Notes for Azed 2,781

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 2,781 Plain

My difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

This puzzle can be found at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/47fd2198-a4c0-4fed-a9eb-d907a7fd03e9/file/puzzle.pdf

The latest puzzle from the Azed franchise did offer one or two amusing clues (such as 17a), but there seemed to be a shrubload of trees, along with tons of ruts, while some of the clues looked as though they were in need of a little ‘polishing’ (on occasion perhaps rather more than a little). In terms of difficulty, although there were many undemanding clues, a few trickier ones pushed it towards the middle of the Azed range, although I certainly wouldn’t have scored it at 2.5 on the Gemelo scale. 

Incidentally, if you haven’t already read the latest Digest, do have a look and cast your vote in the poll relating to the false addition (or removal) of capitals in clues. And feel free to comment on the Digest itself – Dr Cluelittle would love to hear from you.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 26d, “Bottom’s up – it’s briefly swallowed – source of estimate? (5)”. The wordplay has a reversal (‘up’) of another word for the bottom, containing a shortened form of the word ‘it’ (ie “it’s briefly swallowed”). This seems a  rather strange clue – surely the surface reading requires ‘Bottoms up’ without the apostrophe – but the point of interest is “it’s briefly swallowed”, and specifically the apostrophe-s. This appears to tell us that ‘it’ is briefly swallowed by the rising bottom, but the ‘briefly’ needs to qualify the ‘it’ alone, not the “it’s”. When using a qualifier such as ‘briefly’ it is essential to the fairness of the clue that it should be placed immediately before or after the word (or phrase) to which it applies, eg ‘on shortly’ for O. Here it would have been straightforward  to change the order of the words to give ‘it briefly is swallowed’, which would have been absolutely fine.

Across

11a One was paid to grieve, that is as follower of Scottish person (6)
The two-letter abbreviation of the Latin for ‘that is’ comes after (‘as follower of’) the Scots form of a familiar word for a person in expressions such as ‘poor ????’.

13a Prompt intermediate class following page (7)
A six-letter word for an intermediate class in certain schools follows the usual abbreviation for ‘page’. The class is probably best known as the milieu of the ‘Fat Owl’ that was Billy Bunter; at Greyfriars it was the lower fourth from, although at my school it was the second form, slotting in between the Shells and the Upper Middles.

18a Scots whisk women kept out of sight (4)
The usual abbreviation for ‘women’ is followed by a past tense meaning ‘kept out of sight’.

23a Tropical shrub later transplanted in shift (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘transplanted’, perhaps rather questionable based on the Chambers definitions) of LATER is contained by a word for a company, gang or shift, a variant of a familiar five-letter word for a branch or department of an army. The answer is (5,4).

25a Cuckold as once engaging in river pastime, switching parts? (7)
A seven-letter word for taking part in a pastime that involves navigating rough (or very rough) stretches of river has its first four letters exchanged with its last three. The answer is an obsolete spelling of an obsolete word, so the ‘as once’ is certainly warranted.

33a Fire? Rob ran away (4)
There’s an ‘invisicomma’ between ‘Rob’ and ‘ran’, because the cryptic reading requires you to take a word meaning ‘rob’ or ‘plunder’ and remove the consecutive letters RAN (ie ‘ran away’).

Down

2d Coarse linen ma cut for copper (4)
A six-letter bit of ‘old criminal slang’ for a constable (‘copper’, similarly a slang term) has the letters MA removed (‘cut’) from positions four and five. I don’t like that ‘for’ at all – I thought that perhaps there would be a sense of the word in Chambers that might at least provide some justification for it, but there isn’t. As the clue stands, ‘for’ should be ‘from’; an alternative would be something along the lines of ‘Ma cutting copper’s coarse linen’, where ‘cut’ is used in its sense of ‘stay away from’.

3d Street dance abroad? The sort of place it’s performed with father (5)
This one has the French word for ‘street’ being followed by a dialect form of an informal word for ‘father’. But the street dance comes from Cuba, where ‘street’ is ‘calle’, and Chambers doesn’t give the ‘street’ word here, meaning it isn’t part of the English language.  The clue needs to be rephrased, perhaps along the lines of “Father at end of street abroad? This dance might be performed there”.

5d What may be potted I kept in can? (4)
The letter I (from the clue) is’ kept’ in one of many slang words for what the Wykeham Coffee Shop in Oxford labelled the ‘Necessarium’, this particular term no doubt being familiar to Bunter, Wharton et al. The epithet ‘potted’ is usually applied to the full form of the answer, rather than this shortened version, but we’ll let that pass.

8d Plenty in American states showing agitation, bottom to top (7)
This clue is neatly constructed, with a word meaning ‘states showing agitation’ having its last letter moved to the start (‘bottom to top’). Since ‘American’ is defined by Chambers as ‘the English language as spoken in America’, the disguised break between definition and wordplay works very well.

21d Sun above, a palm tree rises – we make up for disappointment (7)
Below the three-letter word for the sun personified is a reversal (‘rises’) of the letter A (from the clue) and a three-letter word for the miriti palm, often seen growing in crosswords.

27d Fur pattern, excellent fringing belly (5)
The two characters which for many years were used in the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping to designate a vessel whereof both the hull (the first character) and the fittings (the second character) were in good order, and which thus came to mean ‘first-rate’ or ‘excellent’, are set around (‘fringing’) the sort of belly that at one time put considerable strain on many a beer-loving professional darts player’s shirt.

29d Prize amulet’s half fresh, but not new (4)
Two wordplays for the price of one! The first involves taking either half of an eight-letter word for an African charm, amulet or spell; the second has a five-letter word meaning ‘fresh’ or ‘unripe’ losing (‘but not’) the usual abbreviation for ‘new’. The answer is shown by Chambers as dialect, although Azed has chosen not to indicate this.

30d One of several on board to worry (4)
The reference here is to the thin strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the neck of a stringed instrument, generically termed a fingerboard but also known by another name on instruments having raised strips of hard material perpendicular to the strings, used to shorten their vibrating length.

(definitions are underlined)