Notes for Azed 2,782

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 2,782 Plain

My difficulty rating: (3 / 5)

This puzzle can be found at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/5c7f8c92-9ce8-4a1e-a1d9-770489bf424a/file/puzzle.pdf

This was one of the trickiest Azeds in recent times, with a range of clues which encompassed the faulty (10a, 13d) and the downright strange (17d). The solve was not unenjoyable, but the puzzle will not linger long in my memory, lacking as it did the wit which permeated Azed’s crosswords during his heyday. The same vessel being shared by the wordplays for 15a and 15d was rather disappointing.

PS Don’t forget to take a look at this month’s Digest to get the latest news from the Clinic – and to register your opinion in the latest poll. We’ve had very little feedback so far on the Digest (good or bad!), but we hope that you have found it to be a worthwhile addition to the site.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 23d, “Meat maybe about noon, dark red in colour (5)”. The wordplay has a four-letter meat containing (‘about’) a single-letter abbreviation for ‘noon’. The point of interest here is the ‘maybe’ which qualifies ‘meat’.

The ‘definition by example’ (DBE) is not always easy to identify: the classic example relates to dogs, with ‘dog’ being a perfectly acceptable definition of COLLIE, but ‘collie’ alone not being adequate to indicate DOG, since a collie is just one example of a breed of dog. Hence ‘collie, perhaps’ or ‘collie?’ is required.

The rule is based on a hierarchy of classes – dogs belongs to the class ‘animals’, so ‘animal’ can indicate DOG, but not vice versa, and collies belong to the class ‘dogs Often the situation is less clear – ‘book’ is clearly valid for TOME, but does ‘tome’ alone legitimately indicate BOOK? And is ‘pet’ sufficient for DOG? The general rule for setters is ‘if in doubt, treat it as a DBE and qualify the definition accordingly’. But back to today’s clue: ‘pork’ is clearly a member of the ‘meats’ class, and so is the word here. This means that the ‘maybe’ is unnecessary; worse than that, it is misleading – ‘meat’ is fine for PORK, and ‘pork maybe’ for MEAT, but ‘meat maybe’ doesn’t work for PORK.

Across

10a Entangle a quill mostly damaged and mostly corroded (10)
An anagram (‘damaged’) of A QUILL is followed by a five-letter word for ‘corroded’ missing its last letter (‘mostly’). What about that first ‘mostly’? It should be ignored, completely. Note: as correspondent Steve has pointed out, in the print version of The Observer the clue begins “Entangle a quill damaged…” and is therefore sound.

14a Mineral, 3-pin plugged (8)
An anagram (‘plugged’) of 3-PIN with the numeral first converted into the corresponding word. I’ve not seen ‘plugged’ used as an anagram indicator before, and it doesn’t feel quite right – Chambers gives ‘plug’ as ‘to shoot’ or ‘to punch with the fist’, but I’m not convinced that either suggests rearrangement.

15a Large vessel going round sea (not river), immense tract (4)
A three-letter ‘large vessel’ contains (‘going round’) the word SEA (from the clue) without the two-letter dialect word for a river often seen flowing through barred puzzles (ie ‘not river’). The ‘large’ at the start of the clue could, technically speaking, be a second definition, but while it and the definition at the end lead to different parts of speech they are still far too similar for this to be a realistic possibility.

20a Recurrent refrain – see second note before favourite finish (8)
The second note of the Julie Andrews scale is followed by a three-letter favourite and a three-letter finish (noun or verb, take your pick).

25a A bit of a kip, diffident, I’ve abandoned? Unsuccessful criminal effort (8)
The once ubiquitous ‘bit of a kip’ makes what I hope might be its farewell appearance in this wordplay where the two-letter Laotian monetary unit in question precedes a nine-letter word for ‘diffident’ from which the consecutive letters IVE have been removed (“I’ve abandoned”).  The answer is surprisingly not given as ‘obsolete’ by Chambers, nor is the (relatively) more common spelling with an ‘e’ on the end shown. You may recall that Sir Francis Bacon wrote in The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, “The King saith, That sure he is, when the French King, and himself sent to the Subjects of Scotland (that had taken Arms against their King) they both spake in another Stile, and did in Princely manner signifie their detestation of Popular ????????es, upon the Person or Authority of Princes.” Or you may not.

