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Notes for Azed 2,598

27th March 2022 10th April 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

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.

While I – of course – believe that the views presented are valid, I realize that (i) I am not infallible, and (ii) in the world of the crossword there are many areas where opinions will differ. I say what I think, but I don’t intend thereby to stifle discussion – I would encourage readers who disagree with the views that I express, whether in the blog posts or in response to comments, to make their feelings known…I shall not be offended!

Azed 2,598 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I thought this was quite tricky for a plain Azed – there were fewer ‘gimmes’ than usual (arguably none) and a very generous dollop of obscurities, both in wordplays and solutions. I didn’t think that it was one of Azed’s best puzzles, with a certain lack of sparkle evident.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at (among others) clue 29d, “Sailor heading east – what’s net weight of vessel? (4)”. The solution here is made up of a three-letter crossword staple for ‘sailor’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘east’, so what is the ‘heading’ doing there? Well, a juxtaposition indicator is what it is, but what it’s doing is absolutely nothing – ‘sailor east’ would produce exactly the same result. A number of juxtaposition indicators are listed in the clinical data section of this site, and they fall into two broad categories: the ones like ‘heading’ here, which serve no purpose except to improve the surface reading, and those like ‘under’ (24d) and ‘found at bottom of’ (26d), which reverse the natural sequence of wordplay elements. The former type are essentially superfluous text, which makes their role in the wordplay similar to that played by ‘link’ words between the wordplay and the definition, of which there are several in this puzzle ranging from ‘for’ (14a) and ‘in’ (15a) to ‘showing’ (5d) and ‘causing’ (16a/22d). I view ‘no effect’ juxtaposition indicators and link words very similarly – they should be avoided wherever possible, but on occasion they are necessary in order to produce a sensible surface reading. Out of 36 clues in this puzzle, 10 contain linking words or phrases, which seems to me rather a lot.

2a It’s endlessly fine imbibing spirit, then beer and type of pop (11, 3 words)
A five-letter word often linked with ‘fine’ missing its last letter (‘endlessly’) and containing (‘imbibing’) a three-letter alcoholic spirit is followed by the name of a brewery which was famous for its Pale Ale (and towards the end of the 19th century was the largest in the world), producing a (4,3,4) name for a type of pop in the musical rather than carbonated sense.

10a One with bit of cloth (plaid?), new in, ideal for non-seamstress? (6)
The Roman numeral representing the number one is followed by a four-letter Scottish (hence the ‘plaid?’) word for a piece of cloth, into which the normal abbreviation for ‘new’ has been inserted. The solution is an adjective, hyphenated (4-2).

15a Insect, one devouring case in furniture wood (7)
A three-letter term applied loosely to many types of insect together with a single-letter word for ‘one’ containing (‘devouring’) a three-letter word for a case, specifically the sort in which wine is stored.

16a Mites causing opening of rind in purple fruit (5)
The wordplay involves the first letter (‘opening’) of ‘rind’ being put into the name of a South American palm (and of the blackish-purple berry which it bears) – the word (which can also be spelt with a double-ss rather than the c-cedilla here) appears to be a relative newcomer to dictionaries, receiving a draft OED entry in 2007.

17a Language replacing English in range of knowledge – for space travellers? (7)
This is a clue of the sort that Ximenes termed an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the whole clue stands as an indication of the solution, but only part of it serves as the wordplay. A five-letter term for a language (often poorly regarded) or the jargon of a particular group of people displaces the usual abbreviation for ‘English’ from a three-letter word for ‘range of knowledge’, part of the title of a radio comedy that starred the late, great Kenneth Horne. The last three words are there purely to enhance the definition, which would otherwise be very loose given that the language is fictitious and hasn’t yet made it into Chambers, although it does feature in the OED.

30a Race almost over? Bore (4)
The five-letter name of a famous race for three year olds (horses, not humans) has its last letter removed (‘almost’) before being reversed (‘over’) to produce the past tense of a word meaning to bear or bring forth.

32a It is roughly about summer’s end?
In contrast to 17a, this is a true &lit, where an anagram (‘roughly’) of IT IS contains (‘about’) the last letter of ‘summer’, the whole clue serving as both wordplay and definition. I see why Azed has put a question mark at the end (it is a rare &lit where the definition is so precise that one is not required), but I think I would then have been inclined to go with ‘Is it’ rather than ‘It is’, producing a more natural surface reading.

34a Hawkers’ spiel? Resist being misled about touching and so on (11, 2 words)
An anagram (‘misled’) of RESIST containing (‘about’) a two-letter bit of commercial jargon for ‘touching’ or ‘concerning’ (probably seen more often in crosswords these days than in correspondence) and a three-letter abbreviation for a term (much repeated by Yul Brynner during his period as an Asian head of state) meaning ‘and so on’. Note that the position of the apostrophe in the definition suggests multiple sales pitches , the (6,5) solution itself being a plural.

1d Bed sheet, what Mac’s in when heated? (7)
A three-letter word for a bed (also seen at 14a when indicated by ‘snooze’) is followed by a four-letter word for a sheet, specifically of paper, the whole being a Scottish (“Mac’s”) word for a state of excitement or irritation.

4d Member of OT people, once more getting somewhat beset? (7)
The wordplay here has an obsolete form (‘once’) of the word ‘more’ containing (‘getting…beset’) a two-word (1,3) phrase meaning ‘somewhat’.

5d Small swelling showing date in ancient dome (6)
If you solved this clue as I did, then you quickly identified that the single-character abbreviation for ‘date’ would need to be put inside an old (‘ancient’) word for a dome, and you then worked back from the familiar solution to identify that the ‘dome’ here is the top of the head, and the word for it is a ‘Spenser special’, the appearances of which seem to be limited to one outing in The Faerie Queene.

6d Laundryman in Berlin that is given foreign sash (5)
It’s not often that the German abbreviation for ‘that is’ (or ‘das heisst’) turns up in puzzles, but it does here, being followed by a three-letter word for a Japanese sash (and a form of witchcraft).

7d Follower of self-styled prophet one third of young ignored (4)
A six-letter word for ‘young’ in the offspring sense loses its last two letters (‘one third…ignored’) to produce the term applied to a follower of Bab, the name assumed by Mirza Ali Mohammed ibn Radhik, the founder of a sect originating in Persia, ‘whose doctrine and practice include Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian elements’.

8d Capital making one a bargain invested in health resort? (6)
That Roman numeral for ‘one’ pops up again, followed by a two-letter (archaic) informal word for a bargain or deal, the pair being contained by (‘invested in’) a three-letter (old) informal term usually associated with a hospital for convalescents but also (according to Chambers) describing a ‘health farm, health resort or health station’ (I’m not even sure what the last of these is).

9d Area shifted in reception room gaining Jock’s reproof (5)
A five-letter reception room has the standard single-character abbreviation for ‘area’ moved internally (‘shifted’, from position 2 to position 4) resulting in a Scots word (“Jock’s” this time) for a snub or reproof.

19d ‘Fidgety Phil’ to scold, shuffling e.g. right and left (7)
The wordplay here involves a three-letter word meaning ‘to scold’ (perhaps the result of a failure to ‘keep your hair on’) followed by an anagram (‘shuffling’) of EG plus the usual one-letter abbreviations for ‘right’ and ‘left’. The reference in the definition is to Heinrich Hoffmann’s Die Geschichte vom Zappel-Philipp (‘The Story of Fidgety Philip’) in his 1845 book Der Struwwelpeter (‘Shock-headed Peter’).

20d Mostly kind where Wellington is showing inclination (7)
A six-letter word for ‘kind’ (or ‘delicate’) without its last letter (‘Mostly’) is followed by the two-letter abbreviation for the name of the (or at least a) country ‘where Wellington is’ (the city not the Womble).

22d What’s pinched (by reiver?) causing his week in prison (6)
Both the solution and the three-letter word for a week which is enclosed by a three-letter word for a prison, especially one in a castle which is entered from above, are Scottish. The ‘by reiver?’ and subsequent ‘his’ indicate this, but I was a bit dubious about it given that the Border Reivers, as well as caring little about the nationality of their victims, came from both sides of the border. However, further research makes it clear that the ‘reiver’ spelling owes its presence in dictionaries to Walter Scott, and you can’t get much more Caledonian than that.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,597

20th March 2022 3rd April 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,597 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle that seemed to me to sit very close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were a couple of wordplays which I felt stretched things a bit, but as always with Azed once you’d got to the answer you knew for sure it was right.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 2d, “Rest freeing one from genuine pain (7)”. The wordplay involves a one-letter word for ‘one’ leaving a four-letter word for ‘genuine’ followed by a four-letter word for ‘pain’, the solution being a word for ‘rest’ taken directly from the French language. The point of interest here is the word ‘freeing’ – it is surely a participle rather than a gerund, but who or what is doing the ‘freeing’? Azed quite often uses this sort of construction, but I’m not very comfortable with it, since the only named subject for the participle is the definition. If this is intended, the clue could equally well have been written as ‘Rest frees one from genuine pain’, which seems unconvincing. Alternatively, the solver could be expected to infer an additional word or words, but what would they be? Perhaps ‘Rest [involves you] freeing one from genuine pain’. As far as possible alternatives go, I can see that ‘Genuine pain lessened by a rest’ suggests that the A is lost from the second word rather than the first, so personally I would prefer something along the lines of ‘Rest: one’s freed from physical pain’.

1a Mistake imbibing selection of wine, barely drinkable (8)
A four-letter informal term for a mistake when containing (‘imbibing’) a four-letter word for a framework on which bottles of wine might be arrayed produces an adjective which is typically used to describe salty water. The ‘mistake’ is the sort frequently made by one JCT Jennings, and just occasionally made by others to his own detriment:

“Dear Mr Tomlinson,” the letter said. “I shall be obliged if you will send me your catalogue of flowering shrubs as I have unfortunately mislaid the list which you sent me last month. Yours faithfully, Angela Birkinshaw (Miss).”

