AZED CROSSWORD 500

BEFOOL (two extra Ds)

1.  D. Ashcroft: Admass imperative: get fund at others’ expense (amass, fun; imperative form of ‘am ass’).

2.  D. A. Crossland: Dodd, live comedian (do; be fool; ref. Ken D.; do = cheat).

3.  A. R. Chandler: Impersonate a comic (Dodd) (do; be fool; ref. Ken D.; do = cheat).

VHC

Rev C. M. Broun: Old comedian lived before drag (live, rag; be + fool).

J. Cordery: To make appear less sanded befits a kitchen stool where the ends are just stuck together (sane; bef … ool).

C. M. Edmunds: Diddle, fiddle of boddle (bole; anag.; sv. bodle).

R. A. England: Take a rise out of piddling funds in BL (piling; oof (rev.) in B el).

E. M. Hornby: Diddle be-diddle (idle; be-fool).

F. P. N. Lake: Kidd’s fighting voyagers loved nothing above a spot of lolly! (kid, love; BEF 0 0 l; British Expeditionary Force).

D. F. Manley: Stuff tummies with D Dinner food – no end of Azed stories coming out (inner; foo(d) in bel(lies); ref. AZ dinner).

D. P. M. Michael: Duped dazed solver, for instance – before the game’s up! (dupe Azed; bef. + loo (rev.)).

J. D. Moore: Be natural: DAZ manages to do this, competitors’ powders fail! (AZ, powers; be + fool; washing powder brand).

C. P. Rea: Have noise measured with necessary rising din! (measure, in; oof (rev.) in bel; oof, necessary = money).

A. Renwick: Have lived and flourished with eggs for dinner portion (live, inner; be + O O in fl.).

Ms E. Sale: Diddle and do (idle; 2 mngs.; do = cheat).

A. D. Scott: Dodd’s causing a riot in Bootle following appearing there instead of having the premiere in Toxteth (do; anag. with f for T; ref. Ken D.; do = cheat).

Mrs I. G. Smith: To bamboozle, follow half beer with toddy (toy; be(er) + fool).

J. G. Stubbs: Dollars, for example, go up in noised measure. What may the guilder do? (noise, guiler; oof (rev.) in bel).

J. Walton: Deluded initially by deft feat of outstanding legerdemain (delude, eft; initial letters).

D. B. Williams: Lived for endless love and left, infatuated (live, infatuate; be fo(r) 0 l).

HC (1)

C. Allen Baker, C. A. Clarke, Mrs M. A. Eacott, Mrs P. Edwards, Dr I. S. Fletcher, N. C. Goddard, B. Greer, R. B. Harling, R. Herbert, D. Hibbert, J. P. H. Hirst, B. Holland-Martin, R. Jacks, A. Lawrie, M. D. Laws, P. W. W. Leach, L. K. Maltby, H. S. Mason, T. J. Moorey, C. J. Morse, F. E. Newlove, R. J. Palmer, I. Torbe, A. J. Wardrop, M. G. Wilson

HC (2)

Mrs B. A. Boydell, H. J. Bradbury, C. Brougham, J. M. Brown, Mrs M. Cartlidge, Mrs A. S. Denniff, Dr V. G. I. Deshmukh, P. Drummond, R. Ellis, D. S. Fielker, R. P. C. Forman, B. Franco, R. R. Greenfield, A. H. Harker, P. F. Henderson, V. G. Henderson, I. A. Herbert, R. H. F. Isham, W. Jackson, M. Jellis, J. H. C. Leach, S. M. Mansell, B. Manvell, C. Miller, D. S. Nagle, M. Postlethwaite, Mrs D. M. C. Prichard, A. R. Rudge, L. G. D. Sanders, R. Stephenson, J. B. Sweeting, R. C. Teuton, J. F. N. Wedge, R. J. Whale, W. E. White, G. H. Willett.
 

