Notes for Azed 2,762

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 2,762 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

A puzzle that seemed overall to be around the middle of the difficulty spectrum. There were some entertaining clues, along with a couple of unusual anagram indicators that I shan’t be adding to the list on this site – neither ‘mottled’ nor ‘unharmonious’ seems to me to suggest rearrangement, although they both look like anagrinds, so I doubt that they will have given solvers any problems.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 3a, “Edible lichen in red pie mashed as filling for medicinal pill (12, 3 words)”. The wordplay has an anagram (‘mashed’) of RED PIE contained within (‘as filling for’) a round medicinal tablet, this word being derived from the Greek for a wheel. The point of interest is the definition of the (5,2,5) answer: not what’s in the clue, ‘Edible lichen’ being absolutely fine as far as it goes, but what isn’t there. Chambers gives the subhead itself as ‘French’; this means that the term has not (unlike Derek Trotter’s bain-marie) been assimilated into the English language, or, as Chambers puts it, ‘the word is still regarded as a foreign word, rather than as a naturalized English word’. In these situations, setters are generally expected to indicate to which language the word belongs. So CORBIE might be ‘Scots crow’ and AMI might be ‘Nice friend’. Here the definition should really be something along the lines of ‘Edible lichen from France’.

Across

1a Crustacean specialist is sat cooking round pancake with piece of firewood (12)
An anagram (‘cooking’) of IS SAT contains (’round’) a 4-letter thin rolled pancake associated with Mexico and a nice chunky piece of firewood.

14a Coloured type of sorrel, shrub with medicinal properties (4)
The single-letter abbreviation for ‘Coloured’, rarely seen in puzzles, is followed by a South American wood sorrel with edible tubers. No doubt JJ Cale was extolling the medicinal properties of the shrub when he sang that “if you got bad news, you want to kick them blues” a dose or two would put him right.

15a Drawing off liquid to drink, ducks mature? (9)
A 3+3+3 charade of a word meaning ‘to drink’, a term of endearment perhaps slightly more transpondine than ‘ducks’, and a word meaning ‘[to] mature’.

19a Serious English letter from Tel Aviv marquis? (4)
Two definitions here for the price of one, although I think most editors these days would feel that the last name of the (in)famous French ‘writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman’ was surplus to requirements and would simply leave it off. The wordplay has a 3-letter word for ‘serious’ being followed by the usual abbreviation for ‘English’.

25a Cut once expressing contempt? Ring off (4)
An 8-letter word meaning ‘expressing contempt’ is deprived of the consecutive letters RING (‘Ring off’). The answer is given by Chambers as ‘obsolete’, hence the ‘once’ in the definition.

26a See painful spot, one that’s returned? This may apply spray (7)
A 2-letter interjection meaning ‘see!’, a 4-letter painful spot, and a single-letter word for ‘one’ are all reversed (‘returned’) to produce a familiar word. The comma separating the wordplay elements means that “that’s returned” doesn’t work grammatically in the cryptic reading, since it can only legitimately refer to the bit after the comma; it would need to say “…that have returned”, which of course makes no sense in the surface reading. The alternative “See painful spot, one returning?” would be fine.

33a Displays of panache in line within bazaars (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘line’ is contained by (‘within’) a familiar 5-letter word for ‘bazaars’.  The answer is the plural form of a word which is only ever seen in the singular. I see why Azed has chosen the definition here – ‘stylishnesses’ or the like won’t cut it – but the problem is that he is describing a manifestation of a trait, while the answer refers to the trait itself.

35a Regarding edge in dividing money, this was outstanding quality (12)
The combination of that popular bit of commercial jargon meaning ‘regarding’, a 3-letter ‘edge’ and the letters IN (from the clue) is contained by (‘dividing’) a 5-letter word for multiple units of a small monetary value in Britain – this is the plural of a singular form which Chambers gives as ‘(in pl) money in general’, but that is a different plural from the one here.

Down

4d Circlet, pink, worn inside (7)
A 5-letter word for a deep orange-pink colour (and a substance made up of myriad small skeletons) has a common 2-letter word of many meanings inside. Is one of those meanings ‘worn’? Probably not – something like ‘Circlet, pink, around leg’ would be better.

5d Former sweethearts? Mum’s kept in contact (6)
A 2-letter word for ‘mum’ is contained by the sort of ‘contact’ that can be hard or soft. The answer is ‘archaic’, which is why the definition is qualified by ‘Former’.

8d Hidden island once spoken about (8)
One of those ‘missing comma’ clues, where the cryptic reading requires a pause – either a comma or a word like ‘with’ – between ‘island’ and ‘once’. The largest of the Greek islands has a 3-letter Miltonic past tense of a word meaning ‘speak’ outside (‘about’).

9d Manuka in scene of action without height and energy (7, 2 words)
A 7-letter word for a scene of action (often followed by ‘of war’) loses the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘height’ and is followed by the standard abbreviation for ‘energy’, the result being a (3,4) name applied to several plants including the manuka.

10d Tot? Literally that renders one boozer! (4)
One of those Azed trademark answer-referencing clues. If you take the answer (‘a small alcoholic drink’, ie ‘tot’) and break it down into 1+2+1 letters, X YY Z, then “[having] X YY Z renders TOT [as] [a word for a habitual] BOOZER”. If that doesn’t make any sense, a more explicit version can be seen by clicking below:

19d Beginning of business yielding winner of prize in farmers’ show? (7)
The letters of a (4,3) description of a pre-eminent ram (clearly a deserved prize-winner at the show) can also be interpreted as the (5-2) answer.

21d What sounds like Victorian bestseller, like Cold Wind in Scotland? (7)
The homophonic bestseller is a famous 1861 novel by Mrs Henry [Ellen] Wood, a ‘sensation’ novel which was hugely successful when adapted for the stage. It was such a sure-fire success (probably due more to the nature of its content than to its dramatic quality) that theatres whose current production was not wowing the punters would post the reassurance “Next week, ???? ?????”, and this became a catchphrase seen in many cartoons of the day.  I suspect that most people associate it with the line “Gone! And never called me mother!”, which doesn’t appear in the book but comes from one of the many theatrical versions.

29d Being cinnamon stone, but not on it (4)
An 8-letter word for cinnamon stone (a variety of garnet containing calcium and aluminium) loses the consecutive letters ON IT (‘but not on it’).

(definitions are underlined)