Notes for Azed 2,731

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 2,731 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I thought this was a little bit harder than last week’s puzzle, but still probably just short of the halfway line, helped by the long entries across the top and down the left side being familiar words with straightforward clues. I didn’t feel it was one of Azed’s finest, including as it did several repetitions, and it seemed as though there were more than ten anagrams, perhaps because each of the four long answers involved one. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 33a “Cultivated French composer incorporates little volume (6)”. The clue itself is covered in the notes below, but the point of interest here is the one-word definition, ‘cultivated’, when the answer is  shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’. There is a distinct lack of agreement among setters and editors over when it is necessary to qualify the indication of words to which Chambers ascribes certain classifications, eg ‘poetic’, ‘informal’, ‘slang’. On top of that, some believe that a qualifier is required for definitions, but not for words which have a cryptic role in the wordplay – so ‘beyond’ as a definition of ‘without’ would require qualification (this sense of the latter word being shown as ‘archaic’), but ‘x without y’ to indicate containment of y by x would be acceptable, despite this sense of ‘without’ also being archaic (this strikes me as inconsistent). However, I think there is a general view that words classified as ‘obsolete’ and ‘archaic’ need to be flagged in some way when used as answers, and I suspect that the lack of a qualifier here is simply an oversight. ‘Cultivated old French composer…’ would be absolutely fine.

Across

11a One with no respect for the law formerly, if old and cunning (6)
A charade of a two-letter archaism for ‘if’ and a four-letter word meaning ‘cunning’ or ‘roguish’.

14a Straight Scotch, outrageous with a dash of tonic (5)
The word for ‘outrageous’ which precedes the first letter (‘dash’) of ‘tonic’ is in this sense almost invariably seen in the expression “That’s ????”, often followed by ‘coming from you!’.

17a One convinced space is not a vacuum and is within endless abundance (7)
The letters IS (from the clue) are put inside a six-letter word for ‘abundance’ from which the last letter has been removed (‘endless’).

20a Change course, being slack (4)
Unless you are Ben Ainslie or your knowledge of Chambers is exceptional, you will probably get the answer to this double definition clue from the first part. As Arthur Young’s Nautical Dictionary tells us,

To ???? a buoy in a ship’s wake, means to slack out a rope to which the buoy has been attached, in order to let it go astern.

21a Where beer may be served before universal prohibition (4)
It would be easy with the first couple of letters checked to write in a more familiar spelling of the ‘prohibition’, but the wordplay makes it clear that the three-letter element which precedes the usual abbreviation of ‘universal’ is a term for a device through which beer can be served and, by association, the room where such service takes place.

24a Massage thigh in club, not new (7)
A three-letter word for a thigh is contained by the five-letter name of a particular golf club from times past (think brassies and cleeks) missing the usual abbreviation for ‘new’.

30a Twiggy, large scale, conveyed by artist, man mostly (5)
The word’ conveyed’ might suggest containment, but here it is simply there to link the definition to the wordplay, which has the usual two-letter artist (also flaunting his credentials in 22d) being followed by a four-letter word for a man from which the last letter has been omitted (‘mostly’). The definition is a little playful, suggesting that in fact the twigs aren’t twigs at all, but something on a significantly larger scale,

32a Shower not active? Charger required (8)
There are a couple of agent nouns here, both the nine-letter ‘show-er’ that must be deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘active’ and the answer. As Azed says, Chambers doesn’t give the 17th century spelling found here, but it can be readily verified in the online Collins Dictionary.

33a Cultivated French composer incorporates little volume (6)
The surname of the French composer and pianist Eric Alfred Leslie (who styled himself as Erik) contains (‘incorporates’) the standard abbreviation for ‘volume’

Down

2d Trio keeping melody in place (6)
You could be forgiven for thinking that it is the trio which should be ‘keeping’ a melody ‘in’, but in fact it is the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘place’ (actually, of course, ‘Place’, because it invariably appears in the name of streets, but that’s one for another day),

3d Creases I kept in place with pressing (6)
Does ‘place with pressing’ really suggest an anagram of PLACE, wherein the letter I must be kept? It’s one where the definitions in Chambers probably make it acceptable, but it doesn’t feel quite right.

4d One of lines on board, endlessly irritating (7)
The eight-letter word which must be shorn of its last letter (‘endlessly’) I would think of in its informal sense as usually meaning something more along the lines of ‘disconcerting’, but it’s clear that ‘irritating’ or ‘nettling’ are also valid.

9d Ballet position to follow step by step from below centre of entrechat (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to follow step by step’ or ‘to follow the outline of’ is reversed (‘from below’) and followed by the middle letter (‘centre’) of ‘entrechat’.

12d Moths, three fluttering over, are caught soaring (10)
An anagram (‘fluttering’) of THREE and the usual cricketing abbreviation for ‘over’ precede a reversal (‘soaring’) of the letters ARE (from the clue) and another cricketing abbreviation, this one for ‘caught’.

22d Bracken artist found climbing famous mountain (6)
The fern that appeared at 27d last week is here to be placed in front of the two-letter ‘artist’ and the whole lot reversed (‘climbing’). The mountain, a dormant volcano, features prominently in the book of Genesis.

26d Tincture, faint? Concentrated it was held to have curative powers (6)
A charade of the two-letter word for the heraldic tincture gold or yellow and a four-letter adjective with a number of meanings, including ‘week, faint, feeling a sinking sensation’ and, for musos, ‘in an inspired state’ – as Baloo says in the film of the Jungle Book, “I’m ????, man. Solid ????”. It must be nice to have a word in Chambers for which you can claim sole responsibility, and there’s no doubt that this one belongs fair and square to Wilhelm Reich. It may – or may not – be familiar from Dušan Makavejev’s film “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism” (which, incidentally, features shots of Reich’s last home, named The Orgonon).

(definitions are underlined)