Notes for Azed 2,726

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 2,726 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

I thought that this one was definitely past the mid-point of the difficulty scale, and would have rated it higher still had it not been for a nagging feeing that my mental light bulb was a little on the dim side this morning. Some nice clues, though there did seem to be an awful lot of redundant words linking definition and wordplay or two wordplay elements, and a great many charades.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 10d, “Premature canine’s development (6)”. Not much going on here, with an anagram of CANINE producing a word which loosely equates to ‘premature’ (or ‘pre-mature’, at least). The question the clue poses, however, is whether “x’s development” is acceptable for an anagram of x. When we talk about ‘noun anagram indicators’, we are generally referring to the direct juxtaposition of a noun and the anagram fodder (which in the cryptic reading itself equates to a noun), eg ‘Eton mess’ for TONE. In the slip for comp 27, Azed wrote:

The most frequent fault, which spoilt many otherwise respectable entries this month, was the old one of indicating an anagram by means of a solitary noun. Thus many clues included the phrase ‘in grave trouble/mess/distress/pickle etc. to suggest an anagram of ‘in grave’. There is no grammatical or syntactical justification for this; ‘a grave pickle’ is not ‘a pickled grave’, toothsome though the idea may seem. The only instances where such a juxtaposition may fairly be said to indicate an anagram are phrases like ‘train crash’ or ‘gin cocktail’ which actually mean ‘a crashing train’ or ‘a mixed gin’ respectively.

In The A-Z of Crosswords, he adds, “I make it a personal rule to avoid noun anagram indicators at all times.” I think most barred puzzle setters would agree with him, and I would have been very surprised had today’s clue read “Premature canine development”. I would have had no problem at all with ‘development of canine’ here, but I am not convinced that ‘version of story’ (for, say, RYOTS) can be written as “story’s version”, and similarly I’m not too keen on “canine’s development” when what is meant is ‘development of canine’.

Note, though, that when the grammatical context allows, what might appear at first sight to be a noun anagram indicator may, in fact, be an imperative verb. So ‘Jumble sale in meadows’ is fine for LEAS. 

Across

1a Succulent cabbage stuffed with dried chilli pepper (9)
A four-letter variety of cabbage with open curled leaves, often described by the adjective ‘curly’, contains (‘stuffed with’) the name for a type of dried chilli pepper used in Mexican cookery, which is not in earlier editions of Chambers and which constitutes the first five letters of a salty little fish that I will put on any pizza whatsoever given the opportunity.

12a School finals, rather a filler? (6)
A charade of a (1,3) expression meaning ‘rather’ or ‘somewhat’ and one of those interjections used by hesitant speakers to fill gaps.

14a Amazonian monkey found on island (4)
A crafty segue between definition and wordplay in this charade where a three-letter ‘monkey’ of the pile-driving kind (a transferred sense from the original and more familiar meaning of ‘ram’) is followed by (‘found on’) the usual abbreviation for ‘island’.

15a Roman chariots, grand, of an appropriate age (5)
This charade has a three-letter word for ‘grand’ being followed by a two-letter abbreviation of the Latin (hence ‘appropriate’, referring to the ‘Roman’ in the definition) word meaning ‘of age (so many years)’.

17a Witch or priest assimilating the ego (5)
Here we have a four-letter Tibetan priest or monk taking in (‘assimilating’) a single-letter word representing the ego. The answer is a word for a witch, or a monster supposed to have the body of a woman, and to prey upon human beings and suck the blood of children.

18a Typical of mermaid in South Pacific (7)
A neat charade of the usual abbreviation for ‘South’ and a word meaning ‘pacific’ (without the capital). I wondered briefly about the definition, but a quick look at the Chambers entry for the five-letter noun from which the answer is derived served to allay any unease on my part. 

23a Lively dances? Further attempt is past (7)
Yet another charade, a four-letter word for a further attempt (probably more familiar in the verbal form, meaning ‘to attempt again’) and the equivalent of ‘is’ in the past tense (‘is past’).

