AZED CROSSWORD 1402

PENTOSE (Definition of Anagram)

1.  M. Coates: What has ovine content, covering those not hot (posteen; pen + t(h)ose, & lit.).

2.  T. J. Moorey: Short Christian festival touches Milosevic’s heart? Moonshine! (poteens; Pent(ecost) + (Mil)ose(vic); ref. Slobodan M.).

3.  C. Boyd: Standing still outside tent, temperature dropping, Pathan might put on this (posteen; (t)ent in pose).

VHC

M. Barley: Dance exercises lead to Nureyev-like twinkling toes (one-step; PE + N + anag.).

E. A. Beaulah: Warm clothing donned in the Khyber after nightfall – according to Kipling? (posteen; post e’en).

C. J. & M. P. Butler: In masquerade went topless to dance (one-step; (w)ent in pose).

M. J. Clarke: Girlie mag has censor’s certificates withdrawn, result of illicit stills (poteens; Pent(H)o(U)se; H former film certificate).

G. Cuthbert: Warm cover jug has to seal it (not settled) (posteen; pen + to seal it less alit).

N. C. Dexter: Standing – still! – after imbibing ten liberal whiskeys (poteens; anag. in posé).

C. M. Edmunds: Open to sell partially licensed liquors? No! (poteens; hidden).

H. Freeman: Tease, with compiler maybe leading a merry dance (one-step; pen + tose).

C. R. Gumbrell: In Swan Lake’s finale you’ll see most of cast dance (one-step; tos(s) in pen e).

R. J. Heald: Feather applied to ticklish toes? This’ll get feet dancing (one-step; pen + anag.).

R. Hesketh: Yank can unravel the fibres of an Afghan greatcoat (posteen; pen + tose).

P. W. Marlow: Across pond, trippers delight in such swans circling near side of café (one-step; to in pens + e).

C. J. Morse: Model, with cleavage, went topless inside greatcoat (posteen; (w)ent in pose).

F. R. Palmer: Illicit drinks help to make one open to seduction (poteens; hidden).

D. Price Jones: Author of the final touches to Windows Ninety-five could be an anorak from Kabul (posteen; pen to s, e).

J. R. Tozer: Dance set to paper and comb? (one-step; pen tose).

A. J. Wardrop: Style and comb Afghan’s coat (posteen; pen + tose; ref. dog).

D. Williamson: Bootleg whiskeys hammer at back of head, gripping rising toper (poteens; sot (rev.) in pene).

HC

D. Appleton, D. Ashcroft, F. D. H. Atkinson, B. Balfour, Mrs F. A. Blanchard, J. G. Booth, C. J. Brougham, Rev Canon C. M. Broun, E. J. Burge, D. A. Campbell, R. M. S. Cork, E. Cross, D. J. Dare-Plumpton, R. V. Dearden, V. Dixon, A. J. Dorn, Mrs M. Gabbutt, P. D. Gaffey, R. R. Greenfield, J. Hastie, Mrs B. E. Henderson, A. Hodgson, R. Jacks, M. Jones, J. C. Leyland, P. R. Lloyd, C. J. Lowe, Mrs J. Mackie, W. F. Main, D. F. Manley, R. J. Palmer, J. Pearce, B. A. Pike, S. Shaw, P. L. Stone, C. W. Thomas, W. J. Wagstaffe, R. J. Whale, N. Wheatley, I. J. Wilcock, W. Woodruff, Dr E. Young, R. Zara.
 

Comments
A tough puzzle, clearly. Only 224 entries, though with very few mistakes, mostly in the SE corner, which proved to be the most testing, perhaps because there were no normal clues there. Ideally, I’d have liked no normal clues at all and I feel sure this is achievable though on this occasion the ideal eluded me. In view of the low entry perhaps it was just as well, though I did try to keep the clues on the easy (or at least not too complicated) side. As some of you surmised the idea for the puzzle occurred to me after the title. Its weakness lies in the fact that it is possible to arrive at the answers to clues without necessarily identifying the anagrams involved. PINE-HOUSE seems to have been particularly elusive, with resultant uncertainty over whether to enter EUPHONISE or EUPHONIZE. I nevertheless felt that this was a price worth paying for a new idea which may get some fine-tuning before I use it next, which I certainly shall. Though there were few errors in the diagram, a number of absent-minded (or perhaps bemused) competitors submitted the wrong type of clue. I sympathize. One regular suggested that a low competition entry may result from people being put off by the clue-word rather than from the overall difficulty of the puzzle. This explanation hadn’t occurred to me before – you may like to comment I gave you PENTOSE deliberately because of its range of anagrams. I’d spotted POSTEEN, POTEENS and ONE-STEP, but not OPENEST or the phrase EN POSTE which a handful used. I was actually not too keen on the latter since the preamble specified one-word anagrams (and to forestall protest I do regard ONE-STEP as one word), but this certainly gave you a decent range to choose from. In producing clues, it was important, I felt, to avoid over-elaboration (the solver’s task being less straightforward than usual) and most of you perceived this. Two specific weaknesses struck me especially when judging clues. One was the use in the subsidiary part of an anagram which could translate into any of the anagrams of PENTOSE as well as PENTOSE itself, e.g. in clues like ‘Groom one’s pet Afghan’s coat – it’s very woolly’ and ‘20’s trip – post-teen fans taking time out’. The other problem concerned the vexed question of ‘linking words’. Members of the Crossword Club will know that this has been much debated in recent issues of the club’s magazine, in the context of normal cryptic clues. My own view is that in that context there is nothing wrong with ‘linking words’, i.e. words linking the cryptic and definition parts of a clue, provided the words used can be grammatically and semantically justified. However on this occasion we were not dealing with normal cryptic clues: the cryptic and the definition parts of the clue were not referring to the same word form, so it seemed to me wrong to introduce linking words which suggested that this was the case. My own clues omitted all linking words for this reason, and I tended to mark down clues which included them. What then of ‘& lit.’ clues, like those of our first prize-winner? After initial unease I came to the view that this approach was entirely acceptable, though few tried it. Here the whole clue can be read as a cryptic indication of PENTOSE and also as a definition of POSTEEN – very neat, even if it would perhaps benefit from a question mark at the end.
 
A late apology – the lateness being my fault, not his - from Anthony Ellis for the fact that the last slip but one had the wrong puzzle number at the top. By the time Anthony spotted the error it was simply too late to correct it for all but a handful of subscribers.