Notes for Azed 2,755

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 2,755 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

An entertaining puzzle which, despite the easy starter at 1a, was quite tricky in places, hence my above-average difficulty rating. Setters will surely have noticed the presence of two unches in the entries at 12a and 31a – this is a breach of Ximenean rules that would see a puzzle rejected by most editors. A regular correspondent suggests that the ‘obsolete nautical’ answer at 19d should have been flagged; I completely agree, and I would suggest that the ‘rare’ word at 32a and the ‘Somerset etc’ one at 9d should similarly have been qualified – Azed seems recently to have become somewhat ambivalent when it comes to indicating such words.

Clue Writers’ Corner: With answers of six or seven or letters, a straight anagram is unlikely to win any prizes, since it will undoubtedly be found by other competitors; and there will surely be plenty of other relatively succinct ways of indicating the answer through wordplay. With longer words, particularly those with a tractable selection of letters, the situation is rather different. There will typically be a wide range of anagrams available, some involving the addition or subtraction of ‘bits and pieces’ to arrive at the desired result, while it may be hard using other constructions (eg container and contents, reversals) to get to the answer without prolixity. When it comes to words that consist of distinct parts, it is usually considered less than ideal to indicate the parts separately (eg ‘bird, one that glides’ for ROLLERCOASTER), which makes things tougher. Although this month’s word doesn’t present the very finest fodder, I expect plenty of anagrams, particularly given the number of synonyms and ‘interesting’ definitions available for the competition word; of course, anagrams can be combined with other elements, which could include definitions, such as of ASTER in ROLLERCOASTER. Incidentally, Azed is happy to allow abbreviations in anagram fodder, so ‘Kylie left devastated’ would be acceptable wordplay for LIKELY.

Across

10a Group creating fuzzy impression from puff book left off (4)
Two definitions for the price of one here, the first harking back to the heyday of Britpop. The wordplay has the usual abbreviation for ‘book’ being ‘left off’ a five-letter term for the sort of puff that is ‘a publisher’s commendatory description of a book’. There’s a bit in the film No Surrender where the character played by Bernard Hill is told “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. “I do.” he replies, “I can’t read.” When judging a book by those commendatory comments on the cover, I tend to be less influenced by what is said than by whether I’ve ever heard of the person that said it (I don’t know about you, but I find the ratio of unknowns to knowns increasing, which probably says more about my age than their status).

11a Jewellers’ stone presented by person that is including marriage portion (8)
A three-letter abbreviation for ‘person’ is followed by the usual two letters representing ‘that is’ containing a word for a marriage portion, or for a very small spot.

12a Playwright even if old-fashioned (5)
The playwright is Edward Franklin of that ilk, probably best known for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, first performed in 1962 and made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton four years later. Martha answers the question at the end of the play, saying “I am, George. I am.”

13a Scotsman’s great, leading ace – some bloke (5)
A four-letter word which can mean ‘cruel’ in England but ‘great’ in Scotland is followed by the usual abbreviation for an ace at the card table.

15a Malay travel that is returning during prohibition (8)
A three-letter word meaning, among many other things, ‘[to] travel’ and those two letters (again) for ‘that is’ are contained by (‘during’) a word for ‘prohibition’. I will never be convinced that ‘during’ is a valid insertion indicator – it appears often enough in puzzles that I’ve become somewhat inured to it, but my relationship with it remains frosty at best.

21a Brother Etonian must forgo outside foursomes for this (6)
The first two words of the clue must be mentally squashed together before the ‘outside foursomes’ are removed. When ‘for this’ appears at the end of a clue, the ‘this’ usually refers to the answer, but here the two words are actually the definition.

22a Heroine, divine lady outwardly, displaying budding protuberances (6)
The ‘heroine’ leads to a four-letter name which has the two-letter incarnation of the goddess of Earth outside (‘outwardly’). I am not sure that ‘heroine’ alone is sufficient to lead solvers to Miss Woodhouse; ‘titular heroine’ would be better, and ‘Austen heroine’ better still.

27a Effect of sun, absorbing ray by reason of this (6)
Something that is liberally produced by the sun (whether it is an ‘effect’ thereof is somewhat questionable) contains the name of the note in sol-fa notation which is anglicized as ‘ray’. The comment about the definition in 21a also applies here, their answers being rather too similar for comfort.

28a Urchin is second caught by wader (8)
The letters IS (from the clue) and the usual abbreviation for ‘second’ are contained (‘caught’) by a familiar wading bird whose dangling feet in flight are a trademark. The answer and ‘urchin’ are essentially the same word, but different.

32a Waving, inappropriate when former reputation’s involved (8)
A five-letter word for ‘inappropriate’ or ‘excessive’ has an obsolete word for reputation or praise (which in its alternative four-letter spelling could be indicated by ‘5 downs’) inside (‘involved’).

Down

1d Black music: mark query/answer dividing Indian city without lore (8)
The usual abbreviation for ‘mark’ is followed by the nine-letter name of an Indian city, missing the consecutive letters LORE (‘without lore’), which has the usual single-letter abbreviations for ‘query’ and ‘answer’ contained by (‘dividing’) it.

3d Short pants, once straight? (4)
A five-letter word for pants, especially those made of tartan cloth, is deprived of its last letter (‘short’).

7d Minor joist needing to settle I instilled (6)
A five-letter word meaning ‘to settle’ has the letter I (from the clue) inserted (‘instilled’). I make no apologies for grousing repeatedly about missing commas, and there should be one (or an equivalent such as ‘with’ or ‘having’) here between ‘settle’ and ‘I’.

9d Dead removed from fortification found in ditch (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘dead’ is removed from a word for ‘a fieldwork of two faces forming a salient’ to produce a dialect word for a ditch (one of several possible spellings). The words ‘found in’ are there simply to join the wordplay to the definition, but the structure of the former is such that I don’t think the whole thing works grammatically.

17d Bird losing head in lift? (4)
I can’t help feeling that it should be the bird that loses its head to make a word meaning ‘lift’, but in fact it is an informal sense of the verb ‘lift’ which must lose its first letter.

18d Jumpers execute this early – they start with one (4)
An &lit of sorts, where the initial letters of the first four words form the answer, in other words ‘they [those words] start with [the letters that make up] one’, where ‘one’ is an instance of the answer.

26d Dram suggests this dish (5)
Rather like 17d, this seems slightly back to front. The answer when split 3+2 (in line with its hyphenation) and interpreted cryptically produces a word synonymous with ‘dram’.

28d Cry of derision unreservedly follows end of match (4)
Good news for anyone checking that the adverb which follows the last letter (‘end’) of ‘match’ can mean ‘unreservedly’ – it is the fifty-fifth, and final, meaning given by Chambers. Good news, that is, unless you started at the beginning of the list.

(definitions are underlined)