\r\n\r\n<\/strong><\/p>\r\n Difficulty rating: Nothing too challenging in this puzzle, but at the same time not a single ‘hidden’, so overall I’d place this pretty much in the middle of the difficulty spectrum for plain Azed puzzles (if you were wondering, I would give a really tough ‘plain’ a difficulty rating of 5; higher ratings are reserved for the harder specials). I thought this puzzle showed Azed on fine form, with a good variety of clue types and plenty of playfulness.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n 12a<\/strong>\u00a0Measures, once artist has knocked back his last two (6)<\/span> \r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n 13a<\/strong>\u00a0Officer briefly interrupting enemy wave as of old (5)<\/span> 16a<\/strong>\u00a0Bring round cages i.e. in Germany for kestrel (9)<\/span> 20a<\/strong>\u00a0Sauce coming in a river? The opposite – single lump perhaps (4)<\/span> 29a<\/strong>\u00a0Who’s ticked off about a bit of lying? (5)<\/span> 33a<\/strong>\u00a0Prospect for Scots assured – English missed out twice (4)<\/span> 7d<\/strong>\u00a0Deerhound? Not crazy about matted fur, unkempt (6)<\/span> 8d<\/strong>\u00a0Lowly freeman, boss of company hands? (5)<\/span> 17a<\/strong>\u00a0Tabby cat, legs going in rear mostly (8)<\/span> 24a<\/strong>\u00a0Bully for you, making tons of gold!(6)<\/span> 25a<\/strong>\u00a0Weight reduced, one is going in here? (5)<\/span> 28a<\/strong>\u00a0Il Trovatore<\/em>, to whit singular opera (4)<\/span> <\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We pick out points of interest from the weekly Azed puzzles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azednotes"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"3](\"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/universal-star-rating\/includes\/image.php?img=cSquares.png&px=12&max=10&rat=3&folder=cusri\")
(3 \/ 10)\r\n
The definition here is ‘Measures, once’, and the wordplay involves a CUBIST (‘artist’) getting the closing pair of letters reversed (‘has knocked back his last two’). I’m not sure that the syntax of the wordplay stands up to close scrutiny, so I’m going to look away now.<\/p>\r\n
I was surprised that Azed gave no indication that the letters LT (‘Officer briefly’, ie lieutenant) were to be separated prior to insertion into (‘interrupting’) FOE (‘enemy’). I would have expected something more along the lines of ‘In short, officer regularly interrupting…’<\/p>\r\n
The abbreviation DH (das heisst, ‘i.e. in Germany’) sometimes comes in handy for setters, as here where it is ‘caged’ by WIN OVER in a neat clue for the name of a bird that, in the words of Gerald Manley Hopkins, ‘rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing’.<\/p>\r\n
Rather than HP (‘sauce’) coming in EA (‘a river’), the latter is contained by the former.<\/p>\r\n
A nice, if unspectacular, &lit. The candidate for castigation is formed by placing CHID (‘ticked off’) around (‘about’) L (‘a bit of lying’).<\/p>\r\n
SECURE (‘assured’) with both Es removed (‘English missed out twice’),the whole being a Scottish verb meaning to scour or search.<\/p>\r\n
The wordplay here indicates an anagram (‘unkempt’) of MATTED, without the outer letters MA…D (‘not crazy about’), together with FUR.<\/p>\r\n
The ‘boss of company’ is the Chief Executive Officer, and the ‘hands’ are R and L (right and left).<\/p>\r\n
PINS (‘legs’) in STER(n) (‘rear mostly’), but the interest for me here was the definition – I can’t remember ever seeing ‘tabby cat’ used to describe an old maid, although since it’s the sort of term that would appeal to Azed I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it had appeared before.<\/p>\r\n
A fanciful definition here, ‘Bully’ being used to suggest ‘like a bull’. The only indication of whimsy is the exclamation mark, although that is as far distant from the definition as it could be without placing it after the enumeration.<\/p>\r\n
Another &lit, A IS (‘one is’) going in WT (‘Weight reduced’, ie an abbreviation of weight) to identify an area where one who’s weight has reduced might now be ‘going in’ (rather than out!)<\/p>\r\n
A crisp little clue to end with, SC (scilicet, ‘to whit’)\u00a0 plus OP (opus, the singular of opera), the whole being an Anglo-Saxon troubadour.<\/p>\r\n