Jennings groaned. In a daze he passed it to Darbishire who read it and scratched his head in puzzled wonder. “Why does she call you ‘Mr Tomlinson’? Have you changed your name by deed poll or something?” “No, that’s not me – that’s somebody else,” Jennings explained. “I see what’s happened though. She’s written two letters and got the envelopes mixed up; I’ve got this Tomlinson person’s letter and he’s got mine.” “What a ghastly bish,” said Darbishire as the facts became clear. “And whatever must this Mr Tomlinson be thinking?” Jennings snorted. “Huh! It’s what I’m thinking that matters. Never mind about Mr Tomlinson – he’s all right! At least he jolly well ought to be; dash it all, Darbi, he’s got my postal order.” The deduction was correct. At the very moment that Jennings was bemoaning his fate, Mr A Tomlinson, Nurseryman and Seedsman, was standing in his suburban shop, pondering over a letter which had arrived by the morning post.

“Dear John,” it began “I am sending you a postal order, which I expect will come in useful at the tuck-shop.”

12a African plant: fish and individual creatures desist when sun’s out (9)
A charade of a small, edible two-letter fish (or a three-toed sloth), the three-letter plural of a four-letter word for a structurally unified individual creature, and a five-letter word meaning ‘desist’ from which the usual abbreviation for ‘sun’ has been removed (“when sun’s out”). Since the solution is a genus of trees, I would have thought that ‘plants’ was considerably more appropriate than ‘plant’ in the definition.

13a Crêpe in France, Breton one containing local milk, not Italian (6)
Here we have the IVR code for France followed by the Breton (ie French) word for ‘one’ containing the French (‘local’) word for milk from which the usual two-letter abbreviation of ‘Italian’ has been removed (‘not Italian’). Please see Steve’s comment below regarding the use of ‘Breton’ to indicate a translation into French. The solution is shown by Chambers as archaic, but Azed has chosen not to indicate this.

14a Monsoon deity? I’ll go for river where my worshippers are (5)
The wordplay in this clue is too laboured for my liking. It involves the letter I being replaced by the usual abbreviation for ‘river’ (“I’ll go for river”) in the name of a country where many of the deity’s worshippers could be found. It only works if the ‘where my worshippers are’ is pre-processed into ‘in Xxxxx’, at which point the substitution instruction makes sense.

17a Such terribly regressive tax takes the most downhill route (8)
An anagram (‘terribly’) of SUCH is followed by a reversal (‘regressive’) of an obsolete four-letter word for a tax, usually spelt with an initial C rather than the S seen here.

21a Regiment, half of it about good to form fresh coalition (7)
The four-letter abbreviation for the name of an engineering regiment (I know what their flag looks like because my neighbour – a former member – sometimes flies it from his flagpole) is followed by the first two letters of the same abbreviation (‘half of ‘it’) containing (‘about’) the usual abbreviation of ‘good’.

26a Extract from plant, a plant from the east, that gives name to common food (5)
Not the best clue in this puzzle, a ‘reverse hidden’ (‘Extract from…from the east’) which provides the name of an area where a particular kind of long-grained rice was originally grown. ‘This gave’ would be far better than ‘that gives’ when it comes to the definition, but wouldn’t work in the surface reading.

29a Senior canon Louis maybe backed to attend prince (5)
Having chosen a Louis from the seventeen or so available (nineteen if you accept a couple of dubious claims), his three-letter title in his home country should be reversed (‘backed’) and put after the standard two-letter abbreviation for ‘prince’.

32a Danger: knife’s front end going as far as it can (4)
The first letter of a four-letter word for a Malay dagger with a wavy blade should be moved as far as it can go (without impinging on the space available for 33a), thus producing a word for ‘danger’.

1d Intellectual dropping in for punch (4)
A six-letter term for an intellectual, typically applied to a research scientist, is missing (‘dropping’) the letters IN.

6d Fine things see off professorships (5)
Another removal wordplay, this time the letter of the alphabet known as ‘see’ is taken away from (‘off’) a six-letter word for ‘professorships’.

11d Degree subject – it’s swatted round college (11)
A neat &lit clue, a two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of degree is followed by a five-letter word for a subject plus an anagram (‘swatted’) of ITS containing (‘around’) the usual abbreviation for ‘college’.

17d Violinist keeps quiet, one involved in medley earlier? (8)
A seven-letter derogatory term for a fiddler contains the abbreviation for ‘quiet’ or ‘softly’ in musical notation; ‘medley’ is an obsolete term for a fight.

18d Tortoise, this, delicacy with a slice of entrecôte (8)
The three-letter Latin word for ‘this’, an archaic term for a delicacy, and the first (or middle, or last, pick your preferred ‘slice’) letter from ‘entrecote’ combine to produce a West Indian freshwater tortoise.

20d Holidays coming up? No good getting stuck into that gospel (7)
A five-letter term for holidays, usually applied specifically to absence from work, is reversed (‘coming up’) before having the usual abbreviation for ‘no good’ inserted’ (‘stuck into’ it).

24d Persian sharif losing hearts, banged up (5)
On checking ‘bang up’ in Chambers I found that a US meaning of ‘to knock about’ is given, so it’s certainly a valid anagram indicator if you’re across the pond. The wordplay here involves an anagram (‘banged up’) of SHARIF without (‘losing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘hearts’.

25d French mister artist framed in middle of bath? Lifeless one! (5)
A whiff of Corday in this one. The single letter representing the French word for ‘mister’ is followed by two letters which we have all seen many times indicated by ‘artist’ (though whether it’s any better than ‘jolly’ for RM remains to be seen) contained (‘framed’) in the central letters (‘middle’) of ‘bath’.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,596

13th March 2022 27th March 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,596 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

After last week’s celebration special, we have a plain puzzle with a 13×11 grid. I thought this was quite a tricky one, with a fair sprinkling of obscurities, several less familiar meanings of familiar words, and some wordplays that explored the boundaries of acceptability.

Setters’ Corner: I see on the andlit.org.uk site the sad news that Dr Eddie Young, a long-time Azed clue-writing competitor, has died. He contributed many excellent clues, as can be seen from the Archive, and won the Azed cup on eleven occasions, but surely his finest moment was with this effort which took first place in comp 1775 (June 2006):

A hard tussle with Dr E. Young plainly winning? (13)[su_spoiler title=”click for solution”]ROUGH-AND-READY [(A HARD DR E YOUNG)*][/su_spoiler]

RIP

1a Early land plants I cut in slash, type grown wild (13)
It’s not difficult to identify that the answer is going to be I plus a three-letter word for ‘cut’ inside an anagram (‘grown wild’) of SLASH TYPE; it’s harder to work out what that answer is. It can be revealed below by anyone struggling to get a foothold.[su_spoiler title=”click to reveal the solution”]PSILOPHYTALES[/su_spoiler]

10a Little Poll issuing shriek in Austrian region? It’s all over (5)
A thee-letter interjection indicating fright which will be familiar to all readers of Beano (and similar comics) is contained by one spelling of a well-known Austrian region, the whole lot then being reversed “It’s all over”). ‘Poll’ is ‘a familiar equivalent of the name Mary, used as the conventional proper name of any parrot’.

14a Leading lady? Father clutches fresh recording, blowing kiss? (8)
A four-letter word for ‘father’ taken directly from another language contains (‘clutches’) a five-letter word for a ‘new recording’ without (‘blowing’) the usual single character representing a kiss. Strictly speaking, I don’t think that it is a new recording, rather a new combination of existing recordings, but I’m not sure that I could better define the term in two words or less.

16a Endless revelry at rear of bottega in Madrid slum? (6)
A four-letter word for ‘revelry’ missing its last letter (‘endless’) goes after (‘at back of’) a rather more mundane word for a bodega, but I don’t think the definition here is accurate. In Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, the term is applied to a ward or quarter of a city, or sometimes to rural settlements, but carries no suggestion of poverty; in the US, however, it is applied to a Spanish-speaking district in a city or town, especially a poor neighbourhood. Although the US has many places with names which duplicate those in other countries, Madrid is not I think one of them.

17a Harvesters become unwell, yellow inside, on being laid off (9)
A six-letter word meaning ‘become unwell’ has inside it a five-letter word for ‘yellow’ from which the letters ON have been removed (‘on being laid off’).

19a One exhausted, given time off, shivering (5)
A single-letter word for ‘one’ is followed by a five-letter word for ‘exhausted’ from which the usual abbreviation for ‘time’ has been deleted (‘given time off’). The solution is an adjective derived from a three-letter name given to the trembling poplar, itself now archaic and superseded by the form seen here.

22a Soaks by the sound of it in acme of distress (5)
I’m not sure this clue is exactly fair, and I would be interested to know how many solvers identified the solution from the wordplay rather than having to reverse engineer it. There’s no problem recognising that the answer is going to be a homophone of a word meaning ‘soaks’, but moving forward from there, particularly considering the fact that the pronunciation of the solution has it rhyming with ‘please’ rather than ‘plies’, is difficult if you are not familiar with either of the words involved.

24a Ace cellist, head giving way to pinnacle in studio (9)
The wordplay here is not phrased in a helpful way – a seven-letter word for a studio (of the sort associated with artists) has its first letter replaced by a three-letter word for a pinnacle or hill (‘head giving way to pinnacle’), the solution being the nine-letter surname of an outstanding French cellist.

