Notes for Azed 2,746

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 2,746 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

The puzzle was late to arrive in a solvable form (ie with clues*) on the Guardian site, but thankfully the Guardian digital subscription does now give access to the version in the newspaper, so I was able to print it, scan it, upload it to this site, and tackle it over my Toastie and marmalade. From my perspective, it seemed very similar in terms of difficulty to its immediate predecessors – nothing really tough, but plenty of obscurities and tricky wordplays. It was something of a collector’s item in that it contained no hiddens of any kind! Some entertaining clues, including a couple that struck me as being not entirely accurate, and a few repetitions.

*Unsolvable unless you possess an apposite solving style. In a letter to the Guardian, Michael Feast wrote: “Many years ago I played Ariel in the Tempest at the Old Vic with John Gielgud playing Prospero. Every day in the rehearsal room during tea breaks and idle moments Sir John would sit quietly doing the Times crossword. Sometimes he would complete it and put it aside within 20 minutes or so. Everyone was terribly impressed. The Times crossword was, in those days, the toughest nut in the bowl. One afternoon after this had been going on for some weeks, one of the cast idly picked up the great man’s paper – he had finished for the day and had gone off to the Garrick Club or somewhere to meet Sir Ralph or someone. Suddenly the actor who had been looking at the paper gasped and showed us the crossword. It was indeed all filled in, but apart from one or two correct answers the rest were just words that happened to fit the spaces and had no bearing on the clues. Needless to say none of us confronted Sir John with the discovery and he continued to complete the Time crossword every day with consummate ease.”

Clue Writers’ Corner: This month’s clue word raises an interesting point. There are two Chambers entries (with completely different etymologies) which share the spelling here, and there is no issue with choosing either as the answer to your clue. However, the second of them is shown by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, and Azed’s view on the use of such words is very clear. In the slip for competition 735 (MALIGN), he wrote:

“Anyone choosing one of the obsolete senses of the verb without indicating this I marked down; at this level of competition such an omission cannot be overlooked”

There are in essence two ways that obsolete words (or obsolete meanings of words) can be indicated: the first involves suitably qualifying the definition. So for the obsolete word PEISE, meaning a weight, one could use definitions such as ‘old weight’, ‘weight once’, ‘former weight’, ‘neglected weight’ or ‘weight no longer’. Anything that suggests that the word is no longer in use is likely to be acceptable, and regulars will no doubt have seen plenty of possibilities in Azed’s own clues,  6d and 22d in this puzzle offering examples.

The alternative is to indicate the obsoleteness contextually. A good example of contextual qualification can be found in 25d, where the Scottishness of the answer is not explicitly indicated but is strongly suggested by the use of the word ‘claymore’ in preference to, say, ‘sword’. With PEISE, one might choose a definition like ‘what apothecary used?’. I think that as long as Azed sees that you’ve recognized that the word is obsolete by making some attempt to indicate the fact there will be no problem.

Should you choose the first Chambers headword, defined by Azed as ‘elders’, it will, of course, require no such qualification.

Across

6a Strong wine for judgement days (5)
The four-letter (sparkling) wine which follows the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘strong’ or ‘loud’ was once ubiquitous, both in the real world and the cryptic one, but has I suspect yielded to prosecco in one domain and fallen out of favour in the other.

11a Cellar enveloped by peculiar notes? It stinks when scoured (10)
The ‘cellar’ leads to a five-letter plural describing the things that might have been ‘laid down’ there, this word being contained (‘enveloped’) by an anagram (‘peculiar’) of NOTES. The answer is an early name for anthraconite, a variety of limestone containing bituminous matter, which emits a fetid odour when struck or rubbed. Tommy Cooper (raising right arm above head): “Doctor, it hurts when I do this”. Doctor: “Well don’t do it then.”

12a Actor not required, passive, in being left out (4)
A six-letter word meaning ‘passive’ has the consecutive letters IN omitted (‘being left out’).

13a Jock’s workload second after returning degree (5)
The usual abbreviation for ‘second’ follows a reversal (‘returning’) of a four-letter word for, well, someone with a degree, but not, according to Chambers, the degree itself. The OED does give the four-letter word as meaning ‘one-hundredth part of a right-angle in the centesimal system of measuring angles, also called a ????e or degree’, but it’s not in Chambers, and I wonder if Azed has simply omitted a truncation indicator.

14a Conjuror’s offering at children’s party? A minor bit of drivel!
I suppose that the conjuror might offer a scaled-down illusion for the younger audience, the wordplay leading directly to an eight-letter whimsical term for something a little sleighter of hand. The ‘drivel’ in the definition is slaver rather than nonsense.

