Rather tricky for a Quiptic, wasn’t it? In addition Hectence makes very free use throughout of two devices that even moderate purists will not approve of.
The first is freely running words together in the clue when the sense requires that they are separate – see 9ac for the first outing of this device. The second is using ‘First this’ or ‘second that’ or similar to mean ‘the first letter in this’ or ‘the second letter in that’, first seen in 23ac.
Afrit, the grandfather of the modern crossword, said that as a setter ‘I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean’, and these devices certainly don’t say what they mean. They make extra work for the solver while saving time for the setter, so it is tempting to think of them as lazy. Still, if you are invited to dinner, you take the dishes seasoned as they are, and these are Hectence’s two favourite herbs. If you find them a bit pungent, taste carefully of 4dn.
Across
1 Scientist’s reportedly been eating poorly (6)
BOFFIN
BEEN, as many people pronounce it, is a homphone of (‘reportedly’) BIN, which here is eating or containing OFF or poorly (‘I feel a bit off’).
5 Leaves container of drink with golfer’s mate (3,5)
TEA CADDY
TEA, a drink, with a golfer’s mate or CADDY, yields this ‘leaves container’ – a container of leaves.
9 Burglar ruined artwork making a getaway (8)
INTRUDER
Hectence takes the view that a setter may run words together freely, with not even the slightest pangs of conscience. Unwinding this clue a bit we might get “Burglar RUINED ART work making A get away”. Thus fortified we make A get away from RUINED ART, and we ‘work’ the remaining letters to find an INTRUDER.
10 Feel sick rotating with pole in exercise to get supple (6)
PLIANT
AIL is turning round or rotating with N for North, one of the two poles, in PT – physical training, better known to some of us as PE.
11 Finished hardwood in annexe is oppressive (12)
OVERWHELMING
OVER (finished), with H ELM (hard wood) in WING or annexe. More run-together words – ‘hardwood’ for ‘hard wood’.
13 Simpson’s naughty kid has change of heart (4)
BART
A naughty kid is a BRAT, and changing its middle or heart around yields the well-known Simpson.
14 Is being kept in shade a drag? (8)
NUISANCE
IS, being kept in NUANCE, is a bit of a drag or NUISANCE. A ‘shade’ is, among other things, ‘a slight difference or amount’.
17 Demonic sea creature’s hiding close to me (8)
FIENDISH
FISH is containing or hiding END with (‘to’) I: FI-(END I)-SH. ‘Me’ and ‘I’ are not really the same, so I’m not quite convinced by this.
18 Partially cook raw vegetable (4)
OKRA
This vegetable is part of coOK RAw.
20 Retiring sick, tucked into beaker with a brownish soup (12)
MULLIGATAWNY
ILL, retiring (going back) tucked into MUG, with A TAWNY.
23 Leading lady gets rescuer astride charger (6)
SALVER
L has SAVER astride for this large platter. Using ‘leading lady’ to mean ‘the letter that leads LADY’ is our second dubious device at work.
24 Everyone at work, after week on extra duty initially, gets hammered (8)
WALLOPED
ALL at OP, or work (short for OPUS), after W (week), is followed by (how does ‘on’ mean this in an across clue?) the initials or first letters of Extra Duty.
25 Speculation before man left after a deception (8)
BETRAYAL
A speculation or BET appears before RAY, a man. Then we get L for Left after A: BET RAY A L.
26 Nurse to Sweden’s first queen (6)
SISTER
S on a car indicates Sweden, Ist (taking I as the Roman numeral 1) = first, and ER is the current queen or a well-known historical one – in either case a well-known boon to crossword setters.
Down
2 Pigs sound at home in adequate pen (4)
OINK
IN (at home) is penned in by OK (adequate) for this sound made by pigs.
3 Do without tent carelessly left behind (9)
FORGOTTEN
FORGO (do without), followed by an anagram (‘carelessly’) of TENT.
4 Pushed for new dugout with second team leading division (6)
NUDGED
N (new) + DUG ‘out’ or anagrammed – more words run together. Then we move to the other herb of the day: ‘Second team’ doesn’t really mean ‘the second letter of TEAM’, nor ‘leading division’ ‘the leading letter in DIVISION’, but that is what is required.
5 Interject and set out how Vettel, stripped of victory, is to concede defeat (5,2,3,5)
THROW IN THE TOWEL
To THROW IN is to interject, after which you are to ‘set out’, or take an anagram of, HOW VETTEL, with the V (for Victory) removed or stripped.
6 Order for pudding? (5,3)
APPLE PIE
Double definition – everything’s in APPLE PIE order here.