29a Knocker’s noise? Oil hinges next to it briefly (6)
The five-letter name of a fragrant essential oil is reversed (‘hinges’ – not a reversal indicator I’ve seen before, but perfectly valid based on the ‘to turn as on a hinge’ definition in Chambers) and followed by the usual shortened form of ‘it’ (‘it briefly’).

30a Chateaux yielding success with English grape (not half) (8)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘success’, the standard single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’ and the eight-letter name of a type of grape (and of the white wine produced from it) missing its last four letters (‘not half’).

1d Piece of armour once: man has incomplete set on top (7)
A three-letter word for the sort of man that might be ‘hep’ has a five-letter word meaning ‘[to] set’ – without its last letter (‘incomplete’) – on top of it.

3d It breaks up fat, lifting vitality in lean (6)
A three-letter word for vitality or vital juice is reversed (‘lifting’) inside a three-letter word which you might not immediately associate with the meaning ‘[to] lean’.

6d Steamed dish from Mexico – Mediterranean island switches its parts (5)
I’m pleased to see that Azed has taken note of John Atkinson’s comment on the same dish (albeit with an alternative spelling) in AZ 2,592, wherein he questioned the use of ‘spicy’ in the Chambers definition. I will leave it to John to confirm that the ones which he has sampled did indeed appear to have been steamed. The wordplay, involves the first three letters of the name of a Mediterranean island (and George Cross winner) being exchanged with the last two.

9d Barracoutas removed from tin up in Orcadian cabin (4)
Not my favourite clue in this puzzle. We are required to remove the chemical symbol for tin from a six-letter South African word for barracoutas (although the clue suggests that it should be the other way round) prior to reversing it (‘up’), the solution being a word for a hut or shed seen in the Northern Isles and the Barred Crossword.

12d Letter, by hand, accompanied by Her Majesty’s initials? (9)
The wordplay here is a charade of a three-letter Latin word for ‘by’ or ‘through’, a four-letter slang term for a hand, and the Royal Cipher of Queen Elizabeth II.

18d Renault may be got out of this (7)
I imagine something similar has been probably been done before, but this simple anagram of RENAULT provides a nice &lit.

20d Crowning (if indefinable) quality discernible in Napoleon, as usual? (6)
The two-letter word for an indefinable crowning quality is contained by the surname of Napoleon – no, not the French military and political leader, but the much more famous (for those of us of a certain age, anyway) Man from U.N.C.L.E. (a perfect role for Robert Vaughn), who – along with his doughty sidekick Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) – had us glued to our sets in the 1960s and talking about him at school the day after transmission. Governments across the globe who were ideologically opposed to each other had joined forces to form the United Network Command for Law Enforcement in an attempt to neutralise the threat posed by THRUSH, an organisation which aimed to conquer the world; it fell to Napoleon and Ilya to lead this fight, and very entertainingly they did it as I recall. Incidentally, it seems that when Ian Fleming was asked to contribute to the show’s concepts he came up with the characters Napoleon S and April Dancer, the latter not appearing in the original series but being played in the spin-off The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. by Stefanie Powers, teamed with Mark Slate (Noel Harrison).

21d Russian travel may be covered uncomfortably in Uralian ones (6)
A composite anagram &lit, but hardly Azed’s finest. The letters of RUSSIAN TRAVEL can be rearranged (‘may be covered uncomfortably’, the last of these words accurately describing how this indication sits with me) to form URALIAN plus the solution (‘ones’).

23d ‘The Mercenary Horseman‘? Choirs often have a go at me (6)
A double definition, the reference in the second being to John of that ilk, an English composer, largely of choral music.

28d Plump hands going up (4)
The plural of a word used facetiously for a hand or handwriting is reversed (‘going up’) to produce a verb which is used these days as ‘[to] barter’, but once also meant ‘to cast or sit down forcibly’, hence to plump oneself (down), although this usage is now confined to dialect.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,595

6th March 2022 20th March 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,595 ‘Looking Back’

Difficulty rating: (6.5 / 10)

The focus this week, I think, should be on celebrating Azed’s extraordinary achievement in having reached his golden jubilee, about which I will say a little more below. As for this puzzle, it will not linger long in my memory, and I hope I will not offend anyone by saying that it looked as though it has been thrown together in a bit of a hurry. The construction is pretty basic – take any ordinary puzzle, change some letters in the completed grid, and write clues wherein the definition leads to the old answer and the wordplay to the new one. But let’s be fair here – Azed has earned the right many times over to have a bit of an easy ride on his 50^th ‘birthday’. Solving the puzzle wasn’t trivial, and I can’t say that I found it particularly enjoyable, but I was gratified to find that the message appeared without any glitches.

Underneath the notes on individual clues I have added a checklist of the letters (there could be none, one, or two) which have been displaced from the defined solution in each clue, followed (for those who may still be struggling) by the positions in the entries where the substitutions are made. Note that there is an error in the clue for 24a – the last three words should be ‘knocking off drink’ rather than ‘knocking of drink’.

PS When Azed refers to the misprints which deliver the message he is clearly referring to the letters in the grid which are indicated by the wordplay but not the definition. The message should become clear if you put a circle or similar in pencil round these letters in the completed grid.

Setters’ Corner: Having done the Mephisto every Sunday for more years than I care to remember, I started tackling Azed puzzles around 14 years ago. I was immediately charmed by their wit and ingenuity, at a level I had only previously seen achieved by John Graham (Araucaria) and Mike Laws, and even then with less regularity. From that point on, I was hooked; when I started doing a weekly blog of the puzzles two or three years later it only served to further increase my appreciation of their excellence.

For some time I had wanted to have a go at setting crosswords myself, but didn’t possess the confidence to submit a puzzle to a crossword editor, knowing it would probably get torn apart; the Azed clue writing comps, however, gave me the opportunity to submit single clues and then see how more experienced setters had tackled the same words. I realised pretty quickly that my initial lack of positive results was due in part to problems with soundness, a requirement which Azed regularly highlighted in his result slips, and consequently I started looking at clues very differently from how I had when I was just solving puzzles. Having overcome this issue, I met with some modest success which encouraged me to set and submit complete puzzles, so I have Azed to thank not only for a wonderful weekly cruciverbal treat of a remarkably high standard but also for getting my setting career started. Thank you! And I can tell you that I was greatly chuffed a couple of years ago when John Green informed me that one of the entries for a Listener puzzle of mine had come from the great man himself.

12a NY bum, male knife wasted, head cut off (6)
A two-letter word for a male is followed by an anagram (‘wasted’) of KNIFE without its first letter (‘head cut off’). The ‘NY’ indicates that the word to be misprinted in the grid is of US origin, and the ‘bum’ is the BTM rather than a hobo.

16a Garden shrub, single one, ordinary, found round fringes of Italy (8)
A five-letter word for a person who prefers to act on their own and the usual abbreviation for ‘ordinary’ are placed round the first and last letters (‘fringes’) of ‘Italy’.

22a Roundabout abroad is booming – about time (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘is booming’ (thinking lion rather than business), containing (‘about’) the usual abbreviation for ‘time’; ‘abroad’ in this instance refers to North America.

24a Pin disposed of in knocking off drink (4)
A seven-letter word for ‘knocking off’ (in the stealing sense) has the consecutive letters PIN removed (‘disposed of’).

25a One of bases for mast with cap on shaped with copper lining (8)
The standard one-letter representation of ‘with’ is followed by an anagram (‘shaped’) of CAP ON which has the chemical symbol for copper inside (‘lining’). The ‘mast’ here is the sort that might be found on the forest floor.

28a Wild goat I’m surprised to see in bitter herb dish (7)
A two-letter interjection denoting surprise is contained by a five-letter term for a dish of bitter herbs eaten during the Jewish Passover. [su_spoiler title=”click to reveal the five-letter element”]MAROR[/su_spoiler]

30a JM’s appalled at having to hug girls regularly (5)
‘JM’ is John Milton, the word defined being his spelling of an adjective normally seen with an ‘H’ included. The wordplay has AT (from the clue) containing (‘to hug’) three letters taken at regular intervals from ‘girls’.

31a Scottish snob mostly irritated about the States (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘irritated’ has its last letter removed (‘mostly’) before being placed around a three-letter abbreviation for the United States. ‘Snob’ is an Azed favourite, being an old informal term for a shoemaker’s apprentice or cobbler.

34a Ointment made with egg on inside, all over (6)
A three-letter abbreviation for a Latin word meaning ‘made’ or ‘did’ has a three-letter word for ‘egg on’ or ‘incite to fight’ inside, the whole lot being reversed (‘all over’).

2d Venetian painter replacing bit of pain with mark having quivery effect (7)
The seven-letter surname of a Venetian artist (with forenames Giovanni Battista) from the eighteenth century has the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘pain’ replaced by the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘mark’.

3d Kidney secretion on hand (5)
The wordplay here is a charade of the standard bit of commercial jargon for ‘on’ and a three-letter informal term for a hand or arm which has fishy connotations.

5d Typical of old hound to move swiftly catching sheep (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to move swiftly’ containing (‘catching’) a three-letter word for a sheep, the word defined being a Shakespearean term used to describe a dog having a pendulous upper lip of a particular quality.

8d A copper initially is often right in arguing from cause to effect (7, 2 words)
The letter A (from the clue) is followed by a two-letter abbreviation for a police officer of relatively modest rank (‘copper’) and the first letters (‘initially’) of ‘is often right in’. The defined solution is divided (1,6).

18d Make a mistake dividing bears, looking up pedigrees (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to make a mistake’ is put inside (‘dividing’) a four-letter word for ‘bears’ (in the sense of ‘weighs’ or ‘presses’) and the result is reversed (‘looking up’).

20d Wild ass, male, one admitting sloth (7)
The word for a male already seen at 12a is followed by the letters ONE (from the clue) containing (‘admitting’) a two-letter word for a sloth which will be familiar to regular solvers.

