Notes for Azed 2,695

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 2,695 ‘Give & Take’

Difficulty rating: (5 / 10)

Note: for anyone who is completely mystified by how the puzzle works, I would strongly recommend having a look at the fifteensquared blog for the most recent puzzle of this type.

A non-competition ‘special’, and the first Give & Take, I believe, since May 2018; I think the only one I’ve ever blogged was 2,285 (March 2016). This type of puzzle is not a particular favourite of mine, as I don’t really like non-words in a completed grid, but it made a change. I found it hard to assess the difficulty of this puzzle, so I’ve put it smack in the middle of the range for specials – I will gladly adjust the rating if readers feel that I have got it badly wrong. A few points for anyone who hasn’t dealt with one of these before: (i) most of the entries in the grid are not real words, any that are being incidental; (ii) the letter added to a down entry may already occur elsewhere in that entry (eg ‘Seal stations up (4)’ for STSOP, STOP with extra S, POSTS<); and (iii) across answers can be entered as soon as you get them, while you may not be able to enter down answers without some checkers if the wordplay doesn’t pinpoint the position of the extra letter. Don’t forget that the wordplay always leads to the complete grid entry, and take particular care both when entering the across solutions and when recording the additional letters in the down ones.

The next line of the poem does indeed have a relevance to the theme, although it perhaps suggests a rather more reciprocal relationship.

After the notes on individual clues I have included a checklist of the positions from/into which the letters should be removed/added. Let me know if there are any other clues which you would like me to comment on.

Setters’ Corner: A couple of points about puzzles of this sort (Give & Take, Letters Latent). Firstly, the clues should ideally not include ‘link words’ between wordplay and definition, particularly those which suggest equivalence (eg ‘is’, ‘making’), since the outcome of the cryptic wordplay is not the same as the word defined; Azed has generally adhered to this principle here, although there are a couple of exceptions (19a, 21d). Secondly, putting together a puzzle like this is complicated – bear in mind that each entry has to be deprived of/increased by a specific letter as demanded by the required message, and on top of that it is far from easy when setting a puzzle to deal with real words that become non-words. So a fine achievement? If you’re Azed, working without electronic aids, absolutely yes. A similar puzzle from an anonymous setter would impress me much less, though, because grid filling tools such as Qxw, when combined with a little technical skill, make it pretty straightforward to produce puzzles such as this.

Across

1a Preserve youth in wild area (9)
Since I had just started my breakfast when tackling this clue, the answer was starting me in the face! Later on, I’m afraid I found a bit of it on the puzzle. The wordplay has a three-letter youth inside an anagram (‘wild’) of AREA.

10a Pie transformed vapour to expose back abdominal parts (10)
An anagram (‘transformed’) of PIE is followed by a three-letter word equating to ‘vapour’ and a reversal (‘back’) of another three-letter word, this one meaning ‘to expose’ or ‘to broadcast’.

16a Parts of border changing places took shape (6)
The two halves of a four-letter word for a border (the obvious one) are exchanged. This is the only clue where consecutive letters are removed from the defined answer.

22a Cherishing Indian title separating names to coin I omitted (12)
Quite a tricky wordplay, with the four-letter spelling of the ‘Indian title of great respect given to a man’ being contained by two instances of the usual abbreviation for ‘name’ , the whole lot being followed by a word meaning ‘to coin’ (as they do at Llantrisant) from which the letter I has been omitted.

27a Rob to prepare for exams is dropping out (5)
There’s no doubt about the solution to be entered in the grid, supplied by a six-latter word meaning ‘to prepare for exams’ without the letters IS (‘is dropping out’), but the letter missing from the defined answer could be an A or an I – as it turns out, it is an A, but the only way to establish this with certainty is from the quotation. 

31a Fill with mortar, usually replacing one in clayey paste (7, 2 words)
The name for the creamy paste used by potters has the Roman numeral representing one replaced by the abbreviation for ‘usually’. The untreated solution is (5,2).

32a Malaysian wood component of older antiques (7)
Another one where determining the omitted letter is likely to be harder than finding the grid entry, which is hiding in plain sight; it’s the first letter of the untreated answer.

34a Acreage calls on grass (8)
The standard abbreviation for ‘acreage’ is followed by a word meaning ‘calls on’ or ‘consults’.

Down

1d Australian mountain measure: bit of hiking equipment? (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘Australian’ precedes a four-letter South African word for a hill or mountain and a two-letter unit of measurement used in the printing trade.

2d Scream, soil trembling, simultaneously feeling quake (9)
This is clearly an anagram (‘trembling’) of SCREAM SOIL, but the key to working out the answer is thinking of the stem which is common to several words with earthquake-related meanings and putting it in the middle of the defined answer.

4d What swimmers should avoid, a stretch of broken water rising in middle of rain (5)
Here, the letter A (from the clue) and a three-letter word for a stretch of broken water (which I associate particularly with a sort of tide) are reversed (‘rising’) within the letters in the middle of RAIN. The danger to swimmers is often seen spelt with seven letters, although this five-letter version is more useful to setters and thus may be more familiar to solvers.

6d Monkeys, dark-coloured, to caress, tailless (5)
A three-letter word for ‘dark-coloured’ which also means ‘sorrowful’ is followed by a word meaning ‘to caress with the lips’ from which the last letter has been removed (‘tailless’).

13d Awfully empty, time to stuff meat? It’s used for setting (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘awfully’) of EMPTY is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘time’ inside (‘to stuff’) a particular sort of meat, associated with schnitzels. The answer is (4,5).

21d Lecturer involved in mounting rows causing hurt (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘lecturer’ is contained by (‘involved in’) a reversal of a six-letter word meaning ‘rows’ in the ‘racket’ sense. The ‘causing’ here is an interloper and should be ignored.

24d End of cooling system brought to the fore? One goes after the dealers (5)
A nice example of this type of clue. The sort of cooling system that one might find in a car has the last letter moved to the start (‘End…brought to the fore’).

26d Lesson at Glenalmond? Duck French coming up after Latin (4)
The four-letter word that is reversed (‘coming up’) after the usual abbreviation for ‘Latin’ would presumably describe a duck scored in French cricket, being the French word for ‘nothing’.

(definitions are underlined)

Positions of omitted/added letters

Across:

In 1 across the letter is omitted from positions 1 and 4 / 6: 6 / 10: 7 / 11: 1 and 4 / 12: 2 / 14: 2 and 8 / 16: 3 and 4 / 18: 4 and 5 / 19: 8 / 22: 1, 8 and 10 / 25: 1 / 27: 3 / 29: 3 and 7 / 31: 5 / 32: 1 / 33: 3 / 34: 1, 4 and 8 / 35: 7 and 9.

Down:

In 1 down the letter is added in position 1 / 2: 1 / 3: 4 / 4: 1 / 5: 3 / 6: 3 / 7: 3 / 8: 5 / 9: 1 [or 2] / 13: 6 / 15: 3 / 17: 3 / 20: 4 / 21: 1 / 23: 6 / 24: 3 / 25: 4 / 26: 2 / 28: 3 [or 4] / 30: 4.