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 2,579 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

After the challenge of last week’s ‘Letters Latent’, something considerably more straightforward. A pleasant solve, though perhaps not one of Azed’s very best. I usually reckon to comment on around sixteen clues, and sometimes mark more than that number when solving the puzzle, but here I found that I was well short of that number. Nothing too controversial, although elements of the wordplays in 16a and 3d are questionable (at best), and the qualification applied to the definition in 4d is wrong.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 17a, “Meshed tissues one placed in the box (5)”. The point of interest here is the use of the definite article in the phrase ‘the box’. A general principle relating to clues which adhere to what are usually termed ‘Ximenean’ standards is that every element of the clue should contribute to its cryptic reading, and in particular that there should be no superfluous words which are misleading to the solver. Does this mean that every clue must be pared down to its shortest possible form? No, it is accepted that words which are not strictly necessary to the cryptic interpretation can be included, such as ‘followed by’ in 11a here, the prefixing of a verb in the infinitive with ‘to’ (‘to live’ = BE), or the addition of the indefinite article to a countable noun (‘a boy’ = LAD), as long as the clue still ‘says what it means’. However, a word like ‘the’ cannot simply be tossed into a clue, and we therefore know that when Azed says ‘the box’, he doesn’t mean ‘box’ or ‘a box’, he is talking specifically about the box, ie the television.

16a Crystalline rock: record it in supplement (8)
A three-letter word (and a crossword setters’ favourite) meaning ‘record’ plus the letters IT are put inside a three-letter word meaning ‘supplement’. Well, it certainly means ‘supplement’ when followed by ‘out’, but although on its own it used to mean ‘to extend’ or ‘to lengthen’ I’m not sure that these days it means anything; I’ve always studiously avoided the word in my own puzzles because I don’t know how to define it.

19a Dirty farm vehicle loaded with half a ton? (5)
A four-letter farm vehicle is ‘loaded’ with a Roman numeral which represents ‘half a ton’ in a cricketing or speedometer reading sense. The question mark is entirely appropriate!

20a Bit of foreign cash making metallic sound where Athenians once gathered (8)
A bit of pre-processing is required here: just as ‘having retired’ must on occasion be interpreted as ‘in bed’ (ie inside a word meaning ‘bed’), here ‘where Athenians once gathered’ must be turned into ‘in xxxx’, where xxxx refers to the public ambulatory (the Painted Porch) in Athens where Zeno gave his lectures. It is a four-letter word for a ‘clear high-pitched short bell-like sound’ which must be placed inside, thus producing a Bulgarian unit of currency.

25a Where to find dinghies at? It’s this lough I’d plied (4)
A composite anagram, where the letters of DINGHIES AT form an anagram (‘plied’) of ITS + the solution (‘this lough’) ID. The answer is the name of a lough, and a big one at that.

27a Collection for the vicar? Mostly change with a tatty bit of material thrown in (8)
A five-letter word meaning ‘[to] change’ has its last letter removed (‘mostly’) and is placed around A plus a three-letter word for a tatty bit of material.

33a Took a gander at something fishy by the sound of it (4)
A homophone for that fish which is seen considerably more often in crosswords than in Sainsbury’s, this time in its three-letter rather than two-letter guise.

1d Partner captured in stone, brittle (5)
A three-letter word for a partner (perhaps more commonly these days a chum) is ‘captured’ in the usual abbreviation for ‘stone’.

3d Tenant farmer always upset in deluge (6)
A two-letter word for ‘always’ is reversed (‘upset’) inside a four-letter word which is a less common spelling of a three-letter word frequently seen in crosswords, usually indicated by ‘soak’. I don’t think that ‘deluge’ can be justified – it clearly indicates inundation, while the term in the wordplay definitely does not.

4d Forbear going stress-free as soon as old (4)
A ten-letter word for a (female) forbear has the letters STRESS removed (‘going stress-free’) to produce a northern form of a much more familiar word; the ‘old’ is I think an error, as neither Chambers nor OED suggest that the term is archaic or obsolete. It should read something like ‘as soon as in the North’.

8d To fix hedging, melodious piece of horticultural decoration (9)
A four-letter word for a ‘melodious piece’ with the letters TO and a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] fix’ surrounding (‘hedging’) it. The word ‘of’ is part of the definition – this type of adjective (for which there may be a technical term, but I don’t know what it is) can be very tricky to define without making the clue horribly ‘clunky’, but Azed usually finds an elegant way around the problem.

9d Intrusive rock: catch fish hiding in a little bit (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘[to] fish’ is found hiding inside a four-letter word for a little bit (or a little arachnid). The ‘catch’ here must be linked to the ‘hiding’ (ie ‘catch NET hiding’) rather than the ‘fish’, because ‘catch fish’ cannot indicate NET, which is a transitive verb and would have to be indicated by ‘catch’ alone or ‘catch (fish)’.

14d Pen pals for Jeanne, maybe, senior Guide filling her summers (10)
‘Jeanne’ is here to indicate both Frenchness and femininity, with her pen pals thus assumed to be foreign and female. The wordplay involves a six-letter word for a senior Guide being contained by (‘filling’) a four-letter word for ‘summers’ where Jeanne comes from.

28d All-conquering emotion uplifted travellers (4)
A four-letter word for travelling people is reversed (‘uplifted’) to produce something that in the words of Virgil ‘vincit omnia’, this phrase also being the title of a work by Caravaggio which shows his studio assistant, Cecco Boneri, posing naked as Cupid on a heap of stuff symbolizing ‘all’ (music, literature etc, though significantly no sign of a crossword). The painting, commissioned by Vincenzo Giustiniani, led to controversy when Caravaggio’s rival Giovanni Baglione, commissioned by Vincenzo’s brother Benedetto, produced a response (usually known as Sacred Love and Profane Love), in one version of which the devil is shown having Caravaggio’s face. The feud rumbled on – Caravaggio was briefly imprisoned after being found guilty of libelling Baglione by way of some rude poems, while Baglione arguably had the last laugh – he produced the first biography of Caravaggio, following the latter’s early death, which I understand praises the early works but is scathing about the man himself and his later paintings.

29d Curse, equivalent of ‘damn’ to start with (minced) (4)
An anagram (‘minced’) of the first letters (‘to start with’) of ‘Curse equivalent of damn’, the answer being a restrained (‘minced’) oath.

(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 2,578 ‘Letters Latent’

Difficulty rating: (6.5 / 10)

No issues with the availability of the puzzle, no power cuts to stop me typing the notes, and a ‘special’ to entertain us. Quite a tricky one too – the clues were a little bit easier than in a standard plain puzzle, but the extra difficulty associated with the missing letters meant that this was still a stiff challenge. More than once I worked out what the entry had to be before I was able to establish the unmutilated solution. Note that there is an enumeration error at 27d, where the length of the answer before the deletion of letters is 7 rather than 6.

