Notes for Azed 2,686

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 2,686 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

Those familiar with Azed’s ‘little ways’ are invariably at an advantage when it comes to tackling his puzzles, and rarely more so than today, where among many personal touches we had no less than three clues which included a bonus route to the answer (a ‘spare’ definition or a second wordplay). I thought this was one of his best puzzles of recent times, with a particularly good &lit at 12 down, and many of the clues exuded a sense of fun. Perhaps I was over-infused with the Christmas spirit, but I found nothing in the crossword with which I wanted to take issue. I may perhaps have overstated the difficulty of last week’s puzzle, but this one seemed to be comfortably past the halfway mark on the scale.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 5d, “One exercising choice, apt to dither about last of ten (6)”. Nothing difficult about this clue, an anagram (‘dither’) of APT TO containing the last letter of TEN, but the point of interest is the anagram indicator, and in particular its plural form. I cannot accept that a sequence of words without punctuation or conjunction can cryptically govern a plural verb, so here the element would need to be ‘apt to dithers’, which doesn’t work. Azed, however, takes a different view on this matter, In the slip for AZ 2,306, he wrote:

An interesting point was raised by a very experienced campaigner. In my clue to PLIANCY (‘Being flexible I can swim in strand’) should not ‘swim’ be ‘swims’ for the anagram to work cryptically? This took me back to a similar question I put many years ago to Ximenes when the late Eric Chalkley won first prize with this clue to PANTOPHAGIST: ‘What pig has to become when gripped by hunger? (anag. in pant, & lit.). Surely, I asked, it should be ‘becomes’, unless he accepted that as a singular string of words or a plural set of words, in this case three of them, it could govern a singular or a plural verb. He replied (I still have his pencilled note) that yes, he did think either a singular or a plural verb was OK, ever since when I’ve followed his dictum, both in my own clues and in my judgement on those of others. Does anyone hold strong contrary views on this?

Yes – me! When the wordplay requires us to deal with a word or words as simply as sequence of letters, they form a single string. We would say ‘Bass drum is a musical instrument’ but ‘Bass, drum are musical instruments’ or ‘Bass and drum are musical instruments’. I couldn’t bring myself to use the ‘one string/plural verb’ construction in an Azed comp submission, but other competitors should note that he will accept them – if he didn’t, we would have been deprived of Dr Eddie Young’s classic clue for ROUGH-AND-READY (AZ comp 1,775),

A hard tussle with Dr E. Young plainly winning? [anagram of A HARD with DR E YOUNG, but for me ‘tussle’ ought to be ‘tussles’ or ‘tussling’]

Across

1a Mound in burnt remainth revealing Semitic goddess (9)
I wonder if Azed considered using ‘Themitic goddeth’ as the definition? Anyway, a three-letter ‘mound’ or hill is contained by the Violet Elizabeth Bott (“I’ll thcream and thcream until I’m thick”) version of a word meaning ‘burnt remains’.

15a Filler? It provides finishing touch to hotel (5)
One of those clues that looks as though it might be a lot trickier than it is. The letters IT (from the clue) follow (ie provide the finishing touch to) a three-letter word for a hotel, the result being a modern interjection which Chambers says is ‘used as a tag question or as mere oral punctuation’.

17a Collaborative Scottish church group producing short prayers (4)
The collaborative church group provides us with a four-letter acronym (the first letter representing ‘Action’) which is also a familiar English word here indicated by one of its less-than-familiar meanings.

19a Senior diplomat from China welcomed by Robert maybe? (6)
I like this one. A two-letter abbreviation for ‘China’ is contained by the middle initial and surname of the Robert, confederate general and ‘Monarch of the Mississippi’, that Al Jolson, among others, was waiting for.

20a Clerk to tease, made to fill small Italian register (11)
A three-letter slang word meaning ‘to tease’ (or to go bad) is ‘made to fill’ (ie put inside) the Italian word for ‘little’ (‘small Italian’) and a four-letter word for a register.

30a Ruler recalling wrongdoing, not the first (look in the mirror) (4)
Two wordplays for the price of one here, a five-letter word for a wrongdoing losing its initial letter (‘not the first’) and being reversed (‘recalling’), with a separate ‘hidden’ following in parentheses. I said at the start that there was nothing in the puzzle with which I wanted to take issue, but on another day I would look more closely at that ‘recalling’ and ask why Azed hadn’t opted for ‘recalled’.

