AZED CROSSWORD 1338

SMART ALEC

1.  V. Dixon: A C-stream learner, posturing? (anag. incl. L, & lit.).

2.  Mrs B. E. Henderson: Tot spoiled with caramels won’t take to a Smartie (anag. less to).

3.  W. F. Main: Unruly star with male lead in Camelot – could he be known as ‘clever Dick’? (anag. + C; ref. Richard Harris).

VHC

E. J. Burge: He thinks he can’t go wrong, having atlas with Merc in rally (anag.).

B. Burton: I generally have an answer to everything and am scarlet with embarrassment (anag.).

D. A. Campbell: Skill in abuse of mescal may provide one with delusions of omniscience (art in anag.).

C. A. Clarke: Sting associated with Guinness, perhaps one too clever by half (smart Alec).

E. Cross: Malpractices could be revealed by one police constable with this clever dick (comp. anag. incl. I PC).

N. C. Dexter: One’s clever – but always out to clash with a master (anag. less ever, & lit.).

A. J. Dorn: He may think he knows most and misguidedly cram least (anag.).

Dr I. S. Fletcher: Clever me, a star not ever wrong! (anag. less ever, & lit.).

C. R. Gumbrell: A star, me, clever without ever being fazed (anag. less ever, & lit.).

R. Hesketh: Originally a ‘Master of Science’ later becoming a ‘Professor of Omniscience’? (anag. incl. a MSc).

R. Jacks: He claims to know a star, Mel C., ‘sporty’ (anag.; ref. Spice Girl).

G. Johnstone: Know-all Marple acts like quicksilver once the penny’s dropped (anag. less p).

F. P. N. Lake: One always knows that, in France, vehicles point the wrong way (cela trams (all rev.)).

C. J. Morse: Could this posturing fool make a master-class? Possibly (anag. less ass, & lit.).

R. Stocks: Dandy Sandy’ – another name for ‘clever clogs’ (smart Alec).

R. J. Whale: I may be disposed to cram least (anag. & lit.).

Dr E. Young: One that does act Mensa role (comp. anag. & lit.).

HC

W. G. Arnott, D. Ashcroft, M. Barley, M. Barnes, Mrs F. A. Blanchard, C. J. & M. P. Butler, E. Dawid, R. Dean, C. M. Edmunds, Ms E. A. Field, A. G. Fleming, E. G. Fletcher, R. P. C. Forman, H. Freeman, D. A. Ginger, G. I. L. Grafton, Mrs E. Greenaway, R. R. Greenfield, P. F. Henderson, R. J. Hooper, P. Knight, S. Lakin, J. C. Leyland, P. R. Lloyd, R. K. Lumsdon, D. F. Manley, P. W. Marlow, C. G. Millin, J. Mortleman, F. R. Palmer, Rev E. H. Pyle, A. Roth, M. Sanderson, V. Seth, N. E. Sharp, Mrs E. J. Shields, P. L. Stone, D. H. Tompsett, Mrs J. E. Townsend, J. R. Tozer, L. Ward, M. J. E. Wareham, Ms B. J. Widger, G. H. Willett.
 

Comments
316 entries, and no mistakes that I could see. I slipped up twice myself this month, I’m afraid, as many of you rightly pointed out. My anagram of STEEPLECHASE contained an extra ‘s’ and my clue to ARCANA indicated a singular rather than a plural noun. Many apologies. The PEARE clue also troubled some of you. It was no masterpiece, certainly, but sound enough. I was playing around with R (ar) inside P (pee), RP (received pronunciation) being the term that linguists and phoneticians use for the generally accepted ‘correct’ way of pronouncing English. ES (which I think is what puzzled people) simply stood for Edmund Spenser and had no conceptual connection with RP at all.
 
SMART ALEC seems to have offered a good range of possible treatments, as I hoped it would. Rather too many of you ignored the derogatory nature of the term. A smart Alec is surely more clever-clever than clever (making ‘posturing’ such an apposite anagram indicator), so definitions which described one as a brain-box or the like were certainly wide of the mark. Chambers indicates as much. Here I must pass on a nice quote, given to me by Mr Beaulah, from the Dictionary of Eponyms by Robert Hendrickson, a book I didn’t know of before. At the entry for SMART ALECK the author says: ‘If there ever lived a real ‘smart aleck’, an Alexander so much of an obnoxiously conceited know-all that his name became proverbial, no record of him exists. The term can be traced back to about the 1 860s and is still frequently used for a wise guy today. The original smart aleck may at least have been clever enough to cover up all traces of his identity.’ Incidentally, Chambers also gives a hyphenated adjectival form smart-Alec, etc and I was asked if it was OK to clue this even though I’d specified the 2-word noun. A number of you did and I was happy to accept this.
 
There were many good ??? were legion, some more popular than others. Quite a lot of you played with ‘masterclass’ with ‘ass’ removed, a nice idea but one which needed a deft touch to get the ‘& lit.’ aspect of it just right. And do be a bit more self-critical when it comes to choosing your anagram indicators. “A cert slam!” he’d swank’ is brief and witty, but no normal definition of ‘swank’ can to me indicate an instruction to the solver to jumble the first three words of the clue. This is a tricky area, I know, and I try hard in borderline cases to give an otherwise good clue the benefit of the doubt, but this wasn’t one of them.
 
No more for now, except to say that I hope the large diagram size we’ve had of late will become the rule rather than the exception, but please don’t count on it every week. And please don’t complain (as one or two have done) that it’s in danger of getting too big and necessitating a bigger envelope. Just be grateful, think of the myopic, and fold it an extra time!