21d Uncle Sam going into origin, rising like a bird (7)
A three-letter abbreviation for a country (which has already put in an appearance at 31a) embodied by Uncle Sam is contained by a four-letter word for an origin (and the surname of the England test cricket captain, at least for the moment). The defined word is a heraldic term with which I was unfamiliar.

(definitions are underlined)

Checklist of displaced letters

Across:

1: the letter S has been displaced from the defined solution; in 6: the letter E; 11: R; 12: I; 13: I; 15: D; 16: C and A; 17: no change; 19: G; 22: Y; 24: no change; 25: A and R; 28: K; 30: A; 31: T; 32: E; 33: U; 34: E

Down:

1: the letters S and E have been displaced from the defined solution; in 2: the letter R; 3: N; 4: T; 5: D; 6: no change; 7: T and T; 8: R; 9: R; 10: M and E; 14: V and I; 18: P; 20: M; 21: N; 23: C; 26: no change; 27: L; 29: O

Checklist of positions

Across:

1: the letter replaced is in position 1 / in 6: position 6 / 11: 2 / 12: 3 / 13: 3 / 15: 4 / 16: 5 and 8 / 19: 1 / 22: 6 / 25: 1 and 4 / 28: 4 / 30: 3 / 31: 4 / 32; 8 / 33: 1 / 34: 6

Down:

1: the letters replaced are in positions 1 and 12 / in 2: position 2 / 3: 3 / 4: 5 / 5: 6 / 7: 4 and 9 / 8: 3 / 9: 2 / 10: 1 and 12 / 14: 1 and 6 / 18: 5 / 20: 3 / 21: 6 / 23: 1 / 27: 3 / 29: 3

Notes for Azed 2,594

27th February 2022 13th March 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,594 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I found this an entertaining puzzle which seemed to sit somewhere around the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were enough straightforward clues to enable the solver to get a toehold, but not so many as to soften the challenge too much.

Setters’ Corner: I’m not going to single out a clue this week, rather to look ahead to Azed’s Golden Jubilee next Sunday. There is an excellent article published on the Guardian website today celebrating this extraordinary achievement which I recommend to all aficionados. I have only been solving Azed’s puzzles for around fourteen of those fifty years, and blogging them for less than that, but from the outset I was hooked. There is nothing to match Azed’s clueing in terms of imagination and wit combined with scrupulous fairness and accuracy of construction, which is why for the last few years Azed has been the only crossword that I have tackled. Enough said. Anyone who would like to have a go at the very first Azed puzzle from March 1972 can find it here in online and PDF forms, together with the solution.

I must also thank that cruciverbal stripling, Richard Heald (incidentally the best Azed competition clue writer of this century by a country mile), for quoting in the above article my favourite Azed clue, “My letters could make lad sad” for LASS. Azed may well have written clues that were more technically accomplished, but surely few that better demonstrate what sets him head and shoulders above other compilers.

11a Learnt as of old to forgive one being released (4)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘forgive’ has the letters ONE omitted (‘released’) to produce the Spenserian (‘as of old’) past tense of a verb meaning ‘study’ or ‘learn’.

14a/15a Bouffant style it could be made up of…(4) / …To surpass another hairdo (4)
There is no interworking between these two clues other than the fact that both solutions relate to a styling of hair. In the first clue, the solution is an anagram (‘could be made’) of UP OF, while the second consists of two definitions, the first involving an uncommon (in my experience, anyway) meaning of a verb more often used in the sense of ‘to strike violently’.

19a Sniffer dog making hit, including drug (4)
A three-letter word for ‘[to] hit’ containing (‘including’) the usual single-letter drug of choice for crossword setters produces an alternative spelling of the name of a sort of hound more associated with Victorian detectives than the Met’s drug squad.

22a Tries Eiger possibly: e.g. this is unfolded? (6)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of TRIES EIGER can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form EG plus the solution (‘this’) as IS. The whole clue stands as an indication of the solution, again represented by ‘this’ in the clue.

26a Quiz: what do some locos run on? (5)
A double definition, where the first one leads to a familiar word, although the ‘quiz’ meaning probably doesn’t immediately -or ever – spring to one’s mind, while the second indicates a hyphenated (1-4) solution.

28a What makes Scots team…sing about this strip? (4)
When the letters SING are placed around (‘about’) this Scots word meaning ‘[to] strip’, the result is the name of…well, certainly a Scottish city, although the football club has an ‘Albion’ on the end of it. But they are often known just by the one word here, so we’ll let it pass.

29a Pet: that’s fed nothing for tea (4)
If the four-letter (canine) pet which constitutes the solution (ie ‘that’) is ‘fed’ (contains) the usual single-letter representation of ‘nothing’ then it can produce the name of a type of scented black tea. Surely the most famous representative of the breed was Tricki Woo, the pampered and rather overweight charge of Mrs Pumphrey in the James Herriot books, famous for on occasion going ‘crackerdog’ (running around wildly) and ‘flopbot’ (which can happen to anyone). And, of course, for the lavish gifts (often edible in nature) that he used to send to ‘Uncle Herriot’ out of gratitude for his excellent veterinary care.

31a Delight where penitents were found, Ali being knocked out (4)
The seven-letter name of a large porch at the west end of some churches where penitents waited to be admitted into the main body of the church (ie ‘where penitents were found’) has the letters ALI removed from inside it (‘knocked out’) in order to produce a familiar word for ‘delight’.

5d Tree cut short in trail raised to form part of ship’s structure (8)
A five-letter scientific term for a tree with its last letter taken off (‘cut short’) is put into a reversal (‘raised’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] trail’ or draw slowly.

8d Jock’s gaga, climbing tree after party (6)
A four-letter tree native to the southern US (which is also the name of a South American monkey) is reversed (‘climbing’) after the two-letter word for the sort of party that crossword setters seem particularly fond of. The “Jock’s” is there to indicate that the solution is shown by Chambers as being Scottish.

9d Colonial administrators endorse changes and arrive with number introduced (12)
Here we have an anagram (‘changes’) of ENDORSE into which a four-letter word for ‘arrive’ and the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘number’ have been introduced. I am not entirely convinced that the wordplay is grammatically sound: the present indicative ‘changes’ jars with the ‘and arrive with number introduced’, the ‘and’ being the problematic element. I would have been happier with “Colonial administrators endorse changes, arrive with number introduced”.

10d Grammatical addition yielding first of idioms in fashion (10)
The well-disguised wordplay in this clue involves a six-letter word for ‘yielding’ being followed by the first letter of ‘idioms’ contained within a three-letter word for ‘fashion’.

12d Remain loyal? More so, rarely without merit (10)
Here we have a wordplay with ‘Azed’ written all over it, leading to a two-word phrase which might describe what those who were perhaps not very loyal to start with but are now more so might be likely to do. It’s actually quite a hard phrase to indicate, and I think Azed has made a pretty good attempt. The solution is on rare occasions (it is shown by Chambers as ‘rare’) used to described those without merit but never (by orthographers at least) to describe those who have been deprived of pudding.

21d Cutting off fuel limits one (7)
A six-letter Scottish and northern English term for fuel, derived from the Old Norse word for ‘fire’, contains (‘limits’) the Roman numeral for one. Or the single letter representing the nominative singular of the first personal pronoun – Ximenes apparently didn’t like ‘one’ being used for I, but it seems to me that there are two perfectly good justifications without resorting to the similarity between the letter and the Arabic numeral (which I suspect was the one he took exception to).

25d SA line dividing passage once (6)
The usual single-character abbreviation for ‘line’ is inserted into (‘splitting’) an obsolete five-letter term for a passage or a walk behind battlements. The definition has SA being used not in the sense of South Africa or Salvation Army, but the sort of thing that in reference to Clara Bow was called ‘It’. Sadly it was not Clara but a character in Elinor Glyn’s novel ‘It’ that Dorothy Parker was referring to when she wrote in a review “And she had It. It, hell; she had Those”.

27d I kept in contact, say, requiring little effort vocally (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is contained by (‘kept in’) a four-letter word that is often seen preceded by ‘contact’, the result being a word which I once included in a puzzle without having looked up the definition in Chambers. Not a good move.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,593

20th February 2022 6th March 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,593 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I thought this puzzle was considerably trickier than last week’s, and considerably more entertaining. I’ve placed it in the middle of the difficulty spectrum, but the relative lack of freebies perhaps even took it a shade past the mid-point. There were some amusing clues in there, with several of Azed’s trademarks on show,

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 6d, “Tail of Moby-Dick and ray no good as source of whalebone? (5)”. The wordplay here involves a charade of the last letter of ‘Moby-Dick’, the letters RE, and the usual abbreviation for ‘no good’, the definition being ‘source of whalebone?’. The point of interest here is the use of ‘ray’ to indicate RE. I once submitted a clue in which ‘a’ indicated AN; I wasn’t too happy about it myself, and the editor didn’t like it at all, on the basis that they are simply two forms of the same word. I don’t think ray/re here is nearly as bad, but I still feel that using one form of a word to suggest an alternative form (eg road/road) is quite different from using a word to indicate an abbreviation (eg road/rd). I’m not suggesting that it is either unsound or unfair, but I do think it’s a bit weak.

1a Blokes in musical genre displaying military headgear (8)
A five-letter word for ‘blokes’ is contained by a three-letter musical genre which has its roots in the Caribbean but became popular in the UK during the 2 Tone revival that began in the late 1970s. “I’ve just seen Suggs walking up the drive” – “Oh dear, that’s the first sign of Madness.” I’ll get my coat…

10a Broadening on each side, timber tree to work at (10)
A charade of a three-letter word meaning ‘on each side’ in the sense of ‘apiece’ (eg when the two sides contesting a football match have two goals apiece), a five-letter Moroccan timber tree, and a two-letter verb meaning ‘to work at’.

