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 2,541 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Nothing too difficult in this puzzle – a few tricky parses were more than compensated for by a few ‘gimmes’ and several very straightforward clues. Plenty of clues to enjoy, my favourite perhaps being 26a.

ScotsWatch: not a single Scottish word today, surely some kind of record.

11a Old fool making reverse of progress, see, in health resort (6)
The wordplay here indicates a two-letter synonym for ‘[to] progress’ plus the letter of the alphabet represented by ‘see’ being reversed inside a three-letter contraction of a ten-letter word for a health resort. I think Azed is stretching things a little here – whilst the full form can indeed describe a health resort, the informal contraction is invariably, at least in my experience (largely acquired, I must confess, from the Jennings books of Anthony Buckeridge), used specifically of the room at a boarding school that accommodates ailing pupils.

14a What shampoo ads promise is almost like shimmering head (9)
Another contender for clue of the week, here we have an anagram (‘shimmering’) of IS and the first three letters of (‘almost’) LIKE, followed by the four-letter word for a head[land] which is a frequent visitor to crossword grids.

20a Fungal mould with turning yellow (5)
A three-letter word for ‘with’, typically seen in place names or in combining forms indicating dual function, reversed (‘turning’) and followed by the usual two-letter heraldic term for the tincture yellow (or gold).

24a Being suspended, first and last just so, a stabbing pain (6)
Here we have a seven-letter word meaning ‘being suspended’ from which the first and last letters have themselves been ‘suspended’, ie dismissed (‘first and last just so’), followed by the letter A.

26a Old hat, most of splendid lining ripped (7)
A nicely compact clue, all but the last letter of (‘most of’) a word meaning ‘splendid’ (or wealthy) is placed inside (‘lining’) a four-letter word meaning ‘ripped’.

33a Sneered at some sides repeatedly suffering reverse (6)
Azed is pushing the envelope here, with two different three letter extracts from SIDES (‘some sides’) being reversed (‘suffering reverse’) one after the other (‘repeatedly’).

34a I’m a gent: lady has ——— with me around (4)
The definition here is ‘I’m a gent’. The wordplay starts to make sense when you replace the blank with the solution (let’s call it ‘xxxx’), and then read it as ‘A word meaning ‘lady’ comprises xxxx with the letters ME put round the outside’.

1d Like some chocs? Pleasing couple of bits (11)
The couple of bits are a four-letter word for a low-denomination coin and a three-letter word for the same coin derived from its copper colour.

5d Old coin I found in rusty fruit box upended (7)
You may, like me, work this out from the definition and part of the wordplay, but if you knew that a ‘lug’ was a box or crate used for shipping fruit then you either have a very wide vocabulary or transatlantic connections.

18d Produce critical edition in new collection, cutting both parts (7)
One of the weaker clues, I thought. The wordplay involves a six-letter word for ‘new’ followed by a three-letter word for ‘collection’, each having the last letter removed (‘cutting both parts’). Since the verb which forms the solution is transitive, the definition has to be ‘Produce critical edition in’, which is a tad questionable, frankly.

25d Mineral water replacing midday’s second of couple (6)
Here a four-letter word for ‘midday’ has a three-letter word for ‘[a large body of] water’ replacing the second of a matching pair of letters (‘second of couple’) to produce the name of a mineral.

27d Part of Santorini circle that’s thrust up toxic stuff (5)
It’s not relevant to solving this clue, but the Santorini circle is a largely submerged volcanic crater in the southern Aegean Sea, the visible parts of which form a circular group consisting of Santorini, Therasia and Aspronisi around the outside with Nea Komeni and Palea Komeni in the middle. If you think that I knew that without having to look it up, then you have no idea how poor my world geography is.

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 2,540 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

There wasn’t anything particularly difficult about this puzzle, but overall I felt it probably merited a rating just below the middle of the spectrum. The standard of the clues was consistently high (24d was particularly good) and I got the feeling that Azed had enjoyed writing them.

ScotsWatch: just the one today, at 32a, its Scottishness being indicated in the clue only by context.

10a Ancient author describing portion of holy scripture (5)
A bonus point to anyone who wrote this straight in without having any checkers. I didn’t. The ancient author is the Roman poet whose full name was Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Born in 39AD, he was brought up by his uncle, Seneca the Younger, and studied rhetoric at Athens. He found favour with Nero, and was appointed to the augurate (the Roman equivalent of VAR as applied to public decision-making) in 60AD after winning a prize at Nero’s quinquennial arts festival; around this time he published the first three books of his epic tale of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey, Pharsalia. Sadly his relationship with Nero rapidly went downhill, possibly accelerated by some poetic finger-pointing in Nero’s direction regarding the Great Fire of Rome, and reached an all-time low in 65AD when he joined the Gaius Calpernius Piso’s conspiracy against the emperor. On being accused, he did what any honourable chap would do – he dobbed his mother in for treason. When this gambit failed, he was forced to commit suicide at the age of 25, hence Pharsalia comes to an abrupt stop part-way through book 10.

12a Love child I enveloped in all liquid of part-partum discharge (7)
I have commented before on my reluctance as a setter to include technical terms in my puzzles, and technical adjectives are about as bad as it gets. Here Azed has worked hard to integrate the definition (‘of post-partum discharge’) with the wordplay, which involves a (1,2,1) representation of ‘love child I’ being ‘enveloped’ by an anagram (‘liquid’) of ALL, but even then the appeal of the clue as a whole is technical rather than aesthetic.

25a It’s red at sea (or sort of red, bow to stern and vice versa) (6)
Here we have a term meaning ‘[of a] sort of red [colour]’, or perhaps more specifically ‘with a reddish-brown coating’, in which the first letter is to be moved to the end and the last letter to be moved to the start. How do we feel about ‘bow’ and ‘stern’ being used in reference to something other than a ship or boat? Well, I don’t think we’re in any doubt what he’s trying to tell us.

29a Bonnes bouches maybe for being served in French city, not English (8)
The wordplay in this clue has a two-letter word meaning ‘for’ contained by (‘served in’) a seven-letter French city (famous for its Maid) from which the E has been removed. The solution is the plural of a type of bird “common in Europe and eaten as a delicacy.” Yum.

31a Boss rival disheartened? He was free but lowly (5)
The ‘Boss’ is a TLA for the chief executive of an organisation, and the ‘disheartened’ rival has had his ‘heart’ (which remarkably constitutes 60% of him – I’m not sure even Big Hearted Arthur Askey would have laid claim to that sort of proportion) removed.

33a Head of state’s partner, so she’s un-Boris in a way (5)
A teensy-weensy composite anagram, where the the letters of SO plus the solution (‘she’) can be rearranged (‘in a way’) to form UNBORIS. The solution is the surname used by the singer-songwriter and fashion model who is married to Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France.

1d Folded what’s delicate in hamper (8)
Barred puzzle neophytes may be unfamiliar with PED, a word for a pannier or a hamper; older hands will probably know it only too well. Here it contains a five-letter word meaning ‘delicate’ (or ‘insubstantial’), producing a term which means ‘folded’, although it is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’ in that sense. The wordplay should be read as “What’s [the result of] [a word for] delicate [being placed] in [a word for] hamper [?]”

2d Sardinia’s capital – large part of that’s limestone (7)
This is a neat clue, with the first letter of ‘Sardinia’ (“Sardinia’s capital”) followed by a large part (three-quarters) of the name of the capital of Sardinia (‘that‘).

4d What’s this, one containing soft herrings? (6)
Yes, what is this? It’s one of 36 that we have to deal with, it contains the normal single-letter abbreviation for ‘soft’, and it’s followed by A (‘one’).

