Notes for Azed 2,754

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 2,754 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

I thought this one was very slightly below the middle of the middle of the difficulty spectrum, largely because of the high proportion of anagrams (11 in 36 clues). There were some clues that read very nicely (eg 27a), although one or two did seem a bit weak (7d in particular).

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 19a, “E.g. worker bee buzzing in nut-tree timelessly?”. Seeing ‘nut-tree’ reminds me of one of my favourite Azed definitions, “Reason for infanta’s visit?”, but here it is simply anagram (‘buzzing’) fodder from which the letter T must be removed (‘timelessly’). The point of interest is that there are two Ts in NUT-TREE – should ‘timelessly’ properly indicate that both of them are to be extracted? It seems to me that, in general, if the solver is instructed to remove something from an operand, then just a single instance should be removed – ‘dining lacking in’ surely leads to DING rather than DG. Similarly with ‘setter lacking time’ for SETER, where ‘lacking time’ is shorthand for “having the abbreviation for ‘time’ removed” – there is no indication that the reduction should be repeated. ‘Timeless’ and ‘timelessly’ are a little trickier, not least because they are rather more whimsical and therefore more difficult to ‘translate’, but I am inclined to treat any such indicator as directing the solver to eliminate a single instance of a sequence of one or more letters. If the requirement is for multiple instances to be deleted, then the setter must make this clear, as Azed has done in 6d (‘without doubly active’) or as in, say, ‘idled, wasting every day’ for ILE. Or, indeed, as in the clue I originally wrote for comp 2,313, only to replace it with an absolutely rubbish one (d’oh!), “Face pater with trepidation after repeatedly blotting one’s copybook (7)”.

Across

1a Example of language misuse British university in such a mistaken … (7)
When Azed uses a pair of ellipses to join two consecutive clues, it usually has a purpose beyond simply continuing a surface reading, with the two clues needing to be considered together. Here the second clue can be solved independently of the first, but in this one the ‘such a mistaken …’ indicates an anagram (‘mistaken’) of the answer to the clue that follows (ie ‘such a …’). The usual single-letter abbreviations for ‘British’ and ‘university’ are contained by the resultant jumble. The definition is a bit of a stretch, since I think it refers to a culture rather than a misuse, but since Chambers gives the word without additional definition, it’s probably fair game.

14a Piece of timber, if old, forming rocker (5)
A three-letter word for the sort of timber that might go on the fire is followed by an archaic form of the word ‘if’, the result being a term for a large boulder that is so delicately poised that even a little push will cause it to rock.

17a Some seasoning I included for crust (4)
One of the less satisfactory clues in the puzzle involves a three-letter word for a salt (‘seasoning’) with the letter I (from the clue) inserted, producing the name given to the upper level of the earth’s continental crust. It has three distinct weaknesses: (i) the three-letter word is a term for any salt, not just the sort that goes with pepper; (ii) there really should be a comma between ‘seasoning’ and ‘I’; and (iii) the salt word is also an alternative spelling of the answer. Could ‘some seasoning’ mean SAL(t)? No, I think not.

20a Old townie accepting comb as distinction (6)
A three-letter ‘archaic slang’ term of contempt for a townsman as distinct from a countryman (or a tradesman/shopkeeper rather than a gentleman) contains (‘accepting’) the three-letter form of a ‘chiefly Scottish’ verb, much revered by setters, meaning ‘to make tidy’, ‘to clear up’…or ‘to comb’.

27a Tissues one kept in box (5)
A single-letter word corresponding to ‘one’ is contained by (‘kept in’) an informal term for ‘the box in the corner’, now more often ‘the enormous flat thing on the wall’.

29a Mate about to slip back part of rigging (6)
A three-letter ‘mate’ contains (‘about’) a reversal (‘back’) of a word meaning ‘to slip’ or ‘to go wrong’.

