Quiptic 815 by Anto

by

A second outing for Anto in the Quiptic slot.

I struggled badly with this, I’m afraid.

There are several I had to cheat on, mainly the cryptic definitions, and there are one or two I can’t parse. It may just be that I was in a somewhat distracted mood this morning and unable to concentrate properly.

Everything started off so nicely with the batty botanists too!

Across
8 BOTANIST
Madly into bats? More probably into nuts! (8)

An anagram (madly) of INTO BATS
9 ELEVEN
Always on left winger’s back (6)

A cryptic definition, referring to football or rugby shirt numbers. The first of my cheats
10 TURF
Territory that’s under Russian flag, primarily (4)

The first letters (primarily) of That’s Under Russian Flag
11 MULTIVERSE
It’s impossible to be at one with? (10)

A cryptic definition (I think). The second of my cheats. I still don’t get it, I’m afraid
12 STACKS
Lots have small nails (6)

S (small) TACKS (nails)
14 SEAMLESS
Look down, coming across as smooth (8)

Another cheat. I’m afraid I can’t see how this parses
15 ARABICA
Coffee‘s first found in Middle East (7)

An insertion (found in) of C (coffee’s first) into ARABIA (Middle East). Coffee does double duty here, providing both the definition and the letter C that’s put into ARABIA
17 REHOUSE
He turns in anger to move home (7)

A reversal (turns) of HE in (in) ROUSE (anger)
20 MEA CULPA
Converted, Paul came to confession (3,5)

An anagram (converted) of PAUL CAME
22 PILLAR
Shaft supporter (6)

A double definition. Shaft = PILLAR. Supporter = PILLAR.
23 LIFE ON MARS
Revolution in man’s role, if it is found (4,2,4)

An anagram (revolution in) of MANS ROLE IF
24 AHEM
My leaving chaos is a polite bid for attention (4)

A deletion (leaving) of MY from MAYHEM (chaos)
25 OMERTA
Conspiracy of silence revealed by newcomer talking (6)

An answer hidden in (revealed by) newcOMER TAlking
26  LABURNUM
Wood causing a blaze in chimney (8)

An insertion (in) of A (a) BURN (blaze) in LUM (chimney). In crosswords, by Parliamentary decree, chimney is always LUM
Down
1 ROBUSTER
Stronger sounding alternative to 15 (8)

A homophone (sounding) of ROBUSTA (a type of coffee bean)
2 HALF
Can be first or second in football (4)

A cryptic definition
3 LITMUS
Long new technology problem comes up this sort of test (6)

L (long) IT (new technology) a reversal (comes up) of SUM (problem). There is a word missing after ‘up’, I think, either ‘in’ or ‘with’
4 STYLIST
Designer of farm building catalogue (7)

STY (farm building) LIST (catalogue)
5 LEVITATE
Vital tee shot to get off the ground (8)

An anagram (shot) of VITAL TEE
6 CEREAL BOWL
Final sporting competition for US flakes? (6,4)

A cryptic definition. Another one I had to cheat on
7 VERSUS
Against reciting poetry? (6)

A homophone (reciting) of VERSES (poetry)
13 CUBIC METRE
Capacity of Picasso, perhaps, for rhythm (5,5)

I assume this is CUBIC (of Picasso perhaps) (referring to Cubism, a style of painting) and METRE (rhythm)
16 CALENDAR
Type of girls who reveal a lot on dates … (8)

A cryptic definition, referring to the nudes often seen on calendars
18 STAKE OUT
… and keep an eye on location for second date (5,3)

S (second) TAKE OUT (date)
19 RATABLE
Grass can be assessed … (7)

RAT (grass) and ABLE (can). At least, I assume this is what is intended, although ‘can’ and ‘able’ are not directly substitutable. ‘Can’ is doing double duty here, providing both part of the wordplay and part of the definition
21 ENIGMA
… in game-changing conundrum (6)

An anagram (changing) of IN GAME
22 PASS BY
Keep going and check with someone (4,2)

A double definition. Keep going = PASS BY and check with someone = PASS BY
24 AIRS
Exposes bearings and relays, according to Roget (4)

I can see that AIRS = exposes but other than that I’m completely at a loss, I’m afraid

21 comments on “Quiptic 815 by Anto”

  1. 24d AIRS
    Exposes bearings and relays, according to Roget (4)

    It is just that the setter has given a list of synonyms (from Roget’s thesaurus) for AIRS: exposes, bearings (carriage), relays (broadcasts)

  2. Lots to dislike here.A decent setter would have said Braque who was primarily a cubist whereas PP had many more strings to his bow.Was this not well thought, ignorant or trying to be smarty-pants?