5d Spring festival’s attended by millions in all-embracing philosophy (6)
The wordplay here gives us the four-letter name of a Hindu spring festival plus an [apostrophe-]S (“Spring festival’s”), together with (‘attended by’) the one-letter abbreviation for ‘millions’.

6d Energy lost in trek replaced with red cheese sandwiches (bulky) (12)
I’m far from convinced by ‘replaced’ as an anagram indicator, but here it is being used to tell the solver to mash TREK without the E (‘Energy lost’) together with RED CHEESE, the definition being ‘sandwiches (bulky)’.

8d Car panel, French article fitted in Packard? (7)
The wordplay here has a French (definite) article ‘fitted in’ the first name of the 20th century American journalist and social critic whose surname was Packard. His book The Naked Society, published in 1964, was the first to highlight the threat to individual privacy posed by the emerging technologies of the day; in it he argued that greater restrictions were required in order to prevent personal information falling into the wrong hands. I wonder why he was so worried – it’s pure coincidence that the ads which pop up on my screen seem to relate to things I’ve recently been shopping for online, right? Right?

11d You aim for Mecca, every last one – in this? (4)
Not a difficult clue, but if you are relying on an early edition of Chambers you might be confused to find there ‘umma’ but not the solution (with a different third letter), which is given by later editions as “the lesser Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca”.

20d Explosive carbamide containing potassium, a brilliant invention (7)
A two-letter abbreviation for a detonating explosive of great power plus a four-letter word for the main form of nitrogenous bodily waste containing the symbol for potassium. The resultant word is usually spelt without the first letter in English, although this version is probably a little closer to what Archimedes’ neighbours recounted when describing the incident to the ancient Greek police.

24d Mix new chocolate? A lot we ———, possibly (6)
A second composite anagram, this time an &lit. The letters of NEW CHOCOLATE can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to produce A LOT WE plus the solution. I don’t recall ever coming across this word before, and Azed has found a very nice way to clue 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 2,539 Printer’s Devilry

Difficulty rating: (7 / 10)

Last seen in April 2019, Printer’s Devilry is back. For those who haven’t encountered a PD puzzle before, a few bits of advice:

• Forget about wordplays and about definitions – the solution is just a sequence of letters that happens to form a real word
• Remember that the ‘break’ will be part-way through a word in the clue
• Look for a word that seems strained or out of place (eg in 10a, ‘To a crude and slovenly American, muck’, the word ‘muck’) – this is where the ‘break will almost certainly be
• Read the clue carefully, trying to understand what ‘story’ Azed is telling and how it might be completed
• Remember that punctuation may have been changed – both added and subtracted – from the undevilled (full) version
• Bear in mind also that spaces can sometimes be added and removed in other parts of the clue – this only happens on three occasions in the current puzzle
• Start with the shorter entries (six letters or less) – they are almost always the easiest; the long ones may sometimes involve working back from the answer

A stiff challenge, but fair (apart from the incorrect enumeration of 5d). I thought 25a, 28a , 4d, 22d and 24d were nicely done, and I admired the way Azed managed to cope with the difficult long entries at 5d and 15d. A few notes on individual clues are below, followed by a list, should you need it, of where the break points come in each clue.

6a Being home, she can’t wait for lessons to end (5)
One of the two clues where the word spacing has been changed from the complete (undevilled) version: ‘s<space>he’ has become ‘<space>she’.

17a My wife doesn’t like to cook it, straight from the river (6)
The fish that Azed has been catching are members of the carp family beloved of crossword setters, sometimes spelt without an E and sometime (as here) with one.

28a Was the Ramsbottom lad prodding that, live? Mistake (6)
The punctuation around the last three words of the devilled version needs to be completely ignored in this clue which is pretty straightforward if you are familiar with Marriott Edgar’s wonderful monologue ‘The Lion and Albert’, made famous by Stanley Holloway. His rendition can be heard here, and I make no apologies for reproducing a small extract from the story about Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom’s visit to Blackpool zoo with young Albert, their son:

There were one great big lion called Wallace
Whose nose was all covered with scars;
He lay in a somnolent posture
With the side of ‘is face on the bars.
Now Albert ‘ad ‘eard about lions –
‘Ow they was ferocious and wild;
To see lion lyin’ so peaceful
Just didn’t seem right to the child.

32a A well-informed person can grasp such things while ignorant (5)
Ideally the undevilled version of the clue should be a piece of English prose, but here it involves some ‘telegraphese’; the word ‘an’ must be inserted after ‘while’ in order for it to read smoothly. A clue like this would be marked down by Azed if it were submitted for a competition – the emphasis should always be on the undevilled version reading naturally as a sentence.

33a Delicate nymphs find the attentions of oversexed siting their tolerance (7)
If you were thinking ‘satyrs’ then you’re on the right track, but here we are looking for some elderly ones, aka sileni.

1d During space odyssey would astronauts ever need to? Real!(4)
Knowing the name which Arthur C Clarke gave to the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey is key to getting this one sorted out.

5d Wretched folk with the sun blazing; for all it’s worry, spell continuing endlessly (10)
Foul! The solution is actually two words, (7,3) – if like me you spent time trying to work out how the only 10-letter word that fits with the crossers could possibly work (which involved the unlikely sequence of letters ‘xrry’), then you have my sympathy.

7d Make sure you pick the right men in the woods! (6, 2 words)
It’s fairly clear what sort of thing you need to be careful about picking in the woods (other than men), but we are looking here for a particular type, beginning with the letter M.

15d These are tired old jokes from the past, admired (9)
A tricky one this – thinking of another word for ‘joke’ which might be slotted into ‘past’ (where the break must surely be) should help get you there.

18d In Mozart’s opinion, Figaro must outwit his master (7)
If you remember the last PD comp, this is an easy starter. The list of successful clues can be found here, and will give newcomers to PD puzzles an idea of what Azed is looking for when judging the competitions (in essence a silky-smooth undevilled version, a devilled version that makes some sense, and a clue that as a whole guides the solver to the solution).

21d Who took control after shocking event in the senate that way (6)
The reference in this clue is not to the new American Secretary of State, rather to one of the Second Triumvirate who took over in Rome after Julius Caesar fell victim to infamy.

27d I’ve solved crosswords for years – is this my first getting up to scratch? (4)
Here we have to think “If someone’s been solving crosswords for years, what might the logical next step be for them in a cruciverbal context?” The word ‘this’ seems superfluous and, indeed, slightly distracting.

Breaks in Clues

The points where the text which has been removed must be reinstated are shown below. Note that there a punctuation changes between the undevilled and devilled versions in a number of instances; note has been made of the clues where these changes are most significant (and therefore most deceptive).

Across: 1 – com/ing; 6 – ho/me [change in spacing elsewhere]; 10 – m/uck; 11 – lo/ok; 13 – pleas/ing; 14 – selec/t [change in spacing elsewhere]; 16 – was/ted [change in spacing elsewhere]; 17 – i/t; 18 – m/ad; 19 – pa/d; 23 – l/ively; 25 – b/urns; 28 – li/ve [significant punctuation changes]; 29 – pos/ies; 30 – T/ony; 31 – b/y [significant punctuation changes]; 32 – ignora/nt; 33 – si/ting.

Down: 1 – Re/al [significant punctuation changes]; 2 – wav/er; 3 – wine/ry [significant punctuation changes]; 4 – l/ist; 5 – wor/ry [significant punctuation changes]; 7 – m/en; 8 – bo/ard; 9 – l/ed; 12 – min/e; 15 – p/ast; 18 – op/inion; 20 – wor/ker; 21 – wa/y [significant punctuation changes]; 22 – w/ry [significant punctuation changes]; 24 – Thi/n; 26 – cas/t; 27 – g/etting.

