Pan always gives us a sound Quiptic, and that was the case this morning. One or two trickier ones, and a not entirely helpful grid for an entry-level puzzle, but it was all there if you went looking for it.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
7 Smart reasons to conceal crime
TREASON
Hidden in smarT REASONs.
8 Meat cooked in ovens
VENISON
(IN OVENS)* Nice with a bit of redcurrant jelly.
9 Vegetable with right to become a fruit
PEAR
PEA plus R.
10 Staying power needed to finish university career, gaining first in nanotechnology
ENDURANCE
It’s a long surface, but a good one. A charade of END, U and N for the first letter of ‘nanotechnology’ in RACE for ‘career’.
12 Daft place to do a wee
POTTY
A funny dd. Funny ha-ha rather than funny peculiar.
13 Crucifix finally found during cries to arrange for a priest with special powers …
EXORCIST
An insertion of X in (CRIES TO)*
15 … formerly working with church
ONCE
A charade of ON and CE. As usual, you can ignore the ellipses between the two clues.
16 Assistant covering up second remark that’s not for everyone’s ears
ASIDE
An insertion of S in AIDE.
17 Good antique metal
GOLD
A charade of G and OLD.
18 Bread, tea and portion of butter upset Italian
CHAPATTI
CHAPATI seems to be the favoured spelling, but CHAPATTI is certainly shown as an alternative. A charade of CHA, PAT for a ‘portion of butter’ and IT reversed.
20 Animal eating Kew’s centrepiece plant
PEONY
An insertion of E for the middle letter of ‘Kew’ in PONY. This is a hard clue, since there are lots of animals and lots of plants in the world.
21 To guarantee money for a specific purpose call receiver
RING-FENCE
A charade of RING and FENCE for someone who ‘receives’ stolen goods.
22 Medical advisory body is discriminating
NICE
A dd. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and one of the various definitions of NICE. ‘That’s a nice distinction to make.’
24 Express disapproval of army accommodation
BARRACK
A dd.
25 Somewhere to get drunk with English royal reaching extremely tricky time of life
PUBERTY
A charade of PUB, E, R and TY for the outside letters of ‘tricky’, with somewhat of an extended definition. And it is E and R rather than ER, because as monarchist readers will no doubt emphasise, Her Maj is the British Queen, not the English Queen.
Down
1 Time to regret being faithful?
TRUE
A charade of T and RUE.
2 Knotted garter to make instrument for executioner
GARROTTE
(GARTER TO)* with ‘knotted’ as the anagrind.
3 Approach director before the beginning of Yorick’s amusing performance
COMEDY
A charade of COME, D and Y for the first letter of ‘Yorick’. ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio …’ Don’t even think of putting ‘well’ between ‘him’ and ‘Horatio’, because that’s not what Hamlet said.
4 Rough sea, for me, is daunting
FEARSOME
(SEA FOR ME)*
5 Conservative wearing badge in charge of alfresco dining
PICNIC
Pan is asking us to insert C in PIN and follow it with IC.
6 Put up with tedious character
BORE
A dd, with the past tense of BEAR and a word for a ‘tedious character’.
11 Source of nutritional advice to pass on to old master
DIETITIAN
A charade of DIE and TITIAN for the 16th century Venetian painter.
12 Nip back to church in an emergency
PINCH
A charade of NIP reversed and CH. ‘At a pinch, I could make it.’
14 Girl‘s witty remark
SALLY
A dd. I’d forgotten the second definition, but my dictionary has ‘a witty or lively remark’, so fair play.
16 Fat cat about to ruin item of historical interest
ARTEFACT
This appears to be (FAT CAT RE)* with ‘to ruin’ as the anagrind. But wouldn’t it then be one of those indirect anagram thingies? I’ve never been very sure what that is all about, but I know that a lot of folk don’t like it. Paul B is your man to explain that, unless someone turns up beforehand.
17 German’s mature and sensible — and down to earth
GROUNDED
No argument about this one: it’s G plus ROUNDED.
19 Experiment with pot in food store
PANTRY
A charade of PAN and TRY.
20 Ample number to host a full meeting
PLENUM
Slightly obscure word, but it’s hidden and gettable once you’ve got some crossers. It’s in amPLE NUMber.
21 Kingdom losing large pieces of paper
REAM
REA[L]M
23 Pretend not to notice dieter’s third sweet
CUTE
A charade of CUT and E for the third letter of ‘dieter’.
Many thanks to Pan for this morning’s Quiptic.
Thanks, Pan and Pierre. A nice straightforward Quiptic. Interesting that 11d could be a catch in a competition crossword, where it would be easy to put in DIETICIAN, which I think is the more common spelling, if you didn’t get the Titian reference.
I cant reconcile “nice” with “discriminating”. Sorry.
Brian, I considered that when I solved and blogged it, but came to the conclusion that since DIETITIANS deal in DIETETICS, then it couldn’t be the C spelling. And the surface wouldn’t have allowed it anyway.
