{"id":3371,"date":"2023-01-22T13:21:23","date_gmt":"2023-01-22T13:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/?p=3371"},"modified":"2023-02-05T13:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T13:03:52","slug":"notes-for-azed-2640","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/22\/notes-for-azed-2640\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for Azed 2,640"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Azed 2,640 Plain<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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Difficulty rating: \"3 (3 \/ 5)\r\n

I thought this one was of significantly above average difficulty – no particularly tough clues, perhaps, but quite a few that required teasing out.<\/p>\r\n

Setters’ Corner<\/em><\/strong>: This week I’m going to look at clue 10d, “Be subjected to officer commanding rude men being drilled (9, 2 words)”. Nothing too tricky about this clue, the wordplay involving a two-letter abbreviation for Commanding Officer followed by an anagram of RUDE MEN, but the point of interest here is the definition. The answer is a phrasal verb which can only be used in a transitive sense, just like many others such as ‘get over’ – you have to get over something<\/em>, you can’t just ‘get over’. It might at first glance appear that ‘be subjected’ would serve as an acceptable definition, but this cannot take an object – in order to adequately define the solution, ‘be subjected to<\/em>‘ is required. There is a very easy test when you are setting puzzles, which involves substituting your proposed definition for the answer in a meaningful sentence. Is ‘gave preference’ a valid definition of ‘favoured’? Try replacing ‘favoured’ in “He favoured his younger son” with ‘gave preference’ and you will readily find out.<\/p>\r\n

Across<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

2a<\/strong> Ultimate in rank assuming first place, a shocker<\/span> (4)<\/span>
The wordplay here requires the solver to move the last letter (‘ultimate’) of a (loose) synonym for ‘rank’ to the start (‘assuming first place’). You might think of ‘rank’ in this sense referring to a particular location, but Chambers confirms that it can also describe the vehicles that are waiting there.<\/p>\r\n

12a<\/strong> Edible fish<\/span>, maigre churning mud with rain (10)<\/span>
A three-letter word for the maigre (a large Mediterranean food-fish), and also a place where you might get a drink, is followed by an anagram (‘churning’) of MUD and RAIN.<\/p>\r\n

17a<\/strong> Like some windows<\/span>, crumbled, one on inside (9)<\/span>
Like me, you may well get this one from the definition rather than the wordplay, which has the Roman numeral for ‘one’ and ON (from the clue) inside a word meaning ‘crumbled’.<\/p>\r\n

18a<\/strong> Piece of parchment, variable length? Old one<\/span> (4)<\/span>
The first letter (‘piece’) of ‘parchment’ plus a three-letter word for a variable measure of length (probably most often seen in the expression “give him an inch and he’ll take an ???”) produces an obsolete (hence the ‘old’) term for a roll of parchment (the ‘one’ referring back to the ‘piece of parchment’ in the wordplay).<\/p>\r\n

23a<\/strong> Mother recalled a Spanish broom, for instance<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A five-letter word for ‘mother’, as used by ancient Romans and boys at public schools, is reversed (‘recalled’) and gets an A (from the clue) tacked on the end, yielding ‘a name for various desert switch-plants, either papilionaceous or caesalpiniaceous [fine words both], including Spanish broom.”<\/p>\r\n

24a<\/strong> Like RNVR<\/span>, open to attacks fended off (4)<\/span>
A ten-letter word meaning ‘open to attacks’ has the consecutive letters FENDED removed (‘fended off’). The Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) is known as the ‘Wavy Navy’ on account of the rank stripes (rings) on officers sleeves being wavy rather than straight; the answer here is strictly speaking solely a heraldic term, but I think the definition is perfectly fair.<\/p>\r\n

28a<\/strong> E. Anglian birds<\/span> fiddle with wings over the Atlantic (7)<\/span>
A charade of a four-letter word for a fiddle (of the dishonest kind) and a three-letter word from ‘across the Pond’ for a wing of a building which gives the overall structure a specific shape when viewed from above. The answer is a Shakespearean hapax legomenon<\/em>, found in The Tempest<\/em>, where Caliban says:<\/p>\r\n

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I’ll bring thee
To clustering filberts and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young ??????? from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