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 2,538 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

A pleasant challenge, probably a little below the mid-range of difficulty, due in particular to the four ‘hiddens’ which accounted for 22 letters, or around 15% of the completed grid. The anagram across the bottom was pretty simple, the one at the top a little trickier. I know that some solvers are not keen on puzzles that overtly demand a degree of general knowledge, and this one may not have been to their liking – personally, I think that in practice a degree of general knowledge is required to solve any cryptic puzzle and a few references that go beyond the dictionary only serve to add to my enjoyment. That said, I thought the restaurateur in 9d was decidedly obscure.

ScotsWatch: just the 2 today – the solutions for 22a and 8d. However, the one at 8d is not just Scots but obsolete Scots, which imbues it with a little extra cachet.

10a Face to windward, being connected via modem (6)
A simple charade, a four-letter word for ‘Face’ and a two-letter term for ‘to windward’ producing an adjective hyphenated in the same pattern (ie 4-2). I guess there’s a whole generation out there now who have no idea what a modem is – I’m afraid that I can remember when one was a luxury and often the only option available would be an acoustic coupler. This was a device with two rubber cups, into which the telephone handset was inserted after a call had been made to the remote system. At full throttle the connection would deliver a heady 30 characters per second, accompanied by a fascinating  variety of crackles and whistles, but if you were on a shared telephone extension and someone tried to use the other phone, things rapidly went downhill…did I mention that there was no error correction facility?

13a Source of hardwood? There’s none on timber tree in being cut twice (5)
The wordplay here involves the usual single character representation of ‘nothing’ being followed by the four-letter name of a tree which is a common source of timber having the letters IN removed (‘in being cut’) and then being repeated (‘twice’).

14a Edible fish coated in batter I almost vomit (7)
A four-letter word for ‘vomit’ has its last letter removed (‘almost’) and is inserted into (‘coated in’) a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] batter’ (which can also be suffixed with ‘bast’) and the letter I.

17a Choir feature in tribute to prince HM backed repeatedly (8)
This is a nicely constructed clue that reads well. If you’re not familiar with the answer (a feature of a church stall), then you will need to know that a MISE was historically “in Wales and the county palatine of Chester, a payment to a new king, prince, Lord of the Marches, or earl, to secure certain privileges.”

19a Homeric star? I, ———, battling with arms maybe (6)
A composite anagram, where the letters of I, ARMS and the solution when moving around (‘battling’) can form (‘maybe’) HOMERIC STAR, the solution being the name of a Trojan prince and top warrior. He led the Trojan army in the Trojan War, despite not being in favour of the conflict. Because it had been prophesied that the first Greek to step on Trojan soil would die, Odysseus craftily threw his shield on the soil and stepped on it. The next person who stepped off the ship was Protesilaus, who was duly killed in a duel with Hector. Hector then proposed a further duel to settle the war, but after he and Ajax had fought for a day it turned out that they were level on the judges’ scorecards. With his duel results on the slide, Hector unwisely took on Achilles, whereupon he suffered his first – and only, although that may have been little consolation to him – defeat.

30a Priest’s daughter, extremely fussy about eulogy’s opening (5)
I’ve come across the solution here being used to describe the daughter of a Pope, but the OED sums it up nicely as “Euphemistically applied to the illegitimate daughter of an ecclesiastic”. A leading contender for the title of ‘most prolific uncle’ has to be Pope Alexander VI, who fathered at least seven children including (while a priest but before becoming Pope) Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia.

32a Rarely used net from class abandoned us in rough sea (6)
This is an anagram (‘rough’) of SEA around a five-letter word for ‘[a] class’ from which the letters US have been removed, but the grammar of the wordplay is faulty. The ‘abandoned us’ needs to be something like ‘having abandoned us’, ‘that’s abandoned us’ or ‘abandoned by us’; I wonder if the last of these options was intended and the word ‘by’ accidentally omitted.

1d Wild flower causing reduction in insect numbers? (7)
When split 3/4, the name of the wild flower produces a phrase describing an event that results in a reduction in insect numbers.

2d Fauvist rubbish, including exotic feast seen from below (7)
It’s not often that LUAU (a Hawaiian feast) appears as part of a wordplay (indeed there are no other words in Chambers which feature those letters either backwards or forwards), but here it is reversed (‘seen from below’) and placed inside a three-letter word for ‘rubbish’, thus producing the name of a French artist. Born in Paris and apprenticed to a stained glass designer, he used glowing colours outlined with black when depicting his subjects. Early in the 1900s he joined the Fauves, led by Derain and Matisse (a personal friend). Many of his works were acquired by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned the series of large religious engravings published after Vollard’s death as Guerre and [the answer to 17 across]. In 1948, he took 315 of his 700 unfinished paintings to a factory in Paris where he threw them into a furnace; his reasoning was that at 77 years of age, and with a picture often taking him 10 years to finish to his satisfaction, he wasn’t going to have time to get them done. When he died in 1958 he was considered to be a sufficiently important figure to be given a state funeral.

3d What rises somewhat, clipping top of wicket? (4)
A five-letter word for ‘[part of a ] wicket’ from which the first letter has been removed (‘clipping top’), producing a word for a particular geographical feature. Has Azed misread the Chambers definition of ‘stump’ and seen ‘wicket’ as a valid synonym, or has he used the question mark to show that he is taking a minor liberty – if the latter, I think it is a bit of a liberty, as a ball clipping the top of the wicket would make contact only with the bails.

8d Scots release, as of old, former member of the family? (5)
Two obsolete words here, both the solution (Scots for ‘[to] release’) and the second element of the wordplay, which involves a two-letter prefix meaning ‘former’ plus a three-letter word, much beloved of crossword setters, for an uncle.

9d Upmarket restaurateur, half cut, appearing in paper as ‘Peg leg’ (10)
The surname of Giuseppe “Joe” Bertorelli (I think, though I’m open to alternative suggestions) must be reduced by 50% (‘half cut’) and inserted into the five-letter name of a British newspaper to produce a hyphenated (6-4) term for a person with a wooden leg. Bertorelli opened one of the first (or possibly even the first) high-class Italian restaurants in London in 1913, at 19 Charlotte Street.

11d Probes former injury brought up in boasts (10)
When you see ‘former injury’ in a barred puzzle you can be pretty sure that it will be either a ‘dere’ or a ‘tene’, and here it is the latter which must be reversed (‘brought up’) in a word meaning ‘boasts’. A clue of simple construction but considerable appeal.

21d As regards character leading regiment in War, we’re concerned with breeding (7)
The capitalisation of ‘War’ makes it clear that we are looking for the personification of war, in this instance from Greek mythology. Unfortunately for him, in contrast to Athena, who represents military strategy and generalship (good), he is the embodiment of violent aggression (less good). Indeed, when it came to Olympian popularity contests he was invariably voted off in the first week, both by his fellow gods and by the Greek public; despite his association with war, he was often portrayed as a coward, reacting to even a slight injury with outrage.

24d Pigment is seen when climbing over Sicilian location (6)
Here the word IS is to be reversed (‘climbing’) above (‘over’) the four-letter name of a city in Sicily.

