Quick Cryptic no 3315 by Jalna

In legal terms (and bowing to m’learned friend Templar’s greater knowledge of such matters), a citation is either a reference to a previously decided case to support a legal argument, or an official notice or summons requiring someone to appear in court.  It is the second of the two meanings we need here.

As for winding up, nothing at all to do with ending something or liquidating a company – the meaning we want is to tease, annoy or excite.

This took me a while to equate pivot and turn, as I see pivoting as changing direction without moving from a given spot, while turning often implies movement, eg along an arc or a curve.  But they are close enough for Jalna’s purposes.

I think the word jointly must be part of the definition, or else it has no role in the clue.  But it is perhaps not strictly necessary, as “Two people” could equally well serve for Duo.

This one puzzled me to start with, as “running to the west” is often used to indicate a reversal.  Here though I take it to mean that the DU is moving west (ie moving left) so that it comes before the S not after it.  Not a wordplay trick I’ve seen before but clear enough what Jalna intends.

I think it is also the first time I’ve seen a river clued as a “body of water”.  Given that the south of France has numerous lakes or étangs on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier – the Étang de Thau, etc – there is a fine opportunity to be misled.  But at least it makes a change from a river being clued as a flower.

Arch as a synonym for mischievous, describing someone who is being cheeky, sly, or deliberately teasing, is a favourite of setters.  Arc as the way in which a situation develops is slightly more unusual, but it comes via the trajectory of something thrown, which is usually a curved path through the air, and from that a continuous progression or line of development, as in a story’s dramatic arc.

I think the question-mark in the clue is merely because of the sheer incongruity of the picture of comedians really really wanting to hear the sound of massacres.

Well, a snooker or billiards cue can be supported by a rest, but other than that I was struggling a bit to connect the two and I am not sure this is the tightest of definitions.

Another very slightly loose definition perhaps: while expect and anticipate are often used interchangeably, they are not quite the same, as expect means to strongly believe something will happen based on previous facts or patterns, whereas anticipate has more the meaning of to expect something and take proactive action to prepare for it.

Cove is a British or Australian slang term for a man, fellow or chap, and now perhaps rather old-fashioned.  It is most often in my experience accompanied by the adjective rum, as in “he’s a rum cove”, meaning “he’s rather strange or eccentric”.

Had = Ate is something of a QC staple; it was in the last puzzle I blogged a fortnight ago as well.

Excellent deception from Jalna here, as with the juxtaposition of river in the clue, one is meant of course to read row as meaning “move a boat with oars”.

And right at the last, another clue that requires some lateral thinking to arrive at the definition.  In this case, I got there via a snooker player playing the first shot of a frame, known as the break or breaking off, and in both billiards and snooker, a break as a run of consecutive shots by the same player.  And by the usual transfer of meaning from actor to tool, it is not too much of a stretch to say that it is the cue that is doing the breaking.

At least, that was my best effort at the parsing, but I await wisdom from others if there is a better explanation.