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 2,551 ‘Spoonerisms’

Difficulty rating: (5 / 10)

‘Spoonerisms’ is undoubtedly one of my favourite variations, giving Azed full rein to exercise both his skills and his wit. This was an excellent example of the genre, with many smiles raised. Incidentally, I counted three proper names not given by Chambers in the grid (at 1a, 31a and 27d) rather than the two indicated by Azed.

For those who haven’t encountered a Spoonerisms puzzle before, a few suggestions:

1. Identify as many of the ‘type B’ clues as possible (the ones where the definition contains a spoonerism), work out the definitions, and then solve them as ‘normal’ clues
2. When tackling ‘type A’ clues, start with the shorter entries
3. Remember that with type A clues the word to be entered in the grid remains undefined – only its spoonerism is indicated

Working through a clue of each type:

Type A – 33a “Company saturation to heed once, in spin, e.g. when struggling (12)”. Here the wordplay involves TO REKE (‘to heed once’, ‘reke’ being a Spenserian form of ‘reck’, to heed) being put inside an anagram (‘when struggling’) of EG SPIN. The definition part, ‘Company saturation’, leads to CORPS STEEPING, and therefore the grid entry is  STOREKEEPING.

Type B – 11a “War that tips monarch’s end, in grip of secret society (5)”. The spoonerism is of ‘Taw that whips’, so the pre-processed clue is “Taw that whips monarch’s end, in grip of secret society”; the last letter of ‘monarch’ (“monarch’s end”) is in the grip of a TONG, producing THONG, ‘a taw that whips’.

A few notes on individual clues follow, after which there is a list of clues showing clue types and the elements featured in the spoonerisms.

18a Date with bog’s long delayed after start of storm (5)
The wordplay here is straightforward (a familiar four-letter word for ‘long delayed’ following the first letter of ‘storm’), but (like me) you will probably need Chambers to confirm the ‘bait with dogs’ definition (note the change of punctuation, the apostrophe disappearing in the despoonerized version).

29a I’m in business as a magistrate (very old) (5)
This is the only ‘type A’ where the ‘definition’ part indicates a single word – AEDILE, ‘a magistrate (very old)’ – which must be ‘internally’ spoonerized.

30a Cosmologist following celestial body – kindly follow instruction (4)
The ‘cosmologist’ here is Martin REES, Baron Rees of Ludlow, the Astronomer Royal since 1995.

31a Tarty popper, a feature of purple pendant (5, 2 words)
The person who ‘tops her party’ is Marine of that ilk, President of the National Rally in France since succeeding her father in 2011.

32a Genuine when exchanging bits, giving my man (contemptuously) coin in Tokyo (7)
This is one of four vocalic spoonerisms (the BUNTING/BIN TONGUE sort) in the puzzle (the others being 25a, 29a and 2d); here a seven-letter word meaning ‘genuine’ has its first three letters moved to the end (‘when exchanging bits’) to produce a spoonerism of SIR A SEN.

2d Primate food put out with headless fish (6)
An anagram (‘out’) of PUT, followed by the four-letter name of a fish resembling a cod, with its first letter removed (‘headless fish’). The spoonerism is a vocalic one, with vowel sounds being exchanged between the two words indicated by ‘Primate food’.

6d Jean’s to mock such as Dixie going topless (6)
Here there is a change of punctuation in the type B spoonerism, with “Jean’s to mock” becoming “Means to Jock” (ie a Scottish word for ‘means’ or ‘intends’). The Dixies with the deceptive capitalization are “military cooking-pails or camp-kettles”.

15d The Scots learn to cheat English with British money around (9)
I’m not sure why Azed put a ‘The’ at the start of this clue – it can safely be ignored, the type A spoonerism comprising a Scottish word for ‘learn’ (‘Scots learn’) and a word meaning ‘to cheat’. The ‘learn’ sense of the word isn’t in fact Scottish, simply archaic – I suspect that Azed may have misread the Chambers entry for ‘lear’. In any event, ‘Scots learning to cheat English with British money around’ would have been more accurate.

22d Cass including garb an Andalusian’s seen in continental summer (6)
Azed has been a bit naughty here – ‘Andalusian’ (“a breed of laying poultry with blue plumage”) is very much a definition by example of a three-letter word which must be put inside a three-letter word which means ‘summer’ in French. The  spoonerism includes a space which must be removed in order to produce the type B definition of the entry.

26d Settlement to cultivate river entering forest often flooded (5)
The R for ‘river’ enters a four-letter word for “an area of riverside forest that is periodically flooded” to produce a spoonerism of ‘PA (or PAH) GROW’, ie ‘[Maori] settlement to cultivate’.

27d He’s gassed moles I found under unpleasant clutter (4)
The footballer in question has certainly ‘massed goals’ for Barcelona and Argentina, over 700 to date

Clue types and locations of spoonerisms

1a: type A – ‘Famous result for Sitting Bull’ indicates the spoonerism of the entry; 10a: type B – ‘Pear batch’ is itself a spoonerism of the definition; 11a: B – ‘War that tips’; 12a: A – ‘discolour gutters’; 14a: B – ‘made of shoal’; 16a: A – ‘Goan booze supported’; 17a: B – ‘Age of sold’; 18a: B – “Date with bog’s”; 20a: B – ‘pig bunch’; 23a: B – “its chime never ranges”; 25a: A – ‘Tuck into a Scotch’; 29a: A- ‘a magistrate (very old)’; 30a: A – ‘kindly follow instruction’; 31a: B – ‘Tarty popper’; 32a: A – ‘my man (contemptuously) coin in Tokyo’; 33a: A – ‘Company saturation’.

1d: A – ‘Sailor pub crawl’; 2d: A – ‘Primate food’; 3d: B – ‘Racing brod’; 4d: A – ‘water drinks’; 5d: A – ‘fixed stoppage’; 6d: B – “Jean’s to mock”; 7d: B – ‘ball to coat’; 8d: B – ‘Call Indian smart’; 9d: B – ‘Suggesting Pliny may’; 13d: A – ‘Curtain rod look’; 15d: A – ‘The Scots learn to cheat’; 19d: A – ‘Sloping jump’; 21d: B – ‘Coal for horde once’; 22d: B – ‘Cass including garb an’; 26d: A – ‘Settlement to cultivate’; 27: B – “He’s gassed moles”; 28d: B – ‘topping whale’.

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 2,550 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Several straightforward anagrams, but enough tricky wordplays (17a and 32a in particular) to raise the overall difficulty to the middle of the range. Some nice clues, although it was strange to find two pairs of repeated wordplay elements crossing in the grid (14a/7d and 26a/5d) as well as the solutions for 5d and 33a beginning with the same six-letter word.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 27d, “Defensive wall protected by some Berber militia?” (4). A ‘hidden’, with the solution appearing in ‘berBER Militia’ and the selection of a chunk of the two-word string being indicated by ‘some’. Hold on, though…the definition here is ‘Defensive wall’, so the wordplay must be ‘protected by some Berber militia’ – but the solution isn’t ‘protected by’ BERM, it is BERM. We have one concealment indicator too many here: ‘Defensive wall protected by Berber militia’ would be plenty adequate, as would ‘Defensive wall some number maintained’. Note that ‘Defensive wall some Berber militia constructed’ would not be acceptable – a ‘hiding place’ must not contain redundant words other than ‘a’ or ‘the’, and therefore the word ‘constructed’ has no place in the clue; this is why ‘some Berber militia’ cannot be the hiding place in the published clue.

9a Extremes of lethargy with taking English in? With which Eng. Lit. students are familiar (6)
The ‘extreme’ characters of the word ‘lethargy’ are followed by a three-letter word for ‘with’ (seen most often in place names or descriptions of multifunctional roles) containing the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘English’ The solution is “a place or building devoted to literary studies, lectures etc.”

11a Saddle rug gallop turned hard (5)
A four-letter word for a high speed (‘gallop’, as in “He was travelling at quite a gallop”) is reversed (‘turned’) and followed by H (‘hard’).