I have included notes on several clues, following which there is a list of the places in each answer from which letters have been removed.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 31d, “This marine deity, sad, hides under sea (6>5)”. The clue is explained below, but the question is whether a composite anagram of this form is valid in a puzzle where the ‘solution’ and the grid entry are different. With some gimmicks, the wordplay does not in fact produce the solution – this would be true, for instance, of a puzzle where the wordplay leads to an extra letter which does not belong to the grid entry; in such instances, the setter must be very careful to avoid any construction which implies that the solution and the result of the wordplay are equivalent (eg ‘wordplay’ is ‘definition’), because they are clearly not. I think this clue is unsound – the element ‘this marine deity’ can only refer to the unmutilated six-letter solution. In order to be acceptable, the definition and the term representing the grid entry (‘this’)  must be separated such that the former stands as the definition of the (six-letter) answer and the latter (comprising only five letters) is part of the composite anagram, eg “Marine deity: sad, this hides under sea”. There’s no reason why a compound anagram can’t be used in a puzzle of this type, but not in the form that’s seen here.

1a Thinly sliced beef (say) in one Scots diner’s starter (10>7)
A four-letter word describing a class of food to which beef belongs is surrounded by a two-letter Scots word for ‘one’ and the first letter (‘starter’) of ‘diner’.

11a German squaddie nurses wound leaving front (11>9)
A six-letter word for a squaddie contains (‘nurses’) a four-letter word meaning ‘wound’ (verb or noun) from which the first letter has been removed (‘leaving front’). The solution is the inhabitant of a particular German city.

13a Button, round, was bright round front of vest (6>5)
The first ’round’ here indicates a single letter which is round in shape; this is followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘was bright’ (or ‘illuminated’) containing (the second ’round’) the first letter (‘front’) of ‘vest’.

20a Arch for instance circled by watches endlessly (8>7)
A two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘for instance’ is surrounded (‘circled’) by a six-letter word meaning ‘watches’ (or ‘catches sight of’) missing its last letter (‘endlessly’).

23a Disorganized rep having time to wander in theatre pit (8>7)
An anagram (‘disorganized’) of REP containing (‘having…in’) the usual abbreviation for ‘time’ plus a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] wander’. The solution is more familiar these days in the context of formal gardens.

26a Ogle lustfully before getting in gentle stroke (7, 2 words>6)
A three-letter word for ‘before’ much used by setters is contained by (‘getting in’) a three-letter word for a gentle stroke (and the name of a famous postman).

32a One processing with symbolic burden changed bases in European league (11>8)
An anagram (‘changed’) of BASES in the three-letter abbreviation for the Council of Europe (‘European league’); the ‘processing’ in the definition is used in the sense of ‘going in procession’.

33a Love of Rome? What Italian enterprises will welcome (6>5)
The grid entry is hidden in the clue, but the answer is not in Chambers – it is the Italian (‘of Rome’) word for ‘nothing’ (‘love’). I’m fine with the future tense being used in a wordplay where manipulation is required, but I think that ‘will welcome’ to indicate that the entry is already contained within the preceding text is stretching things. 

36a A bit of a yen to enter part of Canada without being posted (6>5)
A SEN is one hundredth of a yen, and it ‘enters’ the two-letter abbreviation for a part of Canada. There’s no doubt what Azed is getting at with the definition, though I’m not sure that it stands up to close scrutiny – ‘without being posted’ and ‘not posted’ don’t come to the same thing.

1d Senior administrator always on song (7>5)
A charade consisting of a two-letter word meaning ‘always’ followed by a three-letter word for a song, described by Chambers as ‘originally a poem intended to be sung’. It took me a while to work out what the unmutilated solution was.

2d Old smear Parliamentarian applied to previous king (9>7)
A two-letter abbreviation for a Parliamentarian plus (‘applied to’) a four-letter word meaning ‘previous’ and the abbreviation for ‘king’ relating to the throne rather than the chessboard. The solution is given by Chambers as obsolete, hence the ‘old’ qualifying the definition.

8d Working a lace dress (6>5)
A two-letter word representing ‘working’ is followed by a three-letter word for a lace (in the shoe sense), but I can’t square the first element with ‘working’ on its own. I wonder if the clue was intended to be ‘Working on lace dress’, which seems to me far more satisfactory.

9d Alluvial plain with misplacement of last conifers (6>5)
A five-letter Scots word for an alluvial riverside plane has its last letter moved up to second position (‘with misplacement of last’); thankfully the conifers in the definition are familiar.

12d Keats not upset over writing, the opposite of chaos (6>4)
KEATS has a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] upset’ removed (‘not upset’) and is followed by a two-letter abbreviation for ‘writing’ often used by Azed. The solution is more commonly spelt with an initial C.

25d Major Cambridge exam accepted clad in hooded jacket (7, 2 words>6)
If, like me, you didn’t know that a GREGO was a hooded jacket and therefore were uncertain what to place around the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘accepted’, you may have had to work back from the solution, a (5,2) term in its original form.

28d Ancient letter caught inside old-style printing-press (6>5)
A four-letter word for an ancient letter contains the standard abbreviation for ‘caught’ (‘caught inside’). I suspect that the solution is not the entire printing-press, rather an element of it.

29d Tall grass: duck found under small one (6>4)
A single letter representing ‘duck’  following (‘found under’) a three-letter word for a ‘small one’ (or a ‘wee dram’ as the Scots would say).

31d This marine deity, sad, hides under sea (6>5)
A composite anagram, where the letters of the grid entry (‘This marine deity’) plus SAD can be rearranged to form (‘hides’) UNDER SEA. The solution is given in Chambers under the headword for a type of sea-nymph, the daughter of this fellow.

(definitions are underlined)

Letters removed:

Across: From 1 the first, fifth and sixth letters must be removed prior to entry; 6 – letter 1; 11 – letters 1 and 6; 13 – letter 5; 14 – letter 2; 15 – letter 5; 16 – letter 2; 17 – letter 4; 20 – letter 7; 23 – letter 2; 26 – letter4; 30 – letter 2; 32 – letters 2, 9 and 11; 33 – letter 2; 34 – letters 2 and 6; 35 – letters 4 and 9; 36 – letter 1; 37 – letter 8.

Down: 1 -letters 1 and 4; 2 – letters 1 and 8; 3 – letters 1 and 8; 4 – letter 5; 5 – letter 6; 7 – letters 2 and 4; 8 – letter 5; 9 – letter 3; 10 – letter 4; 12 – letters 2 and 5; 18 – letter 8; 19 – letter 2; 21 – letter 5; 22 – letter 6; 24 – letter 2; 25 – letter 5; 27 – letters 2 and 3; 28 – letter 2; 29 – letters 3 and 6; 31 – letter 6.

The quotation comes from Robert Burns’ The Jolly Beggars (1799), and is alluded to by RL Stevenson in Chapter VII of Kidnapped.

