AZED CROSSWORD 1637

AMNESIC

1.  V. Dixon: One may have had minders since subject to recurrent blanks (alternate letters, & lit.).

2.  R. R. Greenfield: Swizzling in most cases can produce such sots (comp. anag. & lit.).

3.  D. A. Campbell: He can’t remember last bits of Kubla dream since being disturbed (a m + anag.; ref. Coleridge and the man from Porlock).

VHC

M. Barley: What nice drop of scrumpy could make you following morning? (am + anag. incl. s, & lit.).

M. Bath: Machines without access to high-density floppy may be unable to retrieve information (anag. less h).

J. R. Beresford: One beset by an imperfect recollection of names &c (I in anag. + c, & lit.).

C. Boyd: Oblivious of history, warmonger regularly struck out thus (alternate letters + sic).

Rev Canon C. M. Broun: Needing a reminder in case Fifth of November gets muddled (anag. incl. m; ref. jingle, ‘Remember, remember,…’).

M. Casserley: Forgetful, having overlooked our main course when cooking (anag. less our).

J. P. Guiver: Absent minded, retaining only odd snippets, and so forgetful (a + alternate letters + sic, & lit.).

C. R. Gumbrell: Answer comes with rendition of second part in playing of fugue (a + anag. less o; rendition = surrender).

M. Hodgkin: One whom memories can disturb no more (anag. less more, & lit.).

W. Jackson: Uninspired by rosemary? Season mince with a dash of allspice and a pinch of salt (anag. incl. a, s; ref. rosemary for remembrance).

Mrs S. D. Johnson: Showing record loss means I can‘t avoid worker being sacked (anag. less ant).

J. P. Lester: What EMI scan might reveal of one suffering memory loss (anag.).

J. C. Leyland: Machines without hard drives badly lacking memory (anag. less h; drive vi).

P. R. Lloyd: Right out of RAM since crashing with faulty memory ((R)AM + anag.).

C. G. Millin: Knotted tip of mouchoir in case one forgets (anag. incl. m).

C. J. Morse: Qu. What’s unlike elephants? Ans. Mice, silly (anag.; ‘e. never forget’).

F. R. Palmer: Since I am lacking a bit of intellectual ‘works’, about names I get confused (anag. less i, anag. incl. c., & lit.).

R. J. Palmer: What one could get from abusing mescalin, losing most central of faculties (anag. less l, & lit.).

G. Perry: Who’s likely to forget cinema’s ‘Rocky’? (anag.).

R. Phillips: New man, bumbling sice, is no retainer (anag. + anag.).

D. Price Jones: Having developed disorder, can memorise no more (anag. less more, & lit.).

P. L. Stone: Cessna I’m flying needs seconds to take off, unlike a jumbo (anag. less s; ‘elephants never forget’).

K. Wilson: Strangely, cinemas in this state don’t show Total Recall (anag.; ref A. Schwarzenegger film).

HC

G. Alderman, D. Appleton, W. G. Arnott, D. & N. Aspland, J. Bennett, C. J. Brougham, E. J. Burge, B. Burton, Mrs M. J. Cansfield, J. Capstick, P. Cargill, C. A. Clarke, C. W. Clenshaw, R. M. S. Cork, E. Cross, G. Cuthbert, D. J. Dare-Plumpton, N. C. Dexter, L. K. Edkins, C. M. Edmunds, H. F. Everett, Dr I. S. Fletcher, H. Freeman, J. Grimes, M. J. Hanley, R. Hesketh, G. Johnstone, Mrs J. Mackie, W. F. Main, D. F. Manley, P. W. Marlow, P. McKenna, K. Milan, T. J. Moorey, W. Murphy, D. Pendrey, J. T. Price, W. Ransome, D. R. Robinson, C. M. Steele, J. B. Sweeting, R. C. Teuton, Ms S. Wallace, L. Ward, A. J. Wardrop, W. B. Wendt, R. J. Whale, Ms B. J. Widger, D. C. Williamson, Dr E. Young, M. Zeegen.
 

Comments
312 entries, no mistakes. Favourite clue, by a long way: that for AREOLA, with SPIKERY a distant second, and 17 nominations in all. I have used ‘Carmen’ for ‘AA’ before, probably more than once, but claim no originality in this. I’m pretty sure Ximenes used it years ago, though I may be wrong. With awful irony, I forgot that I’d asked you to clue AMNESIAC for the competition in October 1977 (No. 289). Only three of you drew my attention to this, so perhaps most of you who go back that far are becoming as forgetful as me. I should have checked, of course, and would normally have done so but for the upheaval of house-moving, which disturbs all normal routines. (My thanks to all those who expressed concern for me during a generally uncomfortable period.) At least it wasn’t the identical word, and even the difference of one letter can be quite marked. I didn’t, and still haven’t, looked again at the slip for that long-ago competition. Two clues of mine gave some trouble, those for HANCE and SNIPES: ‘Upward curve welcomed by Chancellor’ and ‘Criticisms from e.g. Wesley blasted sin, endless nuisance’. Those who were puzzled by the first of these could not see beyond CE, I guess, and failed to spot a straightforward ‘hidden’ clue (I think ‘welcomed’ will do to suggest the notion of ‘embracing’). And I couldn’t resist a misleading reference to the (moderately famous) black US film actor Wesley Snipes, perhaps more familiar to the under-30s.
 
It was quite hard to find an original way of dealing with AMNESIC, a word that cries out for ‘& lit.’ treatment. Anagrams of ‘name(s)’ and ‘cinema(s)’ were two a penny, so only the neatest clues using these ideas made it onto the short lists. Random Harvest, in which Gregory Peck played an amnesic, also cropped up quite often, as well as some less well known films of yesteryear. I’m keen on the cinema (and the theatre) so I tend to regard as pretty obscure (and therefore to be avoided) titles I’ve never heard of. Not a very objective criterion, admittedly, but one you could usefully bear in mind.
 
One regular competitor (this month’s third prizewinner, in fact) asks for my views on ‘more “imaginative” anagram indicators’. This is a broad issue, and one on which I find it difficult to be prescriptive. When Don Manley and I were asked by Chambers to attempt some sort of definitive list in the introduction to the Chambers Crossword Dictionary we declined, but acceded to their wish to include a large number of words and phrases ‘regularly used to indicate an anagram’, with the following proviso: ‘No such list could be comprehensive. Almost any word or phrase meaning or suggesting disturbance or an abnormal state may be used as or as part of an anagram in a cryptic clue.’ One such phrase, which I am on record as expressing my dislike of, is ‘(a) sort of, and here I have to confess that my former objections to it now seem unreasonable. Dictionaries still seem reluctant to acknowledge the sense of the noun ‘sort’ as ‘an act of sorting’, except in the specific context of arranging computer data, but common sense suggests that its use in a wider general context is now well established. I would welcome views on this.