16a Suitable for disco? There’s no charge getting in morning and afternoon (5)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘no charge’ is contained by (‘getting in’) a three-letter word for ‘morning and afternoon’ (as opposed to evening and night).

17a Cannon maybe? Hence e.g. fired inside (4)
A tricky little fellow this one – the ‘Cannon maybe’ indicates a definition for example, while the wordplay requires that the letters EG be removed (‘fired’) from within (‘inside’) a six-letter word meaning ‘Hence’ in the interjectional sense of ‘Away!’

24a Nimble Scottish woman dressed in loose gown, old (5)
The definition here is ‘Nimble Scottish’, ie a Scots word for ‘nimble’, with a one-letter abbreviation of ‘woman’ contained by (‘dressed in’) a four-letter word (which can also be spelt with ‘que’ rather than ‘k’ at the end) for a woman’s loose-fitting gown. Chambers shows the gown as ‘historical’, hence the ‘old’ in the clue, but doesn’t give W as an abbreviation for ‘woman’ (only for women or women’s) – not the first time that Azed has made up an abbreviation (I remember ‘cadet’ for C a while back).

30a Weed got with cash, ecstasy following (4)
A three-letter slang term for ‘money’ (rarely seen these days outside crosswords), followed by the E for ecstasy, producing a ‘wild vetch or tare’ (‘Weed’). I’m surprised that Azed didn’t use ‘Weed locally’ or similar for the definition, given that Chambers shows the solution as ‘dialect’….

31a Plain, as example where river enters it (5)
…and here we have a Scots word which Azed has similarly chosen not to flag. The wordplay is straightforward, the standard abbreviation for ‘river’ entering a four-letter word for an example (which is often followed by ‘in point’)

32a Ancient vow, what cardinal may describe when bound by his title? (6)
‘Cardinal’ might describe EAST (along with North, South or West), and on those frequent occasions when I have cause to drop a line to a cardinal I would accord him the title ‘His Eminence’, which can be shortened to ‘H Em’ or, as here’ ‘HE’, The ‘vow’ is a Spenserian one.

6d Work? Not just one will often be seen going after soap (5)
A double definition, the first being ‘Work? Not just one’ (ie the plural of the Latin word for work) and the second being ‘[it] will often be seen going after soap’.

8d Shrubby plant on river spotted rising after time, a real winner (12, 3 words, apostrophe)
A nicely constructed wordplay: after the T for time (‘after time’) come a four-letter shrub (named after the cupbearer of Olympus), a three-letter river that emerges into the sea at Whitby, and the reversal (‘rising’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘spotted’.

10d Decorative work, see, covering bishop’s vestment (7)
You may have to get this one from the definition alone, unless you know that a ROCHET is “a close-fitting surplice-like vestment worn by bishops and abbots.”

17d Edible fungus, slightly warm, in pieces (7)
A lovely word, this, produced by putting a three-letter synonym for tepid (‘slightly warm’) inside a four-letter word meaning ‘pieces’.

23d Who’s worried re aim with this – a sommelier perhaps? (5)
A rather weak composite anagram &lit, where the letters of RE AIM plus the solution (‘this’) can be rearranged (‘worried’) to form A SOMMELIER. I suppose the surface reading is quite amusing, but I don’t like the “Who’s” in the cryptic reading – it should surely be “What’s”.

25d Marriage venue? Sounds like I may be seeing to some chairs (5)
The solution sounds like the the scene of a famous marriage when water was changed into wine; the event is depicted in a 1563 painting by Paolo Veronese. The solution describes a craftsperson who might be found ‘seeing to some chairs’, specifically those with woven parts.

28d Tight head’s feature (one of two) with name or number on (4)
For some reason Graham Rowntree immediately sprung to my mind, but sadly he was a loosehead prop. A three-letter word for a feature of the human head (one of a pair) follows an abbreviation for either ‘name’ or ‘number’. In the definition, ‘tight’ has the sense of ‘stingy’.

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 2,549 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I didn’t find too much to detain me here, but on my way through I marked several clues as having tricks up their sleeves, so I suspect that it was a little harder than the two previous puzzles this month – I’d be interested to hear what other solvers think. There was plenty to enjoy in the puzzle, as well as a couple of dodgy definitions.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 30a, “Language generally, riddle involving legal rule” (5). The wordplay, TEMS (‘riddle’) containing (‘involving’) R (‘legal rule’), offers two items of interest. One is that although TEMS is shown by Chambers as ‘now dialect‘ Azed has chosen not to indicate this through a qualification such as ‘for some’ or ‘in places’; I don’t have a problem with this myself, although some editors will insist on dialectal words being flagged to the solver, and I’m not sure I would want to see, say, ‘him’ on its own being used for ‘un’. Regarding the R, Azed’s pendulum of explicitness has swung the other way: Chambers shows ‘r’ as an abbreviation for ‘rule (law)’ and Azed has gone the whole hog by including the context in which the abbreviation is used; I suspect that he has done this for the benefit of the surface reading rather than the solver.

7a Bar? Better rooms therein but lacking inside toilet (4)
The ‘better rooms’ which form the basis of the solution (‘therein’) are SALOONS, from which the ‘inside toilet’ must be removed.

10a Fore-runners of vertebrates possibly had me puzzled about colourless ooze? (10)
The ‘colourless ooze’ which is to be placed inside an anagram (‘puzzled’) of HAD ME is ICHOR, romantically the ethereal juice flowing through the veins of the Greek gods, and slightly more prosaically the colourless matter oozing from an ulcer or wound.

12a Fauns dancing all over the place (5)
The anagram of FAUNS resolves to a slang term from North America, although Azed chooses not to indicate its geographical distribution. I think it’s pretty well known this side of the pond, given that the British R&B band of that name were formed in 1973 (albeit they took it from a Captain Beefheart lyric); by the way, their track ‘Lock and Key’ features some cracking slide guitar from Micky Moody, one of Britain’s finest exponents of the art. Chambers Slang Dictionary tells us that s.n.a.f.u. is a WW2 expression that quickly entered mainstream slang and generated a number of variants, none of which has had the same impact (eg f.i.g.m.o., euphemistically ‘forget it, got my orders – I can see why that one didn’t catch on). The meaning is “a mistake, an error, a situation, often within an institution or organization, that has gone awry.”

15a Chaps in US intelligence organization turned washed-out at home (6)
A three-letter word for ‘chaps’ is put inside a three-letter acronym for a US intelligence organization and the whole lot reversed (‘turned’). The ‘at home’ here indicates that the spelling is specific to the US; whilst it may not be necessary to tell the solver that the solution to 12a is an Americanism, here it is essential as the word does not exist in British English.

19a Working micros, see? Place inside processes for them (12)
Here we have an anagram (‘Working’) of MICROS SEE with PUT (‘Place’) inside, but I’m not entirely happy with the definition. Chambers gives the solution as meaning ‘processes by computer’, so I would prefer the clue to have read ‘”…processes with [or ‘on’] them”.

20a The room’s excited with perm, large fluttery thing (12, 2 words)
Azed must have thought when writing the definition that he needed to define the singular form of the solution. It cannot be a misprint as the surface reading would make no sense if ‘thing’ were simply changed to ‘things’. I think we need to imagine that the clue is “The room is excited with perms, large fluttery things”.

24a Charles as king? For sure (3)
The ‘Charles’ here is the late, great Ray Charles Robinson, the musician who liked to be called ‘Brother Ray’.

31a Satire getting me briefly in a pickle? (10)
A very neat clue, with a two-letter abbreviation of the setter’s pseudonym (‘me briefly’) contained by an eight-letter word for “an alcoholic mixture or pickle in which fish, meat, etc is steeped before cooking, to improve the flavour or tenderize.”

32a Those above junior doctors requiring orderly system without company (4)
Here we have a six-letter word for the universe as an orderly whole, from which the letters CO must be removed (‘without company’) to produce the plural of an abbreviation relating to senior medical personnel.