It has been suggested that this is a Norfolk name for the bar-tailed godwit, although there appears to be little evidence to support this (and how, you might ask, would Shakespeare have known the term). It could supposedly also be a misprint for ‘staniel’, a kestrel. I would have thought that ‘sea-mell’ (a sea mew or a seagull) was an equally likely candidate, and at least one ‘translation’ of the play into modern English gives “I’ll catch seagulls for you on the rocks.”<\/p>\r\n

31a<\/strong> Severe colic<\/span> suffered in the trenches in places<\/span> (6)<\/span>
I got this one from the first of the two definitions, a complaint which I associate with a particular sort of water administered to infants in order to relieve its symptoms. It is also a dialect (hence the ‘local’) version of a word for a small ditch. The restorative water was invented in 1851 by William Woodward and initially marketed with the slogan “Granny told Mother and Mother told me.” Prior to the removal of alcohol (3.6%) from the recipe, Woodward’s maximum recommended dose of the stuff contained an alcohol content equivalent to five tots of whisky for an 80kg adult. It was only in 1992 that Britain mandated that alcohol be removed from the product, which I imagine gave boozy ankle-biters a cause to, er, complain.<\/p>\r\n

Down<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

1d<\/strong> Contest among varied rose beds made flat in a way<\/span> (12)<\/span>
A four-letter informal word for a contest (only in more recent editions of Chambers, but a contraction that has been in common use for many years) is contained by an anagram (‘varied’) of ROSE BEDS, the solution being a botanical term meaning ‘flattened from front to back.’<\/p>\r\n

3d<\/strong> Police officer that’s lost her leg<\/span> (4)<\/span>
A seven-letter slang term for a police officer (dating back to the nineteenth century) has the consecutive letters HER omitted (“that’s lost her”) in order to produce the leg.<\/p>\r\n

7d<\/strong> Large salmon<\/span> tavern served in country spot (7)<\/span>
The usual three-letter cruciverbal synonym for ‘tavern’ is contained by a dialect word for a pimple (ie ‘country spot’), the result being a name for the king-salmon as well as the Californian, Columbian, or Chinook salmon of the North Pacific coast.<\/p>\r\n

8d<\/strong> One interested in lumber once<\/span>, grubby, but not if old (5)<\/span>
The wordplay here involves a familiar seven-letter word meaning ‘grubby’ having an archaic form of ‘if’ removed (‘not if old’). The definition hinges on the archaic slang sense of ‘lumber’ (see lumber4<\/sup> in Chambers), ‘pawn’, as in the shop with the balls outside…<\/p>\r\n

9d<\/strong> Stale pud<\/span>, still turning up, I swallowed (5)<\/span>
…and the definition in this one refers to pud2<\/sup> in Chambers, a paw, fist or hand. A word meaning ‘still’ (or ‘yet’) is reversed (‘turning up’) around the letter I (‘I swallowed’), producing an archaic word for a fist. This clue is ambiguous, since that ‘I’ could potentially slot into the second or third position, thus making alternative spellings of this word, but to fit with the crossers it must go into position 2.<\/p>\r\n

15d<\/strong> Tea-time treat<\/span> – creating intense shudder for Spooner? (9)<\/span>
Azed uses Spoonerisms sparingly, but here we have a small, heart-shaped (5-4) delicacy containing currants that the reverend gentleman might have turned into a sharp tremor.<\/p>\r\n

21d<\/strong> See one former Persian ruler leaving university in his royal headgear?<\/span> (7)<\/span>
The letter of the alphabet with the name ‘see’ is followed by the Roman numeral for ‘one’ and the name of a ruler of Persia from which the usual single-character abbreviation for ‘university’ has been omitted (‘leaving university’). There were three of these chaps, but the most famous is the first of them, accorded the epithet ‘the Great’, who ruled the Persian empire from 522BC to 486BC.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

25d<\/strong> Outdated unit<\/span> not fit for purpose in fuel (5)<\/span>
\u00a0A two-letter abbreviation for ‘unserviceable’ (‘not fit for purpose’) is contained by a word for a fuel (or indeed various broadly similar fuels) in common use. Whether the unit is ‘outdated’ is perhaps open to question, but it does belong to the CGS (centimetre-gram-second) system, which has largely yielded to SI (the International System of Units), wherein the tesla fulfils a similar role.<\/p>\r\n

(definitions are underlined<\/span>)<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/span> Post Views:<\/span> 994<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A plain puzzle which is quite tricky in places<\/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-3371","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},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371","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=3371"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3380,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions\/3380"}],"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=3371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}