Notes for Azed 2,760

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 2,760 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

Overall, I felt this one was somewhere in the middle of the difficulty spectrum – not too many ‘gimmes’, but several long anagrams (albeit not of familiar words) that helped to balance out a few tricky wordplays. I felt that Azed had enjoyed setting the puzzle, which had some original ideas (eg 29a) and some neat definitions (eg 10d).

A correspondent asked if I would comment on the anagram indicators in this puzzle, at least one of which is not in the lists on this site. The number of potential anagram indicators is very large, and I tend to add new ones to the list only if they are clearly sound and they either are obvious omissions or seem to offer something different for the setter when it comes to surface readings. One in this puzzle that I don’t have in the list is ‘bolting’ – I think it’s just about ok, although the most relevant definition of ‘bolt’, ‘to run out of control’, is qualified by ‘(of a horse)’, which concerns me slightly. I do have ‘flourished’ in the list, probably because it has appeared in successful competition clues, but while ‘flourishes’ and ‘flourishing’ have impeccable credentials (‘flourish’ vi = ‘to move in fantastic patterns’), I think the definitions of the transitive verb as ‘to adorn with fantastic patterns or ornaments’ and ‘to brandish in show, triumph, or exuberance of spirits’ leave a little to be desired when it comes to suggesting rearrangement of letters.

Setters’ Corner: A speaker at the Azed 2,750 lunch mentioned Azed’s stated view that while ‘form of’ is a valid anagram indicator, ‘sort of’ is not. As Azed wrote in the slip for competition 508 (POSTURE-MAKER),

“Whereas ‘(a) form of’ (rum pose taker, or whatever) is quite accurate and acceptable as a way of telling the solver to rearrange the relevant letters, ‘(a) sort of…’ isn’t, any more than ‘kind’, ‘class’, ‘type’ would be. ‘Sort’ as a noun doesn’t mean ‘assortment’ so no proper instruction to form an anagram is given to the solver.”

The speaker posed the question of whether Azed would need to reconsider his opinion, given that Chambers now includes a definition of the noun ‘sort’ in the computer sense of an arrangement of data. I would have said ‘absolutely not, a sort is an instance of sorting, not the result of it’, but then I looked the word up in Chambers, and saw “The arranging of data or the product of this (computing)”. In my (many) years in IT I have never seen the word used to describe the product of a sort, and neither Collins (“the act or an instance of sorting”) or OED (“The action of arranging items of data in a prescribed sequence*) support this usage. I certainly won’t be using ‘sort of’ as an anagram indicator any time soon, but one could argue that the Chambers definition would make it legitimate.

Across

11a I may be curly, or crinkly, stateside (4)
A double definition, where something with a variety which has the epithet ‘curly’ is also a US slang term for money (ie ‘crinkly, stateside’). According to Chambers, there are two possible spellings of the word, but the one required here is the one that I suspect every solver would know.

12a Place psaltery somehow as play with this quill perhaps? (7)
A composite anagram, where the letters of PLACE PSALTERY can be rearranged (‘somehow’) to produce AS PLAY and the answer.

13a Lesson in most of yield made as profit (7)
A 4-letter word for a lesson, rather surprisingly not shown by Chambers as archaic, is contained by all but the last letter (‘most’) of a 4-letter word meaning ‘[to] yield’.

14a Ornamental shell displayed by dad, studded with gold (4)
A 2-letter word for ‘dad’ contains the chemical symbol for gold. I’m not convinced by ‘studded with’ as a ‘straight’ insertion indicator – the meaning ‘set at intervals’ strongly suggests that the bits to be included are not contiguous, which would make trying to ‘stud’ one pair of letters with another pair a decidedly tough assignment.

21a Exam in era before English, dealing with period long ago (6)
A 2-letter abbreviation for ‘an entrance examination for public school, usually taken at the age of thirteen’ is contained by a 3-letter word for an era and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’, the answer relating to an era that came  right after the Kerosene and just before the Plasticine.