3d Vassal e.g. the young lady’s sacked (5)
THE GIRL has ‘sacked’ (got rid of) the letters EG to produce the solution.

5d Richard Murphy (or so it’s said) replaced his president in senior post (12)
A playful clue involving a partial, non-word homophone (something that Azed seems to have become keen on recently) for ‘Dick Tater’ (‘Richard Murphy’), followed by an anagram (‘replaced’) of HIS plus the one-letter abbreviation for ‘president’.

16d Chaetopods identified with Neapolitan diet venue? (8, 2 words)
The Neapolitan here is a multicoloured frozen food and the ‘diet venue’ is the city in Germany which has hosted over a hundred German Imperial Diets, assemblies of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire, and which introduced the world to Liebfraumilch.

17d Woman scorned tail of tabby after mink? (4)
The reference is to these lines from The Mourning Bride (1697) by William Congreve:

Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.

18d Not a bit of beer fermenting for host (4)
A five-letter word for ‘fermenting’ from which the letter B has been removed (‘Not a bit of beer’).

21d At the moment when one enters anything but long shot (6, 2 words)
The wordplay here involves A (‘one’) entering  a plural noun which describes the odds of an event deemed to have a 50% probability of occurring. I don’t believe for a moment that this is accurately indicated by ‘anything but [a] long shot’, but I see where he’s coming from.

23d Rooty in partnership, cross after right hand is in contact with Ishant’s first (5)
A devil of a word (well, not actually a word, but a combining form, hence the ‘in partnership’) to clue, the rather tortuous wordplay has a two-letter word for a ‘cross’ (between the yak and the common cow) following (‘after’) a two-letter abbreviation for ‘right hand’ and the first letter of ‘Ishant’. The ECB website tells me that Joe Root’s nicknames are ‘Rooty’ (that’s about as imaginative as most nicknames get these days) and ‘Geoffrey’ (I’d keep that one quiet if I were him). Cricket has a disappointing track record when it comes to clever or imaginative nicknames; soccer has produced most of the best ones – I’m thinking here about notables such as Gilles de Bilde (‘Bob’), Neil Pointon (‘Dissa’), Imre Varadi (‘Ollie’), Kiki Musampa (‘Chris’, think about it) and, of course, Fitz Hall (‘Onesize’). One of my favourites, though, came from the world of tennis – three-time Wimbledon finalist Andy Roddick was known as A-Rod, so it was natural that the rather less distinguished British player Alex Bogdanovic should receive the analogous nickname ‘A-Bog’.

25d Inferior veg recipe fed to cat (5)
‘Cat’, being used in the sense of ‘vomit’, has the standard abbreviation for recipe ‘fed to it’.

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 2,548 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

A 13×11 grid this week, with three ‘hiddens’, one TFL (take first letters) and a generous serving of anagrams offering plenty of help to get things started. It didn’t detain me beyond my second slice of Toastie, but I enjoyed both while they lasted.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 2d, “Backs possibly injured dropped from later game” (5). The  word ‘lame’ (‘possibly injured’, the ‘possibly’ being there because one can be lame for reasons other than injury) is ‘dropped’ from outside ‘later game’ to yield TERGA (‘Backs’). The clue would read more smoothly with a couple of commas, ie “Backs, possibly injured, dropped from later game”, so why didn’t Azed put them in? One of his rules of clueing relates to respecting orthography – punctuation must not be used in the wordplay to mislead the solver unfairly – and here he obeys it: the ‘all-in-one-breath’ expression LAME-dropped-from-LATER-GAME’ is fine, but in ‘LAME, dropped from LATER GAME’ the word LAME is clearly the subject and therefore the combination cannot reasonably lead to a modified form of LATER GAME. In general, punctuation should not be introduced to enhance the surface reading if it makes the cryptic reading less clear.

13a Increase county gossip? (6)
When the linguist Alan Ross introduced the terms ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ in 1954 he cannot have realised quite what a boon the former would prove to crossword setters. Although it is more often indicated by adjectives such as ‘posh’, here Azed uses ‘county’, in the sense of ‘relating to the nobility or gentry with estates and a seat in the county’, to provide the U which is followed by a five-letter verb meaning to talk foolishly or to gossip.

17a Plain song? Probed endlessly about that (7)
A nicely-disguised definition (‘Plain’), the wordplay being a three-letter word for a song with a truncated (‘endlessly’) five-letter word meaning ‘probed’ set around it (‘about that’).

18a Muscly lump where contemporary art is shown around yard (5)
The element of wordplay which is to be put around the normal abbreviation for ‘yard’ is indicated by ‘where contemporary art is shown’, specifically the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

25a Salt in love turned loose, worried (7)
The wordplay here involves a single-letter representation of ‘love’, a reversal (‘turned’) of a three-letter word meaning ‘loose’, and a three-letter word meaning ‘worried'(in the ‘gnawed away at’ sense).

27a Gifts, on being removed from stock, sent off (7)
I’ve clearly been solving barred puzzles for too long, because the sight of the word ‘stock’ in a clue immediately makes me think ‘talon’, the stock of cards remaining after a deal. Here it has the closing ‘on’ deleted (‘on being removed’) and is followed by an anagram (‘off’) of SENT.

29a What gets said after it, often recalling fine sport? (4)
The wordplay involves the reversing (‘recalling’) of the usual abbreviation for ‘fine’ together with a three-letter word for ‘sport’, and ‘What gets said after it, often’ is a definition with ‘Azed’ written all over it.

2d Backs possibly injured dropped from later game (5)
A word that could (‘possibly’) mean ‘injured’ is ‘dropped’ from the outside of ‘later game’.

6d Wellington’s address offering telling punch – error mostly corrected (6)
Azed is one of those setters who like to have a bit of fun when indicating words which are specific to a geographic region, often in a way which is designed to mislead (though of course not unfairly so). ‘In Perth’, for instance, could point to either a Scots word or an Australian one; here ‘Wellington’ has nothing to do with the Duke and everything to do with the city in New Zealand. The wordplay has a two-letter abbreviation for a punch that finishes a boxing match followed by an anagram of the first four letters (‘mostly’) of ERROR. Incidentally, the address of the Duke of Wellington (or of his former residence, at least) is 149 Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner, London, W1J 7NT; when Apsley House was built at the end of the eighteenth century, though, it was next to the main turnpike into central London so became known as ‘Number 1, London’ because it was was the first house you came to when you entered the city.

8d Antiseptic compound? Unsuccessful one’s given up, cocaine preferred (6)
A five-letter word for someone who is (consistently) unsuccessful gets reversed (“‘s given up”), with the abbreviation for ‘cocaine’ being placed at the top (‘preferred’).

14d Bird that’s not OK in theater stalls? (9)
An &lit, albeit not in my view a particularly satisfying one. The four-letter name of a bird, missing the closing OK (“that’s not [ie that has not] OK”), is placed inside a seven-letter word for the stalls in a US theatre (hence the spelling ‘theater’) – as well  as a type of wooden flooring – to produce the name of another bird. However, whilst I suppose that Azed might say that a ‘bird’ in the sense of a girl might be OK in the theater stalls while this sort of bird definitely isn’t, I would rather have seen this clue in a non-&lit form, ie “Bird, one that’s not OK in theater stalls”.

26d Pressed to the mast, sailor’s to work ‘ard as drudge (5)
The standard two-letter abbreviation for a sailor is followed by (“‘s”) a word meaning ‘to work hard as a drudge’ (or to journey on horseback) with the initial h dropped (by analogy with “‘ard”). Chambers confirms the definition ‘Pressed to the mast’.

28d Strap cracks – time to leave (4)
A five-letter word for ‘[wise]cracks’ with the abbreviation for ‘time’ missing (‘time to leave’). On first reading on this clue, it seemed to me that the ‘cracks’ must be of a humorous variety otherwise Azed would have chosen a word like ‘breaks’, which would have significantly enhanced the surface reading. I was right.