7 Saying when A11’s to join old motorway (5)
AXIOM
A XI (eleven) joins O (old) M (motorway).
8 Organise sign-in card for buffet carriages (6,4)
DINING CARS
Organise or anagram SIGN-IN CARD to find these buffet carriages.
12 Submit to her being taken out of therapeutical analysis (10)
CAPITULATE
First take HER out of THERAPEUTICAL: TAPEUTICAL. An ‘analysis’ of the remaining letters will break them down (and rearrange them, I suppose) into CAPITULATE.
15 Article on young doctor by Guardian has no byline (9)
ANONYMOUS
The indefinite article AN + ON + Y=young + MO = Medical Officer or doctor + US, the Guardian of which Hectence is here speaking as a representative.
16 Carefully, leaving nothing out, take final tour in city (8)
GINGERLY
Leaving or GOING, with O (nothing) out, with R in the city of ELY. A more scrupulous setter might have said ‘last part of TOUR’ for R.
19 Washes window ledges within (6)
SWILLS
SILLS are window ledges, and here have W (‘with’) in: within = with in.
21 Brilliant topless bar (5)
LEVER
Brilliant is CLEVER, and removing the top (in a down entry, the first letter is at the top) yields LEVER.
22 Flowering plant’s height disorientated bee (4)
HEBE
H = height, plus an anagram of (‘disoriented’) BEE.
So far this morning, in addition to the Quiptic, I have done the DT, the Guardian cryptic, the FT (all Rufus productions) and the Indy. The Indy Quixote apart, the Quiptic was the trickiest of the day which sort of defeats the object of it being an easy puzzle designed to attract newcomers to the word of cryptic crossword solving.
That said, I did enjoy it so thank you to Hectence and Writinghawk.
I agree that this was a bit tricky for a Quiptic. I solved it quickly but took almost half that time again to go back and parse about 10 of my answers. Even so I couldn’t parse 1a, 6d (which I thought might be a not too CD) or 19d.
I liked 7d, 14a, 17a, 12d, 26a, 11a, 15d, 3d, 9a, 16d and my favourites were 20a MULLIGATAWNY & 4d NUDGED.
New words for me were HEBE, CHARGER = ‘salver or platter’, and BOFFIN (last in).
Thanks Hectence and Writinghawk.
Thanks very much for the blog, WH – I found this more thought-provoking than the puzzle!
I seem to have got used to the conventions that you query – “leading lady”, for example. “First Lady” doesn’t raise anyone’s eyebrows, I assume. We have to imply “[letter of]” after both “leading” and “first”.
But I suspect I’m not even a moderate purist!
Good puzzle, but not very suitable as a Quiptic I thought. The construction for INTRUDER was pretty arcane.
Thanks Writinghawk; I thought you were a bit hard on Hectence’s constructions. For example, my crossword dictionary gives ‘second’ as ‘selection of second letter.’ It also gives ‘leading’ as a head selection indicator, so I think that they are quite legitimate devices – even if not for a purist.
I especially liked BOFFIN and FORGOTTEN. I don’t really understand charger=platter=SALVER; perhaps someone can explain.
OK, found charger=platter in Chambers….. 🙁
This meaning of “charger” is used in the story of the beheading of John the Baptist in Matthew 14 (also associated with the Dance of the Seven Veils, the unnamed daughter being traditionally known as Salome):
Thanks all! JohnR, eyebrows in some circles would indeed be raised by ‘first lady’. But a setter wishing to leave the ciliary ridges undisturbed could write, for example, ‘first of ladies’ or ‘fifth among equals’ or ‘first in line’ or ‘one leading lady’ without reproach. (The last one is a bit subtle – not for a Quiptic, perhaps!) Instead of ‘with second team leading division’ one could have, say, ‘with second of teams at head of division’. Hopefully the examples show why I said that the eyebrow-raising form saves work for the setter.
Robi – your dictionary is quite right to remind you that a clue containing ‘first’, etc, might be telling you to look at the relevant letter. But Afrit’s maxim is meant to remind us that in a properly constructed clue – or sentence – one must look not only at the meaning of the words but at their relation to each other. I cannot ask ‘Going are you where?’ even though I am using the individual words with their right meaning, because I have not established the right relations between them, and the alleged problem with ‘first lady’ is similar.
Setting aside subjective questions of fairness, there is certainly something satisfying about seeing the parts fall into place when a setter has said just what they mean and still managed to bamboozle you for a while.
Andrew: thanks for the excellent citation!
I thought WH’s blog and subsequent comments summed this puzzle up very well. I finished it and enjoyed it but I’m not a beginner, and a few years ago I wouldn’t have had a clue, no pun intended, on where to start with some of the wordplay used here. This would have been much more suitable as a normal weekday puzzle.