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 2,577 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Normal service from the Guardian’s website was resumed this week, which allowed me to address the puzzle whilst enjoying my Sunday breakfast. Having started to write these notes, however, a power cut stopped me in my tracks – thankfully, it lasted only until around 2pm rather than the 7pm that had been estimated. The puzzle itself was notable for several clues which trod the fine line between originality and unfairness, with a couple (I felt) perhaps falling into the latter category.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 19a, “Is it squidged in pats round either edge of river? (7)”. The wordplay involves an anagram (‘squidged’) of IN PATS containing (’round’) R (‘either side of river’), producing SPRAINT. If this were a normal definition + wordplay clue we would be left with just ‘Is it’ as the definition, to which the answer is clearly “No, it isn’t”. So this is an &lit (or ‘all-in-one’) clue, where the entire clue when interpreted cryptically constitutes the wordplay and when taken literally represents the definition. I have commented before that the term ‘definition’ when used in relation to a clue does not necessarily mean a definition that can be found verbatim in a dictionary – very few of the ‘definitions’ in a typical barred puzzle (including this one) will appear in Chambers, and hence I prefer the term ‘indication’, or (particularly in this instance) the hybrid ‘defication’. But when it comes to &lit clues the amount of latitude allowed to setters is increased still further, in recognition of the difficulty associated with producing such clues – making both readings of the clue sound can be a tricky business. What one often (very often, in fact) finds is that there are superfluous words in the non-cryptic reading which are essential to the wordplay; certainly the word ‘either’ here would not be acceptable in a ‘normal’ definition. These bonus words do not invalidate an &lit clue; what the setter must focus on is the grammatical soundness of both readings, in particular ensuring that there is a part of the non-cryptic reading which makes it clear what the solver is looking for – this often involves the use of pronouns such as ‘what’, ‘they’ or (as in this clue) ‘it’.

 I’m not clear why Azed chose ’round either edge of river’ here rather than simply ’round river’. The best &lits contain not a single spare word, one of the very finest examples being Colin Dexter’s Azed competition clue for MAGIC LANTERN, “Item gran arranged family slides in”. 

10a Godless hiding gun in disguised terrine (10)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to increase the speed of (a car engine)’, roughly equivalent to the slang ‘gun’, inside an anagram (‘disguised’) of TERRINE.

11a Ally constant in axis, say (5)
The usual (and to my mind the only acceptable) single letter representing ‘constant’ is contained by a four-letter word for which ‘axis’ is an indication by example (there are many others, a couple of hundred without venturing beyond the human sort). The definition is an obscure one, particularly since its usual spelling is ‘alley’ rather than ‘ally’.

12a Speak incomprehensibly, horse refusing jump? (6)
I am familiar with the word meaning ‘speak incomprehensibly because it appeared regularly in the children’s  comics I used to read (often in the last frame of a strip drawn by the legendary Ken Reid, as I recall), but when I checked in Chambers it was clear that an alternative (less common) spelling was required in order to satisfy the second element of this double-definition clue, the term for the obstinate horse invariably being spelt with a ‘J’ at the start. I don’t know much about horses, but it seems that although one of this type might well show no interest in jumping its defining trait would be the habit of stopping unexpectedly and refusing to go forward.

24a What’s next to do? Think about filling in that CV (6)
Here the solver needs to answer the question “What’s next to do [in the tonic sol-fa]” and then to reverse (‘about’) a four-letter word meaning ‘think’ inside it (‘in that’).

27a Wood? River circles small one (5)
I’m not keen on this one – the four-letter name of a river in northeastern England contains (‘circles’) the abbreviation (‘small’) for…yes, ‘river’. I think that if ‘one’ is referring to another noun here, it can only be ‘wood’.

29a Neutering precludes this cross-breed – nothing smelly (7)
A charade of a two-letter word (often seen in barred puzzles) for a type of hybrid domestic cattle found in the Himalayas, the usual single-letter representation of ‘nothing’, and a four-letter word meaning ‘smelly’, as  something that’s been shot for the pot and hung up for a while might be.

33a Part of golf club selected club lost latitude (5)
An error here – a five-letter word meaning ‘selected’ loses a letter and is then followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘latitude’, but ‘club’ is not valid for C; the abbreviation C for ‘clubs’ relates to the suit in a pack of playing cards, in which context ‘club’ has no relevance (even the ace is the ace of clubs).

34a Tangle in one end of leash at full stretch (7)
I didn’t like the ‘one’ in 27a, but I can just about accept it here. Just about. The solver has to pre-process the clue, replacing ‘one’ with the only noun to which it can possibly refer, ie ‘tangle’, producing ‘Tangle in tangle end of leash at full stretch’, at which point things become much clearer.

1d This fortune-teller calls art? Is crystal ball possibly (5)
A composite anagram, where the letters of the solution (‘this fortune-teller’) plus CALLS ART can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to produce IS CRYSTAL BALL. I’ve two problems with this clue – firstly the amount of extra material in the anagram (eight letters for a five-letter solution) and secondly the fact that the solution has two alternative spellings, either of which could fit the bill.

2d Family of lice like this to catch in gym are on the rise (10)
A two-letter word for ‘like this’ and a three-letter word for ‘to catch’ (as in “Do that again and you’ll catch it”) are contained by one of the two standard two-letter abbreviations suggested by ‘gym’, the whole lot being followed by a reversal (‘on the rise’) of ARE.

3d Faithful about family king abandoned, marking direct descent (6)
A four-letter archaic/poetic word for ‘faithful’ or ‘loyal’ containing (‘about’) a word for ‘family’ missing the abbreviation for ‘king’ in a chess context.

4d Covenant reached by doctor, character closing surgery (6)
Here ‘reached by’ is the first of two very questionable link phrases in this puzzle. The wordplay is a five-letter word for ‘[to] doctor’ plus the last letter of (‘character closing’) surgery. At a pinch I could have accepted something like ‘received from’.

6d Imagine once e.g. breaking hand in two places (5)
A three-letter slang word for a hand or arm (as might be presented for shaking by an anthropomorphic fish) has the letters EG inserted (‘breaking’) separately (‘in two places’).

9d Furrowed part of the US bordering another (7)
After a couple of clues that used the word ‘one’ in unusual ways, the wordplay here would have benefited from it being included at the end, thus making it clear that a five-letter ‘part of the US’ is containing (‘bordering’) the two-letter abbreviation of just such a part (‘another [one]’).

13d Cable maybe chaps fitted in east when missing – here’s proof (10)
The forename of the leader of the Liberal Democrats between 2017 and 2019 (‘Cable maybe’) plus the usual three-letter word for ‘chaps’ are contained by (‘fitted in’) EAST without a two-letter word meaning ‘when’ (‘when missing’).

17d Australian shrubs cover one fresh pulled up (7)
A three-letter cover (for the head), a single-letter word for ‘one’, and a three-letter word for ‘raw’ (or ‘green’) are all reversed (‘pulled up’).

22d First sign of racism in school creating turmoil as before (7)
The first letter of ‘racism’ is put inside the name of a public school in Buckinghamshire. The ‘as before’ is unnecessary – Chambers (rightly or wrongly) does not show the solution as being obsolete or archaic.

23d Unploughed field due to knowledge number’s left in places (7)
An eight-letter word for knowledge has the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ repeatedly departing. The solution is hyphenated, (3-3).

25d Plant bodies Aegean island’s reared (7)
The name of a Greek island in the eastern Aegean sea is reversed (‘[has] reared’).

26d Wildcat grabbing swan’s tail in savage struggle (7)
The wordplay involves the last letter of ‘swan’ (“swan’s tail”) being put inside a four-letter word for a struggle (I’m not sure it’s necessarily particularly savage, but that probably depends on your view of Rugby Union as a whole). However, as this clue stands, it must surely be the wildcat that is doing the grabbing both in the surface and the wordplay.

