Notes for Azed 2,698

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 2,698 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I felt this one was close to the middle of the difficulty range, perhaps slightly below – the two (8,5) entries at top and bottom were very straightforward, but they were to a degree balanced by a few trickier clues for shorter answers. There were some neat clues, including a couple of nice double definitions.

Clue Writers’ Corner: A word which is applied to a person fulfilling a role gives the clue writer a lot of options when it comes to the definition. COSTERMONGER, for instance, could simply be defined as ‘Person who sells fruit from a barrow’. But that would be pretty dull, and certainly won’t impress the judge in a clue-writing competition. We can make it more personal (‘She sells fruit’), or completely impersonal (‘Source of fruit’). We can start to move away from the terms that would be found in a dictionary, eg ‘Wheeler-dealer’. But there’s no need to stop there – introducing potentiality (thus effectively producing a definition by example) broadens our range further: ‘You could ask me for a date’ or ‘Conferences might be my speciality’. Or we could get back to the dictionary definition but apply some heavy disguise, eg ‘I use mobile trading platform’.

Across

11a Sedge plant? Sign of what’s wrong after oversight (5)
The single-letter “sign of what’s wrong” follows a familiar word meaning oversight in the sense of supervision.

12a Clown, one of pair in circus to take offence (5)
The only letter which appears twice in CIRCUS (ie ‘one of pair in circus’) is followed by a word meaning ‘to take offence’ (probably more often seen describing the resulting sulks), the whole being a rustic, boor, churl, or clown, as well as a term ‘generally applied opprobriously, with a fitting epithet, to any person disliked’.

19a Wages shown in great detail (5)
A double definition, the second of which leads to a (2-3) shortened form of a longer adjective.

22a Corps in Indian army – does it feature in Aida? (5)
The standard single-letter abbreviation for ‘corps’ is contained by the Hindi word for an army, often used with a qualifier to identify a particular paramilitary force.

24a Delhi woodbine? I now hold one lit maybe (5)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of DELHI WOODBINE when rearranged (‘lit’, ie drunk) can form I NOW HOLD plus the solution (‘one’). The whole clue stands as an indication of the answer.

28a Crazy, getting tiddly tucking into that spirit (5)
A three-letter word for ‘crazy’ has a two-letter adverb meaning ‘on the way to being drunk’ (ie ‘getting tiddly’) put inside it (‘tucking into that’). I don’t like ‘tucking into’ (rather than ‘tucked into’) as an insertion indicator – the only meaning generally ascribed to it is along the lines of ‘feeding heartily or greedily on’. I would  prefer something like ‘Crazy, becoming tiddly getting stuck into that spirit’.

31a No longer sharp, impudent one covers rampant acne (8)
The four-letter word which contains (‘covers’) an anagram (‘rampant’) of ACNE is a term for an impudent person, much more often seen as an adjective meaning ‘impudent’ or ‘saucy’.

33a Idol in review that is circulating (5)
An informal short form of an eight-letter word for a review or periodical has the usual pair of letters representing ‘that is’ outside (‘circulating’).

Down

2d Equipment left under sacking on lake (8)
A three-letter word for a piece of sacking put over a chest of tea or under a feather bed is followed by (‘on’) the name of the lake which is number eleven in the global surface area rankings and surely number one in the cryptic crossword popularity charts. The usual abbreviation for ‘left’ brings up the rear, being ‘under’ the rest.

3d End snapped off pump handle in S. African briny (4)
A five-letter word for a pump handle (or something operated by hand or foot in a car) has its last letter removed (‘end snapped off’) to produce a South African word which can be applied to water containing a significant amount of salt.

5d Fielder removing top to display bags (5)
The name of a cricket fielding position is deprived of the consecutive letters TOP (‘removing top’) to produce the solution. Once a key position (WG Grace wrote of ‘the most expert ????-????ers at the time when ????-???? was even of more importance than the wicket-keeper’), it has no place in the modern game – Ben Foakes would be pretty miffed if Stokesy put a fielder there during the next test match.

7d Fish and fruit leaving dock (4)
An eight-letter fruit, specifically a large, pear-shaped one, has the consecutive letters DOCK omitted (‘leaving dock’). The fruit is so named because it was originally introduced to Barbados by the Captain of an East India ship who is not responsible for also introducing the expressions ‘suffering catfish’ and ‘blistering barnacles’.

8d Set of connected data from page penned in a rush (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘page’ is contained by (‘penned in’) the name given to two species of Californian bulrush. The answer is a suffix appropriated by technologists to describe a single set of values within a table of a relational database (eg ‘2695, Give & Take, Non-competition’ or ‘2698, Plain, Competition’ in a table of Azed puzzle types); ‘row’ is more commonly used, with the word here normally being confined to consideration of the internal structure of the table.

12d Tired old joke dispensed with head in treasury (5)
An eight-letter ‘tired old joke’ has a three-letter word for a head taken away. I don’t know why Azed has used a past active tense (‘dispensed with’) here, as this is not considered legitimate in cryptic wordplay (indicating something that happened in the past, rather than a state in the present or future). It needs to be ‘… joke dispensing with…’ or ‘…head dispensed with…’.

16d Toby has installed new metal for parts of door frame (8)
There are a couple of three-letter words that ‘Toby’ might lead to, and the one we want here doesn’t begin with a J. The alternative, together with an S on the end (‘has’), contains the usual abbreviation for ‘new’ and the name of a particular metal. As with 16, the verb form in the wordplay is unsatisfactory – ‘X installed Y’ doesn’t equate to ‘X with Y installed’. If it read ‘Toby has new metal installed…’ I might have had a little moan about the missing comma, but it would certainly have been preferable.

20d Antibody to do with gettin’ older (6)
If the two-letter piece of commercial jargon meaning ‘concerning’ or ‘to do with’ were to be declared offensive, it would mark a black day for setters (though I don’t think it would have any significance for Mary Poppins). Here it is followed by a five-letter word for ‘getting older’ which has been contracted analogously to “gettin””.

25d Very Burnsian sentences (5)
The first definition here indicates that the answer is a Scots word meaning ‘very’; the second turns out to be a verb.

29d Single explosion creates this damage round centre of volcanoes (4)
The tricky thing about this clue is working out where the definition stops and the wordplay begins. A word meaning ‘[to] damage’ goes round the middle letter (‘centre’) of VOLCANOES.

(definitions are underlined)