Guardian Quiptic 822/Anto

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This is Anto’s third Quiptic, and it’s fair to say that his/her first two – on Fifteensquared at least – did not receive universal acclaim.

There were several very good clues in here, but they were lost in a sea of mediocrity, and in some cases obscurity.  I always like to welcome and encourage new setters, especially for the Quiptic, which is a really difficult puzzle to set.  But I didn’t like much about this one either, I’m afraid.  Only three full anagrams, and lots of cds, dds and attempts at extended definitions.  Not ideal for a crossword of this type.  In my opinion, of course, so I’m interested in yours.

 

Abbreviations
cd  cryptic definition
dd  double definition
(xxxx)*  anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x]  letter(s) removed

definitions are underlined

Across

1 Spins good maiden over — what a surprise!
OH MY GOD!
Not a good start, because I can’t parse this.  The anagrind is presumably ‘spins’; the anagram fodder seems to be GOOD M O but can’t be because that’s only six letters; where the H and Y come from I have no clue.

5 Exercise and be cheerful!
CHIN UP
A dd.  A chin-up is a gym exercise, apparently.  I wouldn’t know.

9 Its back can be roughly used
ENVELOPE
A cd, referring to the fact that to make a rough calculation, you’d use the ‘back of an ENVELOPE’.

10 Type of column plain speaking leader churned out
SPINAL
(PLAIN S)* with ‘churned out’ as the anagrind.

12 Pass over set of drawers — one doesn’t care whose
CROSS-DRESSER
A charade of CROSS for ‘pass over’ and DRESSER for ‘set of drawers’, so a kind of dd cum cd.

15 Measure of speed for waiter — one hanging on for retirement
TIME-SERVER
A charade of TIME and SERVER.  TIME for ‘a measure of speed’ could be used in an athletics sense, I suppose.

17 Lout drops Victor for a drink
CHA
CHA[V] with the 22nd letter of the phonetic alphabet being what’s left out.  Loutish behaviour is only one aspect of chav culture, but fair enough.

19 Lines old men miss every second
ODE
The odd letters of OlD mEn.

20 Feeling that you have two ways of seeing
SIXTH SENSE
A cd, suggesting that if you had two sights or ‘ways of seeing’, you would have six, rather than the normal five, senses.  Perhaps not an ideal clue for a Quiptic.

22 Working ahead, looking to the future
GOING FORWARD
GOING for ‘working’ followed by FORWARD for ‘ahead’ for one of my least favourite business jargon phrases.  Can always be deleted without affecting the meaning.

26 Summon Georgia over difficult relationship issue
AGE GAP
A reversal of PAGE GA.  Not necessarily ‘difficult’, so I’m not sure what that’s doing in the clue.

27 Serb does dreadful damage through constant lying
BED SORES
I’d always write this as one word, but I’m sure two words are possible as well.  (SERB DOES)*

28 Doubling it up with an Italian master …
TITIAN
Two reversals of IT followed by AN.  Except this is an across clue, so ‘up’ won’t work as a reversal indicator.

29 … they split the market between them
DUOPOLY
A rather weak cd.

Down

1 Old German spelling for the river
ODER
A charade of O and DER as ‘German spelling for the’.

2 Transport king taking queen on board, for example
MOVE
A dd.  The second reference is to chess.

3 Reason why drunk lord enters stream to seek his fortune?
GOLD RUSH
An insertion of (LORD)* in GUSH and what some people would call an extended definition.

4 Deceitfully uses people easily swayed, initially
DUPES
The first letters of the first five words of the clue; the definition is the first five words as well, I suppose.

6 Line some still use in email and voicemail
HYPHEN
Because you can write e-mail or email; but I’m not sure I’d ever write voice-mail, so I might have left that out, since the clue works perfectly well without it.

7 Torture can end soon — very, very soon
NANOSECOND
(CAN END SOON)* with ‘torture’ as the anagrind.  I know that a NANOSECOND is a very short unit of time, but if someone could tell me where the definition is in this clue, I would be grateful.