31a Sudanese possibly in love, reverse of forward (5)
A three-letter word for ‘love’ as Jack Draper knows it is followed by a reversal of an adverb (but not an interjection) meaning ‘forward’.

32a Coffee maker, no longer brisk (4)
Long before the days of George Clooney, we had magical devices that used to make a range of loud bubbling noises and produce pretty ordinary coffee. The four-letter informal term given to one of these devices satisfies the first part of this double definition clue. The second meaning is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’ (hence the ‘no longer’), and the word is usually now seen only as a verb, compounded with ‘up’.

33a Jock’s bound to hold and be steadfast as once (7)
A Scottish word for a ‘bound or great stride’ contains (‘to hold’) the letters AND (from the clue), the result being a Spenserian infinitive form of a familiar verb.

34a Scottish Charley, left drooping locally (6)
One further charade, involving the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ and a Scots (‘locally’) word for ‘drooping’ (also spelt on occasion with an O or a U in position two), produces a Scottish word for a fox. In the nineteenth century, the name ‘Charley’ was sometimes given to a fox, after the politician Charles James Fox. In Tom Brown’s School-Days, Thomas Hughes writes of “A nice little gorse or spinney where abideth poor Charley, having no other cover to which to betake himself for miles and miles.”

35a Longing to return east in grip of craving, jealous (9)
The reversal of a three-letter ‘longing’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘east’ are contained by a word for ‘craving’. The solution is hyphenated, 5-4.

Down

1d SI unit, kelvin? Almost in any circumstances (5)
The abbreviation for ‘kelvin’ is followed by a (2,3) expression meaning ‘in any circumstances’ (typically used with a negative, as in “I don’t eat baked beans under any circumstances”) from which the last letter has been removed (‘almost’).

2d E. African patriarch, one clad in goat’s hair (5)
A two-letter dialect pronoun meaning ‘one’ is contained by (‘clad in’) a term for a Syrian cloth of goat or camel hair. This term doesn’t mean “goat’s hair”, but if you were wearing such a garment you could well be “clad in goat’s hair”; I think that a question mark at the end of the clue would have been nice.

4d Everyone basking perhaps turned up in Indian streams (6)
Just as ‘having retired’ often has to be pre-processed into ‘in BED’, here ‘basking’ needs to be translated into a similar (2,3) expression which is then applied to a three-letter word meaning ‘everyone’, prior to the whole lot being reversed (‘turned up’).

11d Flight from France for somewhere else to the east thereof (6)
A double definition clue where the second definition references the first, and is equivalent to ‘somewhere to the east of France’. The ‘flight’ leads to one of many spellings given by Chambers, all derived from old French, for a term applied to a group of steps.

19d Wee one’s Xmas present, parts of it missing? He’ll go through it (6)
In this one, it is the definition which references the wordplay – the letters of IT (not consecutive, but in the right order) are removed from a (5,3) term for a Christmas present that could be given by a big yin to a ‘wee one’, although it might be the former that’s hoping to play with it. The ‘he’ in the definition is a ‘wee one’, ie a small Scottish person.

22d I’ll be induced by free entry for cabaret (6)
The letter I from the clue is to be put inside an anagram (‘free’) of ENTRY. Chambers shows the ‘bring in’ sense of ‘induce’ as obsolete, so I’m not too keen on it here.

24d With which Paddy bemoans being single around house (5)
A three-letter word for ‘single’ contains a two-letter abbreviation for ‘house’, the result being an Irish or Highland Scottish interjection expressing lamentation.

25d A portion of strawberry ice cream, teatime treat? (5)
The first letter (‘portion’, which for my money could equally well indicate any part of the word) of ‘strawberry’ is followed by the alternative to a tub.

27d Ancient prayer from Galloway etc incorporating religious teaching (5)
‘Galloway etc’ here leads to a three-letter Scots word for ‘cows’, into which one of the two possible abbreviations for the religious teaching carried out in schools is inserted. 

30d Formless basis for braided material (4)
An eight-letter word for a basis has the consecutive letters FORM removed (‘formless’) to produce a term for braided material that is likely to be more familiar when the letter I is included.

(definitions are underlined)