11a Death? Saint accepts short way (6)
The name of a saint who was canonized in 1920 and premiered at the Garrick Theatre in Manhattan three years later contains (‘accepts’) the two-letter abbreviation of a particular type of ‘way’. The sense in which the solution is used here is described by OED as ‘pietistic’ and is a reference to the river that one might look over and see a band of angels heading in one’s general direction.

14a Spiritual leader removing hat for mature lady (in US) (4)
A seven-letter word for a spiritual leader that is usually associated with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has the letters HAT removed in order to produce a slang word, shown by Chambers as ‘chiefly US’, for a mature woman.

15a Abbey, English, displaying blend of metals (8, 2 words)
The name of a famous Monmouthshire abbey is joined by the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’ to produce a (3,5) term for an alloy of lead with a smaller proportion of another metal that was used to coat sheet iron or steel in order to inhibit corrosion.

19a A devil back to front, appearing as heathen in poetry (5)
The last letter of a two-word (2,3) phrase for ‘a devil’ is moved to the beginning (‘back to front’), the result being a Miltonian (hence the ‘in poetry’) spelling of a word meaning heathen or pagan which appears in Paradise Lost.

22a Wine? One’s drunk about a mug (7)
Here we have a single-letter word for ‘one’ followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘drunk’ around a three-letter word for a drinking-mug. I don’t like ‘has’ (or apostrophe-s) being used as a juxtaposition indicator – I have no doubt that there are meanings of the verb ‘have’ in Chambers which could be used to justify it, but that applies to many other verbs. I think something like “Wine one sloshed around mug” would be just as good (modesty prevents me from saying ‘superior’!).

27a The inducement that includes love and opening to heaven for believer in karma? (8)
The letters THE (from the clue) and a three-letter word for an inducement or concession have the usual single-character representation of ‘love’ placed between them and are followed by the first letter (‘opening’) of ‘heaven’.

30a Pearl oyster has borne? Could be this stone, yes? (6)
Azed has been a bit naughty with this one. The composite anagram, where the letters of OYSTER HAS BORNE can be rearranged (‘could be’) to form the solution (‘this’) plus STONE YES, is fine. However, although there are two question marks in the clue, neither of them directly follows the word ‘Pearl’, surely the minimum required to make the ‘definition’ adequate, given that it isn’t even a definition by example, just part of a name. But I’m not bothered, firstly because I enjoyed it, and secondly since I think that 49 years and 11 months of yeoman service gives Azed the right to stretch things a little on occasion.

31a Burning green logs, nip one of them in pieces (6)
The anagram (‘in pieces’) here is of NIP and LOG (‘one of them’), and the solution is a word that I don’t recall coming across before in this particular sense. It relates to a process for purifying copper or tin containing their oxides as impurities, where freshly-cut trees were used to provide the reducing agent (wood gas from the sap) to convert the oxide to the metallic element. Natural gas or diesel are now generally employed for the purpose, but the name of the process has endured.

1d House in Warsaw Susan and James briefly vacated (4)
The standard diminutives (‘briefly’) of the names ‘Susan’ and ‘James’ have their middle letters removed (‘vacated’), the solution being a Polish term for a parliament, and since 1921 the name specifically of the lower house in Poland.

2d WC avoided by women, one in pub like a sewer? (7)
WC (from the clue) without (‘avoided by’) the usual abbreviation for ‘women’ is followed by a single letter word for ‘one’ inside a five-letter term for a pub. The adjective relates to one of those things that the Romans kindly gave us, having already given themselves a ‘Maxima’ one in the 6th century BC.

4d See me going up in plane, one responsible for silverware (8)
The word ME is reversed (‘going up’) inside a six-letter term for a plane – not the sort that leaves the ground, but the sort that might be covered in the former and has its roots in the latter. It is unfortunate that the word ‘plane’ and the solution are rather similar.

5d Unpleasant ooze from Pret à Manager fare, ignoring recipe (6)
A seven-letter informal term for the sort of things that you might get from Pret (perhaps with bacon, lettuce and tomato but without the unpleasant ooze) missing the usual abbreviation for ‘recipe’ (which has already featured at 33a).

8d Naked figure, head out of position, in Italian tourist town (5)
A word for ‘[a] naked figure’, or perhaps more accurately ‘a naked person’ (or a picture thereof), has its first letter (‘head’) relocated (‘out of position’) in order to produce the name of the Italian town, known to me only because the name of their soccer team is that of the town followed by the letters ‘se’.

9d Some spies put out to dry, as victims of hostility (8)
A five-letter term for spies of the type exemplified by Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is followed by a three-letter verb meaning ‘[to] put out to dry’. In the definition, ‘as’ is used in the sense of ‘like’.

23d Jock’s crested tuft, very soft within (6)
The “Jock’s” in the clue is used to indicate the Scottishness of both the definition (‘crested’) and the element of the wordplay (a Scots word for ‘tuft’) which has the usual abbreviation for ‘pianissimo’ (ie ‘very soft’) within it. I’m not convinced that “Jock’s crested tuft” can reasonably be interpreted as “Jock’s crested, Jock’s tuft”, but we’ll let that pass.

26d Vehicle, we hear, for one-time star of silver screen (5)
A homophone (that old favourite ‘we hear’) for a sort of large motor vehicle (I wonder if Azed considered using ‘Articulated vehicle’ instead of ‘Vehicle, we hear’), being the stage surname of Hungarian actor László Löwenstein. I cannot see it without thinking of Al Stewart’s classic song Year of the Cat, which for many years I believed contained the line “You go strolling through the crowd like Big Dolores”. I blame a poor quality cassette recording and Al’s unusual diction. Anyway, it was actually this fellow he was singing about.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,592

13th February 2022 27th February 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,592 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

After last week’s Carte Blanche, this time around we have a full complement of bars, numbers and enumerations. A generous helping of anagrams and hidden/initial letter clues seemed to balance out a few trickier ones, so overall I felt the difficulty was a shade below average.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 2d, “Foreign pick-up in novel for store’s delivery guy (8)”. The wordplay is covered below, but the point of interest here is the definition, “store’s delivery guy”. The solution is classified by Chambers as ‘N Am’, but there is no ‘US’ or similar to be seen in the definition – is that an issue? No, because it is considered perfectly acceptable to suggest localization simply through the choice of defining words. Although ‘store’ and ‘delivery guy’ may have made their way across the pond, they still smack sufficiently of North America to imply that the solution likewise hails from that continent. Azed has done something similar in 10a, this time in the wordplay, where he has used the old-fashioned word ‘viand’ to indicate a term shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’.

10a Enzyme regrettably consumed in viand (8)
A four-letter interjection meaning something along the lines of ‘regrettably’ (and described by Chambers as ‘now rather archaic or mock-heroic’) is contained by (‘consumed in’) a genuinely archaic four-letter word for a viand (normally seen in the plural, though not here).

12a Coarse thread I used to join parts of fish with hands in Scotland (5)
The letter I is used to join the two halves of a Scots word meaning ‘to fish with the hands’ or ‘to guddle’. I wasn’t sure what exactly the thread was being used for in the surface reading, but following a visit many years ago to Threave Castle, where a small pond was teeming with tadpoles of quite freakish dimensions, the idea of finding in that country a fish blessed with hands seems far from implausible.

13a Ape in perfect condition, with dull coating (5)
A two-letter word meaning ‘in perfect condition’, as all systems might be, has a three-letter word (often spelt with four letters, particularly where paint is concerned) meaning ‘dull’ outside (‘coating’),

18a Solitary flower framed by mullion (11)
A five-letter flower (an example of which would be the Michaelmas daisy) is contained (‘framed’) by a six-letter word for a mullion.

24a Girl suggesting divine beauty, mostly in the saddle? (6)
A seven-letter adverb which could feature in the description of someone on horseback has its last letter removed (‘mostly’), leaving a girl’s name of Scandinavian origin to which Chambers ascribes the meaning ‘divinely beautiful’.

26a Navigation system one introduced cut short (6)
It’s that ‘missing comma’ again! Here its presence is required between ‘introduced and ‘cut’ in order to properly (in my opinion) indicate that a five-letter word for ‘cut short’ (as hair might be) is to have a single-letter word for ‘one’ inserted (‘introduced’).

27a Scholar scribbled bit of Homer out in cloistered studies (6)
An anagram (‘scribbled’) of SCHOLAR with the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘Homer’ removed (‘out’). The solution is the plural of a common word, but I was not familiar with the particular meaning used here, “a small enclosure or ‘study’ in a cloister”.

29a House I got back – it’s a long story (5)
The ‘house’ that must be prefixed to the letter I (from the clue) and reversed (‘got back’) is the lower house of the legislature of the Republic of Ireland. The original story runs to 24 books and ten years, and the name has come to be applied to a tale of many woes or a long story.

1d In local speech ‘truly’ say is replacing US for ‘howdy-do’ (4)
I’m not entirely convinced by the accuracy of the wordplay here (‘in’ would certainly be preferable to ‘for’, but would produce a meaningless surface reading), the solver being expected to take a four-letter word for a ‘howdy-do’ (a troublesome state of affairs) and then replace the letters US with a two-letter representation of ‘say’.

2d Foreign pick-up in novel for store’s delivery guy (8)
The ‘foreign’ pick-up is a three-letter one of the antipodean variety, frequently to be found parked in crossword grids, and the sort of novel wherein it is contained could be à clef or policier. Or Abramovich.

3d Ramp maybe, one with leg on each side (5)
Nothing too tricky about the wordplay, the ‘leg’ which goes either side of the Roman numeral for one being the sort that designates the side of a cricket field on which the batsman’s legs are when taking guard. The ramp here, however, is ramp² in Chambers and has nothing to do with sleeping policemen.

