Notes for Azed 2,777

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 2,777 Plain

My difficulty rating: (2 / 5)

This puzzle can be found at https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.AZED.20260301.pdf

A pleasant enough diversion, though I struggled to make much sense of quite a few of the surface readings. The wordplay for 7a is faulty, and the definition at 23a should have an ‘antique’ qualifier, since the required spelling is given by Chambers as ‘obsolete’.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 11a, “Expert creating flaw (5)”. A double definition clue, the first definition leading to an adjective and the second to a noun, which raises two questions around this type of clue. Firstly, since both definitions appear under the same headword in Chambers, does that invalidate, or alternatively devalue, the clue? The clue would only be invalidated if either the two meanings were so close as to be nearly indistinguishable, or if there was another word which satisfied both definitions. In an ideal double definition clue, (i) the definitions lead to different headwords in Chambers and (ii) there is at least one difference in parts of speech between the surface reading and the defined answers. This clue doesn’t pass the first test, but it does score on the second count (through ‘expert’), so it’s not bad as double definitions go.

Secondly, is the link word ‘creating’ appropriate? If the wordplay involves assembly of the answer, the link ‘creating’ in the direction of the definition seems absolutely fine. If the wordplay is a definition of a word which shares the same letters with a different headword in Chambers, I think you could make an argument for its validity. But when the two definitions lead to the same word, I don’t think it’s acceptable – something can’t ‘create’ itself, it already is itself.

Across

7a Swells kicked the bucket after end of celebration (4)
A two-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘died’ follows the last letter (‘end’) of ‘celebration’, the result being…a three-letter word for a swell (singular). Adding the S to make the plural is seemingly, as they say, left to the solver as an exercise. Could the three-letter abbreviation for ‘obsolete’ be a possibility? In a word, no.

12a Jazz type making poet dance switching parts (7, 2 words)
A four-letter word for a poet (in particular, Hamnet’s dad) and a three-letter word for a dance (such as Danny & the Juniors were at in 1957) exchange their first letters (‘switching parts’) to produce the (4,3) answer.

20a Ballot-box information twice yielding names to press (4)
Three-letter words for a ballot box (or a tea dispenser) and for information (something of a crossword staple) each give up (‘yielding’) the usual abbreviation for ‘name’.

22a Indicating port side, outer bits cut from whale bone (4)
A six-letter word for whalebone loses its first and last letters (‘outer bits cut’). Although the general nature of the definition leaves no doubt about the intended answer, I don’t believe that it’s accurate.

25a Dance round baron, brave one in activity involving boxers? (9)
A four-letter dance containing (’round’) the single-letter abbreviation for ‘Baron’ is followed by a four-letter word figuratively used to describe a person of exceptional courage. Azed has been naughty here, using ‘boxers’ instead of ‘Boxers’ for the cryptic reading, despite repeatedly expressing his objection to this practice. In the Slip for comp 1,190, he wrote, “I have always maintained – and here again I follow the Ximenean line – that it is permissible to give a capital initial to a non-proper noun anywhere in a clue if it suits one’s purpose (e.g. to make it appear as if it were a name), but that it is not permissible to reduce a normal initial capital letter to lower case for similar reasons. The former seems to me (just) fair; the latter strikes me as unfairly misleading.”

33a Digger on ship a short distance from India (4)
There are several short words of Maori origin which form part of the setter’s core vocabulary. One of these is ‘pa’, a fort or settlement, and another is the two-letter ‘digging stick’ here (for which ‘digger’ seems barely adequate). It is followed by the usual two-letter abbreviation suggested by ‘ship’, the result being one spelling of an Indian measure of distance ‘averaging 1¾ miles’ (how that works, I have no idea).

34a Fish twice interspersed with English marine slug (8, 2 words)
A familiar six-letter fish has the usual abbreviation for ‘English’ inserted twice, between different pairs of letters. The (3,5) nudibranch with a ‘warty yellowish body ‘ looks just about as tasty as it sounds.

Down

4d Crack that’s devoid of extremes? It was a mild oath (4)
A six-letter word for the sort of thing one might do to a cipher in order to reveal a hidden message is stripped of its first and last letters (‘devoid of extremes’). The answer is shown by Chambers as ‘archaic’, something which is not explicitly stated in the definition but is implied by the use of ‘It was’.

5d Ticked off flower without tincture? (4)
A six-letter flower of the showy kind surrenders (‘without’) the two-letter heraldic ‘tincture’ which will be familiar to all hardened solvers.

8d Passing remark, one taking effect in blame around court (12, 2 words)
A five-letter word for something that takes effect (the agent noun from a common four-letter verb also meaning ‘eat into’) and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘court’ are separately contained by a five-letter word for ‘hatred’ or ‘blame’. The answer is a (6,6) Latin phrase.

14d Old vessels? One experienced in military service in Spanish parliament (9)
A three-letter North American term for a former member of the armed forces is contained by the six-letter name given to the Spanish parliament, which was also the surname of the Spanish conquistador responsible for the fall of the Aztec empire. What better cue for Neil Young fans to give the Zuma album a well-deserved spin?

17d Electrician consumes rotten matter, ay lost, in temporary part of vessel (8, 2 words)
A five-letter informal word for an electrician (by analogy with which a carpenter should be called a ‘chip’) contains (‘consumes’) a five-letter word for rotten matter (as in a decomposing tooth) from which the consecutive letters AY (from the clue) have been removed (‘lost’). The answer is (4,4).

19d Tramp perished in wartime service (4)
The two-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘died’ (last seen in 7a) is contained by the abbreviation for ‘hostilities only’ – this is less a ‘wartime service’ and more a classification relating to particular ratings in the Royal Navy.

21d Sound made by Scotsman, exceedingly jolly (7)
A homophone for (‘sound made by’) a four-letter name stereotypically given to a Scotsman and a (2-2) informal expression meaning ‘extremely’ lead to the musical term which forms the answer.

28d Try on old-fashioned skirt (4)
A two-letter word for a try or an attempt is followed by the ubiquitous piece of commercial jargon for ‘concerning’ often indicated in crosswords using ‘on’ or ‘about’.

(definitions are underlined)