(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 2,576 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Well, after a delay caused apparently by the PDF file being ‘mislaid’ by the Guardian, the puzzle finally arrived online on Monday morning, I felt it was a little easier than its two immediate predecessors, but there were a couple of tricky wordplays that, together with a generous helping of hyphenated solutions, I felt ensured that it did not fall below an average difficulty rating.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to briefly discuss the enumerations in clues, specifically relating to entries consisting of multiple words and hyphenated expressions (of which there are several in this puzzle). In a blocked puzzle, an entry such as ‘LET GO’ would be shown as (3,2), while in a barred puzzle it would be (5, 2 words); in a blocked puzzle LOVE-IN would be (4-2), but in most barred puzzles, including Azed, it would be shown as (6). The barred puzzle enumerations are less helpful, but of course this is balanced by the number of checked letters in the solution – in a blocked puzzle, often only half the letters in an entry are checked, while in a barred puzzle no more than a third can be unchecked (there is an anomaly, in that some barred puzzles allow eight-letter entries with three ‘unches’, but Azed always limits the unches in an eight-letter word to two). Apostrophes in solutions create something of a knotty problem in enumerations, however, which will be discussed the next time Azed includes one in a puzzle.

1a Fixed metal case yielding choice wine, lot disposed of by compact group (12)
A charade of a four-letter word for ‘choice’ (and the nickname of PG Wodehouse), a six-letter (red) wine with the letters LOT removed (‘lot disposed of’) and a five-letter word for a compact group, producing a (7-5) hyphenated solution.

11a In the manner of noisy pet showing reverse of appeal running round yard (5)
A reversal (‘reverse’) of a four-letter word for an appeal containing (‘running round’) the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘yard’.

16a Music club, a real find, very remote (5)
A nine-letter word for a ‘real find’, with the consecutive letters VERY removed (‘very remote’).

20a Many in 16 will, and tick 15! (4)
The wordplay here is a charade of a two-letter informal abbreviation of a six-letter word meaning a very short time (ie ‘tick’) and a two-letter interjection with a very similar meaning to the solution of 15a. The ‘definition’ refers to the solution of 16a, although I think the organizers of such events might be a little taken aback if ‘many’ of the attendees started to do this.

23a Like Mariana’s whereabouts, month before arrangement of date (6)
The reference in the definition is to the grange where Mariana was to be found in Measure for Measure, in the poem Mariana by Tennyson, or (my personal preference) in the superb 1851 painting by John Everett Millais.

26a As before discharge useless female performer, tramp inside? (8)
A seven-letter word for a female performer or reciter has the letters USE removed (‘useless’, a whimsical deployment of the word) and a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] tramp’ inserted (‘tramp inside’). The ‘as before’ indicates that the solution is obsolete (it may have been coined by Milton, as Chambers suggests, but it was in use as recently as the nineteenth century).

28a Like a semiconductor, installation for 20p (in full)? (5)
What I suppose you might call a ‘semi-indirect hidden’, where Azed has helpfully included the ‘(in full)’ to indicate that the hiding place is an expanded version of ’20p’.

30a Some foreign money backing third team? (5)
A (4,1) expression which might (hence the question mark) designate a third team (or perhaps the third set of tracks on a double LP) is reversed (‘backing’) to produce a Ghanaian monetary unit.

34a Wild zeal? Report without it included, making one cross (7)
An anagram (‘wild’) of ZEAL with a five-letter word for ‘report’ or ‘rumour’ from which the letters IT have been removed (‘without it’) inside (‘included’).

3d Philosophical work, thoroughly serious one I ingested (8)
A two-letter word meaning ‘thoroughly’ and a three-letter word for ‘serious’ (or ‘sorrowful’) with a two-letter word for ‘one’ plus the letter ‘I’ inserted between them (‘ingested’).

4d See me zip up for US fight (5)
A two-letter alternative spelling of the note anglicized as ‘me’ is followed by a reversal (‘up’) of a three-letter slang term for ‘nothing’ (ie ‘zip’), the whole being a (3-2) hyphenated US expression.

7d Musicians together recognized as steel, endlessly toothful (7)
A four-letter word for ‘musicians together’ and a three-letter word for ‘recognized’ combine to produce a (4-3) piece of workshop equipment which might slightly fancifully (but entertainingly) be described by the last three words of the clue.

13d Mantle once removed with maiden, celebrates about it (9)
Here the ‘once’ does not indicate that the solution is archaic, rather the particular use of ‘mantle’ in the definition. The wordplay involves a three-letter word for ‘with’ (typically seen in place names or facetious job titles) together with the usual abbreviation for ‘maiden’ around which a five-letter word for ‘celebrates’ is placed (‘celebrates about it’).

22d Finely woven, to reach as of old round tailored shin (7)
Here we have a three-letter obsolete form of the verb ‘fetch’ (‘to reach as of old’) containing (’round’) an anagram (‘tailored’) of SHIN.

29d The sound of noisy birds making one curse? (4)
A homophone (‘the sound’) of a four-letter word for some noisy (black-and-white) birds, more often seen in a seven-letter form, and what Chambers delicately calls a ‘term of imprecation’.

31d Helpless ass scratched loaf (4)
As in a recent puzzle, Azed asks the solver (using ‘scratched’) to remove a word (here ASS) from the fringes of another (a seven-letter synonym for ‘helpless’) to produce the solution, without giving any indication that the ASS is to divided prior to deletion or using an expression (eg ‘stripped off’) which suggests this. The ‘loaf’ in the definition is a verb.

(definitions are underlined)

Apparently the Guardian has ‘mislaid’ the PDF of Azed 2,576.

We can only hope that it will arrive on Monday.

Update: The puzzle is available via the link that Blake gives below, and the notes can be found here.

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 2,575 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

To follow last week’s tough plain puzzle, this week we have…a tough plain puzzle. There were several clues here for obscure words where the wordplay also included an obscurity, and a couple of minor errors, but also some nice clues to enjoy.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 6d, “Foundling home giving many hours with pal for Twist (12)”. The parsing of the clue is discussed below, but the point of interest is the capitalization of the word ‘Twist’, suggesting the surname of Oliver, when the wordplay demands the uncapitalized form ‘twist’. Whilst ideally a word which requires a capital letter for the surface reading but not for the wordplay would be placed at the beginning of a sentence, often making for a very pleasing deception, the unnecessary capitalization of a word elsewhere in a clue is usually considered acceptable, and the solver must allow for this possibility. However, the deceptive removal of a capital (eg ‘nice’ in the clue when the French city ‘Nice’ is meant, for instance in ‘nice day’ to indicate ‘jour’) is not allowed. The usual explanation of this apparent inconsistency is that while the noun ‘twist’ could on occasion be seen with an initial capital, eg at the beginning of a sentence or in a book title, the name of the French city could never, ever be seen as ‘nice’.

6a Intense longing a former athlete held in pulsating chest (9)
The letter A and the three-letter surname of a very famous British athlete are contained by (‘held in’) an anagram (‘pulsating’) of CHEST. The solution was the clue word for AZ comp 495, and you can see what the leading competitors came up with here.

