Notes for Azed 2,770

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 2,770 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

It’s the first Sunday of the month, it’s an Azed, and…it’s not a clue writing competition. There seems to be a degree of confusion, in that the version printed in the paper invites us to submit a clue to replace the asterisked definition, but there is no such definition; with the help of correspondent Andrew, I subsequently located the note buried  at the bottom of page 29 of the main newspaper, which says “The next clue-writing competition will be with Azed 2771.” The online entry form, though, makes things pretty clear: “Please note this is a prize draw puzzle, not a clue writing competition. The next clue writing competition will be Azed 2,771 on October 5th 2025.” But why? Since it’s not too hard to replace one of the cryptic clues with a definition from Chambers and put a star next to the clue number, I’m guessing that the hiatus is designed to allow time for more changes to be made to the clue judging process ‘behind the scenes’.

By the standards of recent Azed plains (and there haven’t been any other sorts) I thought this one was pretty close to the middle of the difficulty spectrum; there were only a couple of clues which I could imagine giving any problems to regular solvers. The puzzle was perhaps a little lacking in élan, with a few rather strange surface readings and some rather loose definitions, but it was quite entertaining and the clues were generally sound.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 29a, “Woody street remained undisturbed (6)”. The wordplay is straightforward, with the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Street’ being followed by the four-letter past active tense of a verb meaning ‘to remain undisturbed or unchanged’ (as in “I think we’ll just let it ????”). The definition ‘Woody’ references the nickname of the American athlete and actor Woodrow Wilson Woolwine ??????, a decathlete and American football star who went on to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his role in Spartacus (for Best Supporting Actor, so presumably he was the one who wasn’t Spartacus). But is ‘Woody’ on its own sufficient to indicate this? The simple answer is ‘No’. It is a variation on the definition by example, and requires some form of indication. Normally this would take the form of a qualifier either before or after the core definition, or a question mark immediately following it. But none of these can be used here without destroying the surface reading. In ‘Perhaps Woody street…’ the capital letter on ‘Woody’ sticks out like a sore thumb, while ‘Woody, perhaps, street’ or the like is very weak. The definition isn’t at the end of the clue, so the question mark is not an option. This is one of those times when an interesting idea should probably have been abandoned on the grounds that it cannot be turned into a clue which combines artist merit with fairness to the solver.

Across

4a Give out helping but not on those cut? (8)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] give out’ is followed by a six-letter word for a helping deprived of (‘but not’) the consecutive letters ON. The cut is of the unkindest sort.

13a Basically gold-loving (6, 2 words)
The chemical symbol for gold and a word meaning ‘loving’ combine to produce the (2,4) answer.

14a Sort of muffler Western lawman used to wrap colt, active? (6)
The four-letter surname of a famous character from the American West contains (‘used to wrap’) the single-letter abbreviations for ‘colt’ and ‘active’. Together with his brother Virgil and Doc Holliday, this lawman formed the ‘enforcement’ team in the gunfight at the OK Corral, and he is probably the only person whose Wikipedia entry describes him as “lawman, buffalo hunter, saloon keeper, miner, brothel keeper, and boxing referee.” As a correspondent notes, Chambers offers very little support for the definition here.

16a Daub showing girl in pub (7)
A four-letter given name is contained by a three-letter word for a pub. The name is, I suspect, more often given to girls than boys these days, but it always puts me straight in mind of the Saki story with that title, where the Baroness suggests bestowing the name on an escaped hyena of uncertain sex which she and Constance Broddle (“one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church”) encounter on a hunt, surrounded by a dozen hounds who “had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent…and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.”

“The hyena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness.  It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure.” From then on, things don’t go too well for anyone except, needless to say, the Baroness herself.

19a Sweet clubs left out, small portion (4)
A five-letter, primarily musical, term meaning ‘sweet’ (and a word that might precede ‘vita’) has the usual abbreviation for ‘clubs’ omitted (‘left out’).

21a Abstainer – what shreds etc will be swallowed by one such (7)
An anagram of ETC is contained by a single-letter word meaning ‘one’ and a three-letter Latin word for ‘such’ or ‘thus’ usually, like the Irish in 1066 and All That, found living in brackets. How do we feel about ‘what shreds etc’ indicating an anagram of ETC? Personally, I’m not too keen, although I wouldn’t have any problem with “what’s shredded etc”.

27a One of the goosefoots, article brought in to cool (6, 2 words)
A three-letter article of the definite kind is contained by (‘brought in to’) a three-letter word meaning ‘[to] cool’, the result being a (3,3) term for ‘any one of various fat-leaved plants, esp of the goosefoot family.’

Down

4d Inveterate flirt embracing e.g. Italian sculptor (8)
There’s one of those ‘invisicommas’ here, between the ‘e.g.’ and the ‘Italian’, since it is the six-letter surname of an Italian sculptor which is containing (’embracing’) a two-letter word meaning ‘for instance (ie ‘e.g.’). 

7d Set of nets without opening split (4)
A five-letter word for a set of fishing nets (or a very large group of snowflakes indeed) loses its first letter (‘without opening’).

8d ’Ow ’Arry might refer to a cavity for lizard (5)
A (2,3) expression representing how an ‘aitch-dropper’ might refer to a cavity leads to the solution; coincidentally, I found myself clueing the plural form of the word just a few days ago.

12d Artist’s instrument (not cherished) – one may draw staves (7)
The usual two-letter abbreviation suggested by ‘artist’ and the apostrophe-s are followed by a seven-letter musical instrument from which a three-letter word meaning ‘cherished’ has been removed (‘not cherished’).

15d Typical of Byron, misused date introducing insolence (7)
An anagram (‘misused’) of DATE contains (‘introducing’) a three-letter word for ‘insolence’. Lord Byron, Dudley Moore and Steven Gerrard are examples of those who have been born with the particular congenital deformity referenced here. Every week, the Birmingham Evening Mail used to print a Schools Crossword, a non-cryptic puzzle submitted by a pupil from a school in the area. My first published crossword appeared in this series; sadly, the puzzle itself has been lost to posterity, and the only answer which I remember from it is the one here.

17d Member of school rarely removing page from journal (8)
The nine-letter name of the oldest surviving magazine in the world, first published in 1828 and with past editors including Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, has the usual abbreviation for ‘page’ omitted (‘removing page from journal’) to produce a term, shown by Chambers as ‘rare’, for an adherent of a school or party.

25d What’ll denote home for Seabee, filled with energy and exercises (4)
The three-letter abbreviation for the sort of vessel which a Seabee might call home, or perhaps more likely might call their place of work, contains (‘filled with’) the usual abbreviation for ‘energy’.

26d What’s involved in fencing with wax (4)
The usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘with’ is followed by a word suggested by wax³ in Chambers, an ‘old informal’ word for a fit of anger. The definition seems a bit, well, definite – I think that something like “What might be involved in fencing” would be preferable.

(definitions are underlined)