4d Grand girl in novel accompanying knight, an old fellow (6)
A charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘grand’, the four-letter title of a novel featuring the eponymous Ms Woodhouse, and a single-letter abbreviation for knight. The ‘old’ in the definition reflects the fact that Chambers give the solution as ‘archaic’.

6d Spicy dish cheers man (6)
The usual two-letter interjection that crossword setters frequently indicate by ‘cheers’ plus a four-letter word for a man. As John A points out below, the dish in question is not necessarily spicy, although Azed’s definition is in line with the Chambers entry, presumably written by someone who (like me) had never eaten one (or who had cause to remember a particularly spicy one).

8d Pils – that’s about it for those nicking what’s not theirs! (5)
A clever clue, and one that when broken in half would be seen to have Azed written right though it. If you put the letters PILS around the solution (‘about it’), you get a word for people who nick stuff that isn’t theirs.

9d Suitable for regular traffic? Hard to believe in grassland, we hear (8)
First the missing comma, now the partial homophone! A four-letter word meaning ‘hard to believe’ (as a story might be) is contained by a group of four letters that would be pronounced the same as a poetic word for a meadow (‘grassland, we hear’). Those four letters do at least constitute a word (which is something for which to be grateful, I suppose), but it has nothing to do with grassland.

17d Reckless conspirator, name associated with mutiny, fired up inside (8)
The five-letter name of a minesweeper featured in a 1950s book, play and film, the last of these memorably featuring Humphrey Bogart as Lieutenant Commander Queeq, has a three-letter word for ‘fired’ (or ‘illuminated’) reversed (‘up’) inside. The original conspirator gave his name to two conspiracies in the first century BC, although his involvement in the first one, and indeed its very existence, have been questioned by modern historians. He was no stranger to suggestions of improper behaviour – he was accused of murdering his wife and daughter so that he could marry the wealthy Aurelia Orestilla, and in 73BC was brought to trial on a charge of adultery with a vestal virgin, a capital offence (‘capital’ as in ‘punishable by death’ rather than ‘excellent’). He was acquitted. Tried for extortion in 65BC, he was again acquitted, although one commentator wrote that “he left the court as poor as some of his judges had been before the trial.” The next year he stood accused of murdering his former brother-in-law and carrying his severed head through the streets of Rome, before getting the victim’s name retrospectively added to the proscription in order to legitimize it. Once more he was acquitted. The conspiracy to overthrow the Roman republic in 63BC that bears his name (and that he really did lead) signalled the end of his run of luck, the slaughter of his entire army (already depleted through desertions) obviating the need for a trial.

28d Letter from Tel Aviv date shown in unsealed enclosure? (4)
The usual single letter for ‘date’ is contained by a three-letter abbreviation for something that was once commonly enclosed when a response by post was expected to your written request or enquiry but is a relative rarity in these days of predominantly electronic communication. I wonder if millennials would be familiar with it? I don’t suppose that any read this blog, so I’m probably not going to find out. Anyway, the solution is the eighteenth letter of the Hebrew (hence ‘Tel Aviv’) alphabet, as well as being the name by which singer, songwriter and actress Helen Folasade Adu CBE is better known.

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,591

6th February 2022 20th February 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,591 ‘Carte Blanche’

Difficulty rating: (5 / 10)

This puzzle is, in the words of Adam Ant, ‘nothing to be scared of’ (I was never sure whether it was ‘ridicule’ or ‘Liverpool’ that he was actually talking about, but having recently watched The Responder I think it must have been the former). But it’s significantly tougher than a standard plain puzzle because that’s what it is, but without bars, numbering or enumerations! And based on feedback here and on the help forums, I think that the increase in difficulty is more pronounced for non-setters than for setters – hence I’ve moved the dial on the ‘toughometer’ up a bit. There are a couple of things to note when solving it. Firstly, the 180-degree rotational symmetry (seen in all Azed puzzles) means that the lengths of the across solutions in clue order are symmetrical, ie if the solution to the first across clue is four letters, the answer to the last across clue will also be four letters, and so on. Secondly, the unching in the puzzle is in line with Azed’s normal standards, so four and five letter entries will have exactly one unchecked letter while six, seven and eight letters entries will have either one or two unchecked letters. This means, for instance, that a four letter entry on the top row must have exactly three down solutions hanging off it, whilst a five letter entry in the same position would have exactly four.

The only way to deal with a Carte Blanche like this is to blind-solve several clues, ideally among the first six across and ten down clues (or thereabouts), and then to start slotting the solutions together. Remember that as soon as you solve an across clue, you can put a length against its symmetrical partner, so solving the last few across clues offers extra benefit. Once you have a foothold, things become a great deal simpler. After the usual notes on some of the trickier or more interesting clues, I have included a checklist of the answer lengths. Following that I have provided (as hidden spoilers) the layout of the first row and the solutions to the first two across clues for the benefit of anyone who is really struggling to get started.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at the clue “Delicate sponge cake – it receives new adornment on wedding day (2 words)”. The interesting feature of this clue is that the solution includes an apostrophe, which raises the question of whether this should be indicated in the enumeration of the clue, eg (2 words, apostrophe). It is a point on which there is no general agreement, and I must admit that for this reason I try in my own puzzles to avoid solutions which contain apostrophes (I can’t recall ever including one), but I am of the view that there is no need to indicate them. It seems to me that the worst thing for the solver is to be unsure as to whether a possible solution matches the enumeration – better, surely, to have a standard for all barred puzzles that solutions consisting of multiple words with spaces between them are indicated as ‘(n words)’ and everything else – hyphens, apostrophes, diacritical marks – is ignored.

Across

Rod, worthless, catching exhausted fish for supper?
A three-letter synonym for ‘rod’ is followed by a four-letter biblical word for ‘worthless’ (no stranger to Azed puzzles) containing a three-letter word for ‘exhausted’ in the sense of ‘finished’ or ‘used up’. If you are puzzled by the ‘for supper’ in the definition, Azed has included it to indicate that the fish in question is described by Chambers as ‘edible’, unlike another denizen of the deep with a similar spelling.

Waitress serving drink, a chatterer
A three-letter word for a (small) drink and a three-letter word for a chattering bird combine to produce the name given to a waitress working in a Lyons’ tea shop. Up until 1924, a waitress working in one of J. Lyons’ tea shops was known as a ‘Gladys’. When the management decided that a general image update was required, they launched a competition among their staff to come up with a new name. Suggestions such as ‘Sybil-at-your-service’, ‘Miss Nimble’, ‘Miss Natty’, ‘Busy Bertha’, ’Speedwell and ‘Dextrous Dora’ were mysteriously overlooked in favour of the solution here, although it was spelt with five letters rather than six (I don’t know where the alternative spelling in Chambers comes from). The ban on bobbed hair was lifted, and a new uniform was introduced, featuring a starched cap with a big, red ‘L’ embroidered in the centre, a black Alpaca dress with a double row of pearl buttons sewn with red cotton and white detachable cuffs and collar, finished off with a white square apron. They made their bow on New Year’s Day in 1925, and by 1939 there were 7,600 of them; the name quickly became associated with waitresses in general. Changes after the war meant that the days of were numbered, with the tea shops targeting a rather different audience and moving over to cafeteria service. Towards the end of the century, Lyons invited former waitresses to write to the company with their memories of working in their iconic restaurants, and these letters are held in the London Metropolitan Archives.

Drunk falls over in place of bishop, bristling?
A reversal (‘falls over’) of the usual crossword term for a drunk inside the three-letter word describing the ‘place of [a] bishop’.

‘Peaceful’ girl, not drinking, with fan round what encloses tennis court?
A five-letter girl’s name derived from the Greek word for ‘peace’ and the standard two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘not drinking’ are enclosed by (‘with…round’) a four-letter word for a fan, or the vane of a fan.

Take your medicine, one short in sherry glass
A six-letter word for a sherry glass has a single-letter word for one removed (‘one short’) to produce a (3,2) expression meaning ‘to suffer a punishment’.

Season for Horace? His first is holding the writer back
The first letter of ‘Horace’ (‘His first’) is followed by the letters IS (from the clue) containing a two-letter word for ‘the writer’ reversed (‘back’), the solution being the Latin name for a season which features as a headword in Chambers by dint of also appearing in the works of Shakespeare.

After start of election party man delivered speech with more detail
Following the first letter of ‘election’ we have a three-letter abbreviation for a particular political party and a six-letter word for ‘delivered [a] speech’. The ‘man’ seems superfluous as far as the wordplay is concerned.

Down

Burns I get treated: this saline solution and guts maybe
A composite anagram of the most friendly kind. The letters of BURNS I GET when rearranged (‘treated’) can produce (‘maybe’) the solution (‘this saline solution’, no pun intended) and GUTS.

Ring mount including bit of erbium? It only looks like gold
A single-character representing a ring is followed by a four-letter word for [a] mount (in the equestrian sense) containing (‘including’) the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘erbium’.

Art having the ability to show consent in what’s felt?
I’ve obviously done too many crosswords, because when I see ‘Art’ at the beginning of a clue I immediately assume that the solution is going to end in ‘-est’ (‘Art master’ = ‘teachest’), and on this occasion I was right. The archaic phrasing of the definition mirrors the archaic nature of the solution, while the wordplay involves a three-letter word for ‘consent’ (or an affirmative answer) being put inside a three-letter synonym for ‘[to] felt’, ie to become tangled. At first I thought that ‘Art having the ability to’ was the definition, which seems to fit the solution, but that won’t work – the first element from the wordplay is not a verb, so must be simply ‘consent’, while if ‘show’ alone were there to link the definition and the wordplay it would have to be ‘shows’. The linking words must therefore be ‘to show’, and the definition is as indicated by the underlining above. This doesn’t entirely convince, but I suppose that any auxiliary verb can be used with an implied infinitive – “Can you see the sea? I can”.

