AZED 2,404

16 comments on “AZED 2,404”

1. Couldn’t finish this week, and several I did get I couldn’t parse.  Why is BARN a former skipper?  I considered it as an answer but rejected it.  Why is MOLE want?  I didn’t know either of the definitions of ROOTY and didn’t get enough crossing letters to guess it.  (My best guess was RAITA but that didn’t get me the across clues.)

2. For 32a, if you add S to IT you get SIT which can mean ‘to be disposed in adjustment, hang, fit’.

   For 3d, the homer is a PIGEON and its fourth letter is moved to the start.

   Dormouse, the appropriate meanings are found under skipper3 and want2 in Chambers. I think it’s always a good idea to look up words in Chambers, especially if you already know what they mean.

3. 32a

   Add S to IT

   Surely it is ‘Stagger’ you have to add the S to -to get [The] staggers – which is a sort of fit.”  (as in epileptic fit)

4. Matthew – Thanks, I think you have the best explanation for 32ac.

   I wondered the same as Dormouse – I did look the words up in Chambers to confirm they are correct but even so I am frequently left wondering why?

5. Thanks for the explanations.  This reverse of the normal circumstances – where normally you’d expect the definition in Chambers appears in the clue – happens so infrequently that I never remember to look up the words in the clue to see if the definitions include the answer.

6. At the time of posting, the Guardian’s website is still showing last week’s Azed puzzle.

   For anyone interested, this week’s can be found here: https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2018/07/14/2,405_July15.pdf

7. My parsing of 32ac and 3dn was exactly as Matthew’s.

   I don’t believe there is anything more to 29ac than PeeDee has identified – a club is a ‘thick heavy stick’ while a staff is a ‘strong stick or pole’, so a staff would be rather on the thin side for anyone who had their heart specifically set on bludgeoning, bur would surely be perfectly serviceable in emergency clubbing situations.

   I think that the wordplay of 28ac only works if ‘making haste’ indicates HIE; ‘HEARIE making HIE to grab EAR’ looks syntactically faulty.

8. Hi DRC – I had only considered using a club as an emergency staff, which even if thin would be too short to be useful.  Using a staff as an emergency club would more practical.

   Please could you explain the syntactical problems with 28ac for me.

9. I think 32ac is absolute nonsense.

   Nick

10. PeeDee@8:

    A skeleton staff would of course be too thin for the purpose.

    Note: the following applies only to puzzles like Azed and the Listener where strict rules of grammar are applied. Where a clue consists of a wordplay and a definition, and nothing else, convention dictates that (a) there is no need to separate the two (thus offering the setter opportunities for deception), and (b) the wordplay can take a range of syntactical forms as long as it leads to the solution. The wordplay may, for instance, be a statement eg [for BOAR, BAR around O] “Pub keeps old”; an expression using the infinitive, eg “Pub to keep old”; or a nounal expression using a participle, eg “Pub keeping old”. So “Pub to keep old pig” or “Pub keeps old pig” are perfectly acceptable (albeit dull) clues for BOAR. But when the clue includes a link between the wordplay and the definition, eg “wordplay LEADS TO definition” or “definition COMES FROM wordplay”, then the wordplay must produce a nounal expression. So “Pig from pub eating nothing” is fine (‘pub eating nothing’ being a nounal expression as far as the wordplay is concerned), but “Pig from pub eats nothing” is not, and neither is “Pig from pub to eat nothing”. Also, as those of a certain age will probably remember from their English lessons, conjunctions join words or clauses of equal grammatical value, and hence ‘Pub keeping duck and pig’ is ok, but ‘Pub keeps duck and pig’ is not. In 28ac if ‘making’ is not part of the wordplay it must be a link, and the rest of the clue has to form a nounal expression – which ‘haste grabbing attention’ would be, but not ‘haste to grab attention’. Hence I deduce that ‘making haste’ = HIE. It’s a knotty topic which is really only relevant to setters, but I hope that makes some sort of sense!

11. I also concluded that “making haste” indicated HIE in its (obsolete) noun form. As far as I am aware the standard practice in Ximenean puzzles is that link words like making/getting/giving should lead FROM wordplay TO the answer. If “making” were the link word here the answer would lead to the wordplay, and it’s unlikely Azed would have done that.

    This site is very slow to load today.

12. Thanks DRC for the interesting and informative explanation.  To make sure I have this right: “making” as a link word is not good because of the convention that the definition must then be a nounal phrase, and “making haste” would not be good as it would lead to “hying” rather than “hie”.  Have I got that right?  And as an aside would the spelling be hying or hieing?

13. The word ‘making’ is not very helpful when it comes to examples because, as cruciverbophile notes, it would normally lead from the wordplay to the definition, rather than the other way round as here (another reason why I believe it is part of the wordplay in 28ac). But in general terms, where the definition in a clue precedes the wordplay and there is a link word or words between them such as ‘from’, ‘of’, ‘made by’ etc, the wordplay must deliver a nounal expression. Three possible clues for GRACE [GE around RAC]:

    “Lady Georgia rings breakdown service” – sound, no linking words so definition ‘Lady’ and wordplay ‘Georgia rings breakdown service’ are separate in the cryptic reading

    “Lady from Georgia ringing breakdown service” [GE around RAC] – sound, can be read as ‘solution comes from GE surrounding RAC’

    “Lady from Georgia rings breakdown service” – unsound, ‘solution comes from GE surrounds RAC’ doesn’t make sense; ‘Georgia rings breakdown service’ is a statement and can’t be the object of a preposition.

    It’s a common pitfall – because of the vagaries of the English language a setter (or editor) really has to look at each individual clue, ignore the surface reading, break the cryptic reading into components, and ask themselves whether it represents a sound route to the solution.

14. Thanks again DRC.  I get the part about “making” not being a possible link word, so that means “making haste” must lead to HIE.  Again my understanding of these matters is not very deep but it seems to me that “making haste” would lead to “hying/hieing” but not “hie”, in the same way that “making haste” could lead to “rushing” but not to “rush”.  The clue doesn’t quite work whichever way you look at it.  Is this your understanding too, or is there something here that I don’t understand?

15. Well, ‘making’ could be interpreted as a gerund (“Making haste in hot weather is inadvisable”), thus ‘making haste’ (noun phrase) ~= ‘haste’ (noun) = ‘hie’ (noun), but it seems rather unsatisfactory.

16. Thanks Azed and PeeDee

    Now that the official solution is out, we can see that Matthew@2 has indeed got the intended explanation of 32ac. Azed’s notes give it as “i.e. join s to it to make sit (qv)”.

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