Notes for Azed 2,758

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 2,758 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Azed enters his testudinal phase with a puzzle that definitely had the needle on the difficulty meter heading for the red. Note that when I make my assessment of a puzzle, it isn’t just the toughness of filling the grid that I am considering, but of both filling the grid and of satisfactorily parsing all the clues – I never consider a puzzle solved until both boxes have been ticked. There weren’t too many really straightforward clues in this one, and there were several where the answer came first and a full understanding of the wordplay second.

Setters’ Corner: Prompted by a question from a correspondent, I tackled the Guardian Easter special earlier this week. I was prepared for a libertarian approach to the clueing, although not for a blatantly faulty clue which had somehow got past the editor. That aside, I know that the expectations of Guardian back-page solvers are different from those of Azed regulars, but a few of the clues did grate. The gimmick involved the wordplays omitting a pair of letters, at least one of which was an ‘A’, and this was the clue for ULNA – “Centre of the bull is bone (4)”. The missing letters are NA, and the wordplay delivers UL, the middle letters of BULL. But how can ‘centre of the bull’ be UL? In my view, it can’t: ‘centre of the’ could certainly be H, and centre of ‘the bull’ could, at a pinch, be B. I don’t think “the bull’s centre” is significantly better – it isn’t the same thing as ‘the centre of bull’, which would be absolutely fine. But why couldn’t the setter just have written “Centre of bull is bone”? To my mind, the inclusion of the definite article in a situation like this is not deceptive, it’s unfair to the solver, and it should be avoided.

Across

13a Small change in Bangladesh I spotted entering expensive area (6)
The letter I (from the clue) is contained by (‘spotted entering’) a word which means ‘smart’ or ‘stylish’, and, by association, ‘expensive’, together with the usual abbreviation for ‘area’.

16a Pink after kiss mostly? Show interruption of blood supply? (7)
The 4-letter word for the colour ‘pink or light crimson’ follows a somewhat old-fashioned word meaning ‘[to] kiss’ in a snoggy sort of way, from which the last letter has been omitted (‘mostly’).

20a Simple game in US? Lacking tact for Central American (4)
A (3-3-2) spelling of the American name for the game known in Britain as ‘noughts and crosses’ (I was only familiar with the 4-4-3 and 3-3-3 versions) is deprived of the consecutive letters TACT (‘lacking tact’) to provide the ‘US and Central American’ term for a person from Costa Rica.

22a Trained pacer, etc – one that’s sure to run (8)
A straightforward anagram (‘trained’) of PACER ETC produces the modern agent noun of a familiar verb. However, the old form (ending in -or) has been retained in certain specific senses, one of these referring to a horse whose entry in a race has been confirmed at a particular declaration stage. Strictly speaking, ‘likely to run’ would be better than ‘sure to run’, but the spelling of the answer is more of an issue than the precision of the definition.

24a Number one bell I turned? It often requires a key (8)
A reversal (‘turned’) of a 2-letter abbreviation for ‘number’, the Roman numeral representing ‘one’, a 4-letter verb meaning ‘[to] bell’, and the letter I (from the clue). A key is normally required for the thing in question, with its mere proximity often being sufficient unto the process these days.

25a An occupant of the pulpit rerunning tape recorder? (4)
A (1,3) expression describing (informally) a person who might habitually occupy the pulpit is reversed (‘rerunning’) to give the answer, an acronym which was applied to Britain’s first video recorder. It was invented by the BBC and unveiled by Richard Dimbleby during a live edition of Panorama on 14 April 1958. After he had described the purpose of the technology, its effectiveness was demonstrated with a playback of the first few minutes of the programme, seemingly rewinding time (no, really). It had taken six years to develop, and the recordings were made on half-inch tape running as fast as 200 inches per second. Sadly, its moment of triumph was no more or less than that, as the delivery later that year of a machine from American manufacturer Ampex – which was demonstrably superior – consigned it to history. Incidentally, I don’t believe that ‘rerunning’ indicates reversal, but rather the sort of thing that Dimbleby demonstrated,  a second appearance but with the same internal sequence as before.

30a Quantity of drugs fit to be nicked, not stable, in Parisian rumpus (7)
A 3-letter word for ‘a quantity of drugs, esp heroin’, being the name of a familiar sort of container, is followed by a 10-letter word meaning ‘fit to be nicked’ (in the sense of being caught by the fuzz, and now usually applied to offences rather than persons) from which the consecutive letters STABLE have been removed (‘not stable’).