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 2,547 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Although there were very few ‘gimmes’ in this puzzle, there was nothing too tricky either, and I needed Chambers only in order to confirm a few entries (and correct the one at 33a). The clues were of a high standard, I thought, with some nice (and deceptive, as you would expect) surface readings.

I have just noticed that comments have mysteriously been disabled on all posts on the site. I have re-enabled them for recent posts and will keep an eye open for any recurrence of the problem. Last time something similar happened only new posts were affected, causing me to blame the post-cloning plug-in that I use, but I may have been pointing the finger in the wrong direction. I should have noticed the complete absence recently of not just crossword-related comments but also the usual assortment of generous offers  from around the world to provide me with a wide selection of medications and, er, services…

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 29a, “First character to perform admits stiff dressage manoeuvre” (6). ‘Sad’ is not an obvious synonym of ‘stiff’, but they could  be used interchangeably on Bake Off in a pejorative sense, and here SAD is contained by PEE, producing PESADE. We are all familiar with ‘first to’ as a single-letter selection indicator, eg ‘first to complain’ = C, and Azed regulars will also be well versed in the use of the ‘names’ of individual letters of the alphabet (‘see’ = C appears in the very next clue). However, it is a moot point whether ‘first to complain’ can fairly indicate SEE, or ‘first to perform’ PEE. In these situations I would normally use ‘letter’ or ‘character’ in order to point the solver in the right direction, and here Azed has done likewise, including ‘character’ – ‘first character to perform’ is scrupulously fair for PEE.

1a Mess up wrong raw material for French bread? (6)
A charade to start with, the first half being a synonym for ‘wrong’ (often applied informally to a wrong note), and the second half being the French word for corn or wheat.

6a Splash pint? Pan’s needed with this all over the place (6)
The first of two compound anagrams &lit, in this one a rearrangement (‘all over the place’) of the letters of PANS plus the solution (‘this’) can produce SPLASH PINT. The solution describes what could be all over the place after the pint has been splashed.

11a Feeble (lacking power) about rough sea, windy? (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘feeble’ has its (initial) P removed (‘lacking power’) and is set around (‘about’) an anagram (‘rough’) of SEA. ‘Windy’ here is used in the sense of ‘nervous’.

12a Villa, maybe one with central heating in the middle of Napoli (6)
The none-too-tricky wordplay gives us the soubriquet of Francisco Villa (born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula), the Mexican revolutionary general who has been portrayed in films by (along with himself) such notables as Raoul Walsh, Wallace Beery, Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner.

17a Who is fitted out with one? Hoplite was (5)
A very fine composite anagram &lit, concise and accurate. The letters WHO IS when rearranged  (‘fitted out’) together with the solution (‘one’) can produce HOPLITE WAS. The Spartan hoplites each had an ‘aspis’ (or hoplon), a large and somewhat unwieldy shield; Philip II fitted out the hoplites in the Macedonian phalanx with a smaller shield of the sort named here.

18a High jinks? Not for civil servants as a whole (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘Not for’ (ie ‘not in favour of’) followed by a two-letter abbreviation for the civil service (‘civil servants as a whole’).

29a Resident alien once tucked into ale, terribly sick-making (8)
I got this one from the definition; deriving the solution entirely from the wordplay means knowing that a ‘metic’ in ancient Greece was a resident alien in a city who was subject to a special tax. This ‘resident alien once’ is ‘tucked into’ an anagram (‘terribly’) of ALE.

33a What’ll launch rocket aloft, we hear, and deny malfunctioning (6)
I guessed wrong for the first part of the wordplay – a non-word homophone (not something I favour) for ‘high’ (‘aloft, we hear’) which precedes an anagram (‘malfunctioning’) of DENY. The rocket fuel in question was developed by Rocketdyne in the US to give ore power than an ethyl alcohol/water mixture; it offered significantly more thrust, and significantly higher toxicity. After being used for several successful launches, including that of America’s first satellite, it was superseded by fuels offering even higher performance.

2d Loose, run free, almost free (6)
An anagram (‘free’) of ‘run’, followed by a word meaning ‘free’ (in the sense of ‘unrestricted’) with the last letter missing (‘almost’).

7d Dolly, say, one in cast performing (6)
The wordplay here is a charade of ‘one in cast’ (4) + ‘performing’ (2), and the solution is the surname of the multi-talented American singer, songwriter and businesswoman. I admit that I’ve selected this clue simply so that I can quote the exchange:

Interviewer: How do feel when people describe you as a ‘dumb blonde’?
Dolly: I don’t care, ‘cos I know I ain’t dumb…and I know I ain’t blonde neither.

9d The endless beat (referring to the downbeat) (6)
Here we have the word THE (from the clue) followed by a four-letter word for ‘beat’ with the last letter removed (‘endless’).

19d Plan to win nothing is admitted by club (6)
I assume that Azed is referring here to Newcastle United. The word IS gets admitted (contained) by a four-letter word for a Maori war-club (often seen in its alternative spelling with a closing I rather than an E) to produce a declaration at the game of Solo (there may be others) that one will attempt to win no tricks.

20d Our distant ancestors, or a writer about them (6)
The letter A followed by a crossword staple for ‘writer’ containing a two-letter contraction of the word ‘them’.

21d Charger maybe in sparkling get-up, all but extremes (6)
An eight-letter word for ‘in sparkling get-up’ (as performers on Come Dancing often were) with the first and last letters removed (‘all but extremes’). The ‘maybe’ indicates that a ‘Charger’ is an example of the solution rather than a dictionary definition.

24d What means game’s up? Reverse of that for inventor (6)
The term for the end of a game of Rugby Union (“What means game’s up?”) is reversed (‘Reverse of that’) to produce the surname of an inventor who acquired (singly or jointly) 1,093 patents, many related to electric lighting, the phonograph, the telegraph, and storage batteries. Sadly he did not invent the six-legged chair seen in the Simpsons episode ‘The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace’; this is the one where Homer, inspired by Edison, becomes an inventor and creates, inter alia, a six-legged, untippable-over chair and a somewhat capricious electric hammer. On visiting the Edison Museum, he sees a model of Edison seated in an identical six-legged chair, but realises that the invention has not been recognised as Edison’s because no-one has so far spotted the extra legs. Taking up his electric hammer, Homer intends to smash the chair so that he can reclaim the invention as his own, but stops himself when he sees a poster in which Edison illustrates how he worked in the perpetual shadow of Da Vinci just as Homer has worked in Edison’s shadow. He puts down the electric hammer and exits the museum, leaving the extra legs at the back of the chair clearly visible. The next day it is announced on TV that two previously unknown inventions of Edison have been discovered – the six-legged chair and the electric hammer – and are “expected to generate millions for Edison’s already wealthy heirs’. D’oh! For anyone wishing to build themselves a copy of Homer’s (or Thomas’s) six-legged chair, this video is required viewing.

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 2,546 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

After last week’s Carte Blanche, here we have a plain puzzle somewhere in the middle of the difficulty spectrum, featuring some nicely oblique definitions. I get the feeling that Azed enjoyed setting this one.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 19d, “Jockey Lester, accepting tribunal’s conclusion, gives fresh account” (7). Verbs can be used in several ways to indicate anagrams; in terms of the syntax of the wordplay, participles (eg ‘changing’) are the most flexible and imperatives (‘change[!]’) the least. Hence the opportunities to use verbs in the imperative mood are relatively infrequent, but they can lead to some neat (and deceptive) surface readings, in which they appear to be nouns (often in an attributive sense, modifying another noun, as in ‘buffet car’ as a cryptic indication of ARC). Particular favourites of setters are ‘police’ and ‘school’ – ‘Police sergeant’ would indicate an anagram of ‘sergeant’, ‘School rules’ likewise of ‘rules’. Imperatives must be used with care, however; in practice, they will almost invariably need to be the first word in the wordplay.