24a Before food is put on board, it must be fit for cast (7)
A 2-letter abbreviation for the Latin phrase meaning ‘before food’, typically used on medical prescriptions but also applied to a pre-prandial grace at certain Oxbridge colleges, is followed by a word for a slab or board, which can also be used metonymically to describe a supply of food and entertainment.

27a Part of eye I’ll have drop on? (4)
Be careful with this one – based on the three checked letters, it would be easy to simply bung an S into the last cell. But the wordplay tells us that the letter I must have a word meaning ‘drop’ attached to it (“I’ll have drop on”), which leads us to a 3-letter word which can have the sense of ‘expel’ – it might not be synonymous with ‘drop’, but it’s close enough.

28a Tonsure to cheer devout fellow cuts (7)
A 5-letter word meaning ‘to cheer’ or ‘to exhilarate’ has an informal word for a sanctimonious person popular only with crossword setters inserted (ie ‘devout fellow cuts’). In the cryptic reading, ‘tonsure’ is a verb.

29a Man’s No. 7 as duty (7)
If Man’s No. 1 is “the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms”, then here we are looking for the (4,3) scene “that ends this strange eventful history”. Second childishness? Sans teeth? Stop looking at me like that…

Down

2d Sickness, with endless ulcerous ooze annoyance of old (7)
A 3-letter word for sickness (grand or petit) of the sort one might experience when crossing La Manche is followed by a word for the ethereal juice in the veins of the gods, or, rather more prosaically, colourless matter oozing from an ulcer or wound, deprived of its last letter (‘endless’). The answer is a word found in the early printings of Hamlet, but subsequently emended.

3d Ooze without density or colour (4)
The repeated use of ‘ooze’ makes me wonder if Azed was originally thinking about a pair of clues joined by ellipses, with the word being shared by 2d and 3d. Here the ‘ooze’ leads to a familiar 5-letter verb from which the usual abbreviation for ‘density’ is to be removed (‘without density’).

4d One from the piggery in sheltered local meadow (7)
A (1,3) expression that might describe ‘one from the piggery’ is contained by a word meaning ‘sheltered’. The answer is shown by Chambers as being a dialect word, hence the ‘local’ in the definition.

9d It’s no good forsaking US trash for Scottish shudder (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘no good’ is omitted from (‘forsaking’) a 6-letter ‘orig US’ word for trash, or the sort of music you might associate with Kurt Cobain, the result being a Scots word for a thin coating of newly-formed ice on water. I remember my mother reading a book by Geoffrey Jenkins called A ???? of Ice, and the word has always stayed with me, though I had no idea what one was (I imagined something considerably more imposing). The title doesn’t actually make much sense, because the ‘of ice’ is superfluous.

13d Fancy collar giving girl sex appeal in SA country (10)
A 3-letter girl associated with Christmas and New Year, and the usual abbreviation for ‘sex appeal’, are contained by the name of a South American country, producing a very French-looking word for an ornamental collar on a coat.

17d Metaphysical system that has a therapy replacing hearts in breach (7)
A 6-letter word for a breach, of the sort which litters the history of the Christian church, has the abbreviation for ‘occupational therapy’ (‘a therapy’) replacing the card player’s abbreviation for ‘hearts’. The editors of Chambers clearly wanted to make it very clear where the originator of the resulting metaphysical system had his roots and where he did not.

22d Dry up having to retain clear old names (6)
A reversal (‘up’) of a 3-letter term applied specifically to dry wines contains (‘having’) a 3-letter dialect form of a familiar 4-letter word meaning ‘to spring upward’ or ‘to bound over’.

25d Stomach, verminous (not cod fish) (4)
An 8-letter word meaning ‘lousy’ or ‘verminous’ is shorn of (‘not’) a group of four letters which setters often indicate simply by ‘heather’ or ‘fish’, the latter being a member of the cod family, hence ‘cod fish’.

26d Stone crock? (4)
A concise double definition clue to finish, the stone being one which I associate with oriental carvings, and the crock being one of the equine variety.

(definitions are underlined)