Notes for Azed 2,602

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 2,602 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

Perhaps slightly more difficult than last week, but still I think a little below the middle of the spectrum. The foreign word at 31d not given by Chambers should have been familiar to most if not all solvers, and the clue to it could hardly have been clearer. I didn’t feel that this was one of Azed’s finest efforts: several of the clues were on the clunky side, and it didn’t seem to have had the final ‘polishing up’ which can add a touch of gloss.

Setters’ Corner: The clues at 8d, 17d and 23d contain the wordplay elements ‘bit of entremets’, ‘bit of plush’ and ‘bit of charcuterie’, in each instance indicating the first letter of the third word in the group. Leaving aside the question of whether ‘bit of’ is an acceptable way of selecting the first letter of a word (arguably any piece of the word is a ‘bit’ of it), my issue is the appearance of the same wordplay device three times in the space of eight clues. Crossword editors will normally allow a term to be used only once in a puzzle for the same purpose (having ‘around’ in one clue to indicate containment and in another clue to represent ‘ca’ would be absolutely fine, and there are a few exceptions, repeated use of ‘in’ to show insertion for example being permitted), and I suspect that like myself most setters keep track in some way of the various abbreviations and indicators that they have used in order to avoid duplication.

In a recent puzzle I seem to remember that Azed used ‘left’ in two clues to indicate L – I didn’t have a big problem with that, not least because it can be hard to find suitable alternatives for a single word that delivers a single letter, but with letter selection indicators there is no excuse. In 8d ‘Finally taking taste of entremets’ would be fine, as would ‘one scrap of plush’, in 17d and ‘first piece of charcuterie’ – and that’s using the same words (entremets etc) to provide the necessary first letter. Letter selection indicators are a boon to the setter (although some editors like their usage to be kept to a minimum), but they allow so much flexibility that I find it disappointing when they are not used artfully.

1a Not in haste? Wrong, and (in short) on time (12, 3 words)
Things get under way with an &lit, albeit not a classic. An anagram (‘wrong’) of NOT IN HASTE is followed by the informal shortening of ‘and’ that often joins fish to chips and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’. The whole clue stands as the definition of the (2,3,7) solution.

10a Like a snort? It’s found in den on once retiring (6)
The “It’s found in” here simply links the definition to the wordplay, which has the combination of a four-letter word for a den and an obsolete (‘once’) two-letter form of ‘on’ being reversed (‘retiring’).

13a Burrower clearly inside blind (8)
A four-letter word meaning ‘clearly’ (and ‘rightly’, ‘skilfully’, ‘thoroughly’ etc) is contained by a verb which originally meant ‘to sew up the eyelids of’ and would have been used with reference to the training of hawks; in a transferred sense it then came to mean ‘to close the eyes of (a person)’, and thence it acquired the meaning of ‘to blind’ or ‘to hoodwink’ (which originally referred to covering the eyes with a hood – have I confused you yet?).

14a Brightly coloured fabric, reverse of worthless in brown (7)
That four-letter biblical word for ‘worthless’ (given by Chambers but not in OED) which often pops up (or back) in barred puzzles is here put inside a familiar three-letter word for ‘brown’ before the whole lot is reversed (‘reverse of’).

15a God embraced by group coming together in prayer (4)
A single-letter abbreviation for ‘God’ (from the Latin) is contained (’embraced’) by the term for a group coming together for a spot of sewing or spelling, producing a word for a prayer. The solution is given by Chambers as obsolete, but rather surprisingly Azed chooses not to indicate this.

19a Before being taken in by dissembler, boss had no knowledge of this (9)
An archaic two-letter word meaning ‘before’ is ‘taken in’ by a seven-letter term for someone making a pretence (not the more obvious six-letter word, note), the result being the sort of job that’s done ‘on the side’.

29a Half getting submerged in Scotch mist (4)
‘Half’ here indicates that we need to take half of an eight-letter word for ‘getting submerged’ in order to get a Scots word for ‘mist’.

34a E.g. Clare lives with boy, name concealed (6)
This ‘Clare’ stands at the entrance to Clew Bay in County Mayo and is (apparently) famous for housing not just the boy in the clue but also the 15th century pirate queen Gráinne O’Malley. The wordplay has a two-letter word for ‘lives’ followed by a three-letter word for a boy into which the usual abbreviation for ‘name’ has been inserted (‘name concealed’).

2d Native American house with a windmill sail inverted on top (6)
One of the few clues in this puzzle (5d is another) where the break between the definition and the wordplay was nicely concealed. The usual abbreviation for ‘house’ has the letter A (from the clue) plus a three-letter word for a windmill sail (or the sort of thing used by Amazon delivery drivers) reversed (‘inverted’) above it (‘on top’).

5d Sick with centre of meal trapped in intestine (5)
The wordplay here involves a three-letter word for ‘sick’ having the central letters of ‘meal’ held inside (‘trapped’); I thought briefly that the ‘in’ was part of the wordplay, and was wondering why Azed hadn’t preferred ‘inside’, but quickly realised that it belonged to the definition.

7d Water rising in gushing upset, precipitous as before (8)
A three-letter word for the sort of water that might be passed is reversed (‘rising’) inside an anagram (‘gushing’) of UPSET, the ‘as before’ indicating that the word is not in current use. In reality, it  seems to be a hapax legomenon, appearing only in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 7, and even then without the E in sixth position:

And having climbed the ??????? heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

10d Old music maker creating minor misdeed in convent? (10)
I’m not sure why Azed didn’t just write this as “Old music maker’s minor misdeed in convent?”, but anyway the ‘creating’ is a link word and the (4-6) solution (including an apostrophe) describes some slightly dodgy dealing taking place without (one hopes) the mother superior’s knowledge.

17d One bit of plush held by hatter I’m turned off, cosmetic (8, 2 words)
The Roman numeral for ‘one’ and the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘plush’ are contained by an eight-letter word for a hatter from which a reversal (‘turned’) of the letters IM (from the clue) have been removed (‘off’). The solution is (3,5), which reminds me of a very old joke which I shall not include here for a variety of good reasons.

21d Sticker, ad scratched over in Bantu language (6)
A seven-letter word for something which sticks to something else (‘sticker’) with the letters AD (from the clue) omitted (‘scratched’) is followed by the usual (cricketing) abbreviation for ‘over’.

24d Poet penning number that’s lingual in part (6)
The poet whose surname is here containing (‘penning’) the single-character abbreviation for ‘number’ is Kathleen Jessica of that ilk, whose first book of poetry, Stone and Flower, was published in 1943. She wrote many quotable things, but she’s a one-hit wonder when it comes to the ODQ – she said in her autobiography that Gavin Maxwell was the love of her life (though that was never likely to work out well), and her sole entry is this fragment from The Marriage of Psyche:

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples spread from the heart of the sea.

I wanted to add a suitable pun, but I’m otterly stumped. All contributions are welcome.

28d Part of kit that’s beaten, hand held (not half) (5)
A three-letter word for ‘beaten’ (in the ‘bashed’ sense) has HAND (from the clue) without the last two letters (‘not half’) in its grip (‘held’). According to Chambers (2-3) hyphenation of the solution is optional but not mandatory.

(definitions are underlined)