29d Guinness, say, something served in pubs cold (4)
The ‘Guinness’ here was a brilliant British actor who is perhaps best known these days for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy (he talks about the first film in this lovely clip from the Parkinson show), although he had received the Best Actor Oscar 20 years earlier (in 1957 for The Bridge on the River Kwai), had been knighted in 1959, and had been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.  Although he was reluctant to appear on television, his masterly portrayal of George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People won him two BAFTA Best Actor awards. Despite his enormous success, he was rarely recognized by the public; he told the story of checking his hat and coat at a restaurant and asking for a claim ticket. “It will not be necessary” the attendant said. Guinness later retrieved his garments, put his hand in the coat pocket and found a slip of paper on which was written “Bald with glasses.”

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 2,537 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

A relatively straightforward Azed today which I would place a little below the middle of the difficulty spectrum. Several of the clues seemed slightly ungainly, with six of them including multiple commas. In fairness to Azed, I must say that when I was writing these notes I was also struck by the number of intractable words that featured in the grid. These present a major problem to the clue writer and almost invariably result in clues which fall somewhere short of elegant.

ScotsWatch: after the dizzy heights of last week, there were just the 2 this time, the solutions to 15 and 22 across.

3a Ransack channel for handy menial in sea-food joint (10)
One that seemed more complicated at first sight than it turned out to be – the wordplay consists of just the first two words, with the last five forming the definition (the ‘for’ is a link between the two). I don’t think of the four-letter word that starts the combination as meaning ‘ransack’, but it’s one of several transferred senses of the word (which include ‘delve’); the second part is a six-letter channel (for carrying away water), and the solution is hyphenated (4-6).

22a Favouring home that’s about new? Jock’s bang opposite (8)
A three-letter word for ‘Favouring’ (or ‘in favour of’), followed by a four-letter word for a home (often made of twigs) containing the usual abbreviation for ‘new’.

24a Book 4 summarily includes English group of notes sung on same note (4)
Thankfully my scant knowledge of the Old Testament does include the names of the first five books, so here I was able to abbreviate the title of the fourth (‘Book 4 summarily’) and put it around the standard abbreviation for English.

25a Needing to diet? Number going outside to be seen(5)
Effectively a ‘hidden’, but Azed has chosen to indicate that a three-letter cardinal number should be removed from the extremities (‘number going outside’) of the phrase ‘to be seen’

31a Rope from rear decapitated SA carnivore (5)
A six-letter word for a rope or lasso being reversed (‘from rear’) and having the first letter prior to reversal removed (‘decapitated’), the solution being a large South American weasel. I’m never entirely comfortable with a construction like this – although you could argue that whichever way a word is pointing the ‘head’ remains the same, I think it’s debatable. Incidentally, some publications will not allow terms like ‘decapitated’ to be used in clues for fear of offending solvers.

33a One bolting sword round sheath? No p-poet (7)
A four-letter, sharp-pointed, narrow-bladed sword containing (’round’) an eight-letter word for a sheath, from which the letters BBARD have been removed (‘No p-poet’).

35a Cent losing out to major currency, third going in fall, sad (10)
I initially thought that the CENT in DESCENT (‘fall’) was going to be replaced, but in fact it is just the one-letter abbreviation for ‘cent’ which is giving way (‘losing out’) in DESCENT to a five-letter currency from which the third letter has been removed (‘third going’). A rather messy clue, I’d have to say.

2d Liqueur, almost the last of it, worthless, imbibed in company (7)
Is U ‘almost the last of’ LIQUEUR? Azed thinks so, and if pushed I’d probably agree. It has to be added to RACA, a biblical word for ‘worthless’, with the resulting string being placed inside the standard abbreviation for ‘company’.

7d What you can get thinner from? Concoction of three girlfriend swallowed (8)
 While I don’t have a problem with the ‘usu derog’ four-letter word for girlfriend, the wordplay just doesn’t say what it means – for me, it needs at the very least a comma between ‘three’ and ‘girlfriend’ to indicate that it is the girlfriend that has been swallowed by the anagram of THREE.

The oblique definition here (what you can get paint thinner from) is a nice idea, but in terms of the overall surface reading, which is intended to suggest a context of dieting, can you actually ‘get thinner’ (in the sense of ‘less fat’) from something that you would swallow? I can’t imagine anyone saying they had got ‘thinner from diet pills’ any more than they had got ‘better from antibiotics’. The point is a fine one, probably of more relevance to setters than solvers, but a balancing act is often necessary when ensuring that a disguised definition doesn’t get overstretched in the effort to make the misdirecting meaning as convincing as possible, something which has clearly exercised Azed’s mind here. In the diet pill context, ‘What can make you thinner?’ would work very nicely, but is it a fair definition of ‘terebinth’? The answer that I think Azed and I would agree on is ‘no’ – the tree could ‘make’ you the oleoresin from which turpentine is distilled, but not turpentine itself. The compromise that Azed has come up with involves a sound definition of ‘terebinth’  achieved at some cost to the intended surface reading; the most appealing examples involve an ‘obvious’ surface that reads absolutely naturally and a ‘concealed’ interpretation that is sound – how the latter reads in the cryptic sense is irrelevant. For an example of a perfectly-disguised definition that meets those criteria one need look no further than Richard Heald’s cup-winning entry for Azed comp 2,014:
[su_spoiler title=”Take the lead in Cinderella, playing girl who works in rags (8)” icon=”plus-circle”]HACKETTE [anag of (TAKE THE + C)] [/su_spoiler]

8d Colourful bird to be sold in marketplace (6)
Barred puzzle regulars will be well acquainted with TRON, a ‘chiefly Scots’ term for a marketplace. Here it contains a two-letter verb meaning ‘to be sold’.

9d What’s poet read? This crafted with art maybe (6)
A composite anagram &lit that is very well signposted. The words POET READ can be produced if the letters of the solution (‘this’) are rearranged (‘crafted’) along with the letters ART; the whole clue acts as a definition of the solution.

21d Regular variation spoilt duet, except for the first, not so good (7)
An anagram (‘spoilt’) of DUE(t) (‘duet, except for the first’) followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘no so good’ (or even ‘pretty bad’). You don’t need a degree in chemistry to know that ‘Regular variation’ is a woefully inadequate definition. I was going to say that I do have such a degree, but – since I never got round to collecting it – I don’t. The term was unfamiliar to me, and a Google search revealed (i) several instances of the exact same definition (“regular variation of the crystalline form of a series of compounds with the atomic number of the element”) to be found in Chambers, along with (ii) many references that appear to be for ‘eutropy’ but are in fact misprints for ‘entropy’. However, the adjective ‘eutropic’ appears in a number of research papers, and appears to relate to a property displayed by a set of elements from the same group in the periodic table – for instance potassium, rubidium and caesium are ‘eutropic’ in that the molecular volumes of their (isomorphous) crystalline salts increase in the same ratio as their atomic numbers (in this example 19:37:55). I think this term comes under the heading of ‘virtually impossible to define accurately in a clue’, and by reproducing the first two words of the Chambers entry Azed has done his best! I wrote a while ago that when setting puzzles I try to avoid technical terms and adverbs, and this word does nothing to change my view. I’ll add that my final exam results weren’t what one might call spectacular, so further enlightenment would be welcomed.

30d Flat stage removed from outskirts of Herts location (6)
The nine-letter name of a Hertfordshire town has the letters of STAGE deleted from the outside (‘removed from outskirts’) to produce a word meaning ‘flat’.

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 2,536 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

Before delving into this puzzle, a couple of non-related points. Firstly, looking at the published solution for 2,533 I see that there is no explanation given for HOSS at 23a; Azed provides notes for those clues which he considers require them, so I think we can safely assume that there wasn’t some subtlety about the clue which escaped us all. Secondly, a bit of self-promotion – for anyone who fancies tackling a fairly tough blocked puzzle with Ximenean clueing, this weekend’s NTSPP (Not The Saturday Prize Puzzle) on Big Dave’s excellent site is one of mine.

