicized form of the Gaelic diminutive of ‘Alice’.

(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 2,631 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

After last week’s Playfair shenanigans we’ve got a standard plain puzzle this week, and one which I thought was very close to average difficulty. Several nicely constructed clues, and very little with which I could take issue.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 25d, “Backs measure up, with attractive charm (5)”. The whole clue is covered in the notes below, but what I wanted to pick out here was the use of ‘attractive charm’ to indicate SA. On several occasions I have seen people on the crossword forums grousing about the use of what they consider outdated terms such as this one, or ‘daily’ to indicate CHAR, or ‘posh’ for U. Whilst I have no sympathy with their rationale – these words and expressions are still very much a part of our language – it is fair to say that a number of these devices also fall squarely into the box marked ‘hackneyed’, and for that reason I try to avoid them in my clues wherever possible.  The currency of the terms is of little or no relevance in my view – yes, I’ve seen ‘daily’ for CHAR more than enough times, but the same applies to ‘bit of a kip’ for AT and ‘jolly’ for RM. I don’t have an issue with setters using words and phrases from the past (surely that’s part of the fun of crosswords), or indeed the occasional SA or IT, but I do like to see originality (combined, I need hardly say, with soundness) outweighing banality, which is one reason why I like Azed’s puzzles so much.

Across
1a Field grass, luxurious, mum plucked in pampas, grown wild (8)
What is contained in the anagram (‘grown wild’) of PAMPAS is a four-letter word meaning ‘luxuriant’ from which a two-letter interjection meaning ‘hush’ (ie ‘mum’) has been removed (‘plucked’).

12a Ivy hugged by priest, shame abandoned (5)
The ‘ivy’ which is contained (‘hugged’) by the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘priest’ is the Japanese name for Aralia cordata or spikenard, a perennial producing new shoots each spring which are blanched and eaten as a vegetable. The ‘abandoned’ indicates that the solution is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’.

14a Slack ropes left hand cast off (6)
The anagram indicator here is ‘off’, while the fodder is the standard abbreviation for ‘left hand’ plus CAST.

15a Short time getting into network? This’ll facilitate that (6)
A two-letter word for a (very) short time ‘gets into’ a four-letter word for a network (eg of blood vessels or nerves), and the definition is perhaps a little loose but not, I think, unreasonable.

16a Sacred object I wrapped in robe (6)
The robe or gown in which the letter I must be wrapped is more commonly spelt with -eau on the end.

18a Jacques maybe in service struggling for non-melodic parts (11)
The ‘Jacques’ here will I’m sure be familiar to more mature solvers, but not necessarily to those of tender years. His films featuring the wonderful comic creation Monsieur Hulot were hugely popular both in his native France and internationally, and Rowan Atkinson has acknowledged that the existence of Mr Bean owes more than a little to his having watched Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday at the age of 17. In this clue his surname is contained by an anagram (‘struggling’) of SERVICE.

24a Celebrated statute completed, according to hearsay (6)
I’m not a great fan of homophones, and I wasn’t much taken by this one, although reading ‘statute’ as ‘statue’ didn’t help. The solution sounds like two words meaning ‘statute’ and ‘completed’.

26a Sucker switching ends in little stream (6)
The word for a sucker or sapling which must have its first and last letters exchanged is more familiar as the name given to a device for turning a rudder or the surname of a Manchester man famed for his dancing girls.

27a Slight Italian gents doffing cap (6)
As correspondent Jim points out in his comment below, the clue as it stands doesn’t work. It should read “Slight Italian gent’s doffing cap”.

Down
2d Feldspar lay around, mostly uninteresting one (8)
The wordplay here is of slightly devious construction, a four-letter word meaning ‘uninteresting’ without its last letter (‘mostly’) and a single-letter word for ‘one’ having another word for a lay or song outside (ie ‘around’).

6d My siesta gives this, of minimum significance (6)
My reason for having a siesta is that it gives ?? ????.

7d Old Etonians, say, following trend turned up with a topper on (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘following [the latest] trend’ is reversed (‘turned up’) and has the letter A and a three-letter word for a top hat (aka a chimney-pot hat) put above it.

9d Late exploit at extremes, enough said (possibly) (8)
Surrounded by a four-letter word for an exploit (ie ‘[with] exploit at [the] extremes’) is a Shakespearean interjection of uncertain meaning and uncertain spelling. In King Lear, Edgar says “Dolphin my Boy, Boy, ****”. Since Edgar is at that time in the role of crazy, half-naked beggar ‘PoorTom’, his rantings are in any event largely unintelligible.

