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 you would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,784 Plain

My difficulty rating: (2.5 / 5)

This puzzle can be found at https://content-api.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/api/mobile/v1/puzzle-data/3c939e4c-f08b-48cc-a1bd-8a0ad299ff5d/file/puzzle.pdf

Most of the difficulty in this puzzle was to be found in the NW corner. As one of Azed’s biggest fans, I don’t want to be seen as carping month after month about the quality of the recent puzzles published under his name, so I will just say that I hope others enjoyed this one more than I did.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 36a, “Adolescent about staggerin’, like the avenue? (9)”. A three-letter word for ‘an unruly adolescent, originally in the 1950s, affecting a dandyish style of dress’ contains (‘about’) a seven-letter word meaning ‘staggering’, similarly deprived of its closing ‘g’, the result being a (4-5) adjective which describes many an avenue, particularly the sort leading to a grand house. The point of interest here is the use of ‘adolescent’ alone to indicate a very specific type of adolescent, and the question is whether it requires further qualification. When I have used that word in a clue, I have always defined it by something along the lines of ‘unruly adolescent’, and I feel that ‘adolescent’ on its own should lead to ‘teen’ or a similar term. But there’s no issue with, say, ‘dog’ being used for ‘spaniel’, so is that any different? Yes, I think it is – for most people, a spaniel is first and foremost a dog, and secondly a dog with particular characteristics; the defining features of the person here, though, are their behaviour and dress, just as the defining feature of an aviatrix is that they fly planes, although the term also tells us that they are female. “I have a spaniel” expands on “I have a dog”, but “My son is an adolescent” and “My son is a young hooligan who dresses up as a dandy” carry completely different messages. Similarly, I would say that ‘child’ was absolutely fine for ‘infant’ and just about ok for ‘trot’ (a toddling child), but inadequate for ‘pickle’ (a troublesome child).

Across

4a What may have been wielded by shipmen, right? (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘wielded’) of SHIPMEN and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘right’ produces the (6,3) answer, with the whole clue also standing as a loose indication of it. But I’m unconvinced about the anagram indicator, and the inclusion of a two-letter abbreviation in the fodder makes for an anagram which some might find a little too indirect for their liking.

11a Dandy/rake, right to left, neither first, in Gregorian cadence (6)
Four-letter words for a dandy and a rake (of the debauched rather than the garden kind) are deprived of their first letters (‘neither first’) and reversed (‘right to left’), yielding a word which is remarkably vowel-rich. I think the wordplay suggests that the two manipulations occur in the wrong sequence.

14a See wanton opening fantastic legs to writhe (8)
The letter of the alphabet with the name ‘see’ and a three-letter dialect word for a wanton person (which could also have been indicated by ‘equipment’) are contained by (‘opening’) an anagram (‘fantastic’) of LEGS.

15a Driver avoiding circling the majority of ridges (4)
This one is nicely constructed. An eight-letter word for a person who drives a car loses (‘avoiding’) a word meaning ‘the majority of’ from its outside (ie ‘circling’).

16a Declare singular turns relation left out (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘singular’ or ‘single’ is reversed (‘turns’) ahead of a five-letter family member missing the usual abbreviation for ‘left’ (‘left out’). Unfortunately, the cryptic grammar is faulty (‘turns’ needs to be ‘turning’), which makes me doubt whether Azed wrote this clue.

19a Fairy or tube worm? Not so (7)
A (4,5) term for a worm that makes its tube out of rounded grains of rock is missing the consecutive letters SO (‘not so’).

32a Measure luminous appearance, not gold (4)
A six-letter word for a luminous appearance (or a small body travelling through space) lacks the two-letter heraldic term for the tincture gold or yellow.

33a Run isn’t common in the sea (8)
An informal (‘common’) form of “isn’t” is contained by (‘in’) a four-letter word for the high sea (which may remind devotees of 1066 and All That of the Great Spanish Armadillo sent to ravish the shores of England on the pretext that Captain F. Drake had singed the King of Spain’s beard, also known as the Spanish Mane, although Drake protested that he was in his hammock at the time and a thousand miles away). The required sense of ‘run’ is something like ‘operate’.

Down

2d Distinctive character including meeting with no act before anger – quite the opposite (11, 2 words)
A four-letter word used figuratively to mean ‘distinctive character’, containing a seven-letter word meaning ‘meeting’ or ‘communication’ without the consecutive letters ACT (ie ‘with no act’), precedes a three-letter word for ‘anger’. The answer is (2,9).

3d Scalp disease? Iris’s head has present involving it (7)
The surname of Iris, the English-born biographer who spent most of her life in Italy, has its first letter (‘head’) enclosed by the two-letter abbreviation for ‘present’ (ie ‘has present involving it’).

5d Source of peat is removed from Jock’s dish (4)
The consecutive letters IS are removed from a delicacy particularly associated with Scotland (as you probably know, it is a small creature with shorter legs on one side than the other, so it can run round mountains, which is ritually slaughtered on Burns Night).

9d What’s a bit like roti – two halves thereof go for a little local cash (4)
If the letters in each half of the answer are rearranged they produce the name given to a former Indian coin.

10d Number in sets once forming holy place (7)
The two-letter abbreviation for ‘number’ is contained by an obsolete spelling (‘once’) of a familiar word for ‘sets’ or ‘sides’.

23d Veg sewn in recess, calm (7)
I’ve no idea what the surface reading here is meant to suggest, but a three-letter legume (‘veg’) is contained by the term for a semicircular or polygonal recess in a church. I’m starting to think that ‘sown’ was probably intended, but ‘sown’ so clearly suggests dissemination that I can’t see how ‘sown in’ would work as an insertion indicator. That said, ‘sewn in’ isn’t much better.

30d Runs short of century causing grief (4)
A five-letter word for the total number of runs achieved loses (‘short of’) the usual abbreviation for ‘century’.

31d Once in Scotland forebear becomes free of stress (4)
A ten-letter word for a (female) forebear sheds (‘becomes free of’) the consecutive letters STRESS. The definition didn’t need to be quite so helpful.

(definitions are underlined)