30a Like a very old breastplate ancient poet cut in convulsion (8)
The name given in the English-speaking world to Quintus H Flaccus, responsible for – inter alia – ‘carpe diem‘ and ‘aurea mediocritas‘, is deprived of its last letter (‘cut’) and put into a three-letter word for a convulsion or involuntary spasm, another “setter’s friend”. There’s no doubt that the noun from which the adjective here derives is a term for an Ancient Greek cuirass, but I think it unlikely that the adjective itself has ever been used in the suggested sense, so I feel that a ‘perhaps’ or a question mark would probably have been in order.

32a Transpire when it’s removed from bathroom? (5)
A (2,5) term for a particular kind of bathroom has the consecutive letters IT removed.

Down

1d Course, a slice of ham, lost heat (5)
A four-letter word for a course that is regularly followed (by George Dixon, in days gone by) combines with the first letter (‘a slice’) of ‘ham’ to produce an obsolete (‘lost’) word meaning ‘to heat’, specifically to heat unseasoned wood in order to straighten it (something that a recent purchase from Wickes would have benefited from). Some dictionaries. including Chambers, show the word as Spenserian – it does appear once in The Faerie Queene, although modern editions show it without the ‘e’, making a much more familiar word:

And in his hand a tall young oake he bore,

Whose knottie snags were sharpned all afore,

And ?????’d in fire for steele to be in sted.

2d Soul of ancient Egypt shed chest with ornamentation (5)
A two-letter word for the soul in ancient Egyptian religion, represented as a bird with a human head, is followed by a word for a shed.

5d Drunk, lacking power at heart, and without spirit (4)
There are a great many words in Chambers which can be used to describe people in various states of inebriation, and here a five-letter one classified as ‘old slang’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘power’ removed from its centre (‘lacking power at heart’), the outcome being a word meaning ‘without spirit’ or ‘listless’.

8d Most excellent gambler, German, in major business deal (10)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘Most Excellent’ is followed by a five-letter word for a gambler (or a devotee of Minecraft, say) and a three-letter abbreviation for ‘Germany’, producing the (4-6) answer.

18d Relax round pasture – while quaffing one? (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘recline’ and – just about – ‘relax’ contains (’round’) a poetic word for a pasture which may put you in mind of the sleepy village which Miss Marple calls home. Strictly speaking, the definition is just ‘one’, although the preceding words are vital in establishing the context wherein it is to be interpreted.

21d Votes rising amid Parisian art for source of caviar? (6)
A four-letter word for an aggregate of votes is reversed (‘rising’) inside the French second person singular of the verb être, ‘to be’ (ie ‘Parisian art’). A regular correspondent asks whether ‘Parisian art of old’ would be better here. Given that ‘art’ is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic, esp church, formal or poetic’, I think it’s fine; Azed rarely (if ever) flags words classified in Chambers as ‘poetic’, and it’s reasonable for the setter to choose the qualification that best suits their purpose. In the classic wordplay ‘art master?’ for TEA CHEST, though, both sides of the ‘equation’ are pleasingly archaic.

25d One who sought solitude, famous, acting to the end? (5)
A familiar five-letter word for ‘famous’ has the usual abbreviation for ‘acting’ moved to the end. The reference in the definition is to the actress who spoke the line “I want to be alone” in the 1932 film Grand Hotel, echoing a sentiment that she expressed about herself many times before and after; in a 1928 interview, she said “As early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I’ve always been moody. I detest crowds, I don’t like many people.”

28d Timber tree? Right one will reveal venomous snake (4)
When the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ is placed in front of the answer (‘right one, ie ‘right’ plus the timber tree), the result is a word for a type of snake. I can only assume that Azed has suffered at the fangs of one of the ‘mildly venomous’ reptiles of this name on Galapagos, since Chambers and other sources suggest that most of the serpents going under this title are entirely harmless, unless you are a rodent or mammal of modest dimensions.

(definitions are underlined)