11d Graceful Linda, six, in new guise (11)
The ‘six’ here refers directly to the solution at 6d.

20d What may be flourished in a moiety of leavetakings? (6)
An &lit, the wordplay indicating that an anagram of the solution can be found (‘what may be flourished’) in one half (‘moiety’) of the word ‘leavetakings’.

21d Posset shows this, one appearing in nasty mixture after end of bottle (6)
This one can be viewed as either a conventional clue or what Ximenes termed an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the whole clue provides the definition but only part of it serves as the wordplay, here the section which I have not underlined. The wordplay has the Roman numeral for ‘one’ appearing inside a word for a nasty mixture, the whole lot following the last letter (‘end’) of ‘bottle’.

22d Ray, dead, stripped of hood, led away (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘dead’ is followed by an eight-letter word meaning ‘stripped of hood’ (as a monk might be) from which the letters LED have been removed (‘led away’). The answer is hyphenated, 3-3, and rather like the term ‘Bombay duck’ suggests a different type of critter entirely.

25d Backs measure up, with attractive charm (4)
A nicely-disguised break between definition and wordplay, the latter involving  a measure (5½ yards) being reversed (‘up’) and combined with a two-letter abbreviation for ‘attractive charm’.

(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 2,630 ‘Playfair’

Difficulty rating: (5 / 10)

I know that some people really enjoy Playfair puzzles, but they leave me cold,  so when no clues are provided to the code word I have no qualms about using a code cracker such as Quinapalus to identify it. I found it hard to assign a difficulty rating to this puzzle – the clues were generally pretty straightforward, but the Playfair element adds a complexity which is likely to divide the opinions of solvers. For those who feel inclined to try cracking the code, I will repeat below some general hints that I have provided in the past, and underneath the notes on the clues I have included a further hint specific to this puzzle. Incidentally, the code word is usually also the word to be clued for the competition – when you find today’s word you will understand why Azed decided to select a different word for the comp!

The only real option with a Playfair puzzle is to solve the non-Playfair clues to get all of the checked letters in the Playfair solutions (or at the very least the pairs of letters which are both checked in the grid, but don’t forget that you can draw conclusions even from an incomplete quartet), work out the non-encoded answers to the Playfair clues, and then create quartets by relating the checked letter pairs from the encoded answers to the corresponding pairs in the non-coded solutions (eg solution = SOLVED, part completed light in grid = J?TPAG, LV encodes to TP and ED encodes to AG, while SO encodes to J?).

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

To which I will add a couple of points:

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

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

Across
1a Explosive artillery holds in reversing rupture (6)
A two-letter abbreviation for a powerful kind of explosive is followed by the usual two-letter representation of ‘artillery’ which contains a reversal of IN (‘holds in reversing’).

11a Bit of timber in dry measure thereof (5)
The first letter (‘bit of’) ‘timber’ is inserted into a poetic word meaning ‘dry’ to produce a measure of timber (ie ‘measure thereof’).

19a Primitive creatures? See one twinkling on a bee flying (7)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ and a two-letter word for [a] twinkling are followed by an anagram (‘flying’) of A BEE.

20a Lost lingo included in central tenet of Confucianism (5)
A two-letter word meaning ‘included’ is to be placed inside the term describing the way to be followed in Confucianism , certain principles of which are considered by some (in particular Benjamin Hoff in his 1982 book) to be personified by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends.

23a Take heed about prime element of baby’s rearing (5)
A four-letter word meaning ‘take heed’ or ‘be concerned’ is set about the first letter (‘prime element’) of ‘baby’, the result being a heraldic term.

27a Dad worked with regular features of comical mental state (8)
A three-part charade comprising elements of 2, 3 and 3 letters respectively.

30a Chap leading a lesson about one type of rock deformation (10)
A three-letter word for the sort of chap who might be cool is followed by A (from the clue) and a word for a lesson containing (‘about’) the Roman numeral for ‘one’.

32a Church in scattered arrangement (6)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘church’ (of unspecified denomination) is put inside a heraldic term (like 23a taken directly from the French language) meaning ‘strewn or scattered over with small bearings,’

Down
1d Wee fish that is tailing pike, see (6)
The usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘that is’ follows a three-letter word for the bony pike or sea-pike (a shortened form of a seven-letter word wish -fish on the end) and the single-letter abbreviation used in texts for ‘see’.

