For the benefit of solvers new to the rigours of the Advanced Cryptic, Dr Watson provides a monthly review of the Observer's Azed competition puzzle. Dr Watson is a regular Azed competitor. Please post any comments on this review to the Crossword Centre’s message board.
Dr Watson wasn’t with Azed quite at the start in
1972, but recalls how eye-opening it was to tackle a first Azed after the
blocked puzzles of the dailies. It’s
been a consistent pleasure ever since,
as hundreds of regular solvers and competitors will testify. Watson offers heartfelt congratulations on
Azed’s 30th anniversary, and looks forward to many more years of
puzzling.
The ‘Theme and Variations’ puzzle is something of an
Azed rarity these days. Watson doesn’t
recall seeing one in the last ten years.
Perhaps Azed was deliberately returning to an old style of puzzle to
mark the anniversary. The basic premise
of this type of puzzle is that twelve unclued solutions must be deduced through
their increasingly indirect links to a central theme. Four of the words are ‘themes’ (themselves connected by the
central theme), each having two ‘variations’.
Each pair of variations has the same relationship to its theme, but the
relationships are different between each of the four themes. The number of clues and the checking in the
diagram are more generous than a standard puzzle, but this is still the most
difficult Azed for some time. The
quality of the clue writing more than rises to the occasion.
Notes to the clues:
13a: Very hot, simmering indeed. SOOTH (so +
anag.). Azed is a master of disguise with
the definition and cryptic part, and does it brilliantly here, despite using
only four words.
19a: Japanese fish with mixed oil dressing. AIOLI (ai + anag.). Here again there’s a clever feint. ‘Dressing’ would usually indicate a container and contents clue.
23a: The music of poetry? Those 9 may make this shine. NOTE (note shine = anag. of those nine). An allusion to the Nine Muses. The ‘9’ is about as indirect an anagram as Azed would allow, though Watson suspects he was deliberately being a little tricksy, given the other clue containing numerals at 3 down.
30a: Above in score, Springboks’ll contain
opposition’s first pair. SOPRA (o, pr. in SA).
The Springboks being South Africa’s Rugby Union side. You might solve the clue and spend a while
trying to work out where the ‘R’ comes from, having read ‘opposition’s first
pair’ as ‘op’.
37a: Palm yielding a drink – flog bottles. TALIPAT
(a lip in tat). No real evidence in Chambers
for ‘lip’ meaning ‘drink’, as far as Watson could see, but this seems to be the
explanation.
3d: My family has 7 in: 4 taken from school early.
OLEA (hidden, 7d is ASH). Simple enough
as explained here, but a devil to spot when solving the puzzle. Azed very rarely uses cross-references like
this one, so it’s not something you look for.
Since 7d is an unclued theme word, the clue poses extra difficulty at
the start of solving, but provides a welcome confirmation at the end.
4d: Tongue and a bit of shalad, we hear? LETTISH
(cf. ‘lettuce’). Doesn’t this have the
feeling of a joke you’ve heard somewhere before?
5d: Article on opening for renal surgeon in The
Lancet? ARCH (a r Ch.). This elegantly
worded and original clue is Watson’s favourite amongst a set of the highest
quality.
8d: US
‘thrill killer’ in denouement of rope caught by high shot. LOEB ((rop)e
in lob). The clue refers to the
‘Leopold and Loeb’ murder trial of the 1920s, fictionalised in the play (and the
Hitchcock film) Rope. Azed
skilfully weaves the different elements into the clue. The lower case ‘r’ in ‘rope’ appears
to be a typesetting error.
22d: Foul simply embodies one. MISPLAY (anag. inc. a & lit.). A textbook ‘& lit.’ that might have been the highlight of another puzzle, but here is one great clue amongst several.
Themes and variations:
Completing the clued lights in the grid reveals the
following in the theme and variation lights (a ? represents an unchecked cell
and a digit represents a mutually checked cell in two T & V lights), theme
word given first:
Theme A: H
A ? B O ? R - M U L 1 E ? R ? - ? 2 L D
Theme B: ? Y ? T E R - T ? R 2 E 3 - R ? 3 E T ?
