AZED CROSSWORD 1325

UPROOTAL

1.  M. D. Laws: What ends urtica invading our plot in new allotment? (a in anag., & lit.).

2.  T. J. Moorey: Remedy for twitch perhaps comes from putting a lot differently under proper golf expert (U pro + anag.; twitch = troublesome weed and the yips).

3.  D. A. Harris: Ur-population is shaken up in this (comp. anag. & lit.).

VHC

J. R. Beresford: More menacing clouds pour a lot (anag.; more²).

Mrs F. A. Blanchard: Eviction order leads to ruthlessly turning unwanted people out of ancestral lands (anag. of first letters).

C. J. Brougham: Poor, poor galut’s no good —— (anag. less g, & lit.).

K. W. Crawford: Moving Laotians to Peru might be —— in East? (comp. anag. & lit.).

E. Cross: Pour a lot out – it’s more effective than paraquat! (anag.).

C. R. Gumbrell: What can make mandragora yelp out? There’s danger this may (comp. anag. & lit.).

R. Hesketh: The throwing out of a lout (for being an intruder) (pro in anag., & lit.).

G. Johnstone: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’s theme featuring Topol and a Russia briefly in turmoil (anag. incl. Ru).

Mrs J. Mackie: The banished Latin author (poet) makes one sad reading of it: an —— (comp. anag. less the, & lit.; ref. Ovid’s exile).

D. F. Manley: What could get a poplar ousted – but not with flipping spade! (comp. anag. & lit.).

G. D. Meddings: Wrench frees loo U-trap (anag.).

C. G. Millin: Rampant decay almost entirely engulfing centre of tooth means extraction (o in up rot al(l)).

R. J. Palmer: A fate Portillo endured somehow losing Enfield rated upset (comp. anag. & lit.; ref. Michael P., 1997 Gen. Election).

P. L. Stone: Halted Aussie score with a liberal use of bouncers (up root a L; halted = at a standstill; score = have sex).

P. Thacker: Drastic treatment of a poor tulip failing in power? (anag. less i’ P, & lit.).

D. H. Tompsett: It’s needed by me to get tropaeolum out (comp. anag. & lit.).

A. J. Wardrop: Leads to unhappy people residing outside of their accustomed land? (first letters & lit.).

R. J. Whale: Elimination from cups? Are poor Italy losing their edge? Both (middle letters; i.e. both edges).

HC

S. Armstrong, E. A. Beaulah, B. W. Brook, Dr J. Burscough, P. Cargill, C. A. Clarke, Ms N. Davis, N. C. Dexter, V. Dixon, B. Grabowski, C. P. Grant, R. R. Greenfield, Ms A. Hunt, W. Jackson, J. P. Lester, J. C. Leyland, R. K. Lumsdon, P. W. Marlow, I. Morgan, C. J. Morse, F. R. Palmer, S. L. Paton, G. Perry, H. L. Rhodes, M. Sanderson, V. Seth, R. G. Smith, J. R. Tozer, A. P. Vincent, M. J. Wareham, P. B. G. Williams, G. K. Workman.
 

Comments
341 entries, no mistakes. No special problems, either, with any of my clues, though several of you said you couldn’t find ABORNE in Chambers. It’s at abear. As I’ve mentioned before, the current edition of C is a lot better than its predecessors in giving ‘dummy’ entries for variant spellings and irregular forms such as this, but it’s still far from perfect. I do make a point of telling you when I include a word which is not in C (though I exclude proper names from this), with some indication of where I’ve found it. I usually only do this when I’m desperate and not because I’m feeling extra-sadistic. Sometimes I find and use a word in Chambers Words when constructing the grid and then have a real job finding it in the dictionary itself when I’m doing the clues - a real nuisance and very time-wasting. Worse still is when I use a word from Words which turns out to be a misprint. There are mercifully few of these, but they can cause large-scale reconstruction of the grid and consequent rewriting of perfectly good clues. So spare a thought for the hard-pressed setter!
 
UPROOTAL produced a wide range of good ideas (and excellent prizewinners), despite, perhaps inevitably, a heavy crop of ‘pour a lot’ anagrams which were all much of a muchness. And I was unimpressed by clues which involved in their cryptic part a reference to ROOT in its commonest sense: altogether too close to the sense of the clue word, and therefore not cryptic enough. It was pointed out to me that the OED contains a note on the morphology of such words, ‘modern nouns of action’ formed by adding the Latin suffix -al to ‘native final-accented verbs’, e.g. beheadal, betrothal, withdrawal, etc. As you can see from the quoted clues above, there was widespread use of composite anagrams this month, always a sign that people are dissatisfied with the component letters of the clue word and striving for an ‘& lit.’ construction. No harm in that, as long as the whole thing doesn’t become too long and cumbersome. Mr Palmer’s clue, for example, ‘borrows’ a dangerously large number of extra letters to achieve its effect but is sufficiently well constructed to make it acceptable (and very clever). One promising clue which ultimately failed to stand up to scrutiny was the following: ‘Removal of hedge? That leaves poultry to a fox.’ This is explained as an anagram of ‘poultry to a’ with ‘yt’ (qv) removed. Despite the obsoleteness of ‘yt’, the clue is just about OK until the last word, which for cryptic purposes I take to be an imperative of the transitive verb ‘fox’. Following the construction of the preceding five words, it is being asked to bear much too heavy a syntactic load. To make it work one has to assume a distinct pause after ‘a’ (not indicated in the punctuation) and a sort of retrospective application of ‘fox’ (i.e. ‘fox that’). Not on, I think.
 
Finally, a question I’m often asked and one I regularly answer but will do so again for newer solvers. Is it acceptable to use in clues submitted the same or partly the same wording for the definition part I used in the asterisked definition? By all means, if it suits your purpose. At the same time I do urge less experienced clue-writers to study the ways in which prizewinning and very highly commended clues often manage to disguise the more obvious or central meaning of the clue word. A useful tip is to put yourself in the position of the solver of the clue you are writing and gauge the degree of satisfaction he or she would get from solving it.