Notes for Azed 2,601

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.

While I – of course – believe that the views presented are valid, I realize that (i) I am not infallible, and (ii) in the world of the crossword there are many areas where opinions will differ. I say what I think, but I don’t intend thereby to stifle discussion – I would encourage readers who disagree with the views that I express, whether in the blog posts or in response to comments, to make their feelings known…I shall not be offended!

Azed 2,601 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

First of all may I take this opportunity to wish all readers a very happy Easter – here’s hoping the Easter bunny has bestowed his bounty upon you. Regarding this puzzle, I felt it was well below the mid-point of the difficulty scale, and didn’t quite have the oomph of last week’s excellent offering, though it was reasonably entertaining while it lasted. 

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to take a look at clue 11a, “To explain dodgy clue I’ll require day (9)”. The wordplay involves an anagram of CLUE I being followed by DATE (ie ‘day’), but the point of interest here is the extra “‘ll require”, which is there solely to improve the surface reading and fulfils no active function in the wordplay (it constitutes a ‘null juxtaposition indicator’), raising the question of whether the clue could have been written as the shorter ‘To explain dodgy clue I require day’.

The grammatical error in clues which is most often highlighted by editors is almost certainly the one seen in “I’m introduced to crazy spinster (4)” for MAID, the issue being that the wordplay would need to read “I is introduced…” in order to be sound (it’s the letter I that is being introduced). Here we have a very similar situation, but unusually it  occurs in the juxtaposition element – in order for the wordplay to be sound in my shortened version of the clue, it would have to read “To explain dodgy clue I requires a day”, which don’t sound quite right. The usual workaround is to draw on the future tense, so the MAID clue becomes “I’ll be introduced to crazy spinster” and the clue here becomes the one published.

12a Dip on this prom becomes increasingly crazy (4)
Only three weeks ago Azed provoked comment by his use of ‘prom’ to indicate a four-letter word which is I think a legitimate synonym for ‘promenade’ but perhaps not for the contracted version thereof (the end having probably been blown away in a gale). He uses the same definition for the word today, the result of putting the letters DIP in front of it (‘Dip on this’) being a word meaning ‘increasingly crazy’.

13a He has Moroccan tree planted within capital (6)
A nicely constructed clue, the letters HE (from the clue) having a four-letter word for the sandarac tree inserted (‘planted within’), and the definition being not at the beginning, as one might assume from the surface reading, but at the end.

17a Busily engaged? O, I dig on frantically at edges of fossilized mollusc (11)
A (2,2) phrase meaning ‘busily engaged’ has an anagram (‘frantically’) of O I DIG ON surrounding it (‘at the edges’). Adjectives of a technical nature are among the most difficult types of solution for setters to deal with, disguising the break between the wordplay and the definition being particularly tricky. Azed is a master of the art, as he demonstrates here. 

19a Murray and suchlike, one following in G. Player’s footsteps (4)
Generally speaking, the golfing world has not been kind to crossword setters when it comes to the names of the top players. Bryson DeChambeau offers distinctly limited possibilities, and the latest addition to the Augusta pantheon, Scottie Scheffler, is hardly (as Ned Flanders might observe) a shoo-in for cluein’. Hence we must be truly grateful to South Africa for producing a successor to Gary Player whose three-letter surname appears as part of 1,009 words in Chambers and when preceded by his first initial gives us the solution here. ‘Murray’ is a former spelling of ‘moray’.

22a Latin book, including one that’s not new in classical library (4)
The usual abbreviations for ‘Latin’ and ‘book’ are placed either side of (‘including’) the letters ONE (from the clue) without the standard abbreviation for ‘new’ (“that’s [ie that has] not new”), the result being the surname of James, the founder in 1911 of the library which features Greek and Latin classics produced in a format where the original text is presented on the left hand page and a translation is provided on the facing page. The books were originally issued by Heinemann in the UK but the current publisher is the Harvard University Press. In 1917, Virginia Woolf wrote:

“The **** Library, with its Greek or Latin on one side of the page and its English on the other, came as a gift of freedom. The existence of the amateur was recognised by the publication of this Library, and to a great extent made respectable. The difficulty of Greek is not sufficiently dwelt upon, chiefly perhaps because the sirens who lure us to these perilous waters are generally scholars [who] have forgotten what those difficulties are. But for the ordinary amateur they are very real and very great; and we shall do well to recognise the fact and to make up our minds that we shall never be independent of our ****.”

