Notes for Azed 2,743

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 2,743 Plain

Difficulty rating: (3.5 / 5)

I felt that this one was comfortably above the mean difficulty level. Yes, there were a few easy ones (as always), but there were also plenty of obscure solutions, and some tricky wordplays. There were several clues that I marked as worthy of comment but which fell victim to the ‘whittling down’ process – if there are any other clues that you would like me to comment on, just let me know.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 24a, “Collects earth in county briefly (5)”, and 30a, “Lowland stream returns alongside lake (6)”. In the first of these, the usual abbreviation for ‘earth’ is put inside the abbreviated name of an English county, while in the second, an Indian word for a watercourse is reversed after the usual abbreviation for ‘lake’; the point of interest, though, is the definitions. In one of Victor Mollo’s splendid bridge books, the unfortunate player known as Papa is described as being so determined to false-card that he would do it even with a singleton. That level of skill may be beyond all but the most resourceful of crossword setters, but we can still aspire to misdirect solvers wherever we inhumanly can. When I look at an answer to be clued, my first thought is “How can I define this fairly but deviously?”, and I suspect that this owes a great deal to Azed. He is a master of the sly definition – there are plenty of examples in this puzzle, but 24a is a good one. Surely we are looking for a verb that means something along the lines of ‘gathers’? The surface reading clearly indicates that…but in a good clue the surface reading is there to send you down the wrong road. In fact, of course, we are looking for a plural noun. The other side of the coin is shown to stark effect in 30a, where the definition is not only ‘straight’, it is the English form of the Scots word which forms the answer, which seems not only somewhat weak but also ‘back to front’. This is a rare exception, though – Azed’s definitions in general are as good as they get.

Across

1a E. Asian business conglomerates, each crooked boor backed (8)
An anagram (‘crooked’) of EACH is followed by the reversal of a word for the sort of boor that might be associated with obesity.

11a Child about to take meal time – she may be assisting (9)
A four-letter word for a small child contains (‘about’) a four-letter word meaning ‘to take [a] meal’ and the usual abbreviation for ‘time’. The definition references the ‘wordplay part’ of the clue (my remarks in Setters’ Corner notwithstanding, you can’t always ignore the surface reading), and the result is a word that I don’t think I have ever come across before, either IRL or ICL (‘in crossword land’).

14a Material for a warm coat requiring money John put on? (6)
The ‘John’ who must be put after (‘on’) the usual abbreviation for ‘money’ is the the one who, until 7 January 1972, was Reggie Dwight from Pinner.

18a Shortened, delivering a cut with both hands possibly (6)
Technically, this could be described as an indirect anagram, since the fodder consists of A CUT together with the single-letter abbreviations for the two hands; the ‘delivering…possibly’ indicates the anagram.

20a Double kite? It’ll take some beating (6)
The wordplay involves the repetition of a word which is often indicated by ‘corporation’, but is here designated (deceptively, of course!) by a ‘Scot and N Eng’ word for the same thing.

23a Like a victim of Heracles, loveless one, malicious (6)
The word ‘one’ (from the clue) is deprived of the standard representation of ‘love’ (‘loveless’) and followed by a word meaning ‘malicious’. The reference in the definition is to a rather large feral cat with impenetrable golden fur and very sharp claws. Heracles (or Hercules, if you share the preference of the performer at 14a) managed to whack it over the head and strangle it (no RSPCA or Cats Protection in those days), and returned wearing its skin. This rather freaked King Eurystheus out, to the extent that he hid in a wine jar. Having emerged from the jar, and despite his commission having been successfully completed, he told Heracles in no uncertain terms that he was never to pull a stunt like that again; he went on to say that the feral cat was just by way of an appetizer, labour-wise, and that Heracles should expect to be given some much tougher tasks like fixing the Greek economy. 

32a Such as Priam, first among the royalty of Ilian capital (5)
It took me longer than it should have to spot that the wordplay simply required the selection of a series of initial letters, although in my defence I’m not sure that ‘first among’ is quite the same as ‘first letters of’.

33a Greeting of old one received in US mass? (5)
The wordplay has a single-letter word for ‘one’ being contained (‘received’) by an alternative spelling of an American word for a large number or amount, but the definition seems faulty, since Chambers only gives the answer as a verb. OED does give it as a noun, but an ‘obsolete rare’ one, the only example of its use being taken from c. 1430.

