{"id":4087,"date":"2023-11-26T12:35:55","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T12:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/?p=4087"},"modified":"2023-12-10T12:17:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T12:17:37","slug":"notes-for-azed-2684","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/26\/notes-for-azed-2684\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for Azed 2,684"},"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 2,684 Plain<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

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

This puzzle, which struck me as being slightly above the middle of the difficulty range, contained considerably more than the usual number of clues with which I could take issue, albeit my gripes were for the most part minor (some might even say trivial). There were some very nice surface readings (eg 17a), along with one or two slightly disappointing ones (eg 27d)<\/p>\r\n

Setters’ Corner<\/em><\/strong>: This week I’m going to look at clue 18d, “Weather’s dull, penetrating wild lilac (8)”. A three-letter word for ‘dull’ is contained by (‘penetrating’) an anagram\u00a0 (‘wild’) of LILAC, producing an adjective listed without definition under the headword for a familiar noun. There are many adjectives like this, so setters are often called upon to come up with plausible definitions, and it can be very difficult to find one that can be worked into an interesting – or deceptive – clue. OED is rarely helpful, usually falling back on ‘of or pertaining to x’, where x is the relevant noun. So the uncontentious definition of, say, AORTAL (‘Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of, an aorta’), would be ‘of main blood vessel’. However, this is not very promising for the clue writer. Something like ‘of large vessel’ would offer more scope, but what about “large vessel’s”? Well, the apostrophe-s specifically indicates possession – ‘of the king’ and “the king’s” can mean exactly the same thing, and where we’re talking about something tangible (like an aorta), ‘of the aorta’ and “aorta’s” seem pretty similar. Because it is concrete, an aorta can have, for example, a width; however, when it comes to abstract nouns, that isn’t true – but an abstract noun can possess an abstract quality. ‘The fickleness of the English weather’ is the same as “the English weather’s fickleness”, and “x’s” in general is valid for any adjective with the meaning ‘of x’, which is good news for setters.<\/p>\r\n

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

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1a<\/strong> Males round Germany after greens getting bad indigestion<\/span> (13, 2 words)<\/span>
A five-letter word for the sort of males that might be seen rutting or partying is put round the three-letter abbreviation for ‘Germany’, with the combination following a five-letter word indicated by ‘greens’. The answer is a (5,8) disease of cattle caused by magnesium deficiency, likely to be\u00a0 familiar not just to cattle farmers but also to anyone who watched the original series of All Creatures Great and Small<\/em> and witnessed cows making a remarkable recovery after receiving a magnesium injection from Uncle Herriot.<\/em>\u00a0I was dubious about the ‘greens’, but, while there is nothing convincing in Chambers, OED gives a slang meaning of the five-letter word as ‘green vegetables’.<\/p>\r\n

12a<\/strong> Speed trap, one assumes, offering a bunch of tickets<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A combination of two three-letter words which might whimsically represent a ‘speed trap’ , or at least a trap for motor vehicles, results in the sort of ‘bunch of tickets’ (albeit now electronic) that one might purchase for travel on the Paris M\u00e9tro.<\/p>\r\n

16a<\/strong> Trotter<\/span>, crude fellow occupying centre of scene (7)<\/span>
A four-letter word for a country bumpkin or an uncouth fellow is contained by (‘occupying’) the three letters at the centre of SCENE. The bumpkin is shown by Chambers as being North American slang, and while including a geographical qualifier would have moved the scene of the surface reading closer to Only Doofuses and Mustangs<\/em> territory, I do think that one should be there.<\/p>\r\n

19a<\/strong> Versatile tool<\/span> spread variously to open rotating display stand (13, 2 words)<\/span>
An anagram (‘variously’) of SPREAD is to be inserted into (‘to open’) a seven-letter rotating display stand (for books or greetings cards in a shop, say), producing a (6,7) term for a\u00a0 tool that is fairly versatile, though no match for a Swiss Army Knife.<\/p>\r\n

23a<\/strong> Ripple<\/span> that\u2019s turned land surface as of old (4)<\/span>
Once again, we have a reversal clue where either element could be the one that needs to be ‘turned’ – it looks more likely to be the ripple, but actually it’s the Miltonian spelling of a word for ‘the surface of land matted with the roots of grass, etc’ which must be reversed to give us a word which can describe agitation on the surface of a liquid, but more commonly means ‘to worry’ or ‘to chafe’.<\/p>\r\n

25a<\/strong> Scoundrel<\/span> making woman throw up (6)<\/span>
Every so often, Azed uses ‘woman’ in a clue under the misapprehension that it can be abbreviated to W; in this instance, the clue could be made sound simply by replacing ‘woman’ with ‘women’, thus supplying the W which is followed by a word meaning ‘throw up’.<\/p>\r\n

28a<\/strong> Top-class star group earning ticks and suchlike<\/span> (7)<\/span>
A charade of the single letter indicating ‘top-class’ and the name\u00a0 of a constellation which was also a model of Toyota car lead to a term for an order of Arachnida which includes ticks and mites.<\/p>\r\n

31a<\/strong> One quoted as authority<\/span> giving famous sign including old cameo (7)<\/span>
The three-letter name for a sign made using the fingers contains (‘including’) an archaic word for a brooch (‘old cameo’) – a different word with the same spelling is often indicated by ‘that hurts’. The sign was made famous by Winston Churchill in the early 1940s and perhaps even more so by Harvey Smith in August 1971 when he won a second successive Hickstead Derby. As he later observed:<\/p>\r\n