10a I vary resistance, i.e. record ohm cut in a way (8)
Anyone who recalls the equipment they used in the physics lab at school might jump to the wrong conclusion here – the first four letters of the solution are the same as those of the more familiar word, but this one is an anagram (‘in a way’) of RECORD and OHM, the letter with the last letter removed (‘cut’). The ‘i.e.’ linking the definition and wordplay is there simply to enhance the surface reading.

13a Old poet, inferior, first of poetry written out in exercise book (5)
A six-letter term for a book providing an introduction to a subject (forever associated in my mind with Latin) has the first letter of ‘poetry’ deleted (‘written out’) to produce an archaic word for an inferior poet.

14a Queen once, suffering her fate? That’s fishy (8)
The Queen here is the fifth of Henry VIII’s wives, a former maidservant of Anne of Cleves, and her first name suffers the same fate as she herself did.

19a Fields by waterway where (one might assume) gondoliers are found (4)
Since Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an opera called The Gondoliers, it is reasonable to assume that gondoliers would be found IN G&S. I wonder if anyone took the IN GS to refer to the outside letters of the word ‘gondoliers’ – it seems to me, though, that what is IN GS there is ‘ondolier’ as the G and S simply can’t contain themselves (if you see what I mean).

22a Pa quitting field of play, once beaten (4)
This is a very tricky one, firstly because ‘padang’ is not a word in common use (not in the circles that I move in, anyway), and secondly because the solution is the archaic past tense of ‘ding’ rather than the past participle, so whilst it once meant ‘beat’ it has never meant ‘beaten’.

29a Fish among rocks, proceeding left to right? (8)
A three-letter fish (often seen in crosswords in its two-letter form) when contained by (‘among’) a word meaning ‘rocks’ (in the sense of ‘oscillates’) produces an entry which could mean ‘proceeding left to right’ but could equally well mean ‘proceeding right to left’, hence the question mark.

31a Geordie, first to last defenceless (5)
To work this one out you need to know that ‘Geordie’ was a term for a coal-pitman (by transference, I believe, from George Stephenson’s safety lamp, itself known as a ‘Geordie’); the first letter of the relevant five-letter word is moved to the end (‘first to last’), producing a botanical term meaning ‘unarmed’ or ‘destitute of prickles or spikes’.

32a Trees yielding sticky stuff India disgorged (5)
The sticky stuff is honey (a three-letter word for it), and ‘disgorged’ is used in the sense of ’emptied’ (the first time I can recall seeing this, but it seems just about ok) to indicate the first and last letters of ‘India’.

33a Journey regularly round length on Asian river, more than once? (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to journey regularly’ (most often seen these days in a transitive sense applied to “one’s trade”)  contains the usual abbreviation for length and the four-letter name of a river which usually seems to be allotted to Europe but apparently (we only did Africa and South America before I gave up geography at school so I’ve no idea about it) ‘flows through Russia and Kazakhstan in the continental border between Europe and Asia.’

34a One of twelve in US showing ermine off among leaders (9)
An anagram (‘off’) of ERMINE is to be placed inside a three-letter shortened form of a word for ‘leaders’ (or ‘those at the front’). The solution is a US term for a juror, derived from the type of writ under which one would be summoned.

2d Aniseed liquor turned up in tea, an Indian ‘fiddle’ (7)
If you don’t know that RAKI is an aniseed-flavoured Mediterranean spirit, you’ll have struggled to cold solve this one. The liquor is reversed (‘turned up’) in the usual three-letter word for ‘tea’.

3d Millions involved in endless festival, a lifesaver (7)
And this one requires you to be familiar with BELTANE, the name of an ancient Celtic anniversary celebration (of the beginning of summer) held on May-day, in connection with which great bonfires were kindled on the hills. It loses its last letter (‘endless’) and has the usual abbreviation for ‘millions’ inserted, producing an Australian word for the lifesaver who swims out with a line attached to their belt.

5d Concerning fish at sea caught by strong rope, it’s within regulation (12)
A two-letter word for ‘concerning’ and a five-letter word for ‘to fish’ (more accurately ‘to entice’ or ‘to lure as with moving bait’) are contained (‘caught’) by a word for a strong rope or chain. I can’t understand why Azed has included the words ‘at sea’, which are not only superfluous but misleading – ‘fish at sea’ would work for ‘trawl’ but not the word required here.

6d Foundling home giving many hours with pal for Twist (12)
In the wordplay, ‘for Twist’ needs to be read not as something to do with Oliver but as ‘for twist’, indicating an anagram of MANY HOURS together with PAL. The solution is hyphenated, (6-6).

7d Woman in historical costume? Glance in Shakespeare (5)
Not the first time that Azed has used ‘woman’ to indicate W, which is not supported by Chambers. If you mentally modify ‘Woman’ to ‘Women’, the clue is fine, the abbreviation being contained by a four-letter archaic term for ‘costume’ or ‘clothing’, these days invariably seen as a six-letter word with ‘AT’ at the start.

11d Being badly dressed in foreign country for closing dates of short visits (11, 2 words)
An anagram (‘badly’) of DRESSED in the French word for ‘country’ (‘in foreign country’) produces a wonderful expression that I don’t recall ever coming across before. According to Trollope in Young Love, a three day stay would be made up of ‘the rest day, the dressed day, and the [singular form of the solution]’.

18d This Quebecois, non-specified, property-owner is entitled to this (4)
A normal charade clue, but with &lit undertones. A two-letter word that would be used in Quebec for ‘this’ is followed by a two-letter abbreviation for ‘not specified’.

20d Little old boat, one lacking in nothing, housing a radio transmitter (7)
The word ONE without (‘lacking in’) the usual single-letter representation of ‘nothing’ is containing (‘housing’) a four-letter word for a radio transmitter, more often associated with the area covered by one, particularly in a mobile phone context.

30d Part of hammer extracting centre from nut? (4)
A five-letter nut has its middle letter removed (‘extracting centre’).

(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 2,574 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

Another plain puzzle, a 13×11 grid, and plenty of tricky clues to unravel. There were several clues where the break between the definition and the wordplay was nicely disguised, and a few others that featured slightly questionable definitions, either of the solution or of an element in the wordplay.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 27a, “A club having French art pinched – bad luck?” (7). It’s a while since I’ve seen ‘art’ used in a clue as the second person singular present indicative of the verb ‘to be’; it’s a device which needs to be used very sparingly, but it can be handy when dealing with the letters ES (‘French art’ or ‘art in French’) or a solution ending -EST. An example of the latter would be a clue along the lines of ‘Box art master?’ for TEA CHEST.

10a Host excitedly making room for marriage bed may be more welcoming with them (7)
An anagram (‘excitedly’) of HOST containing (‘making room for’) a three-letter word for ‘marriage’; I hope that Azed is suggesting that what might make one’s bed more welcoming are items filled with hot water, but he could of course be thinking of the alternative definition of the solution in Chambers…

14a Be full of conceit, as a regretful miss before end of romance (7)
A charade of a two-letter abbreviation for ‘[such] as’, the four-letter name of Cole Porter’s ‘miss’ who regrets she’s unable to lunch today, and the last letter (‘end’) of the word ‘romance’.

