AZED CROSSWORD 508

POSTURE-MAKER

1.  Miss I. M. Raab: Tumbler, nuts, smoke, rapture! (anag.).

2.  R. J. Palmer: Who could make toes rake rump? (anag. & lit.).

3.  N. O’Neill: Must rear poke out, in one affecting the Grecian bend? (anag.).

VHC

E. A. Beaulah: Trouper? Ask me to adopt unorthodox pose (anag. & lit.).

Mrs A. Boyes: I supply rack joints, mince or English rump steak (anag. incl. E; supply adv.).

Rev C. M. Broun: May not he have to put arms or knee in unusual positions? (comp. anag. & lit.).

R. S. Caffyn: Pokes rear and tum into unnatural positions, he does (anag. & lit.).

N. C. Dexter: You want acrobatic trouper? Ask me (anag. & lit.).

P. Drummond: Proteus is literally an assumer of strange shapes (i.e. anag. of posture).

M. Earle: He may order us to keep arm touching back of ear (anag. + r, & lit.).

B. Franco: Meet our park’s screwball – Yogi (anag.; ref. Y. Bear).

E. J. & S. D. Griew: What makes a bear garden of remote US park? Yogi? (anag.).

V. G. Henderson: Start of overpricing in rotten supermarket – I’ll be bending over backwards to make ends meet (anag. incl. o).

R. Hooper: P. E. makes route to career for me (anag. & lit.).

M. D. Laws: See me twist and double over in troupers’ variety? (me (rev.) + ka (rev.) in anag., & lit.).

Rev W. P. Manahan: Proteus? (i.e. anag. of posture, & lit.).

D. F. Manley: Proteus? (i.e. anag. of posture, & lit.).

J. D. Moore: Foot scraping back his power: fresh spur to a meek party-centre? (anag. incl. r; ref. Michael F.).

T. J. Moorey: Rod’s clutching unruly star Emu, one with flexible body (anag. in poker; ref. R. Hull and puppet).

B. A. Pike: Rum pose-taker, oddly positioned (anag. & lit.).

C. P. Rea: What makes him could be a stumer if set about by a stiff person! (anag. in poker, & lit.).

A. J. Redstone: I train rum pose taker (anag. & lit.).

W. J. M. Scotland: Without English chop or rump steak, my attitude is: get knotted! (E in anag.).

D. M. Stanford: Proteus? (i.e. anag. of posture, & lit.).

H. Tillier: Silly me to ask Rupert to become a contortionist. Rupert has no time (anag. less t).

V. C. D. Vowles: Rum pose taker? Very rum! (anag. & lit.).

Mrs M. P. Webber: To speaker rum is disastrous – he’ll tie himself in knots (anag.).

R. J. Whale: Mr Speaker out dancing – he makes members do the twist (anag.).

M. Woolf: For all to see – Pom streaker running around – one could have dislocated neck! (U in anag.; ref. incident at Twickenham).

HC

R. H. Adey, D. R. Appleton, Dr J. K. Aronson, D. W. Arthur, R. L. Baker, P. F. Bauchop, R. C. Bell, A. G. Bogie, C. Brougham, A. J. Bulman, E. J. Burge, J. Campbell, Mrs M. J. Cansfield, E. Chalkley, C. A. Clarke, G. H. Clarke, P. R. Clemow, D. A. Crossland, A. J. Crow, T. Davies, R. Dean, Dr V. G. I. Deshmukh, T. Dolan, C. E. Faulkner-King, M. B. Fisher, Dr I. S. Fletcher, E. H. Freedman, F. D. Gardiner, J. A. Gill, S. Goldie, J. F. Grimshaw, S. Grimshaw, A. Hall, D. V. Harry, R. F. A. Horsfield, F. E. Humpage, A. H. Jones, J. H. Jones, Miss M. Kaye, R. E. Kimmons, P. J. Lawless, A. Lawrie, C. W. Laxton, K. M. Long, B. Manvell, L. May, J. McBreen, A. McIntyre, C. G. Millin, J. J. Moore, C. J. Morse, R. A. Mostyn, W. Murphy, F. E. Newlove, S. J. O’Boyle, J. O’Hagan, F. R. Palmer, D. R. Robinson, A. R. Rudge, T. E. Sanders, M. S. Taylor, R. C. Teuton, L. E. Thomas, A. J. Wardrop, D. B. Wedmore, G. H. Willett, D. O. Williams, D. Williamson, S. Zamzummims.
 

COMMENTS
144 entries, with only a few mistakes (mainly GNARL for GNARR.). A good selection of clues again, with anagrams to the fore. Proteus was certainly a happy find, though I had marginal reservations about the one-word clues of Messrs Manahan, Manley and Stanford. Proteus, as I understand the legend, could change his shape at will, so that he turned into something completely different, thus evading capture. This isn’t quite the same as changing your posture as contortionists do, i.e. simply rearranging your component parts for flexibility or effect or both. Nit-picking perhaps? Well, yes, but that’s the name of the game. Topically-minded competitors tried hard to involve Ms Roe, the Twickenham self-publicist, in anagrams involving the word ‘streaker’. Disappointingly few of these actually came off, the problem usually being to devise a definition applicable to the cryptic reference. This is often the key to effective clue-writing of the more imaginative kind. If the clue-writer has had to try too hard to ‘marry’ his cryptic indicator with his definition the strain is usually obvious and the clue suffers as a result. Ruthless self-criticism is required in these matters, plus a constant awareness of how the solver is likely to react.
 
I think I ought to make clear my dislike of two ways of indicating anagrams that are fairly widespread but (to me) untenable grammatically. Whereas ‘(a) form of’ (rum pose taker, or whatever) is quite accurate and acceptable as a way of telling the solver to rearrange the relevant letters, ‘(a) sort of…’ isn’t, any more than ‘kind’, ‘class’, ‘type’ would be. ‘Sort’ as a noun doesn’t mean ‘assortment’ so no proper instruction to form an anagram is given to the solver. Secondly, ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe’ can in context be synonymous with ‘possibly’ but this does not in my view entitle the clue-writer to use them as equivalents of’ possibly’ to indicate an anagram. ‘Possibly’ suggests to me ‘having the potential of becoming’; ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe’ do not, being altogether more static in connotation. I know this sounds finicky and many crossword compilers use the three words interchangeably where anagrams are intended. I stick to my guns, however, so you know where you stand.