Theme C: 4
S H - A R O ? L ? - ? Y ? A M O R E
Theme D: 1
A ? L E ? - ? 4 L L ? W - ? A I G R ?
Most solvers will already have got the theme by this
point. Theme word A must be HARBOUR and
B should be OYSTER (with XYSTER an outside possibility). What connects these to the 30th
anniversary theme of the puzzle is of course PEARL. Pearl signifies a 30th
wedding anniversary - not given at the entry in Chambers but easily checked.
Pearl Harbour (sic) and pearl-oyster both appear in Chambers. The pearl entry also gives pearl-ash,
which looks a good option for C; and pearl-barley
for D, though D could also be Pearl Bailey, the singer.
On to the variations:
Theme C is the most straightforward: ASH, AROLLA and
SYCAMORE are types of tree.
Theme B’s variations aren’t that hard to spot,
either. TYROES and ROSETY are anagrams
of the theme word. Note that variations
may include word-play as well as semantics, because this will come in useful
later.
Theme A’s first variation is clearly MULBERRY, and Mulberry harbour appears as an entry in
Chambers. For the second variation
(we know now it’s ?OLD) it’s tempting to go for HOLD, given the similarity in
meaning to ‘harbour’, but what we need to look for here is a connection that’s
the same as that of ‘mulberry’, namely a word that can appear in front of ‘harbour’. A scan of the options in Chambers turns up cold harbour, and COLD is the second variation.
Theme D is big trouble. We have to choose between ‘barley’ and ‘Bailey’, and all the
possibilities of ?ALL?W and
?AIGR?. Variation 2 is almost certainly
MAIGRE (a fish or a description of Lenten food). Variation 1 has about nine
possibilities. The only thing to do now
is to consider all the ways of that this theme and variations could work. It
isn’t going to be easy. References and
internet searches will not avail you because there’s no reasonable semantic
connection between any set of three words (Watson in desperation mistakenly
plumped for a tenuous culinary link between ‘barley’, ‘maigre’ and ‘mallow’). The answer turns out to lie in a manipulation
of BARLEY. It can be split, in the
style of a charades clue, into BAR and LEY.
Looking through their entries in Chambers
reveals that bar4 is
defined as a maigre fish, and ley1
leads to lea2, meaning
‘fallow’, so MAIGRE and FALLOW are the variations.
This solution can’t be deduced from Chambers alone unless you actually
consider splitting the theme word, or spot bar4
by chance. Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary lists bar
under fish (one amongst hundreds) and lea under fallow, and
so might provide the necessary inspiration. Chambers Crossword
Dictionary has neither. Dr Watson’s
thanks to all the message board contributors who helped with this solution. One
points out that the OED defines
‘callow’ as a type of meadow, so Azed may need to consider that as a possible
valid answer.
Complete solution:
1a: AROLLA; 6a: FALLOW; 11a: MULBERRY; 13a: SOOTH; 14a: ELEATIC (E leat I C); 16a: HEBE (hidden); 18a: HARBOUR; 19a: AIOLI; 20a: CRIM (C + rim); 25a: NOTE; 27a: SHOGI (shog (d)i(ce)); 28a: LEAM (e(ye) in lam); 29a: HOER (O in her); 30a: SOPRA; 31a: HYRACES (race in anag.); 35a: COLD; 37a: TALIPAT; 38a: ELEMI (anag.); 39a: SYCAMORE; 40a: ROSETY; 41a: OYSTER; 1d: AMELANCHIER (élan in anag); 2d: RULLION (rul(e) lion); 3d: OLEA; 4d: LETTISH; 5d: ARCH; 7d: ASH; 8d: LOEB; 9d: LOBOSE (lobos e(at)); 10d: WHOREMASTER (anag. in waster); 12d: BARLEY; 15d: MAIGRE; 17d: ECHOES (Ch O in see rev.); 21d: ROE (alternate letters); 22d: MISPLAY; 23d: ELOHIM (hole rev. + I’m); 24d: CARFARE (far in care); 26d: TYROES; 32d: STYX (‘sticks’); 34d: SPOT (top’s rev.); 36d: DIT (2 defs, D It.)