Notes for Azed 2,594

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.

While I – of course – believe that the views presented are valid, I realize that (i) I am not infallible, and (ii) in the world of the crossword there are many areas where opinions will differ. I say what I think, but I don’t intend thereby to stifle discussion – I would encourage readers who disagree with the views that I express, whether in the blog posts or in response to comments, to make their feelings known…I shall not be offended!

Azed 2,594 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

I found this an entertaining puzzle which seemed to sit somewhere around the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were enough straightforward clues to enable the solver to get a toehold, but not so many as to soften the challenge too much.

Setters’ Corner: I’m not going to single out a clue this week, rather to look ahead to Azed’s Golden Jubilee next Sunday. There is an excellent article published on the Guardian website today celebrating this extraordinary achievement which I recommend to all aficionados. I have only been solving Azed’s puzzles for around fourteen of those fifty years, and blogging them for less than that, but from the outset I was hooked. There is nothing to match Azed’s clueing in terms of imagination and wit combined with scrupulous fairness and accuracy of construction, which is why for the last few years Azed has been the only crossword that I have tackled. Enough said. Anyone who would like to have a go at the very first Azed puzzle from March 1972 can find it here in online and PDF forms, together with the solution. 

I must also thank that cruciverbal stripling, Richard Heald (incidentally the best Azed competition clue writer of this century by a country mile), for quoting in the above article my favourite Azed clue, “My letters could make lad sad” for LASS. Azed may well have written clues that were more technically accomplished, but surely few that better demonstrate what sets him head and shoulders above other compilers.

11a Learnt as of old to forgive one being released (4)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘forgive’ has the letters ONE omitted (‘released’) to produce the Spenserian (‘as of old’) past tense of a verb meaning ‘study’ or ‘learn’.

14a/15a Bouffant style it could be made up of…(4) / …To surpass another hairdo (4)
There is no interworking between these two clues other than the fact that both solutions relate to a styling of hair. In the first clue, the solution is an anagram (‘could be made’) of UP OF, while the second consists of two definitions, the first involving an uncommon (in my experience, anyway) meaning of a verb more often used in the sense of ‘to strike violently’.

19a Sniffer dog making hit, including drug (4)
A three-letter word for ‘[to] hit’ containing (‘including’) the usual single-letter drug of choice for crossword setters produces an alternative spelling of the name of a sort of hound more associated with Victorian detectives than the Met’s drug squad.

22a Tries Eiger possibly: e.g. this is unfolded? (6)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of TRIES EIGER can be rearranged (‘possibly’) to form EG plus the solution (‘this’) as IS. The whole clue stands as an indication of the solution, again represented by ‘this’ in the clue.

26a Quiz: what do some locos run on? (5)
A double definition, where the first one leads to a familiar word, although the ‘quiz’ meaning probably doesn’t immediately -or ever – spring to one’s mind, while the second indicates a hyphenated (1-4) solution.

28a What makes Scots team…sing about this strip? (4)
When the letters SING are placed around (‘about’) this Scots word meaning ‘[to] strip’, the result is the name of…well, certainly a Scottish city, although the football club has an ‘Albion’ on the end of it. But they are often known just by the one word here, so we’ll let it pass.

29a Pet: that’s fed nothing for tea (4)
If the four-letter (canine) pet which constitutes the solution (ie ‘that’) is ‘fed’ (contains) the usual single-letter representation of ‘nothing’ then it can produce the name of a type of scented black tea. Surely the most famous representative of the breed was Tricki Woo, the pampered and rather overweight charge of Mrs Pumphrey in the James Herriot books, famous for on occasion going ‘crackerdog’ (running around wildly) and ‘flopbot’ (which can happen to anyone). And, of course, for the lavish gifts (often edible in nature) that he used to send to ‘Uncle Herriot’ out of gratitude for his excellent veterinary care.

31a Delight where penitents were found, Ali being knocked out (4)
The seven-letter name of a large porch at the west end of some churches where penitents waited to be admitted into the main body of the church (ie ‘where penitents were found’) has the letters ALI removed from inside it (‘knocked out’) in order to produce a familiar word for ‘delight’.

5d Tree cut short in trail raised to form part of ship’s structure (8)
A five-letter scientific term for a tree with its last letter taken off (‘cut short’) is put into a reversal (‘raised’) of a four-letter word meaning ‘[to] trail’ or draw slowly.

8d Jock’s gaga, climbing tree after party (6)
A four-letter tree native to the southern US (which is also the name of a South American monkey) is reversed (‘climbing’) after the two-letter word for the sort of party that crossword setters seem particularly fond of. The “Jock’s” is there to indicate that the solution is shown by Chambers as being Scottish.

9d Colonial administrators endorse changes and arrive with number introduced (12)
Here we have an anagram (‘changes’) of ENDORSE into which a four-letter word for ‘arrive’ and the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘number’ have been introduced. I am not entirely convinced that the wordplay is grammatically sound: the present indicative ‘changes’ jars with the ‘and arrive with number introduced’, the ‘and’ being the problematic element. I would have been happier with “Colonial administrators endorse changes, arrive with number introduced”.

10d Grammatical addition yielding first of idioms in fashion (10)
The well-disguised wordplay in this clue involves a six-letter word for ‘yielding’ being followed by the first letter of ‘idioms’ contained within a three-letter word for ‘fashion’.

12d Remain loyal? More so, rarely without merit (10)
Here we have a wordplay with ‘Azed’ written all over it, leading to a two-word phrase which might describe what those who were perhaps not very loyal to start with but are now more so might be likely to do. It’s actually quite a hard phrase to indicate, and I think Azed has made a pretty good attempt. The solution is on rare occasions (it is shown by Chambers as ‘rare’) used to described those without merit but never (by orthographers at least) to describe those who have been deprived of pudding.

21d Cutting off fuel limits one (7)
A six-letter Scottish and northern English term for fuel, derived from the Old Norse word for ‘fire’, contains (‘limits’) the Roman numeral for one. Or the single letter representing the nominative singular of the first personal pronoun – Ximenes apparently didn’t like ‘one’ being used for I, but it seems to me that there are two perfectly good justifications without resorting to the similarity between the letter and the Arabic numeral (which I suspect was the one he took exception to).

25d SA line dividing passage once (6)
The usual single-character abbreviation for ‘line’ is inserted into (‘splitting’) an obsolete five-letter term for a passage or a walk behind battlements. The definition has SA being used not in the sense of South Africa or Salvation Army, but the sort of thing that in reference to Clara Bow was called ‘It’. Sadly it was not Clara but a character in Elinor Glyn’s novel ‘It’ that Dorothy Parker was referring to when she wrote in a review “And she had It. It, hell; she had Those”.

27d I kept in contact, say, requiring little effort vocally (5)
The letter I (from the clue) is contained by (‘kept in’) a four-letter word that is often seen preceded by ‘contact’, the result being a word which I once included in a puzzle without having looked up the definition in Chambers. Not a good move.

(definitions are underlined)