15a Quite a lot of table talk that’s beyond ripe (4)
The entry is hidden in the clue but how are we to interpret the definition? Since the solution can only be a noun or a verb, I think we must assume that in the definition ‘ripe’ is itself a verb, so the indication is ‘not just ripen, but go beyond’.

16a Primitive organism, reverse of type that’s undivided inside (7)
A reversal of a four-letter word for ‘type’, more often used in the sense of ‘authoritative standard’, has a three-letter word for ‘undivided’ put inside.

18a On twice heading for promotion, study repeatedly (6)
A two-letter word for ‘on’ or ‘concerning’ much used by setters appears twice, followed by an informal term for an instance of promotion in the marketing sense. This seems a rather weak clue, not least because I don’t believe that the solution means ‘study repeatedly’, but rather ‘study one more time’ – ‘repeatedly’ means ‘again and again’, not just ‘again’.

20a Nimbler restricting din in a way, I’ve very active drum (9, 2 words)
A nice oblique definition, with the wordplay involving a six-letter synonym for ‘nimbler’ containing (‘restricting’) an anagram (‘in a way’) of DIN. The solution has two alternative spellings, but the ‘nimbler’ word doesn’t.

23a A copy making a comeback after jack boot (6)
Here a combination of ‘A’ and a four-letter verb meaning ‘copy’ (or ‘imitate’) is reversed (‘making a comeback’) after the usual abbreviation for ‘jack’.

25a Punt’ propelled thus, we hear, suffering extremes (7)
A homophone (‘we hear’) of a (2,5) phrase that describes how [a] punt would be propelled; the agent noun which is the second word of the phrase is not explicitly given by Chambers with the meaning which Azed ascribes to it here, but that meaning is shown in OED (and it seems entirely reasonable).

27a A club having French art pinched – bad luck (7)
The letter A is followed by a four-letter word for a club (invariably complete with a liberal helping of large spikes in the children’s  comics that I used to read) around the two-letter French equivalent of the English ‘art’, specifically from the phrase ‘thou art’, ie the second person singular of the verb ‘to be’. The solution is hyphenated, (4-3).

30a Very old garment, only 50% well-organized (4)
A little care required here – it would be easy to conclude from the three checked letters that the missing letter was an ‘A’ and to move on. But there are two words which match the definition, one being an obsolete variant of the other; it is the obsolete form that we are looking for here (hence the ‘Very old’ in the clue, rather than just ‘Old’), and it forms the first half (‘50%’) of a word meaning ‘well-organized’ or ‘mentally composed’.

32a Was recording short of Welsh instrument of old (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘was recording’ (or ‘recorded’) without (‘short of’) the usual (but not regularly seen in puzzles) abbreviation for ‘Welsh’.

1d Jay presenting gig with John (10, 2 words)
An odd clue this one, a six-letter word for a light gig being followed by what was originally a diminutive form of the name John, but an alternative version of the term for a Canada jay has ‘John’ as its second word. I’m very surprised that Azed didn’t opt for something like ‘Jay presenting gig with Benny?’

6d Antelope of Nigeria is this i.e. if wild (5)
A composite anagram, and quite a neat one:  OF NIGERIA is a potential rearrangement (‘wild’) of the solution (‘this’) plus  IE IF.

8d Locks bull to cut up? (4)
I don’t know about you, but the wordplay here caused me a bit of head scratching before I worked out that it was a two-word (3,3) phrase meaning ’empty talk’ (ie ‘bull’) with the word TO reversed (‘up’) removed (‘cut’). I’m not quite sure what the surface reading is supposed to mean.

9d One with sponsor lacking crust? Criminy! (4)
A six-letter word for a male child with a ‘sponsor’ (responsible, in theory at least, for their religious education) has its outer letters removed (‘lacking crust’) to produce an obsolete interjection which sounds more like an acronym for something antisocial or even illegal.

19d A cattle-robber at large? Could be one such belter (7)
A composite anagram &lit: the letters of A CATTLEROBBER when rearranged (‘at large’) could produce the solution (‘one such’) plus BELTER.

21d Hotel abroad? It’s occupied by evil spirit (6)
The word IT contains (‘is occupied by’) a four-letter word for an evil spirit, which is given by Chambers as Shakespearean, but the examples given in OED don’t support this. It was also the first name of Kate Twinset’s brilliantly-portrayed character in the recent crime series set in the (fictional, thankfully) Pennsylvania settlement of Easttown.

26d Callisthenics round wood revealing Will’s codpiece? (5)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘callisthenics’ (often indicated in puzzles by ‘gym’) contains (’round’) a three-letter word for a type of wood (or the name of the tree whence it comes). While the definition is entertaining, I think it’s a bit of a stretch; the Shakespearean spelling of the word appears in As You Like It, where a timepiece is drawn from one (that would be worth seeing), and the word in its more usual form (without the ‘A’) is described as a bag that is ‘usually smaller than a sack’, which would probably accommodate a couple of dozen herring as well as a cod.

28d There’s nothing in a bit of sponge to nibble (4)
The usual letter representing ‘nothing’ is put inside a word for a bit of sponge on a stick…I really don’t think that ‘a bit of sponge’ on its own is sufficient here.

(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 2,573 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Another plain puzzle – this one seemed rather less tough than its predecessor, but I felt that it was of at least average difficulty, perhaps even a little bit above (all thoughts on the subject welcomed). I’d have to say that I didn’t think it was one of Azed’s very best (but even a slightly below-par Azed is a puzzle to be reckoned with), and it featured a few constructions that I wasn’t too keen on. No ‘spicas’ this week, but a brace of ‘leos’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 27d, “In hollow a dip through which river runs (4)”. No problem finding the answer, WADI is hidden ‘in’ holloW A DIp, but there are a couple of points of interest. Firstly, the definition: can ‘through which river runs’ indicate a noun? This is one of the few points on which Azed and I disagree – I would say ‘no’, but Azed has stated in the past that he does not have an issue with the solver effectively having to identify the subject of an otherwise subject-less verb. The example he has quoted in the past is “barks and is man’s best friend” for DOG: this requires the solver to infer a ‘one’ (or ‘it’ etc) as the subject, but here even the expanded ‘one through which river runs’ strikes me as a rather messy definition of WADI. There is another problem, though. ‘In hollow a dip’ cannot stand alone as wordplay, ie it doesn’t by itself deliver a substring from ‘hollow a dip’ – it needs a subject, as in eg ‘river valley in hollow a distraction’. That missing subject could perhaps follow, eg ‘In hollow a discernible river valley’, although I’d prefer to see a comma between the hiding place and the definition; but here we don’t have an implicit subject, which means that the clue has to be pre-processed to ‘In hollow a dip[, one] through which river runs’. That said, I expect Azed has had to clue the word many times over in the preceding 2,572 puzzles, and I applaud the fact that he doesn’t re-use clues, even if it means the occasional clue being a little below his usual standards.

