Notes for Azed 2,694

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 2,694 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

During the solve, I felt this puzzle was pretty close to the middle of the difficulty range, though when I wrote these notes I decided that it was perhaps slightly towards the easier end of the spectrum. No ‘ladies of the night’ this week, but an unusual feature was the inclusion of two clues (25a and 20d) which featured no wordplay in the conventional sense. The competition clue word has made a previous appearance as one half of a ‘Right & Left’ in AZ comp 2131.

I will allow myself a brief plug for this month’s prize puzzle at the Crossword Centre, Annus Mirabilis, which is one of mine. It has a theme, but the clues are all normal and of Azed-ish difficulty, so it can be treated as a ‘plain’ – though once you’ve completed the initial grid-fill, the rest should fall into place quite readily. A PDF version is also available (note that it doesn’t include the information about how to enter the competition, only to be found through the first link).

Clue Writers’ Corner: Sometimes one finds oneself needing to indicate a single letter in a wordplay, perhaps something like F or K that doesn’t form part of many short words. A way of dealing with such a situation is to use a single-letter selection indicator. The big advantage of this is that it gives you a huge range of options from which to choose one which fits nicely into your clue – ‘source of funds’, ‘closer to half’, ‘opener for Kent’, ‘end of week’ etc. It’s a device I use a lot in my own clues, but I would urge caution when it comes to Azed competitions. Firstly, it adds three words to the clue, when an abbreviation – ‘force’ for F or ‘king’ for K, say – would only add one, and secondly because it can be seen by the judge for what it is, an opportunity to introduce a word into the clue which is there simply to contribute one letter. Plenty of successful competition clues have included single-letter selections, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that they should be studiously avoided, but I would recommend looking at alternatives and, if you do decide to use one, try not to make it too obvious – this can be done either by combining it with another element in the clue, eg ‘best end of neck’ for STARK, or by misdirection, eg ‘lead from roof’ for R.

Across

1a Winger maybe, balanced in part furthest from finishing (12)
The first part of this 4+8 charade is a term applied to a player in various sports, such as soccer or hockey, whose main role is at their own end of the pitch, while ‘balanced’ has the sense of ‘not leaning in one direction  or the other’. The definition probably doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, while the solution should be enumerated as (12, 2 words).

12a Health, disposing of last two bumped off (5)
A seven-letter Gaelic interjection meaning ‘[good] health!’ is deprived of its last two letters.

13a To macerate, man cut with chopper (5)
A funny-looking verb is produced from a four-letter word for a man, missing its last letter (‘cut’), followed by a term for a chopper; why Azed has not indicated that this is the North American spelling of the word I know not.

17a Fatty stuff Greek character enclosed in cover (5)
A Greek letter familiar to geometricians is contained by (‘enclosed in’) a word for a cover.

25a A dependable guy? A view not universally held! (5)
There isn’t a wordplay as such here, but if you get the informal word for ‘a good, trusty person’ you will understand where Azed is coming from.

27a Seats mostly searched from back to front (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘searched’ has its last letter removed (‘mostly’)  before being reversed (‘back to front’).

Down

4d Rest dithering around, one heads north making way across border (6)
Not the easiest clue to parse, the cryptic reading being something like “with an anagram (‘dithering’) of REST outside (‘around’), a single-letter word for ‘one’ goes in front of (‘heads’) the usual abbreviation for ‘north'”. The ‘way’ is a narrow outside passage between Scottish houses.

5d Derelict, touching failure (6)
The wordplay is a charade of that ubiquitous bit of commercial jargon meaning ‘concerning’ (ie ‘touching’) and a four-letter word for a failure of the sort often predicted on Juke Box Jury. The required meaning of the definition ‘derelict’ is ‘neglectful of duty’, which is shown by Chambers as ‘chiefly N Am’ – I’ve certainly never seen it used in that sense on this side of the pond.

6d Oriental porcelain I found by the sea, timeless (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is followed by an eight-letter word meaning ‘found by the sea’ from which the consecutive letters TIME have been omitted (‘timeless’).

8d Certain categories? Lot once accepted (4)
A quick look at ‘lot’ in Chambers will reveal the required ‘historical’ synonym, to be followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘accepted’.

10d Affluent rulers, smart, left court rolling within (10)
The answer here is not the plural which one could be tempted to write in without fully parsing the clue, but a collective term formed by by putting the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ and an anagram ‘rolling’ of COURT within a four-letter word meaning ‘fast’ or ‘smart’.

11d Radical in medley creating super record (10)
A four-letter word for a root (‘radical’) is put inside a word for a medley, usually encountered as a verb describing what one might do at a party. The answer is hyphenated 4-6 and describes the sort of record introduced in the 1970s which includes not just two tracks, but additional instrumental versions or, more recently, remixes thereof.

20d Pacific islander unchanged after being brought up (7)
Again, there is no wordplay to speak of, simply an indication that if the answer were to be reversed (‘brought up’) it would remain the same, ie it is a palindrome.

21d Better-looking woman’s one captivated after James turns up? (7)
A rather hippopotamian wordplay has the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ being contained (‘captivated’) by a possessive pronoun meaning “[that] woman’s”, this combination following a reversal (‘turned up’) of the first name of a famous comedy actor with the surname James (ie ‘James…?’). The first bit would only really work if the three-letter word meant ‘woman’ rather than “woman’s”, since “woman’s one captivated” could then translate to ‘woman has one captivated’; as it stands, one has to infer a comma after “woman’s”.

23d Évian added to wine? It damages hock (6)
A three-letter term for a resort such as Évian is followed by a word for wine (which might be heard there). This is a nice clue, although I don’t like the gap between ‘Évian’, and the question mark which indicates that it is a definition by example; I would have preferred ‘Évian perhaps added to wine?’ or similar.

24d Cadogan maybe, earl wearing ’Arry’s topper uptilted (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘earl’ is contained by (‘wearing’) a reversal (‘uptilted’) of a (3,3) term for a ‘topper’ which has suffered aitch-dropping such as might ‘appen at the ‘ands of a cockney (ie “Arry’s”). A particular form of the item in question is termed a ‘Cadogan’, as it was copied from a Chinese porcelain wine dispenser in the collection of Lord Cadogan. It has no lid, and was filled upside down through a tube running from the base into the upper part of the interior, which allowed it to be turned the right way up without any escape of liquid. Despite the function implied by the name, the near-impossibility of effectively cleaning the things means that they were probably only ever used for holding the hot water used for making other drinks.

28d Explanation of Latin text (section in course) (5)
A little care is required here if you’ve got all the checkers, although the answer that might spring to mind doesn’t satisfy the definition or the wordplay, the latter involving the usual abbreviation for ‘section’ being contained by a word for a course or passage, although nowadays usually the cost of same.

29d Dug round in dock (4)
The round letter of the alphabet is contained by a word meaning, among other things, ‘[to] dock’ or ‘[to] cut (hair) square across’, producing an answer defined by dug² in Chambers.

(definitions are underlined)