This puzzle seemed to me slightly above average in terms of difficulty and somewhat short of Azed’s very finest in terms of quality. The grid was an unusual one, with those six four-letter words strung across the middle and ten four-letter words in all. The enumeration for 1d is incorrectly given as (12, 2 words) when it should be (11, 2 words).

It was nice to see the nom de guerre of one of the greatest setters of all appearing in the grid. His bank holiday double puzzles in the Guardian were sometimes infuriating and always immensely enjoyable. Some of his clues were not to the liking of Ximeneans, but unlike a number of today’s setters he was well aware of the ‘rules’ and simply chose to break them on occasion. Azed wrote of him: “His distinctive style and seemingly limitless invention endeared him to generations of both solvers and setters. We met on only a handful of occasions, usually in large gatherings of the kind he disliked, but I always enjoyed our chats (perhaps more than those who regard the Ximenean and ‘libertarian’ approaches as irreconcilable might imagine). There is no doubt that he will be remembered as one of the pre-eminent figures in the history of crosswords.”

ScotsWatch: a whopping 5 today – one in the wordplay for 16 across, one in the wordplay for 5 down, and the others as the solutions for 21 across and 17/23 down. This beats last week’s 3 and sets the bar very high indeed for future puzzles.

16a Jock’s confident about busy lab identifying parasite (9)
A hyphenated entry (4-5) that results from putting an anagram (‘busy’) of LAB inside a six-letter Scots word meaning ‘cheerfully confident’.

19a Bolt fast almost (4)
Azed has kindly placed the ‘almost’ at the end of the clue rather than in its more natural position between ‘Bolt’ and ‘fast’, thus clearly indicating that the five-letter word which must have its last letter removed (‘almost’) is one which means ‘fast’ or ‘swift’, the definition being ‘[to] Bolt’.

21a Scotch went, last of bottle swallowed in the pursuit of pleasure (4)
The ‘last of bottle’ is the letter E, but it seems far from obvious to me that ‘the pursuit of pleasure’ by which it is ‘swallowed’ is GAD. Chambers does give gad³ as ‘to wander about, often restlessly, idly or in pursuit of pleasure’, but to transfer this meaning to the noun form without the sense of wandering is a stretch and a half.

22a Spotted rodent tails disappearing in two metal containers? (4)
There are quite a few permutations for the two three-letter ‘metal containers’ which must both lose their last letters (‘tails disappearing’). The first one here would go on the hob but isn’t a pot while the second would go in the pantry but isn’t a tin.

23a Parts of wager to be exchanged? It’s not quite final (4)
The OED shows MISE as being derived from the Old French ‘mise’, ‘the action of placing…wager’, but doesn’t give the English noun in this sense. However, Chambers has it as ‘a stake in gambling’, and it is the word which must have its halves exchanged to produce the round in a knockout competition which is not quite [the] final.

30a Hebe clutches rear edge of charger – such as this? (7)
Hebe is the cupbearer of Olympus, so we need a six-letter synonym for ‘cupbearer’ (a not dissimilar word) to ‘clutch’ the R (‘rear edge of charger’), thus producing a word for the rear part of a horse. I wonder why Azed didn’t choose ‘rear end’ rather than ‘rear edge’?

32a Page one held in both hands, sent from a star (7)
A four-letter word for ‘Page’ (the sort you might fill with writing in school), followed by A (‘one’) held in the single-letter abbreviations for either hand. I think ‘sent from the stars’ would be a more accurate description than ‘sent from a star’, since its use is essentially figurative, but this would adversely affect the surface reading. 

33a Girl having embraced one, perfume lay before fading – as here today… (12)
The wordplay involves a three-letter girl’s name ’embracing’ AN (‘one’), followed by a five-letter word for ‘perfume’ plus LAY without the letter A (‘before [ie A, ante] fading’). Adverbs are very awkward to define interestingly, and here Azed has come up with the rather crafty definition ‘as here today [gone tomorrow]’.

3d Trump’s snipe? Tons pinned by junior pressman (4)
The solution is not an American word for ‘snipe’, rather it is an English word sharing the American meaning of ‘snipe’, viz the butt of a cigar or cigarette.

5d Bean: I loved one in French article (Parisian) (7)
The wordplay here might take a bit of unpicking – it’s  [I plus a two-letter Scots word for ‘beloved one’] in the two-letter abbreviation for ‘French’ and the two-letter [masculine] definite article in France, ie ‘article (Parisian)’.

7d Breeding place closing prematurely, worst in local areas (5)
The ‘Breeding place’ which must have its last letter removed (‘closing prematurely’) is one that you might associate particularly with rabbits but is also ‘a piece of ground kept for breeding game, esp hares, rabbits, partridges, etc’.

14d Dog catches a so-called mackerel and a catfish (9)
The wordplay involves a cruciverbal staple for ‘dog’ containing [A plus a four-letter word for a fish sometimes called the horse mackerel] followed by another A, but the grammar is faulty. As it stands, the ‘and a’ must mean that the second A is also part of what is being caught; the problem can readily be fixed by replacing ‘catches’ with catching.

20d Quack I see usurping last of principate (6)
Since the solution can mean ‘of [a] principate’, this one could prove tricky to parse. In fact, the definition is ‘Quack’, and the wordplay involves the letters IC (‘I see’) replacing (‘usurping’) the last letter of a six-letter word meaning ‘principate’.

23d Was it yielded by Rob Roy alone, rebelling at heart? (6)
A two-letter word for ‘rebelling’ must be put at the heart of a four-letter word for ‘alone’. The word certainly appears in Guy Mannering (‘a gude oak souple in his hand’) if not in Rob Roy.

25d Pastor in heaven, describing special type of attachment (5)
Another hyphenated solution, this one (3-2), produced by putting the one-letter abbreviation for ‘Pastor’ inside a four-letter word for ‘heaven’ (or Jerusalem).

26d Escape notice in after-work party for journalists? (5)
The usual two-letter word seen in crosswords for ‘notice’  is contained by a poetic word for ‘evening’, which in turn can mean ‘an evening party’, although it doesn’t itself have that meaning. The clue therefore leaves something to be desired.

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 2,535 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

I thought this puzzle showed Azed on good form, containing plenty to enjoy and very little with which to take issue. Above average in terms of difficulty, but with enough easier clues to get the solver started. An unusual feature for a plain puzzle was the presence of fully-checked five-letter entries at 3d/24d. A generous helping of first-class clues – I couldn’t readily pick a favourite, but I thought 11a, 16a, 29a, 30a, 1d, 5d and 24d were all appealing in their different ways.

ScotsWatch: A total of 3, as the solutions for 3d/19d and part of the wordplay for 28a. That sets the standard – will Azed be able to beat it in future puzzles?

1a Adhesive as once used to fill stain (7)
UT is the Latin for ‘as’ (now seen only in phrases such as ‘ut supra’), and here is it used to ‘fill’ a five-letter verb (more often seen as an adjective) meaning ‘to stain’. Whether ‘as’ needs to be qualified with ‘once’ is an interesting question which Azed has clearly answered in the affirmative.

11a What needs to be held in both hands for oven (4)
The usual two-letter representation of ‘what[?]’ is held between the one-letter abbreviations for each hand to produce an annealing oven or furnace.