COMMENTS
About 475 entries, with virtually no mistakes in the diagram. Where quite a lot of you came unstuck, however, was in interpreting the precise theme of the puzzle. Thirty-seven D’s had to be omitted from the unmutilated answers to the across clues (including two from BIDDIES, the clue to which was followed by the infuriatingly misprinted (5) instead of (7) – a slip which luckily few were seriously thrown by); and therefore thirty-seven D’s had to be inserted in the down clues to make the quotation literally true. Thirty-five had been inserted by me, leaving a further two to be inserted by you in your BEFOOL clues. Various misconceptions arose, however. Some of you didn’t bother to count and inserted any number of superfluous D’s in your clues; some thought I’d been inconsistent in that not every D in the downs needed to be omitted before solving; and very few of you indeed noticed that the style of the down clues was such that they made reasonable sense with and without the superfluous D’s. The best of those that did achieved VHC’s almost automatically, even Mr. Walton, whose (d)eft is on the borders of acceptability.
 
Having introduced for this very special occasion what I believe is a new type of clue, I suppose I should have anticipated the misunderstandings which might arise. I did not, it’s true, specifically state that clues submitted should be devised in such a way that the D’s could be omitted without rendering them meaningless. In devising the puzzle I realized fairly early on that this was a major consideration and strove for a lack of ambiguity in my own clues. It made them very much harder to compile, certainly, but a lot more satisfying. That said, I couldn’t deny that many of the entries which did not conform in this way were very clever and for that reason I divided the HC’s into two groups as above.
 
There were some who agonized over supposed ambiguities in the downs. Could ‘drent’ indicate an anagram as well as ‘rent’? Was ‘cadged’ equally indicative of a hidden word as ‘caged’? My unhesitating answer in both cases is ‘no’. I had foreseen this dilemma and strove throughout for wording which would be unambiguous. And finally there was the dilemma over ‘& lit.’ clues, which clearly bothered a number of you. My preamble stated clearly that it was necessary to ‘untreat’ (i.e. deprive of the requisite number of D’s) all down clues before attempting to solve them. If what you were left with after this treatment was worded like an ‘& lit.’ clue, that would seem to be perfectly fair. What was not on was an untreated clue which read like an ‘& lit.’ definition of the answer to the treated clue. The important thing to grasp was that the down clues as printed had and could have no direct relationship with their ‘answers’, unless and until they were ‘de-D’d’.
 
Anyway it all seems to have given quite a lot of fun and the idea can doubtless be exploited again, though it’s unlikely that such an appropriate quotation will present itself another time. I’m grateful for all the kind comments which accompanied your entries. The Azed 500 Dinner was a spectacularly successful affair, brilliantly masterminded by Don Manley and Richard Palmer. Two hundred guests were treated to an excellent dinner at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford and speeches from Don Manley, Vince Henderson and Frank Palmer (solvers all), Brian Nicholson (Managing Director of The Observer), Mrs. Betty Kirkpatrick (Chief Eitor of Chambers Dictionaries) and, unavoidably, Jonathan Crowther (AZ). My wife and I were both overwhelmed by the generous presentations, both verbal and tangible, to which we were treated, and I hope I made clear in my own speech that the most rewarding aspect of the Azed series has been the friendships I have made by it. I look forward to meeting many of those friends again at No. 750 and (who knows?) even at No. 1,000.
 
Meanwhile, for all those solvers who were not at the dinner but who like to get their teeth into a good anagram, here is a transcript of the D-AZED MENU (courtesy DFM and RJP): TEN COMMON BEERS? NO! (8, 8); EEL’S FINS? TELL NO FOOL! (6, 2, 4, 6); A CRAB TRIFLE LEFT? COME OFTEN! (11, 2, 4, 7), HEAT A CAT-TOE SOUP… (7, 8), …ILL AT OUR TEA? (11), BOIL CROC (8); MUM’S CHOICE LEMON CHEESE (WE’D HOT TREAT) (9, 6, 4, 5, 2, 6); THE FINER MEN ATE STIFF COW-RIND (6, 4, 5-6, 5). Bon appetit!