Notes for Azed 2,767

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 2,767 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

You wait ages for a tricky ‘plain’, and then two come along in quick succession. With the number 1 bus in Birmingham – aka the ‘Moseley 1’ – it was usually three in line astern, so perhaps by analogy we can expect another relative toughie for next week’s competition puzzle, special or nay. This was an entertaining challenge, with a few nice clues.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 30a, “Spenser’s last in litter, appearance not fine (4)”. The wordplay here has a 5-letter word meaning ‘appearance’ or ‘principal face’ being deprived of the single-letter abbreviation for ‘fine’, the result being a Spenserian form of a familiar word. However, it contains a construction which most editors now explicitly include in their proscribed lists, the use of ‘A not B’ to indicate ‘A minus B’. I can’t think of any situation in real life where the word ‘not’ on its own in such an expression suggests diminution, and I would advise aspiring setters to steer well clear. A wordplay such as ‘slow bowler not special’ seems to me (and others) not valid for INNER [SPINNER – SP]. The addition of a comma is generally considered to make the construction acceptable (eg ‘slow bowler, not special’), although a word like ‘having’ needs to be inferred in order to achieve the required effect (similarly for the parenthesized ‘not late’ in 29d). The problem lies in the inflexibility of ‘not’; a word like ‘less’ which can act as an adjective or preposition has no such issue – ‘A less B’ can indeed mean ‘A minus B’, so ‘slow bowler less special’ is good for INNER and ‘appearance less fine’ would have been absolutely sound here.

Across

1a While up at uni, having entered it ends somehow being brought to light (12)
A (2,4) phrase roughly answering to ‘while up at uni’ (or ‘not during the vac’) is contained by (‘having entered’) an anagram (‘somehow’) of IT ENDS.

12a Unfriendly Scots frequently object (5)
A charade of the  2-letter abbreviation for ‘frequently’ (which somewhat ironically is seen rather infrequently) and a word for an object or end.

13a Called back on being dismissed by herald, bad-tempered (6)
A reversal (‘back’) of a 4-letter word meaning ‘called’ (as on the telephone) is followed by the title given to the chief herald of Scotland (also the surname of a current Australian test spinner), shorn of the consecutive letters ON (‘on being dismissed’).

14a Pottery first to last lined up as before (4)
A 4-letter word for pottery, almost invariably preceded by the name of a particular factory, such as Wemyss or Meissen, has its first letter moved to the end (‘first to last’), the result being an old spelling of an adverb meaning ‘in a line’.

16a Very small Scotch, extreme in goodness! (5)
A 3-letter ‘informal abbreviation’ meaning ‘extreme’ or ‘too much’ is contained by an interjection of surprise similar to ‘goodness!’. I don’t imagine that the definition will cause too many problems for solvers, given the headword under which it appears in Chambers, but the adjective here doesn’t mean ‘very small’; it is used specifically with reference to a shaft of sunlight that shows up all those bits of dead skin etc that are floating around the house (or in our house – though not in yours, I’m sure – the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling). As Alexander Smith wrote in A Summer in Skye:

…just where the ????? sunbeam from the pane with its great knob of bottle-green struck him

18a Alexandra displaying what accompanies thrust, around centre of fashion (5)
An obsolete interjection of (self-)encouragement, originally an accompaniment to a fencing thrust, contains (‘around’) the middle letter (‘centre’) of ‘fashion’.

25a Freak garden bloom, less than half of it moved to rear (5)
You know you’ve done too many crosswords when ‘garden bloom’ calls up just two words, one being ‘rose’ and the other the name given to one of many members of a family often linked to Michaelmas. Here the latter has its first two letters (ie ‘less than half of it’) moved to the rear. Other garden blooms are available, but don’t expect to see too many mesembryanthemums making the transition from the gardening pages.

27a Tropical tree, one lacking in hard outer covering (5)
An 8-letter word for a hard covering (such as that of a tortoise) loses the name given to the ‘one’ in a pack of cards (‘one lacking’).

28a Clappers of course gripped by urge for Scotch (7)
A 5-letter word meaning ‘relating to a course or round’ (ie ‘of course’) is contained by a Scots word meaning ‘to call’ or ‘to drive on’; when followed by ‘canny’, it forms the name given to a number of holes on Scottish golf courses, including the 15th at Trumpberry, and is an exhortation to go carefully.

33a Stops on organ, flaming brittle! (7)
A 4-letter plural referring to the sort of lights that direct drivers to halt (ie ‘stops’) is followed by the name of a particular organ of the human body, producing  a word which was seen in its more regular form in 2,521 (“Revolutionary, executed maybe protecting his leader, brittle when heated”). The adjective ‘hot-short’ has a similar meaning when used to describe iron which contains an excess of certain impurities, while there is a parallel term ‘cold-short’, which when applied to a metal (or to peanuts in hard toffee, presumably) means ‘brittle in its cold state’.

Down

4d Haulier’s strap, once very small, surrounding form of lump (8)
An obsolete form of a familiar word meaning ‘very small’, apparently always preceded by ‘little’, contains (‘surrounding’) an anagram (‘for’) of LUMP.

7d Laughing hyena may account for such an antelope with a neigh! (7)
A composite anagram, where the letters of LAUGHING HYENA can be rearranged to produce (‘can account for’) the solution (‘such an antelope’) and A NEIGH.

10d Something to bind old thong? Jock’s in a tangle (6)
The wordplay yields a (3,3) phrase that could describe a string or lace with which to secure an (obsolete) thong (or a large marble).

19d Pressure on head of edible fungus forced up part of primary growth (7)
The usual abbreviation for ‘pressure’ is followed by a reversal (‘forced up’) of the first letter (‘head’) of ‘edible’ plus the 5-letter name of a type of fungus which is, as it happens, edible.

24d Old ewe with bit of tangled hair covering hoof (6)
A 5-letter word for an old woman (‘derogatory’, according to Chambers) or an old ewe (not derogatory, pending ovine petition to the editors) precedes the first letter (‘bit’) of ‘tangled’.

25d Like a reflecting telescope, universal in volume (5)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘universal’ is contained by a word which can be applied to a cipher, a system of rules, a collection of writings making up a book (such as the New Testament), or a recognized division thereof, forming a volume. The stark definition ‘a volume’ in Chambers leaves plenty to the imagination.

29d One only in the pool for a while, forming pattern (not late) (4)
An 8-letter word for a pattern or model has the consecutive letters LATE omitted (‘not late’). The definition may take a minute to grasp, particularly since the relevant type of pool now tends only to feature in TV dramas set in the 1950s and 1960s (I’m thinking Endeavour, Grantchester and the like).

(definitions are underlined)