Notes for Azed 2,720

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 2,720 Plain

Difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

This struck me as being a true mid-range Azed – a few easy clues, a few tricky ones, and several that were somewhere in between. Generally an entertaining solve.

Clue Writers’ Corner: Firstly, a reminder that while there is no fundamental reason to eschew the obvious when writing a clue for a puzzle, it is a different matter when writing a competition clue. If the competition word were BROOMED, every competitor is going to have spotted that this is ROOM in BED, and also that it is an anagram of BOREDOM. It is very unlikely that clues which take advantage of either of these facts will be destined for high honours, simply because they are so obvious. What will catch the judge’s eye is a novel treatment of the word – although, of course, it must must still be technically sound.

One area where competition cue writers have an advantage over puzzle setters is that of the topical clue, because they know that Azed will be reading and judging their clue within a couple of weeks of it being written. This opens up a range of almost certainly never-to-be-repeated possibilities relating to events which are big news today but will be forgotten within months, and a quick look at the archive will show that Azed often looks favourably on such clues – one reason being that they offer a treatment of the word to be clued that cannot have been used before. I need hardly say that certain news stories will be ‘off limits’ in this day and age, but politics and sport continue to represent fertile ground.

Across

10a Area of Spanish speakers, in life comprehending Arabic (6)
A four-letter word for ‘life’ or ‘vivacity’ contains (‘comprehending’) the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘Arabic’.

19a Article as seen distributed in what you are reading (6)
The two letters of AS (from the clue) are separately inserted in a word which describes what you were almost certainly reading immediately before you reached this sentence.

21a It was found in old distillery, main branch, copy, type lost (6)
A four-letter word for a main branch is followed by a six-letter word for a copy from which the consecutive letters TYPE have been removed (‘type lost’). My knowledge of Shakespeare’s works is somewhat lopsided – I have a passing acquaintance with several of his works and minimal knowledge of some, but having ‘done’ the Scottish play at school large chunks of it remain lodged in my memory, taking up space which could more valuably be used for stuff like where I’ve left my phone and what time I’m due at the dentist. So today this fragment came immediately to mind:

That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A ??????k only.

25a Conchy turned spy, hollow (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘conscientious objector’ (‘conchy’) is followed by a reversal of a four-letter word for a particular type of spy, such as Bill Haydon or one of the principals in The Wind in the Willows (suspected of providing confidential information to the ferrets and stoats).

27a Not outside, dressed in old clothes – it’s wet (5)
A two-letter word for ‘not outside’ is contained by (‘dressed in’) a word of many meanings, the fourth one given by Chambers – shown as ‘obsolete’ , hence the ‘old’ – being the one required here

32a End of sentence given in lawsuit – did that mean ‘nuff said’? (5)
The last letter (‘end’) of ‘sentence’ is contained by a familiar four-letter word for a lawsuit. This could produce another familiar word, but the answer here is quite the opposite. It is a spelling that appears in the First Quarto of King Lear (1608) – this, and two other hapax legomena (‘sese’, also in Lear, and ‘sessa’ in The Taming of the Shrew), have been treated by later editors (somewhat arbitrarily) as being the same word and all rendered as ‘sessa’, an interjection which could mean…well, whatever you’d like it to.

Down

1d Complex course: boats negotiated intervening space, a number separated out (12, 2 words)
An anagram (‘negotiated’) of BOATS is followed by a word for ‘intervening space’ (or the play between parts of a machine), from which the letter A (from the clue) and the usual single-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ have been separately omitted (‘a number separated out’). The answer is (8,4).

2d Nose inside cotton cloth endlessly smelling like Nanny? (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘[to] nose’ is contained by a word for a plain white cotton cloth (unless you are reading this in the US, where the foregoing should be read as ‘a brightly-colored printed cotton cloth’) missing its last letter (‘endlessly’). The final word of the clue has been deceptively capitalized to enhance the surface reading.

4d Sunken wreckage filled with silver jack brought up (5)
I once included ‘absolutely nothing’ in the wordplay of a clue to indicate FA and got a bit of flak from a solver who was offended by it. I hope the same solver didn’t attempt this puzzle, or they may have found that the sense in which Azed uses the word  ‘jack’ is not to their taste – a three-letter word meaning ‘nothing’ (‘jack’) containing (‘filled with’) the chemical symbol for silver is reversed (‘brought up’) in order to produce the answer.

5d Stunner – get a load of that – something to get Serbs dancing (4)
A 2+2 charade, the ‘stunner’ being a term that comes from the boxing ring and the ‘get a load of that’ being an archaic interjection.

6d Sheltered child? Medic’d turned up old-fashioned remedy (8)
A three-letter word meaning ‘sheltered’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘child’ are followed by the reversal (‘turned up’) of a two-letter abbreviation for a particular type of medic followed by apostrophe-D (the apostrophe, as is normal, being ignored in the answer).

7d Con man penning short letter for journalist (8)
I wonder if Azed failed to notice the ‘Aust inf’ against the headword in Chambers of which the answer here is a subhead – the clue should probably start ‘Aussie con man’ or similar. Anyway, a six-letter Australian informal term for a con man or spiv  contains (‘penning’) a two-letter abbreviation for the kind of letter to be found in the Bible.

8d Blush? Let off nasty mark (4)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘[to] blush’ (more familiar as a noun or an adjective) has the consecutive letters LET deleted (‘let off’).

18d Maybe FBI’s sent message in criminal dealings (8)
This is a neatly disguised anagram, where the “Maybe FBI’s” is there to indicate that the required spelling is an American one.

26d Bones creating endless racket in N. African pop (5)
A three-letter word for a racket is deprived of its last letter (‘endless’) and placed inside a term for ‘a modern, N African form of popular music, blending traditional Arabic and Spanish with Western dance rhythms’. It’s quite a recent coinage, of uncertain etymology, although it might derive from the dialect Arabic expression ‘ha er-ray’, literally ‘here is the view’ or “that’s the thinking”, which is frequently found in the songs. the lyrics whereof tend to deal with themes often considered taboo in Muslim society.

29d Treasurer cutting limits (British) for star group (4)
A six-letter word for a treasurer is stripped of its outer letters (‘cutting limits’), which just happen to constitute the usual two-letter abbreviation for ‘British’.

(definitions are underlined)