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Basically, I had an argument with Douglas Bunn, the owner of Hickstead and one of the judges. I’d won the previous year and I was supposed to have brought back the trophy, but I left it at home. I said it didn’t matter because I’d only win it again. He reckoned I couldn’t. So I went and did it and when I did I turned to him and went: “Up yours.” Because of the incident they wouldn’t give me my \u00a32,000 prize money. But a solicitor wrote to me and said: “You won it, you fight for it.” And I thought, why not? It’s all part of life, isn’t it? It’s talking points. So I brought in photos of Winston Churchill doing the V-sign with his fingers facing both ways, to prove that I could have been showing a V for Victory. And that was it. I was never in trouble. Nothing happened. I got my prize money. Everybody was happy.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

32a<\/strong> Being gripped by pain as before granny must<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A three-letter pet name for a grandmother is ‘gripped’ by an old (‘as before’) three-letter spelling of a familiar four-letter word for a pain. Unfortunately, Chambers makes it clear that this is a variant spelling only of the verb; since this verb is intransitive, and the verb ‘pain’ is transitive, it can’t legitimately be indicated by ‘pain’.<\/p>\r\n

34a<\/strong> Heading from cover, kestrel flies in confusion<\/span> (13)<\/span>
A seven-letter word for ‘cover’, from which the first letter has been removed (ie ‘Heading from cover’), is followed by anagram (‘flies’) of KESTREL. I’m not totally convinced that ‘heading from cover’ can reasonably mean ‘Take the heading from a word for cover’, but even if it can the second element, ‘kestrel flies’, renders the clue unsound. I think I could just about accept “Heading from cover, kestrel flying…”, in other words ‘Remove the first letter from [a word for cover plus an anagram of KESTREL]’.<\/p>\r\n

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

1d<\/strong> Finding one\u2019s way without pin in brickie\u2019s rubble<\/span> (4)<\/span>
A seven-letter word for “finding one’s way” (probably in the dark) has the consecutive letters PIN removed (‘without pin’).<\/p>\r\n

2d<\/strong> Touchdown in Eton footie<\/span> making one turn red in the face<\/span> (5)<\/span>
A double definition clue, the latter word (at least as a noun) probably being considerably more familiar to those of us who didn’t attend Eton College than the former. But what about those words ‘making one’ in the middle? I think that ‘making one’ (‘one’ being the solver) is perfectly ok when a charade, say, is ‘making one’ the solution, but here the two words are the same – 2+2 can ‘make one’ 4, but can 4 ‘make one’ 4? I know my view…<\/p>\r\n

5d<\/strong> Stove got going with charts, or old cresset-holders<\/span> (11)<\/span>
An anagram (‘got going’) of STOVE and CHARTS produces a (5-6) Shakespearean term for poles on which torches were mounted. Azed doesn’t explicitly indicate that the word is obsolete, but the term ‘cresset’ is shown by Chambers as ‘historical’, and in Henry IV, part 1, Glendower says to Hotspur:<\/p>\r\n

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I cannot blame him: at my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

20d<\/strong> Confused state of film, flicker-like?<\/span> (6)<\/span>
A two-letter word for a confused state (considered by mathematicians to be of the transcendental kind) and an adjective meaning ‘relating to moving pictures’ (‘of film’) combine to make a word which could accurately be applied to a ‘flicker’, this being ‘the popular name of various American species of woodpecker’.<\/p>\r\n

22d<\/strong> Sarcasm?<\/span> A cheer follows its conclusion (5)<\/span>
The last letter of SARCASM (ie ‘its conclusion’) is followed by A (from the clue) and the short form of a six-letter word for a cheer.<\/p>\r\n

24d<\/strong> Harry embraces king as author of poetical pieces<\/span> (5)<\/span>
I can’t help feeling that the four-letter word which embraces the usual (chess and cards) abbreviation for ‘king’ means something closer to ‘annoy’ than ‘harry’, but who am I to stand in the way of a good surface? The Austrian poet in question had the forenames Ren\u00e9 Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria (actually that’s more than fore), but thankfully for those writing out party invitations etc he was usually known just as Rainer Maria.<\/p>\r\n

26d<\/strong> To become leader<\/span> in Times Chancellor appearing in twelfth letter (5)<\/span>
The single letter representing ‘multiplied by’ (‘Times’) and the two-letter abbreviation for ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’ are contained by the name of the twelfth letter of the alphabet.<\/p>\r\n

27d<\/strong> Louis\u2019s beloved<\/span>, a female\u2019s central to his this (5)<\/span>
A three-letter word for “female’s” is contained by the two-letter French (‘his’, ie “Louis’s”) word for ‘this’, producing the feminine form of the French word for ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’. But while I’ve no problem with “that female’s” or even “female’s” for HER, I draw the line at “a female’s” – it surely has to refer to a specific<\/em> female. On reflection, I think Azed intended HER to be a noun, so the wordplay translates as “a female is central to…”, but while a ‘she’ can be a noun, this doesn’t change in the objective form (Fielding: “The domino began to make very fervent love to the she”), so ‘her’ is no good as a noun.<\/p>\r\n

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

\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/span> Post Views:<\/span> 871<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n

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

There were quite a few tricky clues in this one<\/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-4087","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\/4087","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=4087"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4094,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4087\/revisions\/4094"}],"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=4087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}