Notes for Azed 2,717

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 2,717 Plain

Difficulty rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars (2.5 / 5)

Normal service is resumed with a plain puzzle that was generally fairly straightforward but was raised up a notch on the difficulty dipstick  by a couple of tricky parsings in the bottom half. Quite a few obscure words, but, as always with Azed, the accuracy of the wordplays could be relied on to guide you to the solutions.

Just a teensy bit of self-promotion: if anyone has a few minutes to fill, they might like to have a go at the latest quarterly prize puzzle on Big Dave’s site (there is a link to a downloadable PDF, so you don’t have to complete the puzzle online).

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 11a, “A backer turning round admitting what he’s responsible for? (7)”. The parsing of the clue is covered below, but the question I want to raise here is whether the fact that the ‘backer’ in the definition is not the sort that would be associated with placing wagers, in other words can “what he’s responsible for” reasonably be BET? I must confess that I rather like clues such as this where there is a connection between the definition and the wordplay, and I’m also in favour of any device that makes clues more interesting, as long as they remain fair. There are other occasions where the solver has to do a degree of preprocessing when solving a clue, for instance ‘friar briefly’ -> ‘brother briefly’ -> BRO (2,709) or ‘having retired’ -> ‘in BED’, and since it’s clear that the ‘he’ here refers to the backer, I see no reason why the solver shouldn’t be expected to preprocess this clue into “A backer turning round admitting what a backer’s responsible for”, at which point any problem goes away. 

Across

10a Tree with red juice, contents of vessel female drained? (5)
A six-letter word for the contents of a particular vessel (which happened to be in front of me as I solved this puzzle while tucking into my Toastie and marmalade) is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘female’ (‘female drained’).

11a A backer turning round admitting what he’s responsible for? (7)
A four-letter word for a ’round’ (of the daily sort) is reversed (‘turning’) around what a backer might be responsible for putting on a horse. I feel that the definition is a stretch – is someone who ‘incites by encouragement or aid’ a ‘backer’? Perhaps just about.

12a Extract – it’s taken from script (5)
The consecutive letters IT are removed (‘taken’) from a seven-letter word for ‘script’.

21a Help e.g. McCartney with book coming out? (6)
The McCartney here is the obvious one, and it’s the seven-letter term for what playing his Rickenbacker 4001S (between 1965 and 1989) made him that needs to have the usual abbreviation for ‘book’ removed. Macca is one of the relatively few famous rock/blues guitarists to have played left-handed, along with Jimi Hendrix (who used a regular guitar upside-down but with left-handed stringing), Tony Iommi, Kurt Cobain and Albert King; a number of other left-handed musicians, notably Eric Clapton and David Bowie, chose to play in the conventional way.

23a Sobriquet, one recalled in book (6)
A two-letter word for ‘one’ is reversed (‘recalled’) in a word for a (weighty, often scholarly) book.

29a Canter on gee in gore once (5)
The four-letter word indicated by ‘canter’ which follows (‘on’) the single letter having the name ‘gee’ is defined by example, although not flagged as such – it could equally well have been suggested by ‘gallop’ or ‘trot’, say.

30a A rule to note, not the last for Shiite (7)
The letter A (from the clue) and a three-letter word for ‘rule’ are followed by a verb meaning ‘to note’ (much more familiar as a noun for an individual article in a list or group) which has lost its last letter (‘not the last’).

31a What’s suggested by French squaddie, dutiful? (5)
The ‘French squaddie’ is a ????-????, where the same four letters are repeated before and after the hyphen, thus suggesting a whimsical plural form ????S.

34a Restraint that disables son, one assumes? (10, 2 words)
This seemed like a nice idea that didn’t quite come to fruition, perhaps because of the SON (which could equally have been NEL) appearing in the clue; I can’t immediately come up with anything better (“Ratio is more than this?”) though. The answer is (4,6).

Down

2d Army chief prince called up and unenlightened king dismissed (6)
The three-letter prince who is a frequent visitor to cryptics (sometimes in the guise of a ‘head’) is reversed (‘called up’) and followed by an adjective meaning ‘unenlightened’ (in both its original and modern senses) from which the chess player’s abbreviation for ‘king’ has been omitted (‘dismissed’).

4d Take disturbance gripping lives, rendering ladders less likely (9)
The usual single letter abbreviation representing ‘take’ and a six-letter word for the sort of disturbance that could be civil are put around (‘gripping’) a word meaning ‘lives’, the resulting answer being hyphenated, 3-6, and applicable to the sort of hosiery that Lady Madonna clearly didn’t possess.

6d I’m leaving exam having turned up larval secretion (4)
A six-letter informal term for an entrance exam or the first examination in a course (cf final/finals) without the consecutive letters IM (“I’m leaving”) is reversed (‘having turned up’), producing a word that even sounds sticky. I rather feel that the phrasing of the wordplay suggests that the reversal should precede the removal, but that won’t work.

7d Rick maybe I wrapped in meshes when erected (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is contained by (‘wrapped in’) a reversal (‘when erected’) of a word for ‘meshes’. I wonder how well the ‘Rick’ here is known outside the UK, but then again the puzzle is printed in a UK newspaper, and anyway Google can be relied on to fill any knowledge gaps in these circumstances. I suspect most Azed solvers will be familiar with him, but I wait to be corrected.

15d Number once introduced by piano shortly, or dulcimer (9)
The key to unravelling the wordplay here is to work out that the ‘number once’ is a four-letter word with an archaic meaning of ‘number’ (it apparently derives from an Old English word meaning ‘story’ or ‘number’, the former being its modern sense). This word is contained by the usual abbreviation for ‘piano’ and a four-letter word meaning ‘shortly’ or ‘immediately’. The whole thing might make one think of an item of underwear.

16d Lordly upper crust most take no notice of getting drawn in by (9)
The phrasing here is so convoluted that I initially thought a word was missing, but it means that a four-letter word for the upper part of the earth’s crust is what all but the last letter (‘most’) of a six-letter word meaning ‘take no notice of’ is contained (‘drawn in’) by. A point that has been discussed on this site before is the validity of ‘most’ on its own to mean ‘the large part of’ – it is only ever used to qualify a generic noun (eg ‘I eat most bread’) and is not the same as ‘most of’, which is applied to a specific thing (‘I ate most of the bread’), so I’m not keen.

20d Work rises filling fuel in old cargo vessels (7)
A four-letter word for ‘work’ is reversed (‘rises’) inside (‘filling’) a word for a particular type of fuel.

22d Chipmunk from southern states? One of the same kind, tailless (6)
Two abbreviations, representing Southern United States, are followed by a word for ‘one of the same kind’ (“I shall not look upon his ???? again”, as Hamlet said of his father), the last letter of which has been deleted (‘tailless’).

24d Regarding multiplier, low? Largely dim having to divide that (6)
You know your brain has reached the point of complete cryptic saturation when upon seeing the word ‘low’ in a clue, and regardless of context, you immediately think of the sound that a cow makes. Here that sound has a four-letter word for ‘dim’ or ‘uninteresting’ lacking its last letter (‘largely’) placed inside it (‘having to divide that’, ‘that’ being the word for ‘low’).

(definitions are underlined)

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