A few examples. ‘School meal unsatisfactory’ is fine for LAME, but ‘School meal is unsatisfactory’ is not (the clue can be pre-processed into ‘Rearrange MEAL is unsatisfactory’, which is clearly no good). In general, only link words which suggest ‘in order to produce’ can legitimately be used, as in ‘Police escort for street trader’ (COSTER). The imperative need not be the first word in the whole clue – in ‘A few school leavers’ (SEVERAL) it is not – but usually  (as here with ‘Jockey’) it will be. Whilst this limits the use of imperatives, the capitalization of the first letter of the clue means that words such as ‘Doctor’ and ‘Harry’ can be used deceptively without having to ‘cheat’ with the initial capital – as in ‘Doctor Foster getting soggier’ for SOFTER or ‘Harry Potter spending time drunk’ for TOPER. Note how in the former example the participle ‘getting’ is sound while the indicative ‘gets’ would not be, and in the latter the participle ‘spending’ allows the imperative ‘Harry’ (=’Ravage’) to act on the result of ‘Potter-spending-time’, ie POTER; ‘Harry Potter spends time drunk’ is unsound (if you work through the wordplay you’ll see why). Similarly in the 19d clue, Azed cannot use ‘accepts’ to show the inclusion of the extra L, but the participle ‘accepting’ fixes the problem nicely.

12a April first traps bovine creature (7)
This clue has a solve-by date of next Wednesday, and features a two-letter bovine creature being ‘trapped’ by an Italian loanword meaning ‘first’.

13a Returning buggies maybe driven from tee at Turnbery? (5)
I did briefly wonder whether Donald Trump had changed the spelling of ‘Turnberry’ in a none-too-subtle attempt to fool the R&A, but I suspect that it is simply a misprint. The ‘maybe’ here belongs to the buggies in the wordplay, as it is a moot point whether the pared-down racing vehicles (which are travelling backwards in the grid) are ‘light, very basic vehicles’; the solution is a Scots past tense which could describe what someone on the golf tee did to the ball.

16a Beloved, if old tenor joined in – one such? (7)
A four-letter word for ‘beloved’ or ‘dear’ that has come to us from across the English Channel, with that barred crossword staple AN (an archaic form of ‘if’) plus the usual abbreviation for ‘tenor’ inserted (‘joined in’). The definition is ‘one such?’, referring back to the tenor in the wordplay.

28a Hard part of cell, on strike, leading to end of enterprise (7)
The question came up last week about how ‘lit’ could lead to IN, and one might similarly ask here how ‘on’ can indicate LIT. The answer is that one meaning of ‘on’ given by Chambers is ‘on the way to being drunk’, which approximates to ‘lit’ (‘drunk’). It is followed by a three-letter synonym for ‘[to] strike’ and the last letter (‘end of’) ‘enterprise’. I’m not sure why Azed put a comma between ‘cell’ and ‘on’, but perhaps I have misconstrued the intended surface reading.

31a Dried meat, food without stuffing in a way? (5)
The solution here is one of only two non-compounded words which feature the letter combination ‘fd’ (I’m sure you will know – just like I didn’t – that the other is ‘Wafd’), and a strange import from the Shetlands it is. The wordplay has the first and last letters of ‘food ‘ (‘food without stuffing’) placed in a Latin word for a ‘road’ or ‘way’.

1d Poet’s family shield that includes clubs on the spot (7)
A four-letter word for ‘that’ includes the usual abbreviation for ‘clubs’ and is followed by IN, one of the many meanings of which offered by Chambers is ‘on the spot’. The solution is a Spenserian spelling of the word for a shield on which a coat of arms is represented. The wordplay here is slightly flawed – ‘<word> includes C IN’ means that ‘C IN’ is contained in <word>, not just the ‘C’; ‘<word> including C IN’ could be interpreted either way at the setter’s discretion.

5d Arab covering to hitch to the ears (4)
A homophone indicator (‘to the ears’) which I don’t recall seeing before, the entry sounding like a verb meaning ‘to hitch’ in either a pulling up or a thumbing sense.

8d George is one working without control, independent in scheme (5)
If you’re more familiar with the film Airplane! than with aeronautical technology, then you may think of him as ‘Otto’ rather than ‘George’, but they could both (at a stretch, where Otto is concerned) be called ‘a —– working without control’. The last three words of the clue provide a straightforward wordplay.

9d Entertain American in almost half his home (5)
I initially thought the wordplay here might be relatively complex, but it turned out to be a two-letter representation of ‘American’ inside three-sevenths of the name of the country in which an American lives (‘almost half his home’).

19d Jockey Lester, accepting tribunal’s conclusion, gives fresh account (7)
Don’t be fooled into thinking that the ‘Long Fellow’ (Mr Piggott) is involved here; ‘Jockey is a verb in the imperative, and the fodder is LESTER, to be manoeuvred abround outside the last letter of ‘tribunal’. The definition is ‘gives fresh account’.

21d A tricky fence? Point for each (6)
Not a fence that I was familiar with, and the three-letter word given by the first part of the wordplay is more often indicated by ‘head’ or ‘prince’; the second part means ‘for each’.

22d Seaside clan, swimming? This with seals possibly can impart stings (6)
A composite anagram, though not perhaps one of the great man’s finest. A rearrangement (‘swimming’) of the letters SEASIDE CLAN could form (‘possibly’) the solution (‘this’)  plus SEALS; the definition is ‘can impart stings’.

23d Training requires such sustenance, spanning time (6)
Another sneaky definition combined with a friendly wordplay, here the definition is ‘Training requires such’, the important meaning of ‘train’ here being ‘to travel by rail’, a requirement for which would be, well, rails…

25d Show concern (as some do) when ring’s concealed in palm (5)
A two-word phrase (3,6) meaning ‘show concern’ (as in, say, ‘they show concern’), from which the RING at the end has been removed (“when ring’s concealed”) to produce the name of a palm tree genus. I’m not at all keen on the bit in brackets, which I think was intended to be helpful but would surely have been better as ‘like some people’ or similar).

26d Link husband added to necklace (5)
The definition here draws not on the first entry for ‘link’ in Chambers but on the second.

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 2,545 ‘Carte Blanche’

Difficulty rating: (4.5 / 10)

At last a non-competition special arrives, not an Eightsome Reels but a Carte Blanche, one which seemed to me about the same difficulty as a high-end plain. The hardest part of a Carte Blanche is getting started, but here I was able to readily solve the first across clue together with the second, third and fifth down clues, which enabled me to begin filling the grid. When solving a Carte Blanche, one should bear in mind that no entry can have two consecutive unches (unchecked letters) or more than a third of its total letters unchecked. In terms of grid symmetry, Azed’s statement simply means that the puzzle has normal 180-degree symmetry (my video on puzzle types goes into more detail about both symmetry and unching). At the end of these notes I have listed against each row and column the lengths of the entry (or entries) that appear in them. Oh, and the answer to the first across clue is (4-6); the possible (6-4) alternative isn’t in Chambers but would otherwise have been a plausible alternative.

Azed’s recent low scores on ScotsWatch have prompted me to ‘retire’ the feature, to be replaced by Setter’s Corner. Each week I will pick out a clue which I think may be of interest to new or aspiring setters, perhaps where Azed has avoided a common error or found an interesting way to sidestep a potential problem.

Setters Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 28d, “Name given to viral disease causing a lung part to heave” (5). Not the sort of word I much like clueing, but useful in that it is the only option for the pattern E?O?A, and a reversal (indicated by ‘causing…to heave’) of A LOBE (‘a lung part’) leads to a sound and concise wordplay. The trap for the setter here is the definition: ‘Virus’ or ‘Viral disease’ seem obvious, but wait – Ebola is not itself a virus, any more than Stockholm is a syndrome or Fibonacci a series. As you would expect, Azed has avoided the pitfall with ‘Name given to a viral disease’; ‘Stockholm’ could perhaps be ‘Capital  linked to syndrome’ and ‘Fibonacci’ might be indicated by ‘Numbers man’. Note also that while ‘Jonathan, perhaps’ would be fine for ‘apple’ (a definition by example, Jonathan being a variety of apple),  the appealing ‘Vera, perhaps’ is no good as an indication of ‘aloe’ – the plant is ‘called Aloe Vera’, it is not a type of aloe known as ‘Vera’. By the same token, ‘French, say’ would be valid for ‘language’ but nor for ‘dressing’.