Painter, silly, accepting closure of atelier
A four-letter word for a ‘silly’ (the sort who might also have a hairless head) containing (‘accepting’) the last letter(‘closure’) of ‘atelier’ gives us the surname of a French landscape painter of the nineteenth century, whose works generally majored on mood and atmosphere, often at the expense of topographical detail. That information comes from the web since, although in general I’m reluctant to reveal my ignorance, I have to admit that I had never heard of him.

Riders regularly cover these warm trousers?
The wordplay leads to a (3,5) phrase suggesting the type of trousers which would almost certainly be warm and would definitely not be short. The definition is of the oblique sort, the ‘these’ being particularly relevant to horse races, where they would usually be covered in less than 15 seconds.

Period of a festival as in Rome and since
I was prompted by Much Puzzled’s comment (below) to look more closely at this clue, which I had solved and rather rapidly moved on. The wordplay consists of a two-letter Latin word meaning ‘as’, seen in English only in phrases such as ‘xx supra’ and ‘xx infra’, together with a two-letter word meaning ‘since’ or ‘because’, which itself appears earlier in the clue. The solution is classified by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, so has Azed simply chosen not to indicate this or is this what Ximenes termed an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the whole clue serves as the definition while part of it functions as the wordplay? But the solution is not a Latin word, rather a reduced form of the plural ‘utaves’, a variant of ‘octaves’. Originally it was the name given to the eighth day after a festival, but subsequently in a transferred sense it came to mean the period of a festival itself. This word originates from the Middle Ages while the latter usage dates from the Elizabethan period, so ‘as in Rome’ cannot be part of the definition.

Part of hammer getting under pitfall of e.g. basalt
One spelling of the four-letter word for the thin or sharp end of a hammer-head opposite the face is preceded by (‘under’) a four-letter word for a pitfall.

Sang like a pigeon, holding note
A six-letter word (sometimes hyphenated 2-4) which could describe the feet of a pigeon contains the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘note’.

I’m swallowed by bot that’s done for?
An &lit which Azed has made as straightforward as possible, IM (from the clue) being ‘swallowed’ by an anagram (“that’s done for”) of BOT. The second (and last) of the definitions in Chambers is the relevant one.

Judge, as before, Spielberg’s achievement in cinema
The two-letter name of a Spielberg film is contained by a three-letter term exemplified by cinema. The ‘as before’ indicates that the solution is obsolete.

(definitions are underlined)

Answer lengths

Across: The clue beginning with ‘Mountain’ (4); A crowd’s (4); Rod (10); Waitress (6); Foreign (5); Member (7); Composer (5); Drunk (6); Peaceful (4,7); Delicate (5,6); See (6); Take (3,2); Dotty (7); Season (5); Study (6); After (10); Bit (4); Early (4).

Down: Charges (4,8); Pomade (4,3), Ribbon (7); Burns (5); Ring (6); Art (6); Painter (5); Riders (8); Period (4); Bacteria (12); Part (8); Sang (7); Welshman (7); Box (6); River (6); I’m (5); Judge (5); Concerning (4).

First row

Please expand the items below to reveal the layout of the first row and the solutions to the first two across clues.

[su_spoiler title=”Layout of first row”]A four-letter entry with the third letter unchecked, a four-letter entry with the last letter unchecked, and then four unchecked letters[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Solution to first across clue”]GHAT [competition clue word][/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Solution to second across clue”]BOMA [(A MOB)<][/su_spoiler]

Notes for Azed 2,590

30th January 2022 13th February 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,590 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

A very nice Azed, I thought. Although I made smooth progress through it, I felt there were sufficiently few ‘gimmes’ to warrant a difficulty rating close to average – but as always the views of other solvers are very much welcomed.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 14a, “Expounder of law, penning books in shower? (6)”. The wordplay here is straightforward enough, the solution involving an abbreviation for ‘books’ being contained by a four-letter word for a type of precipitation, with the question mark indicating that ‘shower’ is an indication by example, being only one possible manifestation of the thing. The point of interest here is the definition: the solution is clearly given by Chambers as ‘archaic’, but Azed does not indicate this in any way. It is generally accepted that words shown in Chambers as ‘obsolete’, together with those attributed to a particular author (eg Shakespeare, Browning), will be unfamiliar to a modern audience and should have an appropriate qualification included in their definition. There are plenty of ways that this can be done, and it rarely creates a major problem for the setter to include this extra information without compromising the surface reading. Anything that suggests non-currency will do nicely: ‘old’, ‘neglected’, ‘no longer’ and ‘discarded’ are just a few possibilities for obsolete words, to which examples like ‘Elizabethan’, “Edmund’s” and ‘to Walter’ can be added where a specific source is mentioned. What about words marked as ‘archaic’? I think this is a difficult area – words like ‘prithee’ and ‘furbelow’ would be familiar to many solvers, but these are exceptions. Most of the words, or individual meanings of words, which are shown as ‘archaic’ are obscure. Then again, there are obscure words in Chambers that have no classification. My own view is that words shown as ‘archaic’ should be flagged, and the Magpie magazine’s clue writing guide takes the same line. I think the omission of a suitable qualifier in this clue is an error, and it should have been something along the lines of ‘Expounder of law once penning books in shower?’.

12a Letter’s rare flourish, part in code transferred to the end (6)
A six-letter word for a code has a part of it (the second, third and fourth letters) moved to the end.

16a Receiving a tonk at the MCG (8)
The usual three-letter word indicated by ‘a’ (in the sense of ‘for each’) is followed by a slang word roughly equivalent in meaning to the Australian informal term ‘tonk’ (‘MCG’ being the Melbourne Cricket Ground).

19a Former injury, a small lump, after rolling over in the sand (8)
A reversal (‘after rolling over’) of an obsolete (‘former’) four-letter word (often used by setters of barred puzzles, almost invariably backwards) for ‘injury’ and a four-letter word for a small lump. The caesura between the wordplay and the definition is very neatly disguised, one hallmark of a good clue.

24a Poorly, with rough breathing? Fell perhaps (4)
My Greek O level has often proved a boon in the cruciverbal world, although I probably remember rather too much of Xenophon’s Anabasis than is good for me. A ‘rough breathing’ on the first letter of an ancient Greek word indicated that an ‘h’ sound should be added to it, so here a three-letter word meaning ‘poorly’ receives an H at the start.

26a Head for film seasons in Cannes, for holidays (5)
The first letter (‘head’) of ‘film’ precedes the plural of a French word (‘in Cannes’) for a particular season of the year. Apparently the 2021 edition was held in this season, although I’ve watched enough episodes of Call My Agent! to know that it usually takes place au printemps.

30a Tropical plant fringing river always potential threat to swimmers (6)
The wordplay here involves a three-letter word for a tropical plant, the source of Madagascar arrowroot, containing (‘fringing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘River’ and a two-letter word for ‘always’. The spelling of the ‘potential threat to swimmers’ is not the one most commonly seen in English.

31a Caravan owner? One’s stuck behind it, interrupting progress (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘[to] progress’ is interrupted by (contains) a two-letter word for ‘one’ following (‘stuck behind’) the letters IT (from the clue). I can’t help feeling that ‘Owner of caravan?’ would have improved the overall surface reading slightly, but on reflection it’s a marginal call.

33a Conifer providing everything to fill camp stove? (4)
This is a six-letter word for a type of camp stove with its outer letters removed, what is left being ‘everything to fill camp stove’. Well, that’s what Azed says; personally, I think it’s a bit of a stretch – would one say that IN is ‘everything to fill sink’?

1d Gymnosperm captured in one cadency after another (5)
I’ve used this sort of construction myself in the past, and I must admit to rather liking it as a variation on the usual sort of ‘hidden’ where the answer is in plain sight. Here the solver has to repeat the word ‘cadency’ (‘one cadency after another’) in order to produce the hiding place.

2d Open sandwich with skill held by fork (7)
A three-letter word often indicated by ‘skill’ is contained (‘held’) by a four-letter word for…well, not so much a fork, more a prong of a fork. I did briefly wonder whether ‘held by fork’ could be seen as indicating IN TINE, but even with a bit of latitude it could surely only be ON TINE. However, Chambers gives one meaning of ‘fork as ‘a branch or prong’; and while OED suggests that this applies only to the plural, ‘forks’ being the prongs of a fork, it does give the verb ‘tine’ as ‘to scratch or work with tines’. Both dictionaries therefore lend Azed their support. It seems a long time since I’ve included anything from 1066 And All That, so here’s a favourite piece that seems to further substantiate the fork/prong equivalence:

“Henry VII was a miser and very good at statecraft; he invented some extremely clever policies such as the one called Morton’s Fork. This was an enormous prong with which his minister Morton visited the rich citizens (or burghlers as they were called). If the citizen said he was poor, Morton drove his fork in a certain distance and promised not to take it out until the citizen paid a large sum of money to the King. As soon as this was forthcoming Morton dismissed him, at the same time shouting “Fork out” so that Henry would know the statecraft had been successful. If the burghler said he was quite rich Morton did the same thing: it was thus a very clever policy and always succeeded except when Morton put the Fork in too far.”

3d Aussie tease, one swallowed by sheila (6)
A one-letter word for ‘one’ is ‘swallowed’ by a slang term equivalent to ‘sheila’ in Australia. The solution is a word that I have often heard on cricket commentaries but cannot recall ever having seen in print and which I wasn’t sure how to spell.