13a Backing band includes knight, rather hard up (7)
A four-letter word for a band (in the ring sense) contains (‘includes’) a three-letter word prefixed to the name of a knight, the whole thing being reversed (‘backing’) to form a word meaning ‘rather hard up’. I was pleased to see ‘rather’ being used here in the sense of ‘somewhat’; whilst I know that comparatives are tough to define without using either another comparative or ‘more’ (eg ‘bigger’ = ‘larger’ or ‘more sizeable’), I don’t like to see ‘rather’ used as an alternative to ‘more’ – ‘rather large’ and ‘larger’ simply don’t mean the same thing. I’m slightly less pleased about the grammar of the wordplay – since it is not just the band which is backing but the band-round-knight combination, the use of ‘includes’ is an error; it should read ‘Backing band including knight…’ (or ‘Band including knight backs…’).

16a Something akin to a swift beer towards closing time? (6)
I do like a well-disguised break between definition and wordplay, and we have one here. The last four words constitute the wordplay, and involve a three-letter (poetic) word for a time of day being applied attributively to a three-letter (colloquial) term for a drink, usually of beer.

18a Stop dropping in for a mild smoke (5)
Azed has included the word ‘mild’ to the detriment of the surface reading in order to more accurately indicate the solution, but I’m not sure it will help anyone who isn’t familiar with either the name of the mild cigar or CLARINO, an organ stop imitating the sound of a clarion.

26a Soft loaf I cut with raised pattern (6)
The name of a type of light, soft loaf with the letter I removed (‘I cut’) to produce a word (which has an acute accent on its last letter) meaning ‘with raised [or apparently raised] pattern’.

29a Deny extra editing work on the paper may keep this? (7)
If there is extra editing work to be done on the paper it may keep the ‘sub-editor beyond the usual time’, ie it may keep — —-.

30a Mark refuses tot initially – being on it? (Charles has one) (4)
A wordplay and two ‘definitions’ here. Mark is the first part of an author’s nom de plume;  the letter T (‘tot initially’) must be removed from the other part to produce the solution. The solver must infer the first definition from ‘being on it?’ (the reason for refusing a tot), while the second definition refers to an old name for the Plough.

1d Qualified lawyer, subordinate plonker? It could be fatal (11)
The ‘qualified lawyer’ is a two-letter abbreviation for ‘Bachelor of Law’, and it is followed by a five-letter word for ‘subordinate’ and a four-letter word for a ‘plonker’ (or a smacker). The definition is somewhat loose, but perfectly fair given the precision of the wordplay.

2d Malagasy native? Supporter of La Maison probably (5)
Just as the English house (or at least parts of it) could be held up by the wall, so the French one (‘La Maison’) could be held up by — —.

7d Walk round lake? It’s familiar to geneticist (6)
The ‘walk’ here is the French word for ‘an avenue, walk, or garden path’ [Oxford comma added to Chambers definition – I wouldn’t want to fall foul of those who are refusing the ‘foreign’ vaccine and insisting on the Oxford one].

19d Onset of disease in the early wheat, causing stir in Scotland (6)
A clue where unfamiliarity with the Scottish uproar requires at least passing knowledge of the spring wheat whose gluten-rich seeds yield a flour used to make pasta, and whose name must be set around the letter D (‘Onset of disease’).

20d Being unwell shifty ‘ob’s kept inside (6)
‘Kept inside’ a three-letter word for ‘shifty’ is a four-letter term for a rustic from which the initial h has been dropped (implied by ‘ob, ‘hob’ missing the aitch at the start).

23d Aussie plonk, ordinary accompanying local banger (5)
A four-letter Australian term for an old, worn-out car (‘local’ [ie Aussie] banger’) – also an American term for a flop – followed by O (ordinary), the result being a word that might be used down under to describe cheap wine.

25d When it’s getting late, everything imbibed in it is toxic stuff (5)
A slight sense of déjà lu here vis-à-vis 7d, this one involving a less poetic seven-letter term for the close of the day (‘When it’s getting late’) having its first and last letters removed (‘everything imbibed in it’). I’m not too keen on ‘imbibed’, which describes an action rather than a state, being used to suggest contents; I appreciate that it’s a relatively subtle point, but I think ‘everything contained in it’ or similar would be preferable.

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 2,534 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

First of all, my apologies that the last two Azed posts did not originally have comments enabled; I had cloned a post which had comments turned off as a result, I think, of a WordPress issue I had at the time that I set it up. It wasn’t a ploy aimed at discouraging feedback – far from it, I’m always keen to hear your thoughts, whether on a particular puzzle, the Azed notes in general, or the site as a whole. I’m even happy to be put right if you think I’ve got something wrong! I can confirm that all posts are now open for comments.

Three ‘hiddens’ in quick succession helped to get things started here, and overall I felt the puzzle was towards the low end of the difficulty spectrum. By Azed’s exceptionally high standards it struck me as disappointing, with a few (albeit minor) issues and no standout clues – even a second read through revealed few obvious contenders for Clue of the Week, and the award goes to 4d for its nice surface reading.

10a How Brontës appear in rewrite lacking English – result is slush (9)
An anagram (‘appear in rewrite’) of HOW BRONTES without the E (‘lacking English’), and a clue which highlights one of the few cruciverbal areas where Azed’s views and mine differ significantly. He has always considered (based as I recall on a note from Ximenes) that in a wordplay a string of words (here ‘How Brontës’) can govern a plural verb (‘appear’) as well as a singular verb; I believe that where the words are not separated in any way the verb of which they are the subject must be plural, so here the anagram would have to be indicated by ‘How Brontës appears in rewrite’, which of course doesn’t work in the non-cryptic reading. Application of this rule would have ruled out a number of prize-winning clues from Azed comps, perhaps most notably Dr E Young’s self-referencing classic:

[su_spoiler title=”A hard tussle with Dr E Young plainly winning (13)” icon=”plus-circle”]ROUGH-AND-READY [anag][/su_spoiler]

18a Pain for poet, name forgotten in an upheaval (6)
The second of two ‘upheavals’ in this crossword, here we have A followed by a six-letter word for an upheaval or an alteration with the letter N removed (‘name forgotten’).

24a Such as Fagin, with going for Oliver, say, produces wooden darts (7)
Many’s the time I have come up with what seems like a great ‘story’ for a clue, only to find that I just can’t make it work to my satisfaction. I’m sure this seemed like a good idea to Azed, but the result is frankly a bit of a dog’s breakfast. The wordplay is ok – a four-letter plural of the term which Dickens repeatedly (and controversially) used when referring to Fagin, in which the W (‘with’) is replaced by (‘going for’) the four-letter surname of the British actor Oliver who coincidentally played the part of Bill Sikes in the 1968 film Oliver! but sadly is probably best remembered these days for his drinking exploits and his appearances on chat shows, most notable Aspel and Company, while in the obvious twin grips of tiredness and emotion. The surface reading is, frankly, weak.

30a Military badges, black square surrounding face (7)
The letters B (‘black’) and S (‘square’) surround a five-letter word meaning ‘to face with masonry or other material’ thus producing a word which has more to do with warrants than badges, being the plural of a term for a warrant issued to confer on a commissioned officer a higher nominal rank as a reward for gallantry or merit but without any increase in pay.

2d One extract of hemlock found in vase of Roman garrison in Shropshire (9)
CONIA (‘extract of hemlock’) is one of those things that I’m glad to say is encountered in puzzles more often than in life, and here it is preceded by I (‘One’) and contained by (‘found in’) a three-letter word for a vase, the result being a word which, if Azed had been feeling particularly bilious, he could have chosen as the competition clue word. I’m sure that those planning to enter the comp are glad he didn’t!

