Azed 2683

19 comments on “Azed 2683”

1. Thanks duncanshiell.
   I think MERCY as an obsolete English word for ‘thanks’ is in Chambers.
   COPYISTS took a long time – I was thinking birds – and the SW corner generally.
   Thanks as ever to Azed.

2. GONGSTER is amusing since Azed (in pre-Azed days) used to set for the Listener under the pseudonym Gong.

3. Thanks Azed and Duncan

   29ac following Gonzo@1: Chambers gives mercy as “interj (short for God have mercy) an expression of thanks (now obs)” – hence of course the past tense of “conveyed”. This reminds me of the Michael Flanders translation of la belle dame sans merci as the beautiful lady who never says “thank you”.

   19dn: Chambers gives “paltry, miserable (inf)” as a meaning for measly, and hence for measled.

4. 7ac: I wonder if Azed deliberately wrote this clue to look like two homophone indications.

5. Thanks for the blog, I thought GONGSTER and CAWS both very neat clues to start with.
   I coul not find GIMEL but had to be right. I would not have got AUGUSTE without all the letters , not all that keen on just using a first name of someone.
   URSA MAJOR , to be strict the term wagon is just used for the asterism also known as The Plough or Big Dipper, the constellation itself is much bigger and the two terms do not really equate.

6. Can anyone explain how the clue for GLEAN differs from an indirect anagram? You have to guess the word that is suggested (here, unhelpfully, it’s “fish”), and then reassemble it.

   Congratulations to regular poster Keith Thomas whose excellent clue for ADHERENT won a VHC in this month’s competition. I have updated my blog for that puzzle (2681) which now includes references to Azed’s comments on a couple of clues discussed in the blog.

7. My only thought about GLEAN, bridgesong @6, is that the number of possibilities for cycling an indirect word (in this case 1 in 5 or 20%) is a lot less that the number of possibilities for anagramming an indirect word (in this case 1 in 6! (6 factorial) or 1 in 720 or about 0.14%). I think that extra level of difficulty is why many think that indirect anagrams are unfair as opposed to indirect cycling or even charades for that matter.

   Even Ximenes in his early days used indirect anagrams but came to the view that they were unfair.

8. 12ac further to comments 6 and 7: I think Tim has the right principle. For recyclings of a five-letter word, there are really only 4 possibilities (because you would not count leaving it alone). For anagrams it should have been 5!, again minus 1, to give 119 possibilities. You could also subtract the exact reversal and possibly cyclings from things which Azed would indicate as an anagram.
   If you consider longer answers, the number of cyclings increases linearly, while the number of rearrangements increases super-exponentially, with some reduction in the number of distinct possibilities if letters appear more than once.
   Enough from me for now.

9. I just thought that ANGLE has two distinct syllables ( parts ) to swap over, it is not really a cycling in principle although it is in practice.

10. Thanks for the admirable blog, which gave me the parsing for 22D – was too lazy to work it out. Otherwise, a fairly straightforward and satisfying solve, provided that one has one’s battered copy of Chambers close at hand. I certainly had no problem with GLEAN.

11. All I can remember of this is that I failed to finish it on Sunday and resorted to word searches to finish it on Monday.

    But as an astronomy nerd in my youth, I should have got URSA MAJOR earlier than I did.

    The swapping of the two syllables in ANGLE makes sense.

12. Further to the discussion on 12ac (GLEAN):

    Perhaps we might compare the following three clues

    1. From Azed 2681
    Birds to preserve, first to last (4)
    Preserve = SAVE, transformed to AVES

    2. From Azed 2683
    Pick up fish, exchanging parts (5)
    Fish = ANGLE, transformed to GLEAN

    3. From Azed 2042
    Bat that has got runs, with Ames’s name scrawled on it? (7)
    Ames’s name = LESLIE, transformed to LEISLE and placed before R(uns): “on” in a down clue.

    I had to go back to Azed 2042 to find an authentic Azed clue which I would call an undoubted indirect anagram. It refers to the cricketer Leslie Ames, who played for Kent and England, his international career lasting from 1929 to 1939. I said at the time “As a cricket buff, I had no trouble with this clue, but I still think it is unfair.” I stick by that view.

    (Of course I did not search all the way back to 2042: I remembered the answer and used this website’s search facility to find it. Looking at it again today, Azed could just have told us to move the letter I up the word, but the indicator “scrawled” clearly indicates a full anagram.)

    I found the first one when looking for the additions to the blog which were mentioned in comment 6, and for which much thanks, by the way.

    I think we would generally agree that number 1 is on the right side of the acceptability boundary and number 3 is on the wrong side. Even considered as a cycling, I would argue that number 2 is much closer to number 1 than to number 3, but of course that does not mean that the line should not still be drawn between number 1 and number 2.

    I like the suggestion that the “exchanging parts” relates to swapping two syllables. I think Azed has used this sort of idea before. It would be interesting to know if he has always done it by breaking the word into syllables, and indeed if he has only done it with words of two syllables or some other “obvious” splitting into two parts. I do not have the patience to search through for that at the moment. Any volunteers?

13. Wow! Thanks for bridgesong’s comment. I hadn’t my magnifier to read the monthly results so it was a jolly surprise.
    Thanks as always to Azed & to duncanshiels for the heavy lifting.
    I have to admit to only completing 2683 yesterday. Had misread a number and written in a wrong answer and the diagram was such a mess I lacked the energy to complete it.
    The question of GLEAN is interesting I suppose fish=angle is so obvious even Ximenes might have let it pass.
    STAIN was certainly my last in though the parsing isn’t all that obscure.

14. Thanks for correcting my maths Pelham Barton @8

15. I do not know how to search so I have no actual evidence but I do think Azed uses this “swap” technique sometimes. Some words do have two sections and swaping them gives a new word and Azed has the ability to spot this. I will look out for this in the future.
    We recently had – Response when changing ends? – giving ECHO to OCHE , which is similar.

    Keith@13 congratulations for your VHC .

16. Thanks to all who responded to my comment about GLEAN. I will modify my views as a result!

17. I’ll add my congratulations to Keith Thomas. I thought this was a particularly good set of published clues, and worth a look /Azedslip.html> here if you don’t usually see them.

18. Apologies – messed up the link.

19. Apropos the GLEAN question, in 2681 Azed clued TRASS with treat becoming seat with TR as S.

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