Notes for Azed 2,727

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 2,727 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

This puzzle seemed to sit somewhere around the middle of the difficulty spectrum. As you’d expect from Azed, there were plenty of inventive definitions and some neat clues, but there were also more things for me to quibble with than in recent weeks.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 27d, “Revolver, either end of it penetrating, making one snarl (4)”. The wordplay has the letter found at each end of ‘revolver’ (ie ‘it’) inserted into a three-letter word which describes a revolver, resulting in (‘making one’) a word meaning ‘[to] snarl’. There’s a problem, though – ‘revolver’ is a definition by example (DBE). ‘Dog’ on its own is a valid definition (or indication) of SPANIEL, but ‘spaniel’ alone will not do for DOG, because although all spaniels are dogs, by no means all dogs are spaniels. So ‘spaniel’ is an example of the class ‘dogs’, and in order to indicate DOG in a cryptic clue (whether solution or wordplay element) it requires a suitable qualification, either a question mark, or an expression such as ‘say’, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘eg’, or ‘for example’. Here the clue needs to be something like ‘Perhaps revolver, either end of it penetrating, making one snarl’.

Across

1a Stylish US player revealing beam making return (7)
A three-letter North American slang term meaning ‘stylish’ or ‘fashionable’ – as in The Offspring’s song ‘Pretty ??? (For a White Guy)’ – is followed by a four-letter word for a player in certain team games (rugby and gridiron for instance) having a particular position on the field. I think that ‘player’ on its own is barely adequate as an indication.

11a Antiquated backless couch chucked in lorry (10)
A six-letter word for a couch (which as it happens does have a back, though only at one end) is deprived of its last letter (hence the ‘backless’) and put inside a five-letter informal term for the sort of lorry with a flexible joint between its front and rear sections.

14a Inhabitant bagging trophy, exactly as required (6)
A familiar three-letter word which can be used in a transferred sense to describe geographical parentage (ie ‘inhabitant’) contains (‘bagging’) an informal word for a trophy of the cup-shaped kind (the sort of thing that was being hunted in PG Wodehouse’s first published novel). The solution is hyphenated, 4-2.

21a He may have splurged magenta round third of canvas (8)
I doubt whether those Italians who in the fifteenth century commissioned this artist – whose surname is produced by putting an anagram (‘splurged’) of MAGENTA around the third letter of ‘canvas’ – to produce altarpieces for their churches would have stood for any splurging, but I think we can allow Azed a little artistic licence.

24a Smelly insect intertwines back to irritate (8, 2 words)
A reversal (‘back’) of a five-letter word meaning ‘intertwines’ is followed by a three-letter word for ‘to irritate’, the result being a pesky (5,3) critter which emits a nasty smell when threatened. The marmorated (ie veined like marble) variety were accidentally introduced to the US in the 1990s and reached the UK a few years ago.

26a Jock’s faith proves heavy going by the sound of it (6)
The required Scots interjection is a homophone (‘by the sound of it’) of an informal word meaning ‘walks, heavily and wearily’. You’d hope that the answer wouldn’t start me singing, but I’m afraid I Can’t Control Myself…

28a Inner coat for those attending sheep? (6)
The wordplay leads to a (3,3) expression which whimsically suggests people who are connected with a sheep in its second year (continuing the pop theme, the sheep is cryptically suggested by the Beatles classic ‘Get Back’).

33a Fuss-free storm in bits (4)
A seven-letter word for the sort of windstorm which apparently passed through Aldershot last week has a three-letter term for ‘fuss’ removed (ie ‘fuss-free’) to produce a word which I suppose can mean ‘in bits’, though it would perhaps need to be followed by ‘up’ for that sense to be obvious.

Down

2d Run away to Scotland? Most tear northwards, filled with love (4)
A reversal (‘northwards’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] tear’ (or ‘pluck’, ‘drag’ etc) missing its last letter (‘most’) contains (‘filled with’) the usual single-letter representation of ‘love’ in the Andy Murray sense. I used to think that ‘most’ was ok to indicate the truncation of a word, but these days I feel that while ‘most of’ is fine (eg “I’ll drink most of the wine”), ‘most’ on its own would never be applied to a specific thing (eg “I’ll drink most wine”) and is therefore not acceptable.

3d Affliction of starving kid tucking into edible root, one forest-dweller (8)
A four-letter ‘destructive ulceration of the cheek, esp that affecting hunger-weakened children’ is contained by (‘tucking into’) a three-letter edible root like the potato, and the Roman numeral for ‘one’. I’ve no problem with ‘tucked into’ as an insertion indicator, but I don’t like ‘tucking into’.

4d Crude report we hear (5)
A second homophone, this one for a word which is pronounced quite differently in English than in French, where it has its origins and means (at least in my schoolboy version of the language) ‘noise’.

7d King presiding over tribe, one in NZ (4)
The chess-and-cards abbreviation for ‘king’ is followed by a Maori word for a tribe, with the answer being an informal word for a New Zealander, especially in a sporting context.

9d Pluto e.g. producing high-pitched cry, a row (8)
A charade of two four-letter words, one for a high-pitched note (or a tube) and the other for a row in the serial sense, results in something exemplified by PLUTO (I’ve rarely seen it spelt with just an initial capital), the sort of thing that was laid’ ‘Under The Ocean’ in 1944 to transfer fuel from from the UK to support the Normandy invasion.

10d One converts flats regularly, rentin’ space variously around Spain (12)
The tricky bit about this one, where an anagram (‘variously’) of RENTIN SPACE contains the IVR code for Spain, is understanding the definition, which relates to ‘flats’ of the sort which might be seen in the theatre.

18d Great novelist, first of three – one partner’s not enough for him (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘great’ is followed by the surname of either of two famous English novelists (which one you think of first probably depends on your age), and the first letter of ‘three’.

23d Nod head aiming for heart of agreement (6)
A three-letter informal word for the head, a common two-letter preposition which is hard to define but could certainly mean ‘for’ or ‘towards’ if not ‘aiming for’, and the central letter (‘heart’) of ‘agreement’ combine to produce the answer.

25d Lecherous acts with nothing on, removing top and bottom? (5)
You may well find yourself working back from the answer to establish the whimsical seven-letter word which (if it existed) might mean ‘with nothing on’ or ‘without clothes’ and that must be stripped of its first and last letters (‘removing top and bottom’).

29d Traces of fugitives seen? Posse reveals opposite of this (4)
The phrase ‘in posse’ is the opposite of ‘in ????’.

(definitions are underlined)