31a Bitter banned for Muslims? Send it back (5)
A word meaning ‘forbidden under Islamic religious law’, a relatively recent addition to Chambers (earlier editions give it only as an alternative spelling of the word for the women’s quarters in a Muslim house), is reversed (‘send it back’). The answer relates to the passage in Ruth 1:20 where Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth, both widowed, travel back to Naomi’s home town of Bethlehem. The women of the village say something along the lines of ‘Can this be Naomi?’ to which she replies, ‘Don’t call me Naomi [meaning ‘pleasant’]. Call me ???? [meaning ‘bitter’], for the Almighty has made me very bitter.’

33a Bury ma you’ll find thus in the forest swamp (5)
If you break the answer down into words of 2 letters (XX) and 3 letters (YYY), then in a 5-letter word for a swampy pine forest you will indeed find that the letters MA are XX YYY.

34a Salad veg displaying strong smell inspired frenzy (6)
After being told to give the exact opposite of the truth when asked about Homer Simpson’s qualities, an engineer at the nuclear power plant describes him thus: “Um, Homer Simpson is a… brilliant man with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. He is ensuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes, and his personal hygiene is above reproach.” The sort of 2-letter ‘strong smell’ that this last commendation (if true) would surely rule out is followed by a word which can mean ‘inspired frenzy’.

35a Measures strength of obligations limiting eaterie (8)
A 4-letter word for ‘obligations’ contains (‘limiting’) the sort of Italian eaterie that always makes me think of the one (“Tony’s ?????????”) that featured from time to time in Hi-de-Hi!, and into the name of which Gladys Pugh always inserted an an extra ‘-att-‘.

Down

2d Strand, the same after its centre is out of reach (5)
Not the best of the bunch, this clue has a 3-letter word meaning ‘the same’ or ‘single’ following the word REACH from which the central letters have been removed (ie ‘its centre is out of reach’). The definition refers to strand³ in Chambers.

4d Large fish, not useful, stored in hold (4)
The 2-letter abbreviation for ‘unserviceable’ (ie ‘not useful’) is contained by a 2-letter interjection meaning ‘hold!’ or ‘stop!’, a command often issued in triplicate by Santa to his team of reindeer.

6d German/Italian deploying some French in supermarket (7)
The 2-letter French word for ‘some’ or ‘of’ is contained by the name of a large UK-based retailer of groceries and general merchandise. As Azed notes, the answer is not in Chambers, neither is it  in Collins, but the OED gives it as “The Italian word for German; esp. used to express Teutonic influence as shown in some spheres of Italian art.”

8d Sea fish, salty when not left inside (5)
A 7-letter word for ‘salty’ has the 2-letter abbreviation for ‘verso’ (the left-hand page of an open book) removed (‘not left inside’).

10d E.g. cat toyed with bit of breakfast, sort of interloper (11)
An anagram (‘toyed’) of EG CAT is followed by a 6-letter word for a bit of breakfast that is an essential part of a good fry-up, with an absolute minimum of two being de rigueur.

11d Part of flower below earth to penetrate mineral (11)
A 6-letter part of a flower follows (‘below’) the usual abbreviation for ‘earth’, this combination preceding a 4-letter word meaning ‘to cut or penetrate’.

19d Floor grabbing attraction in government as of old (8)
A 5-letter word for ‘floor’, as in ‘he had the floor’ or ‘she took the floor’, contains (‘grabbing’) a word which is regularly indicated in cryptics by ‘attention’, surely misprinted here as ‘attraction’, since the latter works in neither the cryptic nor the surface reading.

26d Flowery tree in bed, not mature (5)
An 8-letter word, which loosely corresponds to one of the senses of ‘bed’ given by Chambers, has a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] mature’ deleted (‘not mature’).

27d Shrubby plant, name for hard old wood (5)
This is not, as it might first appear, a replacement clue, but rather a charade of a 4-letter shrub (named after the goddess of youth and spring) and the usual abbreviation for ‘name’.

32d Like some woollies, in parts they came undone (4)
A single-letter dialect word meaning ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’ or ‘they’ (ie ‘in parts they’) is followed by a word meaning, among many other things, ‘came undone’, in the way that Lady Madonna‘s stockings did on Thursday.

(definitions are underlined)