2d Tumours mum’s taken in to treat misshapen one (10)
A two-letter word for ‘mum’ in the parent sense is ‘taken in[to]’ an anagram (‘misshapen’) of TO TREAT, the whole lot being followed by a single-letter word for ‘one’.

4d Monster that’s tucked into Asiatic bird, a kind of poultry (7)
The monster here is a three-letter sea-monster, and it’s ‘tucked into’ a bird which is renowned for its ability to imitate human speech (the spelling with an ‘i’ rather than a ‘y’).

7d Rib involved outlay for Adam, without restraint (5)
A four-letter word for ‘outlay’ is followed by ADAM from which a word meaning ‘restraint’ has been removed.

18d Second hearing to do with network surrounding queen (7)
A six-letter word meaning ‘relating to a network’ (in an anatomical sense) contains a single-letter abbreviation for ‘queen’.

19d Rules for jousting, boring, Earl penned with love (6)
A four-letter word for ‘boring’ has the standard abbreviation for ‘Earl’ inserted, this combination being followed by the usual single-character representation of ‘love’.

26d Composer cutting last slow movement (5)
My knowledge of classical music is, well, patchy, and I wasn’t familiar with Orlande de ******, apparently “a composer of the late Renaissance, and the chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school.” His last name has its final letter removed.

(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 2,629 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I felt that this puzzle was of at least average difficulty, though I could be persuaded that it was marginally tougher. I thought that the clues were of a good standard, although like last week nothing particularly stood out.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 30a, “Lentil meal a Levanter transported (9)”. A simple anagram clue, but there are two possibilities for the answer, a preparation of lentil and barley flour intended for invalids that was first given a name beginning with ER and then arbitrarily renamed with the first two letters being reversed, all during the nineteenth century. Is this a problem? Well, in general terms, setters should try to ensure that ambiguities are eliminated from clues by using wordplays which lead only to the intended answer. A common trap is the reversal clue where a single word is reversed to produce the solution – ‘Breaks twisted thong’ might be intended as a clue for PARTS, but it could equally well lead to STRAP. Here the solution is simply to change the word order, ‘Twisted thong breaks’ being unambiguous. The most important thing is that when there is ambiguity the solver must be able through the checked letters (as with today’s clue) to establish beyond doubt the intended entry – an ambiguity which can be resolved by checked letters is undesirable, but one which cannot thus be resolved is wholly unacceptable.

Across
1a Corporation displaying striking power restricting one (6)
The appearance of ‘corporation’ in a clue should alert you to the likelihood that it will refer not to a business but to a belly, often translating into ‘tum’ when part of the wordplay. Here it forms the definition of a word formed when a five-letter word for ‘striking power’ contains a single-letter word for ‘one’.

11a Scotch liquor king left off enjoying as of old (4)
I was initially puzzled by the wordplay here, specifically the use of ‘enjoyment’ rather than ‘enjoy’, since it seemed that we were to remove the abbreviation for ‘king’ in a chess context from a five-letter word which once meant ‘to enjoy’ but now only occurs with the sense of ‘to endure’. However, it is actually the letters KING which must be removed from the eight-letter verbal noun derived from the aforesaid verb (ie ‘enjoying as of old’) in order to produce the answer.

13a Bad news for apiaries left our bee damaged in nourishment (9)
An anagram (‘damaged’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘left’, OUR, and the letter represented by ‘bee’ is put inside a four-letter word for ‘nourishment’, the result being a hyphenated (4-5) bacterial disease which would indeed be bad news for apiaries.

15a Old umpires may end batting (or bowling) round start of shower (7)
Azed from time to time does things which would not go down well with modern crossword editors. Here he includes a second anagram indicator, ‘bowling’, which in terms of the wordplay is completely superfluous, an anagram (‘batting’) of MAY END containing (’round’) the first letter (‘start’) of ‘shower’ being entirely sufficient.

17a Sunday lunch? It may include greens (5)
You may need to refer to Chambers for possible meanings of ‘greens’ in order to parse this double definition clue.

18a Being a renegade always restricts job with bank (8)
A two-letter word for ‘always’ contains (‘restricts’) a four-letter word for a job and a two-letter word for a bank of sand or gravel usually associated with glacial deposits and barred crosswords.

26a Is stuffing rubbish with minimum of sage? (5)
The ‘rubbish’ in the wordplay will forever be associated in my mind with Gerald Ratner’s speech to the Insititute of Directors on 23 April 1991, an illustration of the rule that while the public may have an inkling that your products might not be of the highest quality, you really don’t want to publicly confirm their suspicions. It is followed by the first letter (‘minimum’) of ‘sage’.