5d Food expert accompanying old woman, an aid when shopping (10, 2 words)
Nothing too tricky here, the two words of the solution being clued by the two elements of the wordplay, but I wonder how many millenials are familiar with Robert McMahon, the chef, restaurateur and cookery writer who usually went by his middle name. Although born in New York, he found fame in the UK, where he lived between 1953 and 1984 and from 1994 to his death in 2006.

8d Giggle when opening fly in underwear (9)
A neat clue which has a six-letter word meaning ‘giggle’ (similar to the one that was Marathon in the UK until 1990) being inserted into (‘opening’) a three-letter word for a wingless fly that infests sheep.

13d Violet maybe eats chops in meat wagon (10)
An anagram (‘chops’, in the sense of ‘cracks’) of EATS inside a six-letter word for the sort of vehicle known (particularly in the US) as a ‘meat wagon’.

23d Radio navigation system getting one traced at sea (6)
None of the editions of Chambers in my library gives the solution here, so Azed must have had to go back a fair way to find it. The name is a contraction of ‘Decca Track’, and it was a long-range enhancement to the Decca radio position-fixing system first commissioned in 1957 and designed to cover specific air route segments, in particular long trans-ocean crossings over the Atlantic Ocean. Only one chain of transmitters for the system was ever installed, linking the Newfoundland Decca chain with the Scottish chain, and the system was rendered obsolete in the 1960s by the industry’s adoption of inertial navigation.

29d This writer’s locked in pound as badly behaved juvenile (4)
A simple wordplay to finish things off, a two-letter representation of “this writer’s” being contained by a two-letter abbreviation for ‘pound’, but whenever the solution here is used in the current sense I am immediately reminded of Richmal Crompton’s wonderful creation, William Brown:

“William was feeling specially aggrieved. This afternoon he had been condemned to accompany his mother to a meeting at the Vicarage. It was the housemaid’s afternoon off, and the cook said that she wouldn’t be left in the house again with that young limb, not if they went down on their bended knees to her, she wouldn’t. She’d pack up and go, she would, sooner. She was a good cook, so Mrs. Brown promised faithfully that the young limb should not be left with her, which meant that the young limb must accompany Mrs Brown to the meeting of the Women’s Guild at the Vicarage.”

(definitions are underlined)

Notes for Azed 2,589

23rd January 2022 6th February 2022 Doctor Clue Azed Notes

Azed 2,589 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I thought this puzzle sat a little below the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were considerably fewer contentious points than last week, but at the same time I felt that the joie de vivre that infuses Azed’s very best puzzles was somewhat lacking.

Nothing to do with Azed, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to mention the marvellous story of the robotic vacuum cleaner that escaped from a Travelodge in Cambridge last Thursday, having failed to stop at the lip on the hotel’s front door. After staff used social media to alert the public to the situation, they received many reassuring messages regarding the absconder, with people saying that it was unlikely to come to harm as it had no natural predators. However, one dissenting voice suggested that it was very much at risk, since ‘nature abhors a vacuum’. I wish I’d said that. The fugitive was recaptured on Friday, having been found by a (human) cleaner under a hedge near the front drive. It was apparently unharmed, if a little dirty, and following a dusting down has been reunited with its family.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 6d, “What sounds like thug, unruly youth with a quiff? (6)”. As regular readers will know, I have no grate affection for clues that involve homophones, but I’m quite prepared to accept them when Chambers indicates that the pronunciation of the words involved is the same. In recent times I have become rather alarmed by the rise of the ‘partial homophone’, where the wordplay suggests a word which sounds like part of the solution, the remainder being indicated by other wordplay elements, eg “Strong chain, we hear, broken” for ROBUST. In this example (which was painful for me to write), the homophone leads to a non-word, RO, and the positioning of the ‘we hear’ makes it clear that the BUST is entirely separate. In Azed’s clue, the homophone for ‘tough’ leads to a non-word, TUF, but could the wordplay involve only a homophone, ie ‘tough ted’ = TUFTED? Not in my view – the pronunciations are different, and if Azed had meant the clue to be read that way he would surely have indicated ‘tough ted’ by a phrase, eg ‘callous unruly youth’. Conclusion: I don’t much like this clue.

4a Zero stake for Jock in grave, borrower’s bond (8)
The usual single-character representation of ‘zero’ and a four-letter Scots (‘for Jock’) word for a stake or stub are contained by a three-letter word for [a] grave, the solution being hyphenated (4-4).

11a Printing plate? Choose what’s right for printers (7)
A five-letter word meaning ‘choose’ is followed by a two-letter abbreviation of the term used in printing for the right-hand page of an open book.

15a Having lost new exhaust, was over the limit (4)
The old ‘missing comma’ returns (well, you know what I mean) – the wordplay here is really ‘Having lost new, exhaust’, where a five-letter word meaning ‘[to] exhaust’ has had the usual abbreviation for ‘new’ removed.

17a Shakespearean company, as is fitting, seen in flickering strobe (6)
Chambers gives the solution (an anagram of STROBE) as ‘suitable company’, and when combined with its Shakespearean provenance this has produced a challenge for Azed. Something like ‘Suitable Shakespearean company’ wouldn’t be valid, so Azed has decided to use a postpositive adjectival expression to get round the problem. I did briefly wonder whether ‘flickering strobe’ carried a whiff of tautology, but I concluded that the strobe might be malfunctioning and therefore flickering randomly rather than flashing regularly.

21a Crown appearing in bowlers? They’ll end in headlines maybe (9)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘crown’ appears inside a seven-letter term for a particular class of cricketing bowlers, the result being a word applied to sensational headlines; I don’t think the ‘maybe’ is strictly necessary.

27a PC goes off, having written off expenses briefly (4)
An eight-letter word for ‘goes off’ has an informal contraction (‘briefly’) of ‘expenses’ removed (‘written off’), two letters going from the start and two from the end. The PC in question appeared in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books, and quickly became synonymous with the police force generally. Despite being kindly disposed towards Noddy, he has locked him up on at least one occasion and at other times has threatened him with imprisonment. He demands the attention of miscreants by blowing his whistle and shouting ‘Halt in the name of ***!’ before pursuing them on his trusty bicycle as a prelude to feeling their collars and putting them in jail. The character was apparently based on PC Christopher Raymond (‘Ray’) Rone, who was at one time the beat bobby for the village of Studland in Dorset. Blyton used to stay regularly with her husband at the old golf club there, where Ray, an avuncular character and archetypal village policeman, would come to visit her on his bicycle. It seems that he rarely mentioned Blyton to his family, although many years later he let slip that he “didn’t think she liked children very much”.

1d Taipan e.g., from east in occupation on body of water (8, 2 words)
A nice definition by example that has been integrated deceptively into the clue, the wordplay involving the usual abbreviation for ‘east’ inside a three-letter word for an occupation being followed by a four-letter term for a body of water. The solution divides (3,5) and is Australian rhyming slang for the sort of thing you don’t want to find in your dunny.

6d What sounds like thug, unruly youth with a quiff? (6)
A three-letter (non-word) homophone for ‘thug’ is followed by a word for an unruly youth which makes frequent appearances in crosswords.

7d Finest trimmed bonnet made to order (7)
A four-letter word for ‘finest’ missing the last letter (‘trimmed’) is followed by a term for the projecting rim on the front of a bonnet, or a bonnet with such a feature.

9d Former paddock, area enveloped in bushy creeper (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘area’ is contained (‘enveloped’) by an old word for a bush, especially of ivy (and also the name of a fox about whom a tale was written). The defining word in the clue (not the solution) is given by Chambers as ‘archaic and Scot’, hence the qualification ‘former’, but should be familiar to aficionados of the Sunday Post’s Oor Wullie cartoon strip, either in the spelling seen here or with a U replacing the A.

18d Raised perched hawks – male ones (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘perched’ is reversed (‘raised’) and followed by a word meaning ‘hawks’ in a vending sense; the ‘ones’ in the definition refers back to the ‘hawks’, but in a completely different sense.

22d Lave flow from volcano’s centre almost at an end – shelter (6)
A charade of the central letter of ‘volcano’, a three-letter word meaning (among many other things) ‘at an end’ missing its last letter (‘almost’), and a word meaning ‘shelter’.

26d Demonstrative term from character, first to last (5)
A five-letter word for distinctive character or moral significance has its initial letter moved to the end (‘first to last’).

27d Teacher offering improvement when it’s lacking (4)
A six-letter word for improvement or benefit is deprived of the consecutive letters IT (“when it’s lacking”).

28d Parched by a desert? Thus beset possibly (4)
A composite anagram to finish, where the words BY A DESERT can be produced by a rearrangement (‘possibly’) of the letters of the solution (‘thus’) plus BESET.

(definitions are underlined)

Dr. Daniel Price (Saint Vincent) says:
12th October 2023 at 10:32 pm
As you state, requiring synonymy of strict definitions precludes too many commonly-accepted replacements. Figurative language is often in broad use, and it does not seem to be a stretch to equate figurative definitions. [With that said: I would not use “gutless” to define “spineless”, as the words have the same endings. “Lacking guts” for “spineless”, however, not only works with their definitions but also suggests wordplay that is absent: a nice bit of trickery.]
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent) says:
12th September 2023 at 3:58 am
All of my grids are themed, and I expend much effort in ensuring that theme words do not intersect, even when the theme is irrelevant to solving or is trivial. Even better, and even when I am likely to be the only person who notices, are grids where the themed entries are symmetrically arranged. My bride, who has no truck with cryptics (“you do you, dude”), is nevertheless the recipient of my commentary, and pretends to be happy for me when I achieve the desired effects. The look of the thing is important for our art, and art it is.
Yes, an obviously asymmetrical grid niggles setter and solver. Conditioned responses, perhaps, but conditioned all the same.

The Monthly Digest

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