10a Gnostic, mostly frank about striking success (6)
A four-letter word for ‘frank’ without the last letter (‘mostly’) contains (‘about’) a three-letter word for a striking success which might be applied to a theatrical ‘smash’.

11a Success, too old-fashioned, ends (5)
The old-fashioned  (three-letter) word for ‘too’ is a familiar four-letter word meaning ‘in addition’ but without the O on the end. It follows a two-letter word for a success (not as striking as the one in 10a), the definition being ‘ends’ (a plural noun).

13a Hubble-bubble? Re-inhaling’s out when it’s not lit (8)
This parses as an anagram (‘out’) of RE-INHALING missing the letters IN (“when it’s not lit”, ie when it does not include a word meaning ‘lit’). The hubble-bubble in question has two alternative spellings which could be correct – the one to be entered ends in H.

16a Limit number in sum, number only mathematician can understand? (7)
I think this (‘number only mathematician can understand?’) is a wonderful indication of the solution, particularly given its Chambers definition! The wordplay involves a three-letter word meaning ‘sum’ containing a three-letter word for ‘limit’ (in the sense of ‘to restrict’) followed by the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’.

18a Puffin music book I read without substance (8)
The hyphenated puffin is a charade of a four-letter musical genre plus a single-letter abbreviation for ‘book’, the letter I, and the word ‘read’ lacking the inside letters (‘without substance’).

29a Rose’s place, almost entirely in corner (6)
Two-thirds of a word meaning ‘entirely’ are contained in a four-letter word meaning ‘to corner’. The solution is a town in County Kerry famed for its annual music festival which takes its name from a 19th century song about a young lady of exceptional beauty:

She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer,
Yet ’twas not her beauty alone that won me;
Oh no, ’twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning,
That made me love Mary, the Rose of ———.

31a Rake maybe in briefs but no neckwear (4)
An eight-letter word for ‘underwear, esp women’s brief panties’ has a four-letter (plural) word for ‘neckwear’ removed (‘no neckwear’) to reveal a verb which can just about mean ‘to rake’.

33a King, plus agé, to rule in olden days (5)
A single-letter abbreviation for ‘KIng’ (not the chess one) followed by a four-letter French loanword meaning ‘elder’ or ‘senior’, the whole being a Spenserian spelling of a familiar word for ‘rule’.

1d Deceived by the sound of it, taken in by partner mostly displaying muscle (11)
I really don’t like partial homophones, particularly when they are used to indicate a non-word, but here we have a five-letter string which sounds like ‘deceived’ put inside (‘taken in by’) a seven-letter word for a partner (such as the king in 33a might have had) with the last letter removed (‘mostly’ again, a repeat from 10a).

4d Diversion pa’s taken from Scottish peer (5)
A seven-letter word for a diversion has the letters PA removed (“pa’s taken from”) to give a Scots word meaning ‘to peer’.

6d Who’ll be beating time as rondo’s beginning? (7)
A tidy little &lit here where the people who might be beating time can be found by rearranging (‘beating’) the letters of TIME, AS and the first letter of ‘rondo’ (“rondo’s beginning”).

8d Fate in which old Scots poet switches parts (5)
A five-letter archaic Scots word for a poet has the last three letters moved above the first two in order to produce a much more familiar word for ‘fate’, in the ‘what goes around comes around’ sense.

19d Soaring tree, note – it may be in porcelain (7)
A three-letter tree reversed (‘Soaring’) followed by a four-letter term for a note or short letter.

21d Like a woodpecker pecking a bit of slat in pool (7)
A word for a pool more familiar to the French than the English, perhaps, is produced when a word meaning ‘Like a woodpecker’ (a bird of the genus Picus) contains (‘is pecking’) the first letter of ‘slat’ (‘bit of slat’) 

30d Old gull died cracking crab’s shell (4)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘died’ contained by (‘cracking’) the outside letters of ‘crab’ (“crab’s shell”), producing an archaic word for a gull.

Where the entries appear:

Across: Row 1 – a single 10-letter entry; Row 2 – a 6-letter and a 5-letter entry; Row 3 – (8); Row 4 – (4) and (6); Row 5 – (7) and (5); Row 6 – (8); Row 7 – (8); Row 8 – (5) and (7); Row 9 – (6) and (4); Row 10 – (8); Row 11 – (5) and (6); Row 12 – (10) [symmetry dictates that the last 6 rows will be the reverse of the first 6, similarly with the columns]

Down: Col 1 – a single 11-letter entry; Col 2 – a 7-letter entry and a 5-letter entry; Col 3 – (7) and (5); Col 4 – (7); Col 5 – (5); Col 6 – (4) and (7); Col 7 – (7) and (4); Col 8 – (5); Col 9 – (7); Col 10 – (5) and (7); Col 11 – (5) and (7); Col 12 – (11)

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 2,544 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Another in a long line of non-competition plain puzzles (could there be an Eightsome Reels due along soon, perhaps?), this one had several ‘easy starters’ and nothing too tricky. It didn’t seem to me to possess quite the élan of last week’s puzzle, and there were one or two clues that seemed as though they had been put together rather hastily and remained unpolished.

ScotsWatch: I don’t think that you could count the entry at 11a, which will not have troubled anyone who’s ever watched Taggart, so for a second week in succession it’s a big fat zero.

17a Alleys may be used for hiding (4)
It’s probably a sign that you’ve solved (or set) too many barred puzzles when this is your first one in. Memo to self: must get out more. A double definition, with the plural of an alternative word for a marble (‘Alleys’) and one of those slightly unlikely singulars ending in ‘s’ (‘tems’ is another that springs to mind), an ‘esp Scottish’ leather strap. Newcomers to Azed might be slightly surprised to find a noun being indicated by a verb phrase from which it is the absent subject (‘may be used for hiding [ie flogging]’), but as he notes in the slip for AZ354:

“I’ve said before that an adjective is an inaccurate (because unfairly misleading) way of indicating a noun (and vice versa of course). I do accept however that a verb (in the appropriate person) can indicate a noun. ‘Barks and is man’s best friend’ defines DOG far more clearly than, say, ‘Furry and domesticated’.”

24a Reddish lean when centre’s cut (4)
I tend to think of the five-letter word for ‘lean’ which has had its middle letter removed as meaning ‘tall and thin’ (with a hint of ungainliness thrown in) rather than just ‘thin’, but I’m not going to argue the point.

28a Tries on arrays of goods on display (7)
This is a strange one. The solution is not shown as two words, so it must be the adjective IN-STORE. This could certainly be defined by ‘of goods on display’ (‘Come and see our in-store selection’ /  ‘Come and see our selection of goods on display’), but that leaves us with ‘Tries on arrays’ as the wordplay. ‘Tries on’ has to be the anagram fodder, but the verb ‘array’ is transitive, so cannot be an anagram indicator. Suggestions on a postcard please…

33a Old pro almost constantly on line (5)
There are many antiquated terms for a ‘lady of the night’, the French loanwords being perhaps the most exotic-sounding (‘poule de luxe’, ‘fille de joie’). Here we have one of German parentage, produced by removing the last letter (‘almost’) from a word meaning ‘constantly’ (in the sense of ‘faithfully’) and adding the usual abbreviation for ‘line’.

34a Swarm hurtling out of rug (4)
The construction in the wordplay is one of those that doesn’t perhaps want to be too closely scrutinised: the letters RUG are to be removed from the outside of a seven-letter word meaning ‘hurtling’. But can ‘x out of y’ reasonably mean that x itself has undergone a physical change? I don’t think so – a sweet out of its wrapper is just the same sweet that it was when it had its wrapper on.