5d Portraitist National featured in capital, unknown (6)
N (‘National’) in a four-letter European capital city, followed by one of the three algebraic unknowns that frequently turn up in wordplays, giving the surname of the portrait artist George. Born in Lancashire in 1734, he moved to London in 1762 where pretty much ‘everybody who was anybody’ sat for him. In 1782, the Hon Charles Greville took his mistress, then calling herself Mrs Emma Hart, to Romney to have her portrait painted. So taken was the artist with Mrs Hart (he later described her as ‘that divine lady…superior to all womankind’) that she quickly became established as his muse – during the next four years she sat for him over 100 times. In 1786 Greville needed to find a wealthy wife, and Emma left for a new life in Naples with Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton. Romney felt her loss  deeply, but in 1791 she and Sir William returned to London to be married; Romney booked her for dozens of sittings, and two consecutive entries in his diary for September 1791 show ‘Mrs Hart’ at 9 o’clock and ‘Lady Hamilton’ at 11. After October that year she she never sat for Romney again; his career went into decline, while for Lady Emma Hamilton, the rest, as they say, is history.

7d Like Jock’s well-used fryer? Soften by boiling, then toss (7)
It’s pretty clear that we are looking for a seven-letter Scots word meaning something along the lines of ‘greasy’, but unless we happen to know that ‘to cree’ is to soften (wheat or barley) by boiling then a trawl of the dictionary will probably be required (it appears to be a dialect word, usually found as the past participle ‘creed’ (or ‘creyed/’creaved’).

8d Almost half the letters turning up in pot (4)
Almost half of the letters [of the alphabet] would be encompassed by ‘A to L’, and this is what needs to be ‘turned up’ to produce a small brass or copper pot from India.

9d Old-fashioned wallop Munich gent swallowed in debauch (7)
The four-letter word for a gent in Munich (or anywhere else in Germany) is no problem, but I had to look up ‘wet’ in Chambers in order to verify the meaning of ‘debauch’. I suspect that this is a debauch in the specific sense of a drinking bout, but it’s strange that it should be bracketed with ‘dram’, which surely describes a very different level of alcoholic intake and one much closer to what I would understand by a ‘wet’.

16d Turn including disc-player, one added (7)
A three-letter word for a ‘turn’ (particularly in the music hall sense) containing (‘including’) a two-letter abbreviation for a person who plays discs and a two-letter dialect word for ‘one’, the whole meaning ‘added’. I’m surprised that Azed saw fit to use ‘one’ without any qualification.

23d Upturned punt? Liquid’s heated in it (4)
The reverse (‘Upturned’) of a word for a ‘punt’ in the betting sense, but although the two words share a common meaning of ‘stake’ I can’t think of a sentence in which they could be interchanged without significantly altering the sense. The solution is another barred puzzle ‘regular’, unique among four-letter words for its central letters.

25d Gloom – end up dismissed for insolence (4)
The gloom here is a seven-letter word for ‘unhappiness’ from which a reversal (‘up’) of END has been removed (‘dismissed’) to give a word meaning ‘insolence’, or at least ‘impertinence’.

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 2,533 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

A puzzle of slightly higher than average difficulty, I felt, including a few tricky wordplays and not too many ‘gimmes’. There wasn’t a great deal of competition for ‘clue of the week’, the award going to the neat &lit at 6d.

Note that once again the advisory text ‘Every word is in The Chambers Dictionary (2014)’ has been erroneously reproduced from the Carte Blanche puzzle 2,522 – it should be the standard ‘The Chambers Dictionary (2014) is recommended’.

10a Once exhausted in mood line retreats (7)
Inside a four-letter word for ‘mood’ (or ‘atmosphere’) a three-letter word for a line goes backwards (‘retreats’) to produce a hyphenated Spenserian term (2-5) meaning ‘worn-out’, though not in the sense of ‘exhausted’:

“And on his backe an uncouth vestiment
Made of straunge stuffe, but all to-worne and ragged”

13a Thick coat, black one pinched by crook (7)
To solve this without recourse to works of reference you either need to be familiar with the garment or be aware that a CROME is a hook or a crook, “especially a stick with a hook at the end of it, to pull down the boughs of a tree, to draw weeds out of ditches etc”.

15a Local troops? Many lost, nation gripped by call for help (6)
The name of a country (‘nation’) with the letters MANY removed (‘Many lost’) contained (‘gripped’) by a call for help, the whole being a dialect variant of a familiar word.

18a Bandages head of san applied to artist? Not so (6)
With its allusion to Vincent VG this would have been a COTW contender if ‘head of san’ didn’t sound so horribly dated. The letter S (the aforementioned ‘head of san’) is followed by the surname of a famous artist (with a full complement of ears) from which the letters SO have been removed (‘Not so’).

22a Dhobi service was carried out in local garden? (4)
The seven-letter ‘Dhobi service’ is a low-end offering that I associate with Mr Papadopoulos’s Walford launderette rather than the Raj, where something much more comprehensive would surely have been provided; though far be it from me to suggest that it would have been an appropriate term for a service provided by Pauline or Dot.  Anyway, it has the consecutive letters WAS removed (‘was carried out’) to produce an Indian word for a garden.

23a Colt maybe, what no cowboy could do without? (4)
This appears to be essentially a cryptic definition alone, unless anyone can show otherwise. Yes. a HOSS could be a colt, and (as Roy Rogers confirmed in song) every cowboy needs a horse, but I can’t find a subsidiary indication of the answer. Any offers?

24a On edge, a hundred runs short (6)
The wordplay here is somewhat strained, being a seven-letter word for a division or a county (‘a hundred’) missing the usual abbreviation for runs (‘runs short’); the solution means ‘[having been set] on edge’.

29a Interfere in sleep skipping piano pieces, we hear? (6)
O Azed, has it come to this – a partial homophone? Not something I like to see. The three-letter word for ‘sleep’ missing (‘skipping’) P for piano is fine, but although the homophone for ‘pieces’ is accurate in terms of pronunciation, the fact that it produces a non-word makes it unacceptable to me.

31a St Andrews student from Italy in first half of term (5)
The IVR code for Italy is put inside the first four letters (‘first half’) of an eight-letter word for a term, the result being a Scots word for a university student in their second year that was new to me, and appears to derive from a contraction of ‘semi bejanus’, half a bejan. A whole bejan is a freshman at a Scottish university, though why a second-year student is considered to be equivalent to half a freshman does puzzle me slightly.

33a Section of Baudelaire, not his first in speech units (4)
One of this week’s better clues, a five-letter term for particular parts of speech (‘doing words’, as they used to call them at school) losing the initial letter of ‘Baudelaire’ (‘not his first’) in order to produce a word which Baudelaire could have used to describe a section of his work.

2d Work loading Murphy’s spade, dotty (5)
I’m unconvinced by ‘loading’ as an insertion indicator, as the subject of the verb is the agent of the loading, not the thing loaded – I think this is clear from consideration of the passive form, where ‘loaded with’ is absolutely fine as a containment indicator, but ‘loaded by’ is not. What’s being loaded here is a LOY, a narrow Irish spade.

5d Imperial, fuzzy on chin, Henry trimmed – see monarch in it (7)
Not only is this clue rather ungainly, I also think that the use of ‘Henry’ to indicate H is decidedly questionable, given that SI units really aren’t keen on being given initial capitals; I can’t think of any context where ‘henry’ could legitimately have one. The wordplay involves an anagram (‘fuzzy’)  of ON CHIN without the H (‘Henry trimmed’), into which the standard abbreviation representing the UK monarch (the real one, not the deepfake one) must be placed (‘monarch in it’).

8d Place for smokers in the Wild Boar & Hart (8)
The letters of BOAR and HART are rearranged (‘wild’) to form the name of a Scottish town famed for its smoked haddock, and by association those that do the smoking thereof.