34a Half sin? More than half – they’re humdingers (5)
The first two letters of a four-letter sin of the deadly variety (‘Half sin’) is followed by the first three letters of the same sin (‘More than half’) in a neat little clue.

35a Canting character chronicled, first to talk? (6)
The character here was ‘chronicled’ by CS Lewis together with the witch and the wardrobe; his name is followed by the first letter of TALK.

Down

2d Sons to select fish basket for small rowing boat (5)
The usual abbreviation for sons is followed a four-letter word meaning ‘to select’ and two discrete definitions. That ‘for’ between them concerns me slightly, but I’ll let it pass.

3d Downcast, no good going off for alfresco nosh (5)
A seven-letter word which you might not immediately think of as meaning ‘downcast’, but has that meaning explicitly ascribed to it by Chambers (example from Browning: “Have you noticed, now, Your cullion’s ??????? face?”), is deprived of the two-letter abbreviation for ‘no good’ (‘no good going off’).

6d Vegetarian dish with frills unlimited, including an armadillo! (11)
A word that may put those of a certain age in mind of Manuel’s ‘filigree Siberian hamster’ (“Only one in shop. He make special price: only five pound”) is produced by depriving a seven-letter word meaning ‘with frills’ of its first and last letters (‘endless’) and putting it outside the letter A plus a five-letter name for an armadillo. Whether the dish in question would be more acceptable with armadillo or a lot of Basil in is a matter for debate.

7d French painter losing head? It often ends in a turn (6)
The French painter who must lose the U which constitutes his head (first letter) is Maurice,  a twentieth century artist of the School of Paris whose speciality was cityscapes. The son of the artist Suzanne Valadon, he took his surname at the age of eight from a Spanish artist who signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, but there has been considerable speculation about his true pedigree, with various artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, thought to be in the frame. The definition of the answer makes sense in the context of its Chambers entry.

8d Family feature apparent in crook’s young offspring? (7)
A charade of a three-letter word for ‘family’ and a four-letter feature of the facial variety leads to a word for a child which (according to OED) started out as a term used by 16th century tramps, then passed into more general use, and was then used by convicts. In Oliver Twist, Dickens wrote:

“The ???????s, my dear,” said Fagin, “is the young children that’s sent on errands by their mothers.”

12d Mass out of the way, I cater for men in mess? (11)
The best &lit I can remember Azed coming up with for many a moon. An anagram (‘in mess’) of I CATER FOR MEN without the usual abbreviation for ‘mass’ (ie ‘mass out of the way’) produces a word which is very neatly indicated by the clue in its entirety.

23d Ring in NZ trees covered with cracks (6)
The letter which takes the form of a ring is contained by the plural of the name given to a particular coniferous tree found in New Zealand.

24d Melodious Italian poet of yesteryear, not tense inside (6)
We have to go back to 1474 to find the birth of Ludovico, responsible for the epic Orlando Furioso, who must have the usual abbreviation for ‘tense’ removed from inside his surname.

25d Swallow on the spot to discern about summer’s start (6)
A two-letter word of many meanings, one of which is ‘on the spot’, is followed by a three-letter word meaning ‘to discern’ or ‘to understand’ containing the first letter of SUMMER (ie “summer’s start”).

28d The old shut in pulpit, not initially mobile (5)
A six-letter word for the pulpit in a mosque has the standard single-letter abbreviation for ‘mobile’ removed from its beginning (‘not initially mobile’) to produce an obsolete (‘old’) form of a word meaning ‘to shut in’.

29d What Scottish seers use to penetrate extremes of terrible grief as before (5)
A Scots word for the things that one sees with (‘What Scottish seers use’) is contained by (‘to penetrate’) the first and last letters (‘extremes’) of TERRIBLE. The solution is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’, hence the ‘as before’.

31d The best of north England timber part of the kingdom cut (4)
Just as the down clues started with a ‘two definitions, one wordplay’ clue, so they finish with one. The part of the kingdom which is ‘cut’ (shorn of its last letter) is the bit that isn’t England, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

(definitions are underlined)