35a Join other members: when ordered eat OK with head to take dinner? (12, 2 words)
Far be it from me to say that a clue of Azed’s is no good; by his high standards, though, this really is a bit of a stinker. An anagram (‘when ordered’) of EAT OK, followed by a crossword staple for ‘head[land]’ and a three-letter word for ‘take dinner?’ is perfectly sound. But the first word of the solution is also the eleventh word of the clue, and that last element is itself the sixth word.

5d Shoe horse, eye rolling upwards (6)
One thing that setters quickly learn is that there are precious few synonyms for ‘eye’.  After ‘orb’ there are ‘lamp’, ‘optic’ and ‘peeper’, and that’s about it. The only one that’s much use in wordplays is the first-named, and here it is joined to the back of a three-letter horse and the whole lot reversed (‘rolling upwards’).

7d Enlist second horse, once galloping around (9)
I may previously have come across ‘crib’ as a a meaning of ‘horse’, but if I had I’d forgotten, though the definition and the rest of the wordplay (an anagram of ‘once’ around S plus the horse) left no doubt that it was the missing element. OED gives this sense of horse as “A translation or other illegitimate aid for students in preparing their work; a ‘crib’. U.S. ” but without further explanation or example.

8d Artist king afforded protection (4)
The artist here (provided by an abbreviation of ‘king’ plus a word for ‘shelter’) was born in Switzerland in 1879 but spent most of his working life in Germany. The son of a music teacher and a singer, he initially trained as a musician before deciding to commit himself to the visual arts (and engaging fully with the artistic lifestyle). He was strongly influenced by Van Gogh – ‘Permit me to be scared’, he remarked after seeing some of Van Gogh’s work in Paris. A founder member of both Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Riders) and Die Blaue Vier (the Blue Four), he developed an abstract style in which the coloured rectangle is the building block; his musical training comes through in many of his compositions, where the various shapes combine to produce a kind of harmony (so they say). 

18d Calculators? Filch one with children around (8)
The three-letter word for ‘Filch’ which is followed by A (‘one’) and contained by a word for ‘[male] children’ is the same one which answered to ‘pad once’ in 2d.

21d Something like pewter aunt got out with her Spanish equivalent coming round (7)
Azed used TIA (Spanish for ‘aunt’, as seen in Tia Maria) in a puzzle not too long ago, and here she is again, taking a grip on an anagram (‘got out’) of AUNT.

23d Film star, international, trapped in a fracas endlessly (6)
I (international) is ‘trapped’ in A plus a five-letter word for a fracas missing the last letter (‘endlessly’), producing the name of the eponymous heroine of the rather entertaining 2001 film starring Audrey Tautou and also known by the slightly less catchy title Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain.

29d Not a lot of money goes on a bit of kouskous in it? (4)
An &lit, if a rather low-end one, comprising a three-letter word for a tiny amount of money (and formerly a French five-centime piece)  followed by the first letter (‘a bit of’) ‘kouskous’, the whole being a word for a place where someone might lay out a small sum on a portion of a N African dish. Incidentally, I have myself used ‘a bit of’ to indicate the first letter of the following word, but I know that some editors are not keen on it, and I have been converted to their way of thinking – why should a ‘bit’ of something be the first bit, it could equally well be any of the letters in the word.

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 2,543 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

A pretty straightforward puzzle with a good variety of clues that exuded a generous helping of joie de vivre.

ScotsWatch: not a single one today. Has Azed suffered a bout of Scotophobia? Was it something Nicola said?

13a The most important thing, half of what’s due (9, 2 words)
You wouldn’t need to check the name on its collar to know that this clue belonged to Azed. The wordplay requires solvers to be able to count in Italian, albeit not to a very high level.

15a Is Holding about the ultimate in fast bowlers maybe? (4)
Azed allows himself a deceptive capitalization of the first letter of ‘Holding’ here, suggesting the great West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding, while the wordplay requires a three-letter word meaning ‘is holding’ to be put outside (‘about’) the last letter of ‘fast’ (‘ultimate in fast’). Incidentally, there is no evidence that the comment ascribed to Brian Johnston when talking about Holding bowing to English batsman Peter Willey during the Oval test of 1976 – “The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey” – was actually made; it was certainly not broadcast.

19a Shrine: sanctified one erected by academy (5)
The wordplay here is a charade made up of a two-letter abbreviation for a ‘sanctified one’, a two-letter word meaning ‘erected’, and a single-letter abbreviation of ‘academy’. Given that the first element is an abbreviation which would never be used except when prefixed to a name, I think there ought to be an indication that a ‘two step translation’ is required, eg ‘short sanctified one’. There is a big difference for me between using, say, ‘disc’ for CD and ‘student’ for L – one might well speak of having bought a new CD, but surely not of having been run into by an L.

23a Melon when stuffed into shopping bag (6)
I have a feeling that regular commenter Orange will have known the four-letter word for the shopping bag which has had the usual two-letter word for ‘when’ stuffed into it, but I didn’t (or, more accurately, I’d forgotten it). It’s an American term for a lady’s work-basket, hand-bag or satchel, derived from the French word for a basket (which has an ‘s’ on the end, an alternative spelling of the US word).

29a Ristorante? You may get pickled roes in this one (4)
A neat little composite anagram &lit, where the the letters of ROES IN plus the solution (‘this one’, ie ‘this ristorante’) can be rearranged (‘pickled’) to produce RISTORANTE.

30a Azzurri’s forward one’s opposing twice? (6)
The ‘Azzuri’ in the definition indicates that the solution is an Italian loan-word; the wordplay involves A (‘one’) being followed by a one-letter abbreviation and a four-letter word both answering to ‘opposing’ (‘opposing twice’).

32a Like well-drilled pack, promptly (as before) getting name sewn into strip (9)
I suspect most solvers will work this hyphenated (5-4) entry out either from the definition or the last part of the wordplay, N (‘name’) inside (‘sewn into’) a three-letter noun meaning ‘strip’ (as in ‘football strip’). The five-letter bit at the start is an alternative spelling of ‘tite’, an obsolete word meaning ‘promptly’.

3d Cave dweller in ooze enveloping sea’s roar (7)
Like 32a, this one has a relatively obscure word in the wordplay, here ‘rote’, a term for ‘the roar of the surf’ – Chambers shows it as ‘now US’, although Azed has (quite reasonably, I think) chosen not to indicate this. It’s ‘enveloped’ (contained) by a three-letter word for a thick, yellowish ooze (my apologies to anyone with a particular fondness for shell-less, squidgy molluscs, but this word is the lexicographical equivalent of a slug, something that has no pleasant connotations whatsoever and which invokes a response best summed up as ‘yeeuchh’).

The resulting cave-dwelling amphibian takes its name from the Greek sea-god who, like the nymph in 10d, was a skilled shapeshifter. He was also a first-class soothsayer, but unlike most of the Greek seers he was none too free with his prophecies; those who required his forecasting services had to go down to the beach after midday, where he would be having a kip, and get a firm grip on him. Now, if you were having a nice post-lunch snooze on the beach and someone grabbed hold of you, what would you do? I imagine you’d assume every possible shape you could in an effort to escape and, when it proved impossible to shake off your assailant, you would reluctantly give them a prophecy. And probably not one they’re going to like, am I right?

5d Rover Matt’s turned up in (5)
‘Matt’ refers to an American actor, producer and screenwriter, whose surname must be reversed. Azed doesn’t flag the ‘indication by example’, and since there is no deception surrounding the use of ‘Matt’ I don’t see why he should. Azed could have chosen instead to name-check the 1993 Williams teammate of the ‘racing star’ in 10d, his surname lending itself well to a sneaky surface reading – not someone as well-known outside the UK, perhaps, but a world champ in his own right nonetheless.