25a Ungenerous, that is without charge returned, recovers without lies (9)
A two-letter abbreviation for ‘that is’ contains a four-letter word for a charge (the sort that you might receive in a restaurant) that has been reversed (‘returned’) and is followed by a seven-letter word meaning ‘recovers’ from which the sequence LIES has been removed (‘without lies’). However, that first ‘without’ is a potential problem – whilst ‘without’ when used as an adverb can mean ‘on the outside’, so ‘x having y without’ is fine for ‘y contains x’, the ‘outside’ meaning of the preposition is given by Chambers as archaic. I don’t consider that ‘He is without his tent’ could mean that he is on the outside of it, and thus I don’t consider the preposition acceptable as a containment indicator. Neither do I think that a comma can be inferred between ‘without’ and ‘charge’, although that is probably more likely to have been Azed’s intention.

28a Come in, clasp working? (7, 2 words)
‘Come in’ here is used in the sense of ‘to become fashionable’, and the (5,2) phrase could be indicated by the last two words taken either separately or together.

29a Girl after a bit of excitement reverse saying no, losing head (6)
I think that the word ‘reverse’ was intended to read ‘reversed’ – both are valid when it comes to the wordplay, but ‘reverse’ doesn’t seem right in the surface reading. As written, the wordplay demands that after the first letter (‘a bit of’) ‘excitement’ the solver should reverse (the imperative form of the verb) a word meaning ‘saying no’ from which the first letter has been removed (‘losing head’).

31a Men will be involved with routine in this with nothing changing? (9)
A composite anagram &lit, where the letters of MEN and ROUTINE when rearranged (‘involved’) can form the solution (‘this’) plus O (‘nothing’) when likewise reordered (‘changing’). The whole clue stands as a slightly loose definition of the solution, but that sort of mild inexactitude is considered acceptable in &lit clues (indeed, such clues where the definition is of the standard which would be expected in a normal definition+wordplay clue are few and far between, and typically rather dull).

1d Going after notoriety (rumoured) German abused chit in local court once (11)
Azed seems to have become rather keen recently on the partial homophone, a device that I don’t much like at the best of times and, when (as in this clue) it produces a non-word as part of the wordplay, that I find unwelcome. Here we have a four-letter group which in the solution is pronounced similarly to a four-letter word for notoriety (ie, ‘notoriety (rumoured)’), following (‘going after’) which are the usual three-letter abbreviation for ‘German’ and an anagram (‘abused’) of CHIT.

5d Fancy assistant No. 1 being demoted to No. 4 (4)
Not an entirely original treatment of the solution, but the No. 1 / No. 4 thing is an innovation. The first letter (‘No. 1’) of a four-letter word for an assistant is moved down to fourth position (‘demoted to No. 4’).

6d Sign most of fruit is in credit with sun rising (11)
A seven-letter word for a type of fruit with its last letter removed (‘most of’) is put inside the standard two-letter abbreviation for ‘credit’, this being followed by a reversal (‘rising’) of the word SUN (from the clue).

7d Projectile launcher finally left, not having succeeded (6)
A concatenation of a (2,4) phrase meaning ‘finally’ and the usual one-letter abbreviation for ‘left’ is deprived of (‘not having’) the standard abbreviation for ‘succeeded’.

15d Couplets? Here’s very short one penned in Norfolk town (8)
A four-letter informal term for a very small person, taken from the stage name of the 4’6″ music hall comedian and dancer Harry Relph, is contained by (‘penned in’) the four-letter name of a Norfolk town that is a regular visitor to crosswords.

18d Orcadian landowner producing decorative slab in gold (7)
The two-letter heraldic tincture indicated by ‘gold’ will be familiar to all solvers, but the decorative slab or tile contained within it may well not be. It comes from the French language, and is also the surname of the actress Béatrice, perhaps best known for her starring role in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 37°2 le matin (better known in the UK as Betty Blue).

20d Tea cake famously-short-lived: icer carelessly has left one in middle (6)
The reference here is to the oft-quoted humorous definition of the solution given by Chambers, ‘a cake, long in shape but short in duration’.

21d Element in couplet central to poet, singly paired (6)
A four-letter (gaseous, inert) chemical element is put inside the pair of letters in the middle of (‘central to’) the word ‘poet’, producing a (3-3) term more often seen as 3-2-3 or 1-2-1.

(definitions are underlined)