Notes for Azed 2,730

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 2,730 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

Either I was in exceptional solving form this morning, or this was surely the most straightforward Azed in recent memory. Not that I’m complaining, as I was able to get started quickly on these notes, for which I’ve selected close to the usual number of clues for comment, although in another week several of them wouldn’t have made the cut.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at what is almost certainly the hardest clue in the puzzle, that for 23d: “Larval excrement? With this it becomes pertness (5)”. One of my all-time favourite Azed clues is “My letters could make lad sad” for LASS (LAD with L AS S becomes SAD); the clue here is constructed on very similar lines, but the change is applied not to a word appearing in the wordplay, but to the answer itself, so the wordplay translates to ‘with <the change suggested by the letters of the answer> <the answer itself> becomes <a word meaning> pertness’.

This is close to being the ne plus ultra of self-referencing, but how are we meant to get the first two letters of the answer? The second one is checked, but the first could be anything – we have to know (or look up) the word for ‘larval excrement’. In fact, the wordplay could be used as it stands in a clue for any word, of whatever length, which ends in the same three letters, so all you have to do is change the definition: thus the clue ‘Blundering? With this it becomes pertness’ gives a different word (beginning with CR) which would fit in the slot at 23d. Azed’s clue is clever (kind of), but I don’t think it’s fair, because the wordplay only delivers part of the answer.

Across

7a Have another go at doctrine lacking leader (4)
A five-letter word for a doctrine is deprived of its first letter (‘lacking leader’).

11a Shaft attached to front of favourite bit of gym equipment (7)
A four-letter word for the shaft of a barrow or cart (as well as a form of public transport which has been reintroduced to a number of UK cities) is followed by (‘attached to front of’) a three-letter ‘favourite’ (particularly of crossword setters).

14a Sound of band, not amateur, showing enthusiasm? (5)
The six-letter onomatopoeic word for the sound that might be heard from a  brass band loses (‘not’) the usual abbreviation for ‘amateur’. This word put me in mind of an expression ending in ‘jumper’ which was popularised by Jimmy Edwards in the 1950s and even appeared on the Beatles’ recording of I Am the Walrus, but I find that it was originally coined by Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes as the title of a 1936 song, available on a 78rpm disc coupled with the catchily-styled Miss Porkington Would Like Cream Puffs (who can blame her?). Sarony was a prolific writer of nonsense songs, his published output exceeding four hundred, among which are Jollity Farm and Hunting Tigers out in Indiah, both recorded by the great Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in their early days.

16a Metal worker, enthusiast about gold stone (8)
A three-letter enthusiast contains (‘about’) a two-letter word for the heraldic tincture gold and a term for a precious stone.

24a Female rarely round, once near (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘female’ is followed by a word meaning ’round’, shown by Chambers as ‘rare’ (hence the rarely), which might describe the earth or an eyeball. Chambers has the answer as obsolete, indicated by ‘once’.

29a Love-drug provided by blade according to hearsay? (5)
A homophone (‘according to hearsay’) for the sort of blade that might make pop fans think, depending on their age, of Jimi Hendrix’s Dolly or The Fratellis’ Chelsea.

Down

3d A nice walk? Eric’s last as leader maybe (6)
This is the sort of reference that may be lost on younger solvers. The author whose surname must have its last letter moved to the beginning (‘last as leader’) was well-known ‘back in the day’, and his influence was acknowledged by several other authors including Graham Greene, John le Carré and Ian Fleming, but I suspect that his fame has faded considerably since. He was perhaps the first writer of realistic spy fiction, and his early works such as The Mask of Demetrios (1939) are regarded as classics.

6d Old monarch covers self-confidence in warm coat (5)
The ‘old monarch’ leads to the cipher of one of the Georges, which precedes (‘covers’) a three-letter word for the self or self-confidence.

17d Pressure regulator to secure toast when it’ s done? (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to secure’ (as one might do to a big wooden door to keep out the rampaging hordes) is followed by an anagram (“when it’s done”) of TOAST.

19d Accountant having to accept a stigma as bitter tonic? (7)
The two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of accountant contains (‘having to accept’) the letter A (from the clue) and a familiar word for a stigma.

21d Source of river in Geneva? (6)
This clue wouldn’t meet with the approval of at least one crossword editor of my acquaintance, containing as it does two single-letter contractions where the lost letter is replaced by an apostrophe. The shortened form of ‘of’ (which Chambers in fact gives both with and without the apostrophe) is followed by the usual abbreviation for river, a contraction of ‘in’, and the sort of spirit exemplified by geneva.

23d Larval excrement? With this it becomes pertness (5)
See Setter’s Corner above for a discussion of this clue.

25d Gender, formerly, what may be hedged round say (5)
A three-letter word for something that might, in a familiar phrase using its plural form, be hedged contains (’round’) a two-letter abbreviation which can have the sense of ‘say’ or ‘for instance’. The answer is not an old word meaning ‘gender’, rather it is an old meaning of the word ‘gender’.

27d So-called fern I omitted from headdress (4)
The letter I from the clue is to be omitted from a word for a headdress or a richly-jewelled ornament for the head, which might have those who were moved by the sound at 14a now singing a 19^th century song of uncertain authorship which involves a lot of ‘Boom-de-ay’. I’m not sure why Azed describes the fern as ‘so-called’ – as far as I can determine it is, as Victoria Wood might have said, totally bona fido.

(definitions are underlined)