    As for Roget, the only sort of clue where he works is the “Hairy man in Roget’s book”.

    Didnt reckon much on 6d- its as if this upstart was trying to beat the solver-on a Quiptic!. Whereas Picaroon (Fri) and Puck(Prize) seek to entertain by very neat surfaces- they sort of want you to get the punch-line but send you round the houses on a wild goose chase so you laugh extra loud when the penny drops.

    9 and 2 were shocking clues

    25 would have been OK in a Don puzzle or a Prize where you are on the lookout for hidden obscure words- clue was OK but well out of place in a Quiptic.

    11 is offside by a mile.

    Sometimes I enjoy a chewy Quiptic where the Monday Cryptic is a write-in but this was patchy with some good clues but overall it brought out the hedgy in me which is rare.

    Big thumbs down esp in the Quiptic slot. Also rare from me.

  3. I too found this rather hard; in particular, it seemed rather tough for a Quiptic. A very helpful (and much appreciated) blog which helped with some I was struggling to parse.

    I too thought that 11 across was a cryptic definition; whilst one could be “at one with the universe”, it’s hard to still be “at one” if you replace “universe” by “multiverse”?

    My only parsing of 14 across was to interpret “coming across as” as “sounds like” and then say that “seamless” sounds like “seem less”, which could be interpreted as “look down” (i.e. it appears that there is less than before). This seems rather contrived and so I may well be wrong.

  4. Thanks Anto and nms

    I found this quite tricky, especially the NE corner and I failed to solve 9a & 14a – so this puzzle was neither quick nor easy for me!

    My favourites were 24a, 26a, 16d.

    New word for me was MULTIVERSE.

    I could not parse 11a, 14a (though I was trying to parse it in the way that Rick @ 3 mentions), 24d and 6d (still don’t really get it except for connection to Super Bowl?)

    13d – I found it strange that Picasso was described as CUBIC rather than a Cubist.

  5. I felt that some of these clues simply didn’t work. 9A surely would only work if left wingers (in some sport) always wore the number 11; as far as I know, this is not the case, but perhaps someone can put me right? 6D is very weak, and I think needs more of a definition than it gets.

    I think 14A is supposed to sound like “seem less” (= “look down”), but I didn’t much like it. I also found 11A unconvincing. In any case, some of the cluing seemed out of place in a Quiptic, which I’ve always understood to be a kind of beginner’s taster of cryptic crosswords.

  6. I didn’t like this.

    22a PILLAR doesn’t seem like a dd – surely a “pillar of the community” derives from the idea of a pillar (shaft) in a building. As for 9a, no – wrong! I could go on about several of the other poor clues.

    As has been said, a lot to dislike

  7. Reaction on 225 from bloggers and contributors is generally a case of accentuating the positives and being constructive about the negatives; then a bit of debate about what’s good and what’s not so good. But I really can’t find anything positive to say about this puzzle.

    Like copmus, I don’t like doing thumbs down, but …

    Please don’t use this Guardian grid for a Quiptic. It makes life easy for a setter, but very difficult for a solver. Leave it to compilers who need to hide a message in the perimeter. And having solutions with less than 50% checking shouldn’t really be found in a Quiptic.

    Please don’t reference one clue to another in a Quiptic. If you absolutely must do that, then make sure that they don’t intersect, like 1dn and 15ac, because you need one before you can get another.

    ABLE doesn’t equal CAN. ELEVEN is not even cryptic. Is IT really ‘new technology’? The surface is senseless anyway.

    MULTIVERSE I still don’t understand; HALF is barely cryptic. What CEREAL BOWL is about, I really don’t know.

