AZED CROSSWORD 1225

CURRY

1.  C. G. Millin: Hot dish with shapely figure, right for form of plunging neckline (r for V in curvy).

2.  R. J. Palmer: Last bits of your leftover turkey etc you may cook in this (anag. of last letters, & lit.).

3.  J. R. C. Michie: Bits of umbles removed for consumption by pack of hounds (u, r in cry, & lit.; curry³).

VHC

M. Barley: You’ll find this is meat cooked with (say) turmeric (comp. anag. & lit.).

M. J. Bath: Are Hackney scrubbers like Barking ones apparently – called Ruby? (cur-ry, 2 defs.; Ruby Murray, Cockney rhyming slang for curry).

E. A. Beaulah: Treat leather? This may well make things hot for you, Wasim (2 mngs.; ref. ball-tampering allegations in Test cricket).

C. A. Clarke: Call boxing a sport? That’s preposterous, victim being dead (RU (rev.) in cry; ref. recent tragedy in boxing; curry³).

Dr I. S. Fletcher: Scrabble champion associated with triples? (2 mngs.; ref. John C., former skating star).

M. Freeman: Tim? Could be the one that goes with Rice! (2 mngs.; ref. Tim C., actor, Tim R., songwriter).

C. R. Gumbrell: Fiery stuff to consume prey of Old Scratch? (3 mngs.).

R. Hesketh: Groom to treat kid to race course thrash (5 mngs.).

D. F. Manley: Cooked meat is this? You might detect turmeric, say (comp. anag. & lit.).

T. J. Moorey: Your Rugby captain initially up to scratch, no longer Diana’s prize (yr RU c (all rev.), 2 defs.; ref. Will Carling, Princess Diana).

A. Morgan-Richards: Clean up Red Rum? Yes, principally (first letters & lit.).

D. R. Robinson: The Vindaloo might —— appear as uncordial (very hot) (comp. anag. & lit.).

C. W. Thomas: Superficial, therefore lacking clout (cur(so)ry).

J. R. Tozer: ‘Doggy’ treat? Once, perhaps (cur-ry, def., & lit.; curry³).

A. P. Vincent: Rub coat down cursorily, removing bits of soil (cur(so)r(il)y).

S. Woods: Copper wretched, so leaves beat (Cu + (so)rry).

HC

Ms N. Bennett-Jones, J. R. Beresford, C. J. Brougham, D. A. Campbell, Capt D. A. Craddock, D. B. Cross, G. Cumming, P. Davies, N. C. Dexter, C. Edmunds, R. A. England, P. D. Gaffey, E. Gomersall, R. R. Greenfield, P. F. Henderson, E. M. Holroyd, C. Hopkins, W. Jackson, T. Jacobs, Mrs P. E. Jones, D. Lester, J. P. Lester, C. J. Lowe, R. K. Lumsdon, W. F. Main, C. J. Morse, F. R. Palmer, J. Pearce, J. H. Russell, M. Sanderson, N. G. Shippobotham, J. B. Sweeting, D. H. Tompsett, G. H. Willett, D. Williamson, W. Wynne Willson, and an unnamed entry from London NW1.
 

Comments
346 entries, with quite a lot of mistakes. The problem was YAMA, which clearly caused particular difficulty – I’m not entirely sure why, though one competitor went so far as to call my clue ‘sadistic’. It was ‘The first mortal, unoriginated by a mother’ ((b)y + a ma) – quite neat, I thought. It’s not a common word, I admit, but those who opted for DAMA (not an English word) or MAMA must have accepted too readily an answer that didn’t fit the clue or were too wedded to the idea that Adam was involved somehow.
 
I’m very sorry about the missing bars (seven of them, no less), for which I am blameless. My proof corrections were ignored or misread. Most of you, I think, soon realized where the bars should have been and were not too inconvenienced, but it should not have happened. I am assured that procedures at the Observer are being tightened up with a view to preventing similar lapses. I sincerely hope they are as good as their word.
 
Quite a tricky word to clue this month. Though unpromising in structure CURRY does at least offer a reasonable range of meanings (and, to repeat what I’ve said before on occasion, I don’t at all mind your using the sense or the wording I’ve used for the asterisked definition). I am not keen on treating the prefix UR- as if it were a word in its own right, as a number of you did, i.e. by defining it as e.g. ‘original’ with no indication of its part-word status. The same goes for any such affix given in Chambers. Similarly, use of the obsolete sense of CURRY should indicate its obsoleteness in some way. Mr Michie’s nice ‘& lit.’ above manages this by the ambiguous use of the past participle ‘removed’.
 
Two clues submitted this month draw attention to the importance of not ignoring punctuation: ‘Superficial (not so hot) dish’ (cur(so)ry) and ‘Hot dish in dress – leather’ (2 meanings). The definitions here are ‘hot dish’ and dress leather’ respectively, but I cannot accept that one may simply overlook the closing bracket and the dash used to split these phrases for the sake of the overall structure of the clues themselves. Punctuation marks must be seen as performing their normal function in both the cryptic and the literal reading of a clue that includes