AZED CROSSWORD 2313

PERFECT

1.  A. J. Wardrop: Hints of fruit, eggs and cream in fresh parfait à l’anglaise? (first letters in pert).

2.  I. Simpson: Such clues do fantastically, being selected for cup? (comp. anag. & lit.).

3.  R. C. Teuton: Inside No. 1 Court you may see a Roger Federer trademark ace (RF in pee ct).

VHC

T. Anderson: Sheer muscle and time is needed to subdue garden plot (erf in pec + t).

D. Appleton: Tense finishes in Ryder cup golf gave me terrific enjoyment – thrilling, spot-on (last letters & 2 meanings).

M. Barley: Closing stages of latest Ryder Cup produce some dramatic golf, terribly tense (anag. of last letters).

T. C. Borland: Free with TCP, getting wound spotless (anag.).

J. M. Brown: Exercise shattered ref – about time to finish (PE + anag. + c., t).

Mrs L. Davis: How to describe it? Kind of square, like one After Eight Mint (3 defs; it = ne plus ultra; 8 + 1 = 9).

M. Hodgkin: Fellow put in piano, upright in time for old folks’ waltz (F in p erect; triple time).

G. Johnstone: In the manner of ‘made to a T’? (per fec. T, & lit.).

J. R. H. Jones (Mexico): Tense presidential election race; forum exposes Clinton and Trump’s primal characters (first letters).

J. C. Leyland: What represents Last of the Summer Wine? That iconic clip of elderly three in a bar (anag. of last letters; triple time).

D. F. Manley: Tense Championship’s conclusion set up to enthral fans, last three being successively dismissed (f in p erect; ref. hat-trick clinching last county cricket championship match).

P. W. Marlow: Polish origins of Frédéric Chopin, pianistic expert, rated especially telling when reviewed (anag. of first letters).

Rev Prebendary M. R. Metcalf: Fierce exercising in gym gets one less tense (anag. less I in PT).

T. J. Moorey: Such harmony’s destroyed in hasty performance with American soprano adrift (comp. anag. less A, s; ref. Francis Foster Jenkins, as in 2016 film).

D. J. R. Ogilvie (USA): Perhaps expecting rather ferocious exchanges, Clinton and Trump start out so tense, focusing on the past! (first letters).

J. Parke: Faultless play of Peterborough FC, out of town (anag. less borough).

T. Rudd: Beyond a good show? Dud note —— – often Peter C makes it up (comp. anag.; ref. ‘Beyond the Fringe’, Dudley Moore & P. Cook).

P. L. Stone: Bit of patchy ground at Newlands leads to English collapse and tense finish (p erf + E, c, t).

J. R. Tozer: Polish may be treated free in an NHS establishment (anag. in PCT (qv)).

L. Ward (USA): Consummate forward pounds three headers in for exhilarating comeback (first letters in pert).

HC

M. Barker, M. Bettison, Ms K. Bolton, C. J. Brougham, Mrs S. Brown, P. Cargill, D. Carter, E. Dawid, R. Gilbert, J. Grimes, Dr C. P. Hales, R. J. Heald, J. R. Howlett, L. M. Inman, B. Jones, M. Lloyd-Jones, C. Loving, M. A. Macdonald-Cooper, Dr R. MacGillivray, S. Naysmith, C. Ogilvie, M. L. Perkins, A. Plumb, J. & A. Price, D. Price Jones, S. Randall, W. Ransome, J. M. Sharman, Dr S. J. Shaw, J. Smailes, P. Taylor, A. J. Varney, Mrs A. M. Walden, T. West-Taylor, R. J. Whale, K. J. Williams, A. J. Young.
 

Comments
183 entries, a few with TRIO for BRIO. The clue to BRIO (‘Where one feels specially at home? Therein I go’) was voted favourite of the month, out of 21 mentioned once or more, by a wide margin. I don’t recall coming across this Welsh meaning of bro before, and with my veiled use of ‘go’ as the definition, I dare say it took a while to understand the clue as a whole. The clue to MIGHTY (‘May, in the past hot, in gym it boiled – very!’) apart from its distinctly creaky syntactical structure, was also flawed, as a few of you noticed, there being no indication of the ‘y’ in the first cryptic treatment. Apologies for that. The clue definitely needed more work to be spent on it. One other error, probably made by less experienced competitors, came up often enough to be worth mentioning. At least six entries included clues to the asterisked definition (COMPLETE), in defiance of the instructions in the Rules and requests paragraph. I hope enough of the culprits will read this to take note.
 
PERFECT certainly offered a wide range of possible treatments, with its multitude of definitions and use as three different parts of speech, almost an embarrassment of riches perhaps. Some resorted to clues consisting of nothing but a string of definitions, but in view of the other possibilities on offer I found this approach a little uninspired. This is illustrated by the fact that each of the three prize-winners uses a completely different idea. I particularly enjoyed the elegant simplicity of Mr Wardrop’s first prize-winner, incorporating as it does all the key features of the dictionary definition for ‘parfait’.
 
A few of you muttered a bit about my clue to EARL, with its reference to Earl Wild, the US pianist (1915-2010) described by one music critic as ‘a super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class’. For my part, I had never heard of the Hanna Barbera cartoon series Wacky Races, among whose many characters was one Peter Perfect, and would hazard a guess that few solvers below a certain age would know of it either. (It was originally screened in the late 1960s.) Not, I suggest, in the Horowitz class. But here I must correct something from last month’s slip, in which I attributed the catchphrase ‘The world is your lobster’ to Derek Trotter in Only Fools and Horses. As two of you gently pointed out it was actually spoken by that other malapropism-prone London wide boy Arthur Daley, in Minder. Still a gem, for all that.