28a Stole recipe forming new centre of lecture (7)
A seven-letter word for a lecture has its middle letter (‘centre’) replaced by the usual abbreviation for ‘recipe’.

34a Sort of hollow marriage retrograde? One’s sure trapped in it (6)
A reversal (‘retrograde’) of a three-letter word for ‘marriage’ has a three-letter informal word for ‘sure’ (or ‘indeed’) ‘trapped’ inside it. The solution is hyphenated (3-3).

Down
3d Crowns once placed on sovereign’s head? This shows admiration (6, 2 words)
The plural of a Shakespearean word for the top of the head (‘Crowns once’) is put on top of the first letter (‘head’) of ‘sovereign’ to produce a (2,4) phrase which is used (often ironically, according to Chambers) to express admiration.

4d Old gull making good after losing fish? (4)
Perhaps the trickiest clue in this puzzle, where the wordplay involves an eight-letter word meaning ‘making good’ or ‘patching up’ having the name of a fish from the cod family (and a setters’ favourite) removed. The solution is given by Chambers as ‘archaic’, hence the ‘Old’.

14d As to churning in stomach, not affected by the environment (9)
I learnt something here, having never (to the best of my recollection) come across the five-letter word indicated by ‘stomach’ being used with this meaning, the third stomach of a ruminant. Its many folds apparently resemble the pages of a (presumably large) book, and give rise to one of its other names, the manyplies. Interestingly, this meaning is not given by the OED, although it is shown by Wikipedia. What’s inside the word here is an anagram (‘churning’) of AS TO.

19d What makes one’s dog bark when old and saintly? (7)
This is one of those clues where Azed has come up with a rather involved wordplay in order to optimize the surface reading – the ‘What’ is effectively the solution, and the ‘makes’ equates to ‘is made from’. The wordplay proper consists of the five words in the middle, where “one’s dog” could equally well be “one’s cat” and the ‘bark when old’ indicates an old variant spelling of a word for ‘bark’ (ending with a ‘d’) which is now almost exclusively used to describe the peel or skin of fruits and vegetables.

21d Piston rising and falling – it limits erosion (6)
The same three-letter word for a piston appears reversed (‘rising’) and then in its normal form (‘falling’), the result being a seaside grass frequently used to counter erosion.

23d Cierge lit – to light one’s way up these? (6)
I suspect that the answer here may be the word for which Chambers offers the greatest number of variant spellings (12 including this one), but none of the others shares the same mix of letters, so unlike 30a there is no ambiguity. There are many anagram indicators which depend on the suggestion of inebriation, and ‘lit’ is one of them.

25d Game birds, number not appearing in transport (5)
A six-letter word meaning ‘[to] transport’ has the usual single-letter abbreviation of ‘number’ removed (‘not appearing’) to produce a term for a small flock of game birds.

27d Bacteriologist exchanging parts of entrails (5)
The first three letters of a word for certain entrails when prepared as food are exchanged with the last two, the result being the surname of a German bacteriologist who, rather like Dame Nellie Melba, had a dish named after him.

(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 2,628 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

A puzzle that featured what seemed to me an inordinate number of straightforward anagrams, in consequence of which I would rate the difficulty as significantly below average. I thought the clues were generally of a reasonable standard, although none particularly stood out.

Note that there is an enumeration error (in the online version, at least) in the clue for 30d, where the solution is four letters and not five.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 9d, “Bypass to avoid needing to be on time (5)”. This clue consists of eight words, but only the first three and the last play any active part in the cryptic reading, with ‘needing to be on’ offering no useful information to the solver. Although the word ‘on’ is technically superfluous, it is commonly used as a juxtaposition indicator, and is no less appropriate than words like ‘for’ or ‘in’ when used to link wordplay and definition. But what about ‘needing to be’? One of the core principles of Ximenean clueing is that a clue should consist of wordplay(s), definition(s), and nothing else – this rule is clearly subject to bending, or linking words would not be allowed, but modern thinking is that clues should be kept as concise as possible. On that basis, I think that most editors would be reluctant to use a clue like this as it stands, with something like ‘Bypass to avoid centre of Dunstable’ being preferred.

Across
4a Gold purchases – transactions included at least 200 centavos (9)
The chemical symbol for gold and a word for purchases as seen from the vendor’s perspective with the abbreviation for ‘transactions’ inserted (‘included’) lead to the plural of a former Argentinian currency unit which was equivalent to 100 centavos.

