Notes for Azed 2,753

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 2,753 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

A real mixture this week – plenty of straightforward clues, but a few pretty tricky ones. Overall, that probably puts it around the middle of the difficulty spectrum, but as always I’d welcome any views that support or challenge that assertion. It was an enjoyable solve, although I did feel that the surfaces in a few of the clues were a tad clunky and could have benefited from a little polishing. Note that, as correspondent Gillhumph has pointed out below, the word ‘deities’ in the clue for 20d should read ‘deity’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 2d, “A dozen Scotch cakes, say, consumed in west Wales (4)”. The answer, a Scots form of ‘twelve’,  is hidden in the wordplay part of the clue. The point of interest is those cakes, and the question of whether the definition is valid, in other words whether ‘a dozen cakes, say’ would be an acceptable definition for ‘twelve’. Since Chambers defines ‘dozen’ as ‘a set of twelve’ (my italics), I think the answer is surely ‘yes’. The word ‘dozen’ was formerly very much a noun, which would be followed by ‘of’, as in ‘a dozen of pencils’; it is only in the last 200 years or so that, like ‘hundred’, it has become a quasi-adjective (‘a dozen pencils’). Given this modern usage, I don’t think a clue like “A dozen Scots held in west Wales” could be faulted, but neither, given the Chambers definition, can the clue here.

Across

1a Lawyer (briefly) to question, with time, dubiously rebuked (7)
A three-letter abbreviation (‘briefly’) of an ‘especially North American’ term for a lawyer is followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘to question’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’.  In King Lear, Act 1 Scene 4, Goneril says:

Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
You are much more ??????? for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmful mildness.

…or does she? This is one of those ‘cruxes’ that gets Shakespearean editors excited – the only thing on which most of them seem to agree is that ‘alapt’ in the first folio isn’t what the Bard intended.

8a Old bird served by US restaurateur in his salad? (4)
The answer is both an archaic (‘old’) word for a gull and the surname of the owner of Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant in the 1930s, after whom a salad including lettuce, tomato, bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado and chives, with the ingredients laid out in neat rows, is named. Whether he invented the dish or it was named in his honour is a matter of conjecture. Note that the salad (though not the gull) is a relatively recent addition to Chambers.

15a Clubman Jock’s chatter takes in one with general intelligence (8)
A six-letter Scots word for idle talk contains (‘takes in’) the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ and the single-letter abbreviation for ‘general intelligence’, producing a rare term for someone who bears a club (or a key).

19a Oriental tipple to quench – litre disposed of (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to quench’ is deprived of the usual abbreviation for ‘litre’.

21a Fortifying outwork? More than one of them could form salient (6)
Anagramming the plural form of the answer (ie ‘more than one of them’) could produce SALIENT.

23a Valve (obsolete) was trying, with nothing in it (6)
An obsolete spelling of a word meaning ‘was trying’ has the usual single-character representation of ‘nothing’ inserted (‘in it’). I’m not sure why Azed didn’t use something like ‘tested’ in place of ‘was trying’.

32a As of old, willingly in bar polishing last off (4)
A five-letter word for a bar used to impart pressure or motion has its last letter omitted (‘last off’).

35a Which chant suggests a degree of polish? (7)
To parse this one, you need to clearly separate the definition from the wordplay, wherein ‘which’ refers to the answer, and a familiar four-letter word (????) meaning ‘[to] chant’ could, when split into two parts, suggest ‘? AND ???’. The phrasing of the clue is decidedly ‘back to front’, but something like “A degree of polish that suggests chant?” would make very little sense.

Down

3d Major strike, event involving US eccentric (9)
A five-letter word for an event (or a mild obsession) contains (‘involving’) a word for an eccentric in the North American vernacular (or a mate in the Liverpudlian one).

6d Med port, depressed about end of affluence (7)
An archaic English – or a modern French – word for ‘sad’ contains (‘about’) the last letter (‘end’) of ‘affluence’. For seven years from 1947 the port was part of a Free Territory under the direct control of the UN Security Council. It comprised two zones; in 1954, one zone became part of Italy, while the other became part of Yugoslavia.

8d See ending of concerto and of grand opera, maybe (4)
A kind of ‘semi &lit’, where everything apart from the first word forms the definition and everything apart from the last word constitutes the wordplay. The letter of the alphabet represented by ‘see’ is followed by the last letter (‘ending’) of ‘concerto’ and the last letter (‘and [ending] of’) ‘grand’…as well as the last letter of ‘opera’. Of course, ‘endings’ wouldn’t work in the definition, the answer being singular, but I do struggle to see where the solver can legitimately find that final letter. Could the ‘grand opera’ be ‘Aida’, contributing its last two letters? No, I don’t think it could.

9d What includes British flier I’d seen flapping? (8)
A true &lit, where the answer is made up of the single-letter abbreviation for ‘British’ and an anagram (‘seen flapping’) of FLIER ID, and is suggested more than adequately by the entire clue.

10d Somewhat deformed by being guided round mine? … (11)
There is a similar device being used here to the one in 35a. Here the question mark belongs well and truly to the ‘by’, which must be expanded to ‘b and y’ before being followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘being guided’ (Chambers: ‘under leading or control’), this combination containing (’round’) a three-letter slang term for a bomb or mine, which will be familiar to all Azed regulars. I would have liked to see a more explicit whimsical indicator attached directly to the ‘by’.

16d Jewish period that finds Yemeni catching nasty rash (9, 2 words)
A five-letter term for an inhabitant of a famous port in Yemen contains (‘catching’) an anagram of (‘nasty’) RASH, producing a (5,4) answer. The Jewish calendar is lunisolar: while the years follow the sun and the seasons of the year, the months follow the lunar year, which consists of 12 cycles of the moon around Earth, amounting to a little over 354 days. To deal with the lunar year falling behind the solar year by approximately 10 days 21 hours each year, the Jewish leap year occurs every 2-3 years and adds an extra month to the calendar. This thirteenth month is inserted between  ????, the twelfth month of the year, and Nisan, the first month of the year. Since the leap month follows the month of ????, it was decided that the leap month should be called ???? ????? or Second ????.

28d Veteran rowers fell short (4)
A five-letter word meaning ‘fell’ (as in ‘fell deeds’ and ‘fell diseases’) has its last letter deleted (‘short’), the result being a Miltonian spelling of a familiar word.

30d Cook removing stew from cooker, modern (4)
The combination of a five-letter word for a cooker plus a three-letter word meaning ‘modern’ has the letters STEW removed from the outside (two at the start, two at the end) to produce a word which after spending many contented years as a noun has, like ‘podium’ and ‘monster’, recently also been pressed into service as a verb that we probably could have managed without.

(definitions are underlined)