Writinghawk @7 – ‘Going are you where?’ sounds a bit like Yoda from Star Wars. 😉
Didn’t find this too hard and WH’s complaints barely occurred to me being used to such in the indy all the time. It certainly makes for better surface and more concise clues. Ta for the blog writing hawk.
Re Indy, examples please Flash, though I’m almost sure you must possibly be right.
Thing about these heinous clue-grammatical crimes is that they are all allowed, or maybe all-owed, in-deed, in the Augdrain*. And so Hectence is within her (?) rights to fill her (?) boots – she (?) may well be the fairest compiler on Earth in her (?) capacity as a Times (?) compiler for example. But shurely only those who complain on those other occasions that these unwritten (?) rules are broken can really have a bash.
I don’t ever say anything nasty about The Guardian.
Paul B your back catalogue? Or just about everyone 🙂
I’m sure that afrid was right to rein in on some abuses but times if not The Times move on. Liberte fraternite etc.
Thank you for highlighting this puzzle Writinghawk (a break from Rufus) and for the interesting comments. As this puzzle is from The Guardian not The Times is there any reason why the Guardian editor should follow The Times’s editorial policy?
Personally I don’t have any problem with these devices, in fact I like them.
Thanks for blogging, Writinghawk. I don’t want to put you in a minority of one, but I don’t have a problem with any of the devices you mention either. Are they clear instructions? They are to me.
But I agree with you and others: this was really tricky for a Quiptic (second week running). Would have sat well as a daily cryptic.
Thanks to Hectence anyway.
Hello Flash
You’re probably right re my back catalogue. Hoist, petard, etc.
I don’t know that I expressed myself all that well above, but the point I hoped to make is that The Guradnia follows its own path on cryptic device. So fine. No-one has to like it. I merely suggested that a Guardian writer could behave in an entirely different manner when setting for another paper, while poor old WH didn’t mention The Times at all!
Not sure what Afrit wrote other than his famous maxim, but you can a find a little more here:
http://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/05/afrits-armchair-crosswords.html
… and you can certainly get a copy from Derek Harrison at The Crossword Centre.
Very true, Writinghawk does not mention The Times by name. I think The principle still stands, though my expression is weak.
@WH – what a lot of rubbish you spout. If you want to make party political broadcasts on behalf of the Ximenean tendency do at least say that that’s what you’re doing – ie don’t pretend that there are some universally accepted “rules” of cruciverbal grammar which are being broken.
There is more than one approach to cryptic clue setting and evaluation and most of us who have been doing eg Guardian and Telegraph for a while are perfectly familiar with all the devices used in this excellent puzzle. Those who read their way in at a later date through the Ximenean propaganda of eg Manley and co (even nice guy Greer did it) are obviously at a disadvantage if they left their critical faculties at the door.
Try reading Barnard and ignoring Ximenes and you’ll get a bit closer.
Alternatively – if you only like Ximmie puzzles why not bounce the blog job onto someone else when you find you’ve picked up a non-ximmie puzzle. Don’t spoil it for the rest of us.
This site gets to be like having punk rock fans doing reviews of Wigmore Hall gigs.
Thanks, Swagman, I will look into the Barnard of whom you speak. Always happy to learn from my elders and betters. It seems to be out of print but on your recommendation I have secured a second-hand copy from Amazon at great expense, so it had better be good. Glad you liked the puzzle, sorry the blog was not to your taste. There is more than one approach to blogging – next time, perhaps, comment on one you like better. A pleasure to have your input, though mind you I hope never to meet a Miserable Swagman.
Not sure where the Times came into the equation – I assure all present I never mentioned it in word or thought.
Paul B, I have a copy of that charming little collection of Afrit’s. His clues are achingly redolent of an older and simpler age, though I can’t quite say why. Here are a couple from crossword no. 3:
As you will see I am not quite the hardliner our jolly friend probably gives me credit for.
Jolly is NOT jolly at all!! Poor WH.
If I was any jollier I’d be dancing on the table.
Hope you enjoy it. It prolly takes a couple of reads to fully absorb his terminology – but realising that at the time it was written nobody had ever attempted such an analysis makes me, at least tip my hat to him. He obviously has a mathematical frame of mind and was probably over-estimating his target audience, cruciverbalism at that time having been largely hi-jacked by the classicists.
You will note that he had the good grace to namecheck McNutt as a leading setter – the latter’s intemperate rant against the setters of his day a few years later failed to do that.
BTW Val Gilbert’s book (can’t recall the exact title) has a chapter on him and a few sample puzzles.
Pleased to see such an interesting discussion – thanks all!