Notes for Azed 2,597

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.

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Azed 2,597 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle that seemed to me to sit very close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were a couple of wordplays which I felt stretched things a bit, but as always with Azed once you’d got to the answer you knew for sure it was right.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 2d, “Rest freeing one from genuine pain (7)”. The wordplay involves a one-letter word for ‘one’ leaving a four-letter word for ‘genuine’ followed by a four-letter word for ‘pain’, the solution being a word for ‘rest’ taken directly from the French language. The point of interest here is the word ‘freeing’ – it is surely a participle rather than a gerund, but who or what is doing the ‘freeing’? Azed quite often uses this sort of construction, but I’m not very comfortable with it, since the only named subject for the participle is the definition. If this is intended, the clue could equally well have been written as ‘Rest frees one from genuine pain’, which seems unconvincing. Alternatively, the solver could be expected to infer an additional word or words, but what would they be? Perhaps ‘Rest [involves you] freeing one from genuine pain’. As far as possible alternatives go, I can see that ‘Genuine pain lessened by a rest’ suggests that the A is lost from the second word rather than the first, so personally I would prefer something along the lines of ‘Rest: one’s freed from physical pain’.

1a Mistake imbibing selection of wine, barely drinkable (8)
A four-letter informal term for a mistake when containing (‘imbibing’) a four-letter word for a framework on which bottles of wine might be arrayed produces an adjective which is typically used to describe salty water. The ‘mistake’ is the sort frequently made by one JCT Jennings, and just occasionally made by others to his own detriment:

“Dear Mr Tomlinson,” the letter said. “I shall be obliged if you will send me your catalogue of flowering shrubs as I have unfortunately mislaid the list which you sent me last month. Yours faithfully, Angela Birkinshaw (Miss).”

Jennings groaned. In a daze he passed it to Darbishire who read it and scratched his head in puzzled wonder. “Why does she call you ‘Mr Tomlinson’? Have you changed your name by deed poll or something?” “No, that’s not me – that’s somebody else,” Jennings explained. “I see what’s happened though. She’s written two letters and got the envelopes mixed up; I’ve got this Tomlinson person’s letter and he’s got mine.” “What a ghastly bish,” said Darbishire as the facts became clear.  “And whatever must this Mr Tomlinson be thinking?” Jennings snorted. “Huh! It’s what I’m thinking that matters. Never mind about Mr Tomlinson – he’s all right! At least he jolly well ought to be; dash it all, Darbi, he’s got my postal order.” The deduction was correct. At the very moment that Jennings was bemoaning his fate, Mr A Tomlinson, Nurseryman and Seedsman, was standing in his suburban shop, pondering over a letter which had arrived by the morning post.

“Dear John,” it began “I am sending you a postal order, which I expect will come in useful at the tuck-shop.”

12a African plant: fish and individual creatures desist when sun’s out (9)
A charade of a small, edible two-letter fish (or a three-toed sloth), the three-letter plural of a four-letter word for a structurally unified individual creature, and a five-letter word meaning ‘desist’ from which the usual abbreviation for ‘sun’ has been removed (“when sun’s out”). Since the solution is a genus of trees, I would have thought that ‘plants’ was considerably more appropriate than ‘plant’ in the definition.

13a Crêpe in France, Breton one containing local milk, not Italian (6)
Here we have the IVR code for France followed by the Breton (ie French) word for ‘one’ containing the French (‘local’) word for milk from which the usual two-letter abbreviation of ‘Italian’ has been removed (‘not Italian’). Please see Steve’s comment below regarding the use of ‘Breton’ to indicate a translation into French. The solution is shown by Chambers as archaic, but Azed has chosen not to indicate this. 

14a Monsoon deity? I’ll go for river where my worshippers are (5)
The wordplay in this clue is too laboured for my liking. It involves the letter I being replaced by the usual abbreviation for ‘river’ (“I’ll go for river”) in the name of a country where many of the deity’s worshippers could be found. It only works if the ‘where my worshippers are’ is pre-processed into ‘in Xxxxx’, at which point the substitution instruction makes sense.

17a Such terribly regressive tax takes the most downhill route (8)
An anagram (‘terribly’) of SUCH is followed by a reversal (‘regressive’) of an obsolete four-letter word for a tax, usually spelt with an initial C rather than the S seen here.

21a Regiment, half of it about good to form fresh coalition (7)
The four-letter abbreviation for the name of an engineering regiment (I know what their flag looks like because my neighbour – a former member – sometimes flies it from his flagpole) is followed by the first two letters of the same abbreviation (‘half of ‘it’) containing (‘about’) the usual abbreviation of ‘good’.

26a Extract from plant, a plant from the east, that gives name to common food (5)
Not the best clue in this puzzle, a ‘reverse hidden’ (‘Extract from…from the east’) which provides the name of an area where a particular kind of long-grained rice was originally grown. ‘This gave’ would be far better than ‘that gives’ when it comes to the definition, but wouldn’t work in the surface reading.

29a Senior canon Louis maybe backed to attend prince (5)
Having chosen a Louis from the seventeen or so available (nineteen if you accept a couple of dubious claims), his three-letter title in his home country should be reversed (‘backed’) and put after the standard two-letter abbreviation for ‘prince’.

32a Danger: knife’s front end going as far as it can (4)
The first letter of a four-letter word for a Malay dagger with a wavy blade should be moved as far as it can go (without impinging on the space available for 33a), thus producing a word for ‘danger’.

1d Intellectual dropping in for punch (4)
A six-letter term for an intellectual, typically applied to a research scientist, is missing (‘dropping’) the letters IN.

6d Fine things see off professorships (5)
Another removal wordplay, this time the letter of the alphabet known as ‘see’ is taken away from (‘off’) a six-letter word for ‘professorships’.

11d Degree subject – it’s swatted round college (11)
A neat &lit clue, a two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of degree is followed by a five-letter word for a subject plus an anagram (‘swatted’) of ITS containing (‘around’) the usual abbreviation for ‘college’.

17d Violinist keeps quiet, one involved in medley earlier? (8)
A seven-letter derogatory term for a fiddler contains the abbreviation for ‘quiet’ or ‘softly’ in musical notation; ‘medley’ is an obsolete term for a fight.

18d Tortoise, this, delicacy with a slice of entrecôte (8)
The three-letter Latin word for ‘this’, an archaic term for a delicacy, and the first (or middle, or last, pick your preferred ‘slice’) letter from ‘entrecote’ combine to produce a West Indian freshwater tortoise.

20d Holidays coming up? No good getting stuck into that gospel (7)
A five-letter term for holidays, usually applied specifically to absence from work, is reversed (‘coming up’) before having the usual abbreviation for ‘no good’ inserted’ (‘stuck into’ it).

24d Persian sharif losing hearts, banged up (5)
On checking ‘bang up’ in Chambers I found that a US meaning of ‘to knock about’ is given, so it’s certainly a valid anagram indicator if you’re across the pond. The wordplay here involves an anagram (‘banged up’) of SHARIF without (‘losing’) the usual abbreviation for ‘hearts’.

25d French mister artist framed in middle of bath? Lifeless one! (5)
A whiff of Corday in this one. The single letter representing the French word for ‘mister’ is followed by two letters which we have all seen many times indicated by ‘artist’ (though whether it’s any better than ‘jolly’ for RM remains to be seen) contained (‘framed’) in the central letters (‘middle’) of ‘bath’. 

(definitions are underlined)