Notes for Azed 2,667

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 2,667 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

I thought last week’s puzzle was pretty tricky, and if anything this one was trickier still. Plenty of nice clues, my favourite being 21a.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at a clue that I noticed on one of the help forums, “Footwear found by Mr Jennings in a ship (5)”. The answer is SPATS, PAT (Mr Jennings) in SS (a ship). This raises a point about references to ‘famous’ people (real of fictional) in clues, where (as here) in order to solve the clue you need to know whom the setter is talking about. Like Azed, I’m far from being opposed to a bit of general knowledge being involved in cryptic crossword solving, and the potential for looking things up on the web  will compensate for a lack of knowledge in a particular area. However, I think that before introducing a particular person to a clue, setters have to ask themselves whether most solvers are likely to be familiar with them. Beyond those people whose fame is global and enduring, such as Mozart, Mickey Mouse and Muhammad Ali, the questions that setters need to answer are, I believe, (i) Is this person currently in the public eye?, and (ii) Is this person likely to be known to anyone who lives outside the UK but takes an interest in what goes on there? A clue featuring a celeb who fails these tests is likely to frustrate rather than entertain many solvers, and I think that Pat Jennings, although very well known to me, falls into the ‘avoid’ category. A little better would be ‘goalie Jennings’ or the like, but the only Pat I can think of who would definitely pass the test is the one with a black and white cat.

Across

1a Light blue marks on bird fluttering in its home? (9)
The usual abbreviation for ‘marks’ and an anagram (‘fluttering’) of BIRD are contained by the home of, say, a captive budgerigar. The definition here is technically not quite accurate, in that the answer isn’t itself a colour, it’s a word that when affixed to ‘blue’ describes a colour; strictly speaking, the term on its own is no more a colour than Vera is an aloe or Ogen is a melon.

11a Hairs of a kind in the ears, not so sensible (7)
The hairs here are of the kind that “are borne on the surface of a cell, that move liquid over its surface or act as locomotor organs in eg protozoans and flatworms.” Their name starts with a C, but the homophone (‘in the ears’) which we are looking for begins with an S.

12a In tumult old militiaman gets detached from Tim (5)
An eight-letter word for a Turkish feudal militiaman has the consecutive letters TIM remove from the start (‘gets detached from Tim’).

14a Glasgow bum after a drink begged endlessly (penniless) (6)
A three-letter word for a particular spirit is followed by a four-letter word for ‘begged’ from which the last letter has been lost (‘endlessly’). For good measure, Azed tells us that the missing letter is an abbreviation for pence, of the sort that went with L and S before decimalization.

18a Murrayfield ground? That’s armful I scattered (4)
A composite anagram &lit (although I couldn’t bring myself to underline the whole clue as the definition) which doesn’t really work for me. The idea is that the letters of MURRAYFIELD when rearranged (‘ground’)  form an anagram (‘scattered’) of the solution (‘That’) plus ARMFUL I, the answer being a Scots form of the word ‘earth’.

22a Tripped lightly, free of stones, round savoury snack (10)
A six-letter word meaning ‘free of stones’, as a jarful of olives might be, contains a word for a snack associated with Spain and usually found in its plural form.

25a Hat sailor wears back to front – he’s a fool (4)
This clue looks at first glance more complex than it actually is – the wordplay simply involves the reversal (‘back to front’) of the shortened form of a nine-letter word for the sort of hat a sailor might wear (or a strong, waterproofed sheet).

33a Boozer opening to give away? Hurried along (7)
A three-letter word for a hostelry (‘Boozer’) is contained by (‘opening’) a word meaning to ‘give away’ or ‘cast off’.

35a European in Kolkata? He accompanies clique in service as of old (9)
The letters HE (from the clue) following (accompanying) a four-letter word for a clique are contained by a word with several obsolete (‘as of old’) meanings, including ‘service’, but which now is generally understood as a price paid for services.

Down

5d Seine (say), wrong, free, rising up once wholly decayed (10)
A three-letter word for the type of thing exemplified by a seine (a fisherman’s friend), a four-letter ‘wrong’ (in the legal sense), and a three-letter verb meaning ‘[to] rid’ are all reversed (‘rising up’) to produce the (4-6) hyphenated solution.

6d Some with allergies avoid this surfeit, half of mutton (6)
You shouldn’t have any trouble with the answer or the four-letter surfeit, but you might be puzzled by the ‘half of mutton’. In English printing circles, a mutton was another name for an em quadrat – and half of an em is an en…

7d Shred songs Spooner-style? He may well be deaf (9)
Azed tends to reserve spoonerisms for the ‘specials’ that contain them in abundance, but here we have a rare escapee. A (3,6) phrase, with the songs having a distinctly Germanic feel, is spoonerized into a (3-6) answer.

8d Dance? No thanks, it’s obscure for poet (4)
A six-letter dance (in quick waltz time, apparently, though such things are strictly a mystery to me) loses a two-letter word meaning ‘thanks (‘No thanks’), the result being a Spenserian word meaning ‘conceal’ or ‘obscure’.

9d Sort of foot-lever let out to disentangle inside (7)
Easy to get the wrong answer to this one – putting a four-letter word that can mean (among other things) ‘to solve’ inside an anagram (‘out’) of LET will produce the more common spelling of the solution. However, it is a different word, often seen in puzzles defined by ‘tidy’, but which Chambers also explicitly gives as ‘to disentangle’, that must be inserted into the anagram.

13d Prince in position of steersman round a riverside French commune (10)
The usual abbreviation for ‘Prince’ is followed by a (2,6) phrase representing ‘in position of steersman’ containing (’round’) the letter A (from the clue). The answer relates to ??????????-sur-Saône, a commune in the Côte-D’or département of Eastern France.

15d Water bird I caught on lake, served in pastry (9)
The letter I (from the clue), the usual abbreviation for ‘caught’, and a four-letter word for a lake are ‘served in pastry’, ie contained in the sort of thing that Desperate Dan liked tucking into (horns and all).

20d Quiet sort of green lining recess (7)
A three-letter word for a shade of green (a better indication than for the blue in 1a) is contained by (‘lining’) the sort of recess often found at the east end of a church choir.

27d Unit of landed herrings one wrapped in special string (5)
Not a cran today, but that other measure of herrings loved by crossword setters, formed when a single-letter word meaning ‘one’ is ‘wrapped in’ a name for the middle string of the lyre.

29d Leading officer flourished lost banner with joyful cry (4)
The wordplay here would probably benefit from a bit of punctuation, but it involves a four-letter word for a banner from which the two letter abbreviation for ‘flourished’ has been removed (‘lost’) being followed by the sort of joyful cry which for some reason I tend to associate with cads and bounders, usually of the moustachioed kind.

(definitions are underlined)