10d Racing star embracing nymph – one providing aid to the legless? (11)
The nymph who is embraced by the surname of a French racing driver, four-time F1 world champion and fierce rival of Ayrton Senna, is a Greek sea goddess. It was prophesied that this leader of the Nereides would bear a son who would be greater than his father, and it didn’t take Zeus (who hated any sort of threat to his power) long to work out that the less great the father was the less impressive the son would need to be in order to fulfil the prophecy. He therefore fixed her up with a mortal husband, Peleus, who ambushed her on the beach; they had an unusual courtship,  she turning into various shapes while he clung on to her for all he was worth. Anybody who was anybody on Olympus was at the wedding (where there was a bit of Discord over a Golden Apple), and their first-born son turned out pretty darned well for a mortal. The mother tried everything she could to protect Achilles after another seer had prophesied that he would die heroically in battle against the Trojans (why people kept going back to these seers I have no idea, they must have known they’d never hear stuff like “you’ll get a brand-new Aston Martin for your birthday” or “you’re not going to die heroically in battle”), but when all’s said and done despite a dunking in the Styx he was still a mortal, and the rather cowardly Paris (with a bit of help from Apollo) eventually got him with a lucky shot.

16d Fab performer in short song one released in twinkly style (7)
The (assumed) surname of the oldest member of the ‘Fab Four’ (‘Fab performer’) is followed by a contraction of the word ‘in’ (‘in short’) plus a three-letter word for a song (of the sort  that Walter Scott’s minstrel might have sung) without the A (‘one released’). The solution is a bit of a horror to define succinctly, supporting the old setters’ maxim ‘Never work with children or adverbs’.

31d Weight nag shed creating bodily firmness (4)
A seven-letter word for ‘weight’ has the letters ‘nag’ removed (‘nag shed’) to produce a word meaning ‘bodily firmness’.

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 2,542 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

There were a good variety of clue types in this 13×11 puzzle which I felt was of slightly below average difficulty. Some nice clues, and very little for me to take issue with.

ScotsWatch: just the 1 today (at 5d) – surely after the recent famine we will be due another bumper crop soon?

7a Most of skin one’s revealed in part of strip? (5)
The first three letters (‘most’) of a four-letter word for ‘[a] skin’ (the missing fourth letter could be an L or a T, take your pick) with a two-letter word for ‘one’ inside (“one’s revealed in”), the whole being a part of the sort of strip you might see in a newspaper.

11a James, or Jim? (4)
Similar to a couple of VHC entries for AZ comp 788, the first part of this double-definition clue takes us from ‘james’ to its equivalent form ‘jemmy’, from there to ‘crowbar’, and thence to a four-letter abbreviation thereof. The second element is a definition by example, Jim Crow being ‘a derogatory name for any black person; racial discrimination against black people’.

Incidentally, the winning clue in the competition was H. Freeman’s clever ‘B-r-ag?’, while those similar clues were W. Jackson’s ‘James, alias Jim’ and G. Johnstone’s ‘Jimmy or Jim?’ – I marginally prefer Azed’s clue here to either of these.

23a Halt progress at sea? Sign alternates with it (5, 2 words)
Here the letters of a sign of the zodiac are interleaved with the letters of the word IT.

28a Tower X left unfinished twice (4)
The wordplay here is straightforward, but the definition might seem puzzling without the knowledge that Chambers gives one meaning of ‘tower’ as ‘(esp in the 17c) a woman’s high headdress’.

30a Fruit of abnormal size – selection stocked (7)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘of abnormal size’ with a five-letter word for a selection inside (‘stocked’).

31a Brain tissue turning sickly, in needing to be removed (4)
A six-letter word for ‘sickly’ has the letters IN taken away (‘in needing to be removed’) and is then reversed (‘turning’).

32a Sort of Germanic hidalgo exchanging components (5)
It is the SENOR whose parts (one of two letters and one of three) must be exchanged.

33a Timber I cut roughly, given guidance, was like aspen (8)
An anagram of TIMBER (‘roughly’) without the I (‘I cut’) followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘given guidance’. In the words of Tennyson, “Willows whiten, aspens quiver”.

1d Criss-cross pattern in thin strip on gilded leather (11)
A pretty unlikely word for (perhaps) gilded leather is produced by putting a five-letter word for a criss-cross pattern inside a four-letter word for a thin strip (often of wood) followed by ON. Although the OED gives many alternative spellings for a word which became obsolete around 1400, later occurrences being conjectures on the exact nature of the material, which was highly esteemed in the Middle Ages. The ten-letter versions beginning with either SH or CH are (in the words of Victoria Wood) totally bona fido, but the eleven-letter variant found here may be a Chambers ‘invention’.

The word previously appeared (also as 1d in a 13×11 puzzle) in Azed 1,946 – the same elements featured in the wordplay, the clue on that occasion being ‘Gilded leather? Verify lining flap, worn’.  

2d The breath of life was going in the old man (5)
A three-letter word meaning ‘was going’ (in the sense of ‘the machine was going’) is put into a two-letter term for ‘the old man’.

7d Wing a crane’s seen to flap and fly around (11)
The surface reading here is either ungrammatical or strange, while the wordplay is somewhat questionable as well – it involves an anagram (‘seen to flap’) of A CRANES with the four-letter name of ‘a small but very troublesome Brazilian biting fly’ going outside (‘fly around’). I’d have no problem if the last three words had been ‘with fly around’; although this would have made the surface reading less deceptive, I think that overall it would have been an improvement.

10d Topic dominated by tragic monarch clutching the fool (11)
A four-letter word for a topic (or ‘chief point of a discourse’), preceded by an archetypically tragic Shakespearean monarch containing (‘clutching’) the letters THE.

16d Dress materials: treat embroidered lengths (short) in print (8)
An anagram (’embroidered’) of TREAT, followed by the plural form of a short length used in printing, twice the width of an ‘en’.

21d Sweeper, one prone to patrol breadth with ball? (6)
A four-letter word for someone who is prone (‘one prone’, ie someone lying or laid flat) containing the usual abbreviation for ‘breadth’ and followed by a single-character representation of ‘ball’, the whole being a sweeper in a footballing context.

In his excellent book Inverting the Pyramid, A History of Football Tactics, Jonathan Wilson describes how Ivano Blason came to be recognised as the first great libero. “When he had joined [Internazionale]  in 1950, he had been a clumsy full-back, but in his new role became noted for his long clearances and his uncompromising nature. Legend has it that before kick-off he would scratch a line on the pitch and tell opposing forwards they were not allowed beyond it, hacking them down if they tried.” Lodovico Maradei of the Gazzetta Della Sport said “Blason was not the elegant libero some may imagine. He was basically a hacker who just belted the ball into touch whenever he could. That’s why the libero was originally known as battitore libero – ‘free hitter’ – because more often than not he would simply hit the ball into touch.”

22d Former province was still held by leader of Turkish uprising (6)
A three-letter word meaning ‘was still’ is ‘held’ by the three-letter representation of the letter at the start of ‘Turkish’ (‘leader of Turkish’), the whole lot being reversed (‘uprising’).

25d Peter pursuing trendy freelance company (5)
A three-letter word for ‘peter’ (as in ‘peter out’, note how – as in 11a – Azed has put the word at the start of the clue so he could legitimately misdirect solvers with the initial capital) following (‘pursuing’) the crossword staple for ‘trendy’ (or ‘popular’, ‘fashionable’ etc). Note here that because the verb ‘peter’ is invariably compounded with ‘out’,  the word indicated by it has to have a similar meaning when also compounded with ‘out’. Thus ‘fade’ would be fine, as would the synonym used in this clue, but ‘wane’ would not.

27d Girl, Victoria’s close friend, that is missing? (4)
The occupation of Queen Victoria’s ‘close friend’ in her later years has the letters IE removed (‘that is missing’) to produce a word which is not only a diminutive form of a common girl’s name (the name being common, not the girl, I hasten to add) but is also given by the main section of Chambers as ‘a girl’.