27a Ferny scales chaps cut into NZ tree (7)
The word for ‘chaps’ that yields the three letters at the heart of the answer will be familiar to all solvers, but the name of the NZ tree that it ‘cuts into’ may not be – its four letters are frequently seen following PRO in a (3,4) phrase meaning ‘in proportion’.

28a Style of jacket, male, kept in vessel coming back (5)
A two-letter ‘male’ is contained by (‘kept in’) a three-letter vessel (often associated with tea) and the whole lot reversed. There is no indication given in the instructions for the puzzle that this answer, and indeed the one at 31a, are not in Chambers. The entry here is a proper noun, and had it been indicated by ‘first Indian PM’ or the like no further guidance for solvers would have been required; but because the definition relates not to the person but to a particular style of jacket, either the compound needs to be in Chambers or the solver needs to be told where it can be found (it’s in the OED). Similar considerations would apply to ‘Eton’, but since ‘Eton jacket’ is in Chambers there would be no need for any special note.

30a Foreign sparrow that is lost in boggy ground (4)
Here there is an invisicomma between ‘sparrow’ and ‘that’ (compare with 25a, where the required comma between ‘diffident’ and “I’ve” is present). The usual two-letter Latin abbreviation for ‘that is’ is lost from a six-letter word for ‘a common S African sparrow, Passer melanurus‘, the result being a term for boggy ground or soil.

Down

1d Dislodge family avoiding clown (4)
A three-letter word for ‘family’ is omitted from (‘avoiding’) a word for a clown or a clumsy rustic, often seen following the word ‘country’.

2d Work with rubber, reverse of ideal, in Covent Garden stuff? (10, 2 words)
The two-letter abbreviation of the Latin word for ‘work’ precedes a six-letter word for a rubber and a reversal of an adjective meaning ‘in excellent condition’ (‘ideal’). The answer is (5,5) and has nothing to do with fruit and veg.

5d China grass is leaning in cocked hat (8)
A charade of the four-letter word for the plant of the nettle family also known as China grass and a four-letter word meaning ‘is leaning’ or ‘reclines’ produces a word which some of us will no doubt associate with Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, and which (with a slightly different spelling) was the competition word in Azed 419, the winning entry being Sir Christopher Morse’s splendid “Marlborough’s second crusher in conclusive quartet of victories (9)”.

6d Bullrush in spa cut from flattened spoon (4)
A seven-letter word for a sort of flattened spoon has the consecutive letters SPA removed (‘cut’) to produce the answer, but the last letter of the utensil is not the one that would initially come to mind.

9d Such as Circe, inane and curt within similarly truncated (8)
A five-letter word meaning ‘inane’ missing its last letter (‘truncated’, implied) is to be put inside another word of the same length meaning ‘curt’, likewise deprived of its last letter (‘similarly truncated’). The definition needs to be read as ‘[those] such as Circe’. The online version of the clue suggests that the ‘inane’ word has the ‘curt’ word within, but in the print version ‘inane’ and ‘curt’ are the other way round and thus the wordplay leads correctly to the solution.

13d One aunt, uncommon, I’ll follow, as the case indicates (10, 3 words)
Those who had problems arriving at the (1,6,3) answer to 7d in last week’s Gemelo shouldn’t have the same difficulties here, given that the combination of A (from the clue), an unindicated anagram of AUNT, a four-letter word meaning ‘uncommon’ and the Roman numeral representing ‘one’ results in the same phrase.

15d Hellebore plant HM placed in vessel, unusual (8)
The cipher of Queen Elizabeth (‘HM’) is placed inside the same vessel seen at 15a and a three-letter word meaning ‘unusual’. The word ‘plant’ seems superfluous, even unwelcome.

16d Grig found in lock, bare maybe (8)
Chambers will readily cough up the three-letter word answering to ‘grig’ which is contained by a five-letter ‘lock’. This is one of those situations where the requirement for a qualifier such as ‘maybe’ is unclear, and its inclusion is certainly not wrong.

25d Gradual decline, first to last, again (4)
A four-letter word for a gradual decline (particularly of the lunar kind) has its first letter moved to the end (‘first to last’).

(definitions are underlined)