    I won’t go on any further, but I’m really keen on Quiptics (which I think are a great idea) being an entry into cryptic crosswords for new solvers. That’s what they were for me. And if a newish solver saw this (and the last offering from Anto) then let’s just say they might be discouraged from coming back.

    I won’t mention the role of the Guardian Quiptic crossword editor. He might have saved the setter from another roughing up if he’d actually looked at the puzzle before publishing it.

    Many thanks to nms for his valiant efforts with this one.

  8. I agree with the consensus that this is totally unsuitable for the Quiptic slot. I don’t think it’s an entirely bad puzzle. I like some of the clues a lot, and most would be OK in a normal Cryptic, but some are disappointing.

    I couldn’t fully parse 22d, and although I think the parsing given here is probably right, I still don’t like it. I’ve defended removing non-consecutive letters in Cryptics before, but I think mAyHEM is completely out of place in a Quiptic. I too took MULTIVERSE as a play on “at one with the universe” and I quite like it, and I don’t have a problem with SEAMLESS. I don’t like the clue for RATABLE, which I would prefer to spell “rateable” anyway, though it seems as though that spelling is now being superseded by the other (originally US?) one.

  10. Thanks nms – not an easy puzzle to blog. I agree with jennyk @8 and her (assuming that is the right pronoun) general assessment of the puzzle.

    I came to the same conclusion as Rick @3 and Jason @5 over 14A SEAMLESS.

    michelle @4 and 6D CEREAL BOWL: in addition to the Super Bowl, there are other Bowls in US football (Rose and Orange come to mind), and there has even been a computer football game in which teams compete for the fictional Creeal Bowl, so perhaps the clue is now as awful as it might seem.

    Wikipedia informs us that coffee cultivation first took place in Southern Arabia, so 15A ARABICA is near enough a true &lit.

  12. It seems the disease is seeping into the Quiptic. An awful puzzle for me, which I checked as the previous offering by ‘Anto’ wasn’t so great either 🙁

  13. While I agree with the criticisms here, I would like to say that MEA CULPA and OMERTA were really excellent clues. If Anto can ease back on the shows of cleverness and pull out a few more like that, I think s/he could go far.

  14. (Perhaps instead of putting untested newcomers in the Quiptic slot, perhaps the Guardian should simply have an occasional “New Faces” slot. Somewhere where compilers who have yet to finesse their style can get some exposure and feedback, but without making the Quiptic too daunting for beginner solvers.)

  15. Thanks Anto and nms
    NOT a quiptic!
    Lots of dodgy clues, but MEA CULPA was sublime.
    The multiverse is a theory that requires that every time a wave function is collapsed, (e.g. Schrodinger’s cat) the universe splits and both possibilities continue in separate universes. Thus there are many many different versions of everyone in the different universes, so it is impossible to be “at one”.

  17. Thanks Anto and nms.

    Judging by the comments and some of the clues, this was not suitable for the quiptic slot. However, I quite enjoyed solving what I could, but ELEVEN, MULTIVERSE and SEAMLESS were beyond me, as was the parsing of several other clues.

    MEA CULPA was great, and I also liked BOTANIST, STACKS and AHEM.

  19. I quite liked 14a. It was to clever to come up with an original way to say “sounds like”.

    Otherwise though, I agree with everyone else.

    The real problem with 6d was the inclusion of “final”. Bowl games are generally not championship games.

    Thanks to Cyborg @9 for the 11 explanation. I tend to make very feeble attempts when clues involve sports, because, you know, yawn.

  20. I agree with a lot of the criticism here, but I’d like to add my appreciation for 20ac. Whether coincidentally or not, this crossword appeared on 29 June, the Feast of S. Peter and S. Paul, so the reference to Paul’s conversion was not only clever but piquant.

  21. Agree with most of those above. Quite a few clever clues but the Quiptic slot isn’t really the place for them.

    COTD 20a – simple and elegant – and also one that *was* perfectly well suited to the Quiptic slot.

    In 20a “to” is obviously the link-word – as commonly used by many good setters. It can be justified in many ways – eg (Collins – Preposition #5):

    used to indicate equality ? “16 ounces to the pound”

Comments are closed.