8 She examines hand out for personal information
PALM READER
A cd.

11 Arrival of commercial outlet …
ADVENT
A charade of AD and VENT.

13 … where footwear for clowns is made eventually
AT LONG LAST
I did like this one.  Clowns typically have big feet, don’t they, so their cobblers would make their shoes …

14 Timid men curious about gym block
IMPEDIMENT
An insertion of PE for ‘gym’ in (TIMID MEN)*

16 Crushed horn is their most marketable product, alas
RHINOS
I also liked this one.  (HORN IS)*

18 Coffee often mistakenly ordered as a quick round
ESPRESSO
I didn’t much like this one, because a beginner is going to struggle with parsing it, if not with solving it.  The setter is referring to the fact that many people, mistakenly, spell it and pronounce it as EXPRESSO, which would be a charade of EXPRESS and O for ’round’.

21 Animal found in central Saigon, Guam and Panama
IGUANA
The central letters of the three places.

23 I invested in bond to flourish
WIELD
An insertion of I in WELD.

24 Musical crowd, proverbially
TRIO
‘Two’s company; three’s a crowd’, as the saying goes.  So a ‘musical crowd’ would be a TRIO.  Well done to anyone who got this without the crossing letters.

25 Game for watch designed by Apple?
I-SPY
Apple have apparently just introduced an Apple Watch – what it does apart from tell the time, I don’t know, because I’m not an early adopter.  So since Apple use the ‘I’ prefix for their other products, then I-SPY would be a whimsical solution to the clue.

Many thanks to the setter for this morning’s Quiptic.

22 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 822/Anto”

  2. Thanks, muffyword. Obvious now that you’ve explained it. (Aren’t all clues that you don’t understand like that?) OMG, I was so, like, how did I not like see 1ac today? I’m like so damaged, innit?

    Apologies to the setter – perfectly good clue.

  3. Thanks Anto and Pierre
    I enjoyed this, certainly much more than previous Antos. Some nice touches of humour. Favourites were RHINOS, WIELD, AT LONG LAST, BED SORES and ESPRESSO.
    I struggled a bit on the SE as DUOPOLY wasn’t a word that sprang to mind, and TRIO had a sort of “second-level” definition.

  4. I still don’t see 1ac. Pace Muffyword @1, OMG doesn’t help – we’ve already got the G, O and M, but where are H and Y?

  7. I found this the most accessible Anto Quiptic yet, but it certainly wasn’t straightforward and I’m really not sure the Quiptic slot is the correct place for Anto’s quirky cluing style. I finished in the SE with DUOPOLY after TRIO.

  8. Thanks both. I think that this setter is improving, although still a bit tough for a Quiptic

    Thanks Muffyword for the parsing of 1ac

  10. Thanks Anto and Pierre.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, especially the quirkiness, but agree with Andy B @7 that it is perhaps not ideal for the Quiptic slot.

    So many favourites, AT LONG LAST, CROSS-DRESSER, TIME-SERVER, IGUANA, SIXTH SENSE, TRIO…

  11. I would argue that your most experienced setters should compile the Quiptic. This is work of the poorest quality, likely to confuse rather than instruct the newbie.

  12. I don’t think this is as bad as some have suggested, but there are some clues I found problematic. Perhaps 1ac would be easier for someone who uses social media a lot, but I didn’t parse it correctly, getting stuck in the same way as Pierre. I agree with him that the clue for AGE GAP doesn’t need “difficult” (and it would be better without it) and that there isn’t an adequate definition for NANOSECOND.

    “Second sight” is a common term for what is also referred to as being a SIXTH SENSE, so that clue seems fair enough to me. The clue for TRIO also seems straightforward to me. That was the first (and only) proverb about crowds to come to mind, so I didn’t need to wait for crossers.

    I also agree with hh @11 that pitching Quiptics at the right level probably requires an experienced setter. The Everyman crosswords have a similar brief and those who’ve been following the discussions about them here will have seen that the new setter is only just beginning to get the level right after many weeks.

    Thanks to Anto and Pierre.

  13. HH @11 and jennyk @12
    We have had a few who have successfully moved in the other direction – from Quiptic to main puzzle. Nutmeg springs to mind. I suspect that far more people attempt the main puzzle (interesting to know if this is true?), so new compilers get to cut their teeth where there is less exposure.