1a Bruiser with power breaking additional window (8)
A seven-letter word for someone/something that bruises (or more commonly grinds to a pulp) has the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘power’ inserted (‘breaking’) to produce that devious sort of advertising window which pops up on your computer but is only visible when you close the window behind which it is lurking. The wordplay here strikes me as questionable; as it is written the participle of an intransitive verb is required to indicate the insertion, eg ‘entering’, so here the solver must infer ‘Bruiser with power breaking [it]’.

7a Seed covering ball is there? He belts it possibly (4)
A composite anagram, where the letters of BALL IS THERE can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form HE BELTS plus the solution (‘it’).

11a Positive German football team making money (4)
I’m afraid my knowledge of German cardinal numbers doesn’t go beyond ten, so I would have needed this to be a netball or ice hockey team in order to avoid the need to check that part of my answer. The usual abbreviation for ‘positive’ is followed by the appropriate German number, producing a word that originally meant ‘things pilfered’ or ‘booty’ and became a derogatory term for wealth or money, ie ‘filthy lucre’.

13a Starts going at this speed one’s gift for traffic police (5)
A strange one this. There’s no doubt about the answer, but ‘starts’ on its own to indicate ‘take the first letters from’ isn’t something I’d expect to see from Azed. Even if you assume a preceding ‘it’, that still doesn’t work (‘It starts x y z’ surely can’t mean ‘It consists of the first letters of the words x, y and z’). There are some possible alternative parsings, but none that seems viable. Plus the surface reading doesn’t make any sense, to me at least. I’d be happy with “Starts to go at terrific speed – one’s gift for traffic police”.

17a Wolf maybe died having escaped from fair (5)
A six-letter adjective more often associated with frankness rather than fairness, without the usual abbreviation for ‘died’ (‘died having escaped’). The ‘maybe’ indicates that this is a definition by example, since the solution also applies to animals which are not wolves.

23a Holiday abroad, shortest one if there’s no Brie (5)
The combination of an eight-letter word meaning ‘shortest’ and a one letter word for ‘one’ has the letters BRIE removed (“if there’s no Brie”).

29a Republicans having a bit of a knees-up in lively dance (5)
This clue might prove tricky for solvers unfamiliar with the acronym GOP as used to describe the US Republican Party. It dates back to 1875, at which point it stood for Gallant Old Party, and has been given several alternative interpretations over the years (most notably Get Out and Push) but the accepted expanded form is now Grand Old Party. In 2009 the Wall Street Journal instructed staff to discontinue use of the term GOP on the basis (ostensibly) that readers might not know what it meant. Incidentally, the party’s elephant symbol dates back to an 1874 cartoon by Thomas Nast, showing the Democratic Party as a donkey trying to scare an elephant depicting the Republican Party. .

32a Sex symbol that is given leading part in India (4)
A rather wordy wordplay from which all but the first and last words could be removed without changing the outcome; a three-letter (poetic or Scottish) word for ‘that’ (as in ‘that x over there’) is followed by the first letter of (‘leading part in’) the word ‘India’. 

33a Certainly wood growth having nitrogen applied quite recently (8)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘Certainly’, a four-letter word for ‘wood growth’ (in a very general sense), and the chemical symbol for nitrogen.

2d King Cole in a bad way? Soon one’s out at the elbows (9)
An anagram of the monarchical (rather than chess) abbreviation for ‘King’ together with COLE, followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘soon’, producing a projection on the ulna. I’m not sure why Azed chose to use ‘elbows’ rather than ‘elbow’, which would have been more accurate.

3d Indian tree, one replacing millions of others (5)
A term applied to members of a large group of tropical and sub-tropical trees (‘others’, ie other trees) has its M (for ‘millions’) replaced by a single-letter word for ‘one’, producing a tree found in India.

15d Photo on lake that is showing Walter’s bird (9)
A three-letter colloquialism for a photo is followed by a four-letter word for a lake (of the sort that you might come across in the Lake District) and the usual abbreviation for ‘that is’. As is usual, ‘Walter’ is Sir Walter Scott, who is responsible for something like 140 words or distinct meanings in Chambers, including such gems as beflum and gumple-foisted.

22d Not strictly a Mohican cut for harvest celebration (6)
We’re into James Fenimore Cooper territory here, with specific reference to the protagonist of the five books that make up the Leatherstocking Tales, a child born to white parents and known as Natty Bumppo. After growing up among Delaware Indians, he takes various aliases including ‘Deerslayer’ (the title of the first book); in the second and most famous book, The Last of the Mohicans, he is a British scout known as ‘Hawk-eye’ and with his Mohican friends, Chingachgook and Uncas becomes part of the caravan transporting the two daughters of Colonel Munro to the safety of Fort William Henry. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce in M*A*S*H takes his nickname from the character, as apparently The Last of the Mohicans was the only book his father ever read. Incidentally (although completely irrelevantly), John Brunner’s brilliant 1975 sci-fi novel The Shockwave Rider features an intelligent dog called Natty Bumppo – the book  gave us the term ‘worm’ as a description of a malicious program that spreads through a computer network, and is one of the first works of fiction to feature computer hacking.

25d Region of SW France suggested by the French? (5)
The masculine singular definite article in French is suggested by the solution when it is read as (1,3,1). At first I thought that Azed had missed a letter off the end of the solution, but it is not a proper noun, rather a word given in Chambers as describing ‘a heathy plain or sandy tract (now forested) along the coast in SW France’. A ‘region’ is a ‘tract of country’, so this is absolutely fine.

26d Such a face suggests foolish cracksman, first to last (4)
This is what Ximenes called an ‘offshoot &lit’, where the whole clue acts as the definition while just a part of it forms the wordplay – here it is the last four words, an American word for a burglar or safe-breaker having its first letter moved to the end (‘first to last’). Since ‘Such a face suggests foolish’ is no good as the definition, we must re-use the wordplay in order to produce a satisfactory(ish) definition of a word which might describe the face of a foolish[-looking] cracksman. The example that Ximenes gave for this type of clue is “What a bishop may have had before getting a crook” for PREBEND, which is not dissimilar in structure.

(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 2,572 Plain

Difficulty rating: (4 / 5)

This struck me as a tough puzzle which newcomers to Azed might have struggled to get to grips with. Not as many straightforward anagrams as usual, and several clues where obscure (to my mind, anyway) words were involved in both the wordplay and the solution, something that I don’t like. If anyone (unlike me) managed to complete the puzzle without recourse to Chambers, kudos! There were some well constructed clues, but I did feel that the sense of fun that shines brightly in some Azed puzzles wasn’t on full beam, and whilst a single ‘spica’ in a puzzle is fine, the presence of two of them represents one spica too many.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 25d, “United in small island group, they’re not wholly divine (5)”. The wordplay here is U in AITS, but the point of interest is the use of ‘small island group’ to indicate AITS, which raises the question of how much the setter can ‘twist’ a straight definition to suit his or her purposes. Here Azed clearly didn’t want to use ‘small islands’, although it would be grammatically sound; I’ve no problem at all with something like ‘more than one small island’, or even ‘several small islands’, but I think ‘small island group’ is a bridge too far – it suggests a collective noun and frankly even as the definition in a clue for AITS I think it would be iffy. I suppose ‘rock group’ might be acceptable for STONES, but then rocks and stones are generally found in groups. When tweaking the indication of a word in order to improve the surface reading of a clue, the setter has to be careful not to stretch it to breaking point or to introduce superfluous words in order to make the clue ‘read’ better.