11d Face group of old wiseacres one short (not the last)? (8)
Kudos to anyone who derived the solution from the wordplay, rather than the other way round. I certainly didn’t. Not even close. The Seven Sages of Greece (also known as the Wise Men of Greece) were seven Greek philosophers who flourished during the 6th century BC. So here (bringing a little Latin into play) we have VII SAGES, but when ‘one short’ they become VI SAGES; and when their last letter is removed (‘not the last’) we get VI SAGE. Simples! Brewer’s lists the seven, together with a saying attributed to each:

Bias of Priene: ‘All men are bad’
Chilo of Sparta: ‘Consider the end’
Cleobulus of Lindos: ‘Avoid extremes’
Periander of Corinth: ‘Nothing is impossible to industry’
Pittacus of Mitylene: ‘Seize time by the forelock’
Solon of Athens: ‘Know thyself’
Thales of Miletus: ‘Who hateth suretyship is sure’

16d Given rise, I had task round college, well-defined (8)
Following the reversal (‘given rise’) of a contraction of ‘I had’, and containing (’round’) an abbreviation of ‘college’, is a five-letter word for a ‘task’ perhaps more often used to describe an allotted period of work.

19d Jock’ pinched, from seven days in the highlands occupying filthy hole (6)
The Scots word for a week (‘seven days in the highlands’) here is OUK; I know it because I wrote a clue for an alternative spelling of the word, ‘Repeated appearances of kagoul encapsulating week in the Cairngorms (4)’,  which proved much trickier than I expected.

27d Volume, old, kept in private room, an allurement (5)
I wasn’t convinced that an angler’s lure, which this is (often followed by the word ‘minnow’), could be described as ‘an allurement’, but the OED gives ‘allurement’ as ‘a lure, bait’, so it’s ok.

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 2,532 ‘Presents Round The Tree’

Difficulty rating: (4 / 10)

A pretty gentle Christmas special, with everything spelt out very clearly in the preamble, but no less enjoyable for that. Below I’ve included some notes on the normal clues, followed by hints for the thematic entries. My clue of the week was 7d, which features a lovely definition nicely integrated into the clue.

For those planning to enter the competition, note that the requirement is to provide a wordplay specifically for the thirteen-letter entry at 1a, thus (as with the standard competitions) providing the puzzle with its ‘missing’ cryptic clue. Recent converts may find the Azed slip for 2,376 helpful as it refers to a near-identical puzzle, where coins were hidden in puddings and the absent clue was for SOW(PIASTRE)ENS, ie PIASTRE in SOWENS. History shows that when judging Christmas comps Azed tends to prefer clues with a seasonal flavour.

May I take this opportunity to wish all solvers a very happy Christmas and much good solving in the New Year.

12a Weed: a vineyard infested with it suffers reverse (6)
The letter A plus a three-letter word for a vineyard ‘is infested with’ (contains) the word IT, the whole lot being reversed (‘suffers reverse’).

19a Typical of artistic school that is found in fuzzy (not cloudy) scenes (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘that is’ inside an anagram (‘fuzzy’) of SCENES without the abbreviation for ‘cloudy’ (‘not cloudy’).

33a Circus owner maybe introduced to rubber trampolines (7)
A simple enough ‘hidden’, but younger solvers may not be familiar with the Bertram Mills Circus, the most famous circus in Britain in the 1930s and still a household name in the 1960s. Born in 1873, Mills – described by Lady Eleanor Smith as ‘a short, stocky man with a bald head, a ruddy pugnacious face, a grey moustache, and twinkling, shrewd blue eyes’ – worked for many years in the family’s coach building and undertaking firms, successfully developing these businesses while indulging his love of horses by coach driving for a hobby. After attending a performance of Fred Wilkin’s Great Victory Circus at Christmas 1919, Mills was asked for his opinion on the show (which featured many top-class acts); he is said to have replied “I dare not trust myself to tell you. But if I could not give the people a better circus than that for their money, I’d eat my hat.” A £100 bet with a fellow coaching enthusiast, Sir Gilbert Greenhall, meant that more was at stake than his hat when Mills took up the challenge. Having previously met John Ringling at the New York Horse Show, Mills swiftly arranged for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to come to England for the 1920/21 winter season; unfortunately, John Ringling was unable to arrange shipping so soon after the first World War and had to ask Mills for cancellation of the contract, adding, “Let me know what I owe you.” Mills replied, “You owe me nothing; I will produce my own show.” And that is what he did; his Christmas 1920 show at Olympia was hailed as a triumph, and the Bertram Mills Christmas show was rapidly established as a fixture in the London calendar. His touring tented circus subsequently became a major attraction as well, and though Bertram Mills died in 1938 his two sons kept things going until the circus finally closed in 1967. In their heyday, the Christmas shows attracted the rich and famous, with the British royal family and Winston Churchill being enthusiastic supporters.

35a Name giving promise of payment involved in rowdy party in Perth? (6)
A man’s given name is produced by putting the abbreviation BE (‘bill of exchange’, ie ‘promise of payment’) inside an Australian (‘in Perth?’) word for a rowdy party.

4d Wine one’s drunk clutching drinking-mug (7)
One of my bugbears is ‘has’ (or apostrophe-s) being used to indicate ‘is followed by’. Here A (‘one’) is followed by (“‘s”) an informal word for ‘drunk’ surrounding a three-letter word for a drinking-mug.

6d Twins rarely like conjoined ones, i.e. separated (5)
The letters I and E must be individually removed (‘separated’) from a word synonymous with ‘conjoined’.

7d Got up in coating of gilt I can be made a fool of (6)
A fine clue, where the ‘coating of gilt’ serves to indicate the letters GT.

18d Shift cycling shades (5)
It is a word for ‘shades’ which is ‘cycling’ (the last letter moving to the start) to produce a word meaning ‘[a] shift’.

28d Member of ascetic fraternity in reduced numbers, forsaking extremes (6)
A clue which is simpler than it might initially appear – a word that on a good day might just about mean ‘in reduced numbers’ (but certainly means ‘reduced’) loses its first and last letters (‘forsaking extremes’).

32d Not what this is, clearly (5)
The word ‘this‘ refers not to this particular clue, but to this particular puzzle. ‘Clearly’ is the ‘straight’ definition.

Thematic Entries – shown as (p1,t,p2) where p1/p2 are the two parts of the ‘present’ and t is the tree:

1a (5,5,3) – the ‘present’ (in its alternative spelling without the second T) was the Christmas 1987 competition clue word – this was the first Azed comp I ever entered.

14a (3,2,2) – this ‘present’ is the sort that pupils in a Latin class would call out during the taking of the register (and also what Caesar did with his jam).

23a (2,6,5) – the ‘on shortened’ here simply indicates O.

27a (3,3,1) – a four-letter Latin word for ‘life’ has to be put into a judo costume.

39a (3,6,4) – the ‘present’ is a French New Year’s gift, here singular (seven letters) but normally (according to Chambers) seen in the plural.

1d (1,3,2) – having confidently entered the solution based on the wordplay, the ‘present’ had me scratching my head for a while. It’s a three-letter acronym for a potentially tax-free gift.

3d (2,6,5) – the privies here are not brick outhouses, rather (a shortened form of the word for) the lavatories in a barracks or similar.

8d (6,4,3) – the three-letter word for ‘reputed (French)’ would typically be translated into English as ‘said’.

10d (1,3,3) – the woman is the sort who according to Rider Haggard or Rumpole must be obeyed.

22d (4,2,1) – a ‘rem’ is “a former unit of radiation dosage, the amount which has the same effect as one rad of X-radiation.”