  14. Thanks Anto, I found this more difficult than the Rufus cryptic.

    Thanks Pierre, I also stumbled with OMG, thinking that the anagram for good must have been in there.

    AT LONG LAST produced a smile and I especially liked RHINOS.

  15. muffin @13
    I understand the logic of that, but the Quiptics need to be within a fairly narrow difficulty range whereas the main Cryptics can and do vary greatly. I think it’s tough on a new (or new to the Guardian) setter to expect him/her to judge the Quiptic level. It must be disheartening to get so much criticism for your first few puzzles. Perhaps if the crossword editor was more active in selecting appropriate puzzles it would be less of a problem.

  16. jennyk @15
    I agree. In some ways it is harder to hit the right level for a Quiptic, whereas there is a lot of variation in the level of the main puzzle, as you say. How often does someone here say “this was harder than today’s Rufus”? (It was Robi today.)

  17. Thanks Pierre I’d have made a dog’s breakfast of trying to blog this. Not often I agree with HH but this would have thrown quite a few regular solvers of the main crossword.
    Perhaps Hugh should throw Anto into that lions den. Here some of these were not really aimed at new solvers.

  18. muffin and jenny

    I think it was Anax who once described compiling a Quiptic as ‘setting with one hand tied behind your back’. Which it is, really, because if you’re going to set a good one there’ll be devices and vocabulary that won’t be available to you. I think I’m right in saying that Orlando and Arachne did it the other way round: became establish Guardian setters and then got invited to do the Quiptic.

    And some setters, like Vlad and Screw, established themselves elsewhere and then got the gig with the Guardian cryptic straight off. I don’t think there’s much logic to it.

    In the end, it’s a cryptic crossword. It just needs to be accessible and clearly clued. Which is easier said than done. But it’s still a great addition to the crossword week and the Grauniad need thanking for inventing it.

  19. Pierre @18
    “But it’s still a great addition to the crossword week and the Grauniad need thanking for inventing it.”

    Absolutely!

  20. Perhaps Rufus should do the quiptic his style is eminently suitable and he knows how to do CDs. Let the q team loose on the G proper. Unless of course the Q pays less than the main paper… Sorry still smarting that Anto out smarted me today. Grrr hate failing to finish

  21. “Perhaps Rufus should do the Quiptic”?
    Why?
    There are already plenty of excellent Quiptic writers: Pan, Moley, Hectence, Provis, to name a few – oh, and Nutmeg and the incomparable Orlando.

    I agree with everyone who thinks this crossword is inappropriate for a Quiptic.
    I do not agree with those who think this setter is a potential daily setter.
    Despite a handful of really nice ideas I think this is overall crossword setting of the B category.
    I know, it’s easy to criticise puzzles while standing at the sideline but clues like 29ac (part of a pointless ellipsis) and 24d are rather odd (in any crossword).

    Some above like TIME-SERVER (15ac) but, for me, this was not so very good clueing.
    Why should one want to define ‘time’ by ‘measure of speed’ (dancing?) and what is ‘for’ doing there?
    The use of ‘up’ is either a slip or a beginner’s mistake. The only way to justify it here is by seeing ‘up’ as an anagram indicator. I bet my money on it that that wasn’t Anto’s intention.
    Some clues show a woolliness a la Otterden (though he’s much more imaginative), e.g. 3d, 18d or 1d (‘German spelling for the’ = DER).
    How on earth can you get HYPHEN from the clue alone? A hyphen is a line?

    Some say, it’s hard to write a proper Quiptic.
    I am not so sure about that (whatever Anax says).
    It’s probably more about putting one’s usual style aside and lower the level – a mindset thing, just don’t try to be clever.
    But let’s face it, anyone (including setter and editor) can see this is not a suitable product.
    But it got published for some reason.

    A comparison has been made with the problems for the new Everyman setter after Allan Scott left.
    And that a setter needs some time to adjust.
    An experienced setter like Colin Gumbrell can, I am afraid Anto cannot.
    Three below par Quiptics in a row now.

    Perhaps, some will find me too negative.
    I could make a list a la Hedgehoggy but that’s not just it – the overall feel is wrong.
    Well, so be it, this is what I think.
    “Not a fantastic Quiptic setter (4)”

    Many thanks Pierre.

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