1a A dry cape’s inside – something supplying effective cover (5)
I initially thought that we would be required to put a ‘C’ inside A plus a word for ‘dry’, but in fact the clue is a charade of A, a two-letter abbreviation meaning ‘dry’ in an abstemious sense, and the ‘inside’ of the word CAPE, producing a word for the leaves of a palm tree which are used for thatching.

7a What comes after lying in sun repeatedly? We’re often baked (5)
I do wonder whether ‘What comes after’ is rather too indirect for comfort; to infer ‘the main course’ seems a stretch, so our first step must be to ‘afters’, whence we proceed to the three-letter word which is placed inside (‘lying in’) two instances (‘repeatedly’) of the normal abbreviation for ‘sun’. 

13a It was fired from the saddle, oil coating more than half of one (8)
A six-letter word for a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons (‘oil’) which is hard to come by in England at the moment containing (‘coating’) two consecutive letters from the word ONE (‘more than half of one’). The solution is a short rifle carried by mounted soldiers in the 16th and 17th centuries.

18a A bandage applied to a very large place? Discernment required (12)
A three-letter word meaning ‘a’ in the sense of ‘for each’, a five-letter word for a bandage wound around an injured limb in repeated figures-of-eight, and a four letter word for a very large place combine to produce the solution.

28a Butterfly to free following rulebook (6)
The three-letter verb meaning ‘to free’ is a crossword staple, but to get to the answer you need to know either the butterfly or PIE, a book of rules for determining the Church office of the day.

29a Sandwiches: number in foreign bread set before one (6)
So accustomed does one become to misdirection that I immediately assumed that ‘foreign bread’ was going to be the currency used in some far-off land, but in fact here it is the French word for ‘bread’ which contains the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ and is followed by the Roman numeral for ‘one’.

30a Pair reduced to single in travelling interrail, moving slowly (8)
The ‘pair reduced to single’ is the double-R in INTERRAIL which must be reduced to a single letter before the remaining letters are shifted around (‘travelling’) to form an adjective which certainly doesn’t mean ‘moving slowly’ but which is decidedly tricky to define accurately.

31a Large tropical fish, American, revealing soft metallic element (6)
The four-letter name of a large marine fish of the mackerel family found in warm parts of the western Atlantic is followed by the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘American’ (or ‘America’). Again, I think the definition is questionable – the adjective here describes the element in a combining form, certainly not something in which it is present in a ‘soft metallic’ form.

32a Countryman’s handle to lift on end of scythe (6)
The five-letter word which is followed by (‘on’) the last letter of ‘scythe’ (‘end of scythe’) means ‘to lift’ in the pilfering sense. The solution is shown by Chambers as ‘dialect’, hence the “Countryman’s” qualifying the definition.

33a Acreage yokel turned over for cows out of service (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘acreage’ (I say ‘usual’, but I’m struggling to remember when I last saw it used in a puzzle) and a four-letter dialect word for a yokel are reversed (‘turned over’), the result being a Spenserian (‘out of service’) word meaning ‘subdues’. This verb is probably related the adverb ‘adawe’, meaning ‘out of life’,  which may have been mistaken for a verb in phrases such as ‘they did him adawe’, meaning ‘they did him out of life’, ie ‘they killed him’.

2d Ecstasy filling African people in some sacred places (6)
The African people ‘filled with’ Ecstasy are the TEMNE, now predominantly found in northern Sierra Leone, having left their original settlements in Guinea during the 15th century.

6d Company in flying to Mars go by direction finder (12)
The standard two-letter abbreviation for ‘company’ contained by (‘in’) an anagram (‘flying’) of TO MARS plus a four-letter verb meaning ‘to go by’ or ‘to elapse’.

7d Cause of disease forward fellow’s turned up (5)
The adjective meaning ‘forward’ (or ‘saucy’) is in common use; the associated noun less so. Followed by an [apostrophe-]S, it needs to be reversed ‘turned up’ in order to produce the solution.

8d Coconut oil product to preserve eggs soft? Reverse of that (6)
A charade of a three-letter word meaning ‘to preserve’, a pair of letters representing [duck] eggs, and a one-letter abbreviation for ‘soft’, with the whole thing being reversed (‘Reverse of that’). I believe that the solution is more of a by-product of the extraction of coconut oil, being the mass left after the oil has been removed from the pulp.

10d Osteal places may afford space to this (5)
A composite anagram &lit, and a succinct one at that, where the letters of OSTEAL PLACES can be rearranged to form SPACE TO plus the solution (‘this’). Too succinct, perhaps – I’m not sure that ‘may afford’ is sufficient to indicate rearrangement, even a potential one.

17d Feature of requiem to fade with soaring swell within? (8, 2 words)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to fade’ has a five-letter word (just about) meaning ‘[to] swell’ or (more commonly) ‘to come into being’ reversed (‘soaring’) inside (‘within’), the result being a (4,4) solution. The ‘swell’ meaning of the five-letter verb is obsolete, associated now only with the similar four-letter verb lacking the initial A. The required letter sequence could have been more accurately indicated by ‘a swell’, but this would have presented a problem in relation to the reversal – ‘a soaring swell’ reads very nicely but would deliver AESIR rather than ESIRA, while ‘a swell soaring’ doesn’t sound right at all.

20d Like e.g. US soldiers on parade, from Weald, leaderless, might one assume (6)
The idea is that when read as (2,2,2) the solution could (hence the ‘might one assume’) describe WEALD with the first letter removed, ie EALD. The solution is the North American spelling of a word which might describe the orderly arrangement of soldiers on parade. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but a great clue it ain’t.

21d Precise pointer at top of compass? (6)
When the pointer is at the top of the compass it would be indicating ‘north’ and therefore could perhaps be described as a (1,5).

23d Poison swallowed direct, dad dropped (6)
A concatenation of a five-letter word for ‘swallowed’ and a four-letter word for ‘[to] direct’ has the letters DAD removed from the outside. I question whether ‘dropped’ is sufficient to indicate that the word to be taken away has first to be divided – I don’t see why the relevant part of the clue couldn’t simply have read ‘dad dropped outside’ (or ‘dropped off’), which makes the instruction clearer..

24d Avian spur son observed on magpies (5)
The usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘son’ has the four-letter magpie genus added to produce a word which also features in the wordplay of 18a.

25d United in small island group, they’re not wholly divine (5)
Here the standard abbreviation for ‘United’ appears in a four-letter word for ‘small islands’, with demigods being the outcome for those fluent in Tongan, although those more familiar with the languages of other Pacific islands may ascribe a slightly different meaning to the word.

27d Check up about sign of what’s not right in Paddy’s bit of casual work (5)
A four-letter verb meaning ‘[to] check’ or ‘to restrain’ is reversed (‘up’) around (‘about’) a mark made by a teacher beside an incorrect answer (“sign of what’s not right”).

(definitions are underlined)