34a Millet ground through being coarse (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘ground’) of MILLET is followed by a word meaning ‘through’, the result being a (3,6) expression. Sometimes setters have to be a bit creative when trying to fit a definition into the surface reading. One trick is to replace a noun describing a quality (eg ‘kindness’) with the gerund ‘being’ plus an adjective (eg ‘being kind’); this sometimes looks a bit strange in clues, but it passes the substitution test  – ‘Kindness is always appreciated’ / ‘Being kind is always appreciated’. In the surface reading, ‘being’ can function as a present participle. The Chambers definition of ‘coarse’ offers enough possibilities to make it suitable for indicating pretty much any undesirable trait of character.

35a Large number of birds die clutching old claw (8)
A four-letter word for ‘die’, now used in a somewhat euphemistic sense, contains (‘clutching’) an obsolete word for a claw which is also a poetic word meaning ‘dry and withered’.

Down

1d MO’s reinvented operation, in being divided into parts, world-forming (12)
An anagram (‘reinvented’) of MO’S and a two-letter abbreviation for ‘operation’ are contained by (‘in’) a term from biology meaning ‘divided into parts’. This is one of those times when finding a devious definition is a bridge too far.

3d Means of travel describing crack (not the first)? (7)
An eight-letter adjective which describes a certain type of crack loses its first letter (‘not the first’) to produce a means of travel.

4d Water bottle, maybe, to aim for in sale? (5)
The wordplay leads to a (3,2) phrase which relates specifically to a sale by auction.

6d It’s activated by electromagnetic waves on leaving graduate college (5)
Oxonians will have a distinct advantage here, the ‘graduate college’ being on St Cross Road in Oxford (not far from the Physics and Chemistry labs, as it happens). Anyway, its seven-letter name has that two-letter bit of commercial jargon for ‘on’ or ‘concerning’ deleted (‘on leaving’) to produce the contracted term for an apparatus which can, indeed, be electromagnetically activated, but whose purpose is to encourage atomic particles to get a wiggle on.

7d Legman, 45, taken in by conman (8)
When Cornershop sang about being ‘brimful of Asha on the 45’, it was this sort of 45 to which they were referring (although probably a standard 45rpm single rather than its ‘extended play’ counterpart). The two-letter abbreviation is contained by a  term for a conman taken from the Australian vernacular but not flagged as such by Azed.

8d Trouble, often in Glasgow, raised sign of impatience locally about rector (5)
A four-letter ‘chiefly Scots’ version of an interjection of impatience or reproof, often encountered in English literature in its three-letter form, is reversed (‘raised’) around (‘about’) the usual abbreviation for ‘rector’.

10d Be still losing head and being fidgety (12)
The wordplay is a cunning charade of three four-letter words indicated by ‘be still’, ‘losing’ and ‘head’.

21d State with cheek in America is getting detached (7)
The ‘state’ here is the only one in the US that I have spent more than a few hours in, since I travelled a few times to Charlotte, North Carolina. Its two-letter abbreviation and a three-letter slang word for ‘cheek’ (“none of your ???”) are contained by the usual two-letter representation of ‘America”. Azed expresses surprise that the answer is not given by Chambers, but it doesn’t surprise me – there are many participle adjectives beginning with ‘un-‘ which have no corresponding active form (note that the past participle given by Chambers relates to being uncut rather than unfastened, hence the absence of the active voice). Another example would be ‘unclued’, a term often seen in the preambles of themed crosswords, which has no active version – you can’t ‘unclue’ an answer; similarly, you can’t (unless you are Shakespeare) ‘unspeak’ something. Or unemail it, unless you’re quick.

22d Slab in centre of Bury portraying estate holder (7)
The five-letter slab which is to be put inside the two middle letters (‘centre’) of ‘Bury’ is also the surname of French actress Béatrice, star of Betty Blue, who has something of a reputation for courting controversy. Hard to understand why, although she did say in a TV interview that when she used to work in a morgue with her friends they sold body parts of corpses, and, while on acid, they ate a dead man’s ear…

28d Lace trimmings cad cut for suits? (5)
An eight-letter word for lace trimmings has the consecutive letters CAD removed (‘cad cut’), producing a word for ‘suits’ in the legal sense.

(definitions are underlined)