I wasn’t dead keen on ‘nice’ for ‘discriminating’ either, copmus.
Thanks Pan and Pierre.
This I found harder today than Rufus and the grid did not help.
I first entered ‘dietician’ at 11d, then realized TITIAN was called for. DIETITIAN is the given spelling in the COED, with the other spelling in brackets as an alternative – my spell check will not accept it.
NICE is a word we were taught at school never to use (over 60 years ago), I still try to avoid it, but with little success. In Middle English it meant ‘stupid’ or ‘wanton’ from the Latin nescius, ‘ignorant’, this led to ‘coy’ which led to ‘fastidious, scrupulous’ and later to ‘fine, subtle’ which some people regard as the ‘correct’ meaning.
A good crossword, but I parsed ARTEFACT in the same way as Pierre, and I think that is rather too tricky for a Quiptic. Although the clue for PEONY offers too many possibilities for an easy solve on its own (at least for me), it is much easier with even two of the three crossers in place, so (again, for me) that is acceptable even in a Quiptic. I was aware of the two possible spellings for the “source of nutritional advice”, but the word play is unambiguous.
I think ER works as well as E+R for PUBERTY as surely she is both the queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the queen of England? I think the consensus during the Scottish referendum was that if any or all the constituent parts of GB & NI chose to go their separate ways, she would remain queen of each of them individually unless she or they decided otherwise.
Thanks to Pan and Pierre.
Thanks to Pan and Pierre.
With respect to ARTEFACT, I think it is an indirect anagram because you have to substitute re for about and then make the anagram. I think single letter abbreviations can sometimes be added to fodder but this seems a bridge too far for a Quiptic.
Yes, the grid is horrible and is not helpful. Otherwise, it’s a good Quiptic.
P.S. My Oxford Thesaurus gives discriminating=NICE as archaic.
Romped through this until the SE corner where NICE held me up. Favourites were CHAPATTI and ARTEFACT (I read ‘ruin’ as the anagrind). RINGFENCE was new to me.
Thanks to Pan and Pierre.
Being an American, I spell it “artifact,” and I was mystified as to where the RI came from. Then when I hit “check,” I realized that y’all spell it funny. And yes, I also figured out, at that moment, that you were required to use an indirect anagram. Which is considered (by many) to be dirty pool even in a prize puzzle, let alone a Quiptic.
RING FENCE was new to me.
For “nice” meaning “discriminating,” think of “niceties,” a word we still have. And you see “nice” in this sense in, I believe, Jane Austen–and presumably in authors earlier than that–so I’d say it’s fair, though again probably not in a Quiptic.
[Incidentally, is “dirty pool” an Americanism? If so, the phrase makes reference to a rigged game of pocket billiards, not a filthy place to swim…]
@mrpenney
I realized that y’all spell it funny
We have precedence. Colour, aluminium etc, two peoples divided by a common language – lets call the whole thing off.
andy smith @11, the ‘Americans’ are correct, ‘colour’ is from the Latin color. In Jamaica quite a lot of spoken ‘Elizabethan’ English is still in use, so I guess in the States a lot of the old spelling persists.
andy smith @11
[OT – “aluminium” is not quite that simple: Aluminium versus aluminum]
Thanks Pan and Pierre
I had some difficulty in polishing off the SE, but I was happy with “nice” – “a nice distinction” (as I’ve just noticed Pierre wrote!) is an difference between two fairly similar things, so involves discrimination.
I didn’t like ARTEFACT much – it’s known, in some circles, as a “ghost anagram”. If the “ghost” letters are included together in their original order, it’s fair enough, but here they weren’t.
Wasn’t a very similar clue for ASIDE in the cryptic recently?
mrpenney @10; yes, I think ‘dirty pool’ is an Americanism. You might also be interested that pocket billiards over here can have a ruder meaning.
muffin @14
SPOILER
Very recent – too recent, some might say.
Oh dear – it did cross my mind it was that one – sorry everyone!
Andy @11: my tongue was in my cheek there. I’ve got a long track record on this message board of talking about the curious differences between American and British English…of course I know that usually your spellings predate ours, since ours are usually thanks to Noah Webster.
Aluminum, though, is the way the guy who discovered it (a Brit) intended it to be spelled. So we got it right, dammit.
That’s actually part of a whole class of spelling differences where the British decided that the spelling had to be more Latin or French or Greek than it really needed to be. Americans get diarrhea and hemorrhages and see orthopedists and pediatricians. The British throw random extra vowels into each of those words just because Cicero and Plutarch would have. And don’t get me started on theatre and centre–the Norman conquest was nearly a thousand years ago; get over it.
mrpenney, Noah Webster got ARTEFACT wrong, it is from the Latin arte (ablative of ars ‘art’) + factum (neut. past part. of facere ‘make’), however ‘artifice’ is correct, French from Latin artificium.