15a Line of verse son’s left, little ‘un (4)
A five-letter word for a line of verse has the usual abbreviation for ‘son’ removed (“son’s left”) to produce the solution, a word which owes its existence  to the stage name of the diminutive music-hall comedian Harry Relph (1868–1928). He was given the nickname as a child because of a resemblance to Arthur Orton (1834–98), known as the ????borne claimant, who claimed in 1866 to be the heir to an English baronetcy who had been lost at sea.

16a Ozzie batting, rest tumbled out (6)
One for regular correspondent from ‘down under’, Jim, where we have a two-letter word from the world of cricket (something we don’t talk about at the moment) with an anagram (‘tumbled’) of REST outside (‘out’).

23a Food containing nasty smell posed threats to many serving (6)
A four-letter colloquial term for food contains a two-letter abbreviation for a particular sort of nasty smell. The term was first coined in 1919 by a company that made a deodorant for women called Odo-Ro-No, but Lifebuoy subsequently popularized it. Their radio advertisement used a foghorn followed by a sound created using a Sonovox to represent the two letters. The definition of the 1-5 answer here is one of those ‘missing subject’ ones where you have to assume a pronoun, in this instance ‘they’, so that the definition becomes ‘they posed threats to many serving’. I’m not keen myself, but Azed has said in the past that he is fine with “barks and is man’s best friend” for DOG.

29a Canon’s maybe Roman Catholic? This man Chico in disguise (5)
A composite anagram of a slightly unwieldy kind, where the letters of ROMAN CATHOLIC are a potential rearrangement (‘in disguise’) of the answer (‘this’) plus MAN CHICO. The definition here is akin to using “ear’s” to define OTIC.

30a Scottish set move to the right and left (4)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to move to the right’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘left’. The ‘move’ word has two alternative spellings, both of which would fit, but the Scots word for ‘[to] set’ can only be spelt in one of the resulting ways.

32a Lower grade delivered, one from the middle coming last (5)
A five-letter word meaning ‘delivered’, in the way that a blow or a playing card might be, has the single-letter word meaning ‘one’ in its centre (‘one from the middle’) moved to the end (‘coming last’).

Down

2d Starts to hearten one usually rather introverted? She may
Probably the easiest clue in the puzzle, the answer being made up of the first letters (‘starts’) of five consecutive words. But surely what the lady in question may do is ‘start to hearten’ the shy people rather than ‘starts to hearten’ them?

3d When to choose a cobra for a poet? (6)
A charade of a two-letter word meaning ‘when’ and a four-letter one for ‘to choose’ producing a chiefly poetic term for various types of venomous snake.

4d Army following whim – it’s followed by whoops (8)
A four-letter word for an army or a great multitude follows a four-letter word for the sort of whim that might have described Ray Davies or any of his bandmates.

5d Examination of data: one country’s is short of it (8)
A (2,5’1, 2) phrase meaning “one country’s is” has the consecutive letters IT removed (‘short of it’) from the name of the country.

7d Nicked Scotch right out of middle of trifle (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘right’ is omitted from (‘out of’) the middle of a five-letter word for a trifle of the sort that might be clutched at.

8d Oarsman beside river has a short swim turning up (6)
A two-letter word meaning ‘beside’ is followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘river’ and a reversal (‘turning up’) of a word for a short swim. The resulting word, which describes an eight-oar boat at Oxford University, can also be applied to the crew, but not, I believe, to an individual member thereof; the definition needs to be ‘oarsmen’. The word can be used in the singular with reference to a person, but only a boy who has been at Harrow School for less than two years.

9d Shakespearean sapper, by and large one left out (7)
A (2,7) phrase meaning ‘by and large’ has a single-letter word for ‘one’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ deleted (‘out’).

18d Dark brown, or dark blue, for being replaced in black WC (7)
The six-letter university city which gives its name to a dark shade of blue has the consecutive letters FOR replaced with the single-letter abbreviation for ‘black’ and a three-letter word for a WC. Is ‘replaced in’ the same as ‘replaced with’? I’m not convinced.

22d Antique overlay of excellent quality covering royal monogram? (6)
A four-letter word meaning ‘of excellent quality’ is followed by the cipher of Queen Elizabeth.

25d What claymore may give guy, ay cut before death (5)
A four-letter word for the sort of guy that might hold a tent in position is deprived of the consecutive letters AY (‘ay cut’) and followed by a three-letter word for ‘death’. The presence of the ‘claymore’ indicates that the answer is Scottish.

28d Chump from south I don’t understand as before (4)
It’ s an ‘obsolete or dialect’ word which must be reversed (‘from the south’) to produce the chump, but without a comma following ‘south’ it really should be the other way round. The answer might put you in mind of the Darling siblings’ somewhat unusual nanny, while the “I don’t understand” word immediately made me (if no-one else!) think of the Russian (male) giant panda who in the 1960s was introduced to London Zoo’s Chi Chi, object matrimony. Sadly, it didn’t work out for them, with Chi Chi preferring bamboo shoots to her Soviet suitor.

(definitions are underlined)