Notes for Azed 2,564

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 2,564 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

A puzzle which seemed to me to sit slightly beyond the mid-point of the difficulty range, containing just one ‘hidden’ and a relatively low (for Azed) proportion of anagrams.

I have been producing these notes in their current form for a while, and I would appreciate any feedback that readers can offer on the format and content. One area of particular interest to me is the level of explicitness which you would like to see; I am conscious of the fact that “a two-letter word for a cow” and “the usual abbreviation for ‘latitude'” don’t improve the readability of the parsings. Would you prefer to see “OX (‘cow’)” and “L (latitude)”? Or would you rather that I stuck with the ‘n-letter words’ but explicitly showed the single letters? All views on this and any other aspect which might be improved will be very welcome.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at 22a, “Search in e.g. Chambers for describing table for distinguishing variables (6)”. Nothing too special about this double-definition clue, and the Chambers definition of ‘lookup’, which should surely read ‘denoting a table giving a set of possible values for a variable’, has done Azed no favours, but the interest lies in the first definition, that of ‘look up’ (two words). Of the grammatical errors which I see in clues a significant number are the result of setters ignoring (or not understanding) the difference between a transitive (object) and an intransitive (no-object) verb, with a verb of one type being used to indicate a verb of the other type either in the definition or as part of the wordplay. It is a particular issue with compound verbs, eg ‘look up’. In the clue here we have the verb ‘search’, which does have a transitive form, but its object is the place searched, not the thing sought; so ‘Search in e.g. Chambers’ will not do for ‘look up’ (try making up a sentence that uses one and then swap it for the other), and hence Azed has added the word ‘for’. Since ‘search for’ and ‘look up’ are synonymous only in a specific sense of the latter, Azed has flagged this by qualifying ‘search for’ with ‘in e.g. Chambers’. The result: an accurate indication of the solution.

12a Cuddly toy? Baby’s first, what one finds mother’s in front of (5)
The first letter of ‘Baby’, followed by a four-letter word which, when it has “mother’s” in front of it, indicates the sort of alcoholic beverage found at 5d. The way that Azed has constructed the last part of the clue is an object lesson in coming up with a combination of words that is grammatically sound both in the surface reading and the wordplay.

14a/15a Argument to add when dividing… (7) / …Side falling out including amateur plans (5)
The ellipsis here requires the first three words of the second clue to be shared with the first, ie the latter becomes “Argument to add when dividing side falling out”, instructing the solver to insert  a three-letter word meaning ‘to add’ into an anagram (‘falling out’) of SIDE. The second clue is ‘as seen’, another anagram of SIDE, this one including the usual abbreviation of ‘amateur’. Some editors are happy with ‘over’ as a containment indicator; personally, I would never use it and it looks as though Azed won’t either, because it would have worked very nicely here in place of ‘including’ in the  second clue.

24a Rare melody, contralto’s resort (6)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘contralto’ is followed by a word for a resort or den; the whole is a rare spelling of a familiar word.

25a Requiring more scratchings, I ordered thrice (7)
A lovely definition. I think that ‘ordered’ is probably acceptable to most solvers as an indication of an anagram, but I don’t like it myself – the letters of any word are already in the order that produces that word, and I don’t think that ‘ordered’ suggests that the existing order should be changed, though I realize that I am probably in a small minority on this. I would have preferred “…I reordered thrice”, which I think reads equally well. I would also be happy with ‘…I strangely ordered thrice’ or something of that ilk.

Incidentally, when ‘scratchings’ started being sold in pubs I was surprised to find that they were a pork product; to me, scratchings were what our local chip shop in Redditch would sell you (in generous measure) inside a cone of paper for a penny, they being the bits of cooked batter from the bottom of the fryer. Probably somewhere south of a deep-fried Mars bar in the healthy food ratings, but absolutely delicious…I can still remember the taste – mmmmm. Thinking of pork scratchings, and the discussions which I recall taking place on occasion regarding the likely origin of ones with particularly interesting shapes, I am reminded of what must be the archest advertising slogan of all time, Peperami’s brilliant “It’s a bit of an animal”.

33a Old refrain from Italian city about a snake (9)
A five-letter Italian city is set around NAGA (a snake, especially the cobra) to produce an archaic term for a refrain.

4d Regular speed merchant – or not, one assumes (5)
NOT could be indicated in a down clue by ‘ton up’.

5d Kitty would do for this traditional gin regaining popularity (6, 2 words)
‘Kitty’ could (just about) serve as an indication of the solution, which is the name of a kind of sweetened gin popular in the nineteenth century and now enjoying a resurgence, I understand, associated with the ‘Craft Cocktail’ movement.

7d Junkie, how one might describe Cressida? (8)
Dame Cressida Dick leads Metropolitan Police Service, so she might be described (inter alia) as ‘a CID head’.

8d Star of Oliver!, say? I’ll give way to musical’s No. 2 in dance (4)
A four-letter dance (a version of which can be done with the hands) has its I ‘giving way to’ (replaced by) the second letter of ‘musical’. The solution describes the sort of performer who would be playing Oliver.

16d Clapper of course interrupting music coming up is thrown out (8)
A five-letter adjective meaning ‘of [a] course’ or ‘of a cycle of duty’ going inside (‘interrupting’) a reversal (‘coming up’) of MUSIC, from which the IS is removed (‘is thrown out’); the clue makes it clear that the ‘coming up’ precedes the ‘throwing out’.

23d Dumpling, triangular piece turning up in pastry dish (not English) (6)
The triangular piece which must be inverted (‘turning up’)  within a three-letter word for a pastry dish from which the E has been removed (‘not English’) is GORE, a triangular piece let into a garment to widen it (I have every confidence that regular commenter Orange will have been familiar with the word; I’m afraid that gussets and darts represent the limit of my knowledge in this area).

24d This, on being processed, produces colorant (6)
A composite anagram &lit where the letters of the solution (‘This’) and ON can be rearranged (‘processed’) to produce COLORANT. I think there are a couple of problems related to the punctuation here. The second comma, whilst required by the surface reading, makes the wordplay decidedly iffy; worse, the first comma divides up the anagram material into two elements which means that the verb ‘produce’ should be in a plural form. I think the clue would be fine without the commas.

28d Vintage table wine, half disposed of (4)
An eight-letter French claret loses its last four letters (‘half disposed of’), resulting in an obsolete (‘Vintage’) version of a word that is invariably spelt with five letters these days.

30d It’s pouched – in more ways than one (4)
A kind of double definition, exploiting the fact that the solution is not just a unit of currency but also a species of large kangaroo. When embarking on a trip to Europe, it is important to acquire the correct sort.

(definitions are underlined)