10a Chatter quietly with conductor (7)
The ‘conductor’ here is arguably Britain’s most famous living maestro, and surely the only one who can be confidently identified from just the rear view of his head.

13a Predecessor on the throne, English, branching out? (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘English’ has a word meaning ‘branching’ outside (‘out’), and the answer is a word seemingly only found in Tennyson’s Harold, but not indicated by Azed as being archaic, obsolete, or generally well past its prime. I wonder if Azed is following the lead of several UK supermarkets in removing ‘best before’ dates from a number of products.

15a Offshoot completely extracted from leek (5)
An eight-letter word for a leek has a synonym for ‘completely’ removed (‘extracted’) to produce the solution.

23a Mac’s cast for fish in Windermere? (6)
I knew neither of the words which feature in this double definition clue, although I was able to guess the single unchecked letter as it produced what sounded like a Scots word. I’ve probably heard of the fish (so called, apparently, because of the size of its scales), but if I’ve seen Keith Floyd or Rick Stein doing something with one I’ve long since put it from my mind.

25a Perth’s neat finish? In Perth, honestly (8)
Here we have a charade of a five-letter word from Perth, Scotland, for ‘neat’ and a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] finish’, the result being a hyphenated (5-3) term from Perth, Australia, meaning ‘honestly’ (probably more familiar to non-antipodeans in its six-letter form, typically preceded by ‘fair’). The ‘neat’ word is definitely Scottish in its four-letter form (without the last letter), although I think the version here is in widespread use (Collins shows it without qualification).

28a Not attributes to be found in penitentiary (5)
This clue raises an interesting question – can a noun be ‘defined’ by something it isn’t? Clearly ‘not cats’ couldn’t indicate ‘dogs’, but ‘not  clergy’ could I think indicate ‘laity’. This seems to be somewhere between those two extremes, and I leave it to the reader to decide whether it is valid. The wordplay is so straightforward that the clue could hardly be described as unfair, whatever your conclusion as regards the foregoing.

29a One pursuing plan? Court somehow rejected dull spiel (5)
Perhaps the trickiest clue in the puzzle, a ten-letter word for someone pursuing a plan has an anagram (‘somehow’) of COURT removed (‘rejected’) to produce the solution. I’m a little surprised that Azed didn’t use something like ‘One instituting legal proceedings’ rather than ‘One pursuing plan’, in order to enhance the surface reading.

Down
2d Tailor’s material to employ with circling bands, right inside (11)
The wordplay here takes a bit of teasing out (rather like the material, perhaps). It involves a concatenation of the letters TO (‘from the clue’), a synonym for ’employ’, and a five-letter word for ‘circling bands’, into which the single-character abbreviation for ‘right’ has been inserted.

3d Close interest (4)
The ‘close’ in this double definition clue is how a guess in a game might be described if it was reasonably near to the right answer, but not very near.

5d Hamlet’s sword wound? Laborious, a V cut (5)
A seven-letter word for ‘laborious’ has the consecutive letters AV removed (‘cut’). The solution actually appears in The Taming of the Shrew: “Here’s snip and nip and cut and ***** and slash”.

7d A reader missing denouement? She was furious (6)
The letter A (from the clue) is followed by a word for a reader from which the last letter has been removed. This clue immediately made me think of the Hancock’s Half Hour episode The Missing Page, where the library copy of the murder mystery Lady Don’t Fall Backwards by Darcy Sarto borrowed by Mr H turns out to be lacking the final page, whereon detective Johnny Oxford would have unmasked the foul miscreant.

25d Disinfect mattress from below that’s disgusting (5)
A reversal (‘from below’) of a three-letter word for ‘mattress’ is followed by an interjection meaning “that’s disgusting”.

26d Lively as child with age (not adult) (5)
A three-letter child combines with the letters AGE from which the usual abbreviation for ‘adult’ has been removed, the result being a word which is shown by Chambers, though not by Azed, as ‘dialect’.

27d Inject mass within maximum, first off (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘mass’ is found inside (‘within’) a five-letter word meaning ‘maximum’ from which the first letter has been removed (‘first off’).

30d Orcadian estate of a kind without superior character? (4)
I must admit that I got the solution here and worked back to the five-letter word meaning ‘of a kind’ that is to be deprived of its initial letter (‘without superior character). I think that ‘of a particular kind’ would probably constitute a better indication.

(definitions are underlined)