Notes for Azed 2,736

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 2,736 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I think I may have overrated the difficulty of last week’s puzzle, but I feel fairly confident about placing this one just below the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were a few tricky clues, but three ‘hiddens’ and some other straightforward wordplays served to balance them out. This puzzle seemed to have received a bit more ‘polishing’ than some other ones of late, with no duplications of indicators, abbreviations etc that I spotted – and they’re only really an issue when they stand out.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clues 5d and 6d, “The old dress up in religion following gods (5)” and “Transport worker trained animal to follow rule (7)”. The first of these has a three-letter religion following a plural of the Latin word for a god, while the second – which immediately put me in mind of this story – has an anagram following the usual abbreviation for ‘rule’. The point that I wanted to raise, though, was the appearance of ‘following’ and ‘to follow’ in two consecutive clues, in both instances to indicate postposition. Coincidentally, in the draft of a recent puzzle I found that I had used ‘after’ in two consecutive clues. Such a thing is not an error in any shape or form, and it’s rather different from repeating (say) an anagram indicator, but I do feel that it detracts a little from the artistic impression, particularly when it occurs in consecutive clues. I changed one ‘after’ to something else, and I would have modified one of these clues, perhaps by getting the animal to ‘uphold’ the rule.

I will mention in passing that I do have a Word macro which checks for duplicated words in a set of clues. It saves me some work, as I used always to do a manual trawl for repetitions.  If anyone is interested in using it, let me know and I will make it available for download on the site.

Across

12a Misanthrope in play? Phrase he arranged maybe (5)
A composite anagram, where the letters of MISANTHROPE when reordered (‘in play’) come to the same thing as a rearrangement (‘arranged’) of PHRASE plus the solution (‘he‘). Since the earliest known production of the play in question was based on Thomas Shadwell’s adaptation entitled The History of ????? ?? ??????, The Man-hater, the definition is entirely apt. I don’t think that the clue can be viewed as a true &lit, not least because the subject of the main clause (such as it is) in the second sentence is ‘Phrase’.

16a ‘There’s power in strong drink’ – Shakespeare’s frank (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘power’ is put into a word for ‘strong drink’ which crops up from time to time in cryptics and is an abbreviated form of a 17th century perversion of the Dutch for ‘High Mightinesses’, the title of the States-General. It was originally used contemptuously to mean ‘high and mighty’ and subsequently, of drink, to mean ‘strong’ or ‘heady’. Looking up frank² in Chambers will clarify the definition. 

23a Love holding end of rudder making differences of latitude at sea (8)
A seven-letter word which equates to ‘love’ in the Wimbledon sense containing (‘holding’) the last letter (‘end’) of ‘rudder’ produces a term which would surely be better indicated by a singular than a plural.

28a Roller in river resulting in delay (5)
The ‘Roller’ which finds itself in a Scottish river is not a wave but a famous car marque abbreviated to two letters.

29a Low buzz spouted endlessly? (6)
A three-letter word for a ‘buzz’ is followed by a four-letter word meaning ‘spouted’ as Moby Dick might have done, deprived of its last letter (‘endlessly’).

33a Reaches within money charged for seppuku? (8, 3 words)
A five-letter word for reaches of water, or, more commonly, veins containing metallic ore, is contained by (‘within’) a familiar word for ‘money charged’, the result being a (4,2,2) term for something of which ‘seppuku’ is a rather grisly definition by example.

34a Sort of ‘windy’? Being empty, given food, bird twice tucked in (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘given food’ loses its middle letter (’empty’) before having two instances of the same female bird put inside (‘tucked in’). The solution is hyphenated, 4-4.

Down

1d Waste food? Tick off chickens, hard to chew, we hear (12)
An anagram (‘off’) of TICK is followed by a four-letter word for ‘chickens’ and a homophone (‘we hear’) for ‘hard to chew’, the solution being 7-5. I’m not keen on partial homophones like this, although the four letters involved do at least constitute a real word.

2d Loose robe, with nothing on top? It’s ornamental in Japan (7)
A loose robe very much associated with Japan has the usual single-character representation of ‘nothing’ placed on top.

4d Culmination? With this one comes to earth (4)
Azed periodically comes up with clues where the answer needs to be ‘plugged into’ the wordplay, typically replacing a demonstrative pronoun (here, ‘this’) and with one or more spaces inserted. Here the answer must be split into a pair of two-letter words, so ‘with ?? ?? [the word] ONE comes to [the usual abbreviation for] earth’.

10d The Bard’s delicately framed offer he’s accompanied by deft twirling (12)
A six-letter word meaning ‘offer’ combines with the letters HE (from the clue) and an anagram (‘twirling’) of DEFT to produce the (6-6) answer, which is a hapax legomenon from the Bard. Lear tells his daughter:

No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.
Thy ??????-?????? nature shall not give
Thee o’er to harshness.

I imagine that she understood him, but I’m not sure anyone else can be certain about exactly what he meant.

17d Tragic incident in office, safe at first (8)
A three-letter word for a facility euphemistically referred to as an ‘office’, or ‘the usual offices’, is preceded by a five-letter word for a safe (ie ‘safe at first’), probably more commonly seen suffixed with ‘-man’ to describe a safe-blower.

22d Understanding medical field doubled energy (7)
At the sight of ‘hospital department’ or ‘medical field’, the seasoned cryptic solver will immediately think of three initials; in this instance, those letters must be repeated (‘doubled’) before the usual abbreviation for ‘energy’ is tagged on the end.

25d What may feature at openings of Latin residences? (5)
A low-end &lit, where the answer comes from the first two letters of the penultimate word in the clue and the first three letters of the last word.

26d Calf’s first to last in range (5)
A word meaning ‘relating to the calf of the leg’ (ie “calf’s”) has its first letter moved to the end.

(definitions are underlined)