I swear on my life that I’m going to take up religion again, so that a deity can intercede on my behalf and arrange that I never again find myself having to blog a Quiptic by Anto.
I really don’t find any pleasure in being negative about a crossword, because we’re all here for a bit of light entertainment. But I don’t know what to say about this one. Please tell me that I’m just being picky. And please can some kind soul explain the ones that I haven’t been able to? This is a Quiptic.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 On the street is she happy sheltering in alcove?
BAG LADY
An insertion of GLAD in BAY and an extended definition.
5 Fashionable county has no time for dangerous game
CHICKEN
A charade of CHIC and KEN[T]
9 Track soldiers retreating after losing their leader
SPOOR
[T]ROOPS reversed.
10 Old school friend goes in wild alarm …
ALMA MATER
An insertion of MATE in (ALARM)*
11 … to engage in hand to hand combat!
ARM WRESTLE
I am guessing that this is a cd, but what it’s doing in a Quiptic I have no idea.
12 Can you see the beginnings of growth?
CYST
The first letters of the first four words of the clue.
14 They often fly together in a row
SKIN AND HAIR
I’ll have a stab at this being a cd about hairstyles, but in truth I have no idea and I have to go out to work soon.
18 How old school builder schedules installation of facilities
LADIES FIRST
Another cd? What so many cds are doing in a Quiptic, if that’s what it is, I have no clue either. I suppose that an old school builder might construct the girls’ toilets first.
21 Such tosh regularly uttered when things go wrong
UH-OH
The even letters of sUcH tOsH.
22 His brain teems in comic awkwardness
MISTER BEAN
(BRAIN TEEMS)* with an attempt at an &lit. What an &lit is doing in a Quiptic, you tell me. Not prohibited, of course.
25 Duke misjudging occasion for bravado
DERRING-DO
A charade of D for ‘duke’, ERRING and DO.
26 Area by skip is not in order
AMISS
A charade of A and MISS.
27 Smash and grab tactic for sheep rustling?
RAM RAID
A cd.
28 Stick with drink during final round
LAST LAP
A charade of LAST and LAP
Down
1 African gets rid of husband, as he works on holiday
BUSMAN
BUS[H]MAN
2 They prepare good lodgings
GROOMS
A charade of G and ROOMS.
3 Tools of historical revisionists
AIRBRUSHES
I’m afraid that I have no idea, which is a bit embarrassing for a Quiptic blogger. Another cd?
4 Poet makes NATO reverse negative environment
YEATS
Er, [N]AT[O] in YES?
5 Hear claim being treated as material
CAMELHAIR
(HEAR CLAIM)*
6 Single text that yields many philosophies
ISMS
A charade of I and SMS.
7 Whip supports fund for young queen
KITTY CAT
CAT under KITTY.
8 Scored an ace? You must go on from this point
NO RETURN
A dd cum cd.
13 Leaders are solid, surprisingly, about it
EDITORIALS
An insertion of (ARE SOLID)* around IT.
15 Home force surrounded and broken
INFRINGED
A charade of IN, F and RINGED.
16 Struggle to have fun with older anagram!
FLOUNDER
(FUN OLDER)*
17 Picture that paints a single word, perhaps
IDEOGRAM
Another cd, perhaps.
19 Ongoing story of dosser I allowed inside
SERIAL
Hidden in dosSER I ALlowed.
20 Finishes after all in a dreadful state
ENDS UP
I’m really sorry, but I don’t get this one either. Can someone help, please?
23 Head off constitutional attack on networks
TROLL
I think that this is [S]TROLL.
24 City whose fame is based on dodgy foundations
PISA
Another cd.
Thanks Anto and Pierre
I sympathise, and am also baffled by most of the ones that floored you. AIRBRUSHES is OK though – photos can be “airbrushed” to alter “history”, e.g. by adding or removing people from grooups. In order to ARM-WRESTLE you put your hand in that of your opponent. For YEATS you change the NO of NATO to YES (“reverse negative environment”).
There were some rather good clues, I thought, though inappropriate for the Quiptic. I liked BAG LADY, MISTER BEAN, UH-OH and DERRING-DO.
Is “bushman” allowed by the Guardian style guide? I thought the more PC “San” was now used.
Wrong spot again but some of it not bad -YEATS and MISTER BEAN excellent but too many iffy ones. I’ve heard of feathers flying but…
I think “skin and hair flying” is sometimes used to describe what happens in a fight (or “row”), but SKIN AND HAIR is surely not an expression that can stand on its own.
I was baffled by ENDS UP – I suppose it could describe a confused situation.
And a KITTY CAT is not necessarily a young one.
I agree with Muffin about AIRBRUSHES, ARM-WRESTLE and YEATS.
Thanks and commiserations to Pierre.
Thanks Pierre and (I think) Anto!
20 Finishes after all in a dreadful state – if you put “ends up” after “all” you get “all ends up” = in a dreadful state.
Very tricky puzzle, not much fun
What an extraordinary puzzle.
Further to my comments @4 I was going to be rude about this puzzle. But it is free, we are not forced to solve it and I am sure Anto is doing her/his best.
But it is in the Quiptic slot, which I take to be QUIck cryPTIC. This is more of a SLOPTIC. There is nothing wrong with a SLOPTIC (in the right slot), but when I solve a tricky clue (at last) I want to smile and say “oh I see, that’s clever” not be irratated and say “really?”
Thank you Anto and Pierre.
Although this crossword may not be suitable for the Quiptic spot, I thought there were many good clues, the only one I had a real problem with was SKIN AND HAIR, and I found ENDS UP rather confusing.
BAG LADY, AIRBRUSHES, MISTER BEAN, DERRING-DO and YEATS were great.
Kind of agree with most above. Not such a bad puzzle (aside from the CDs (?)) but well out of place in the Quiptic slot.
(echoing Shirl @3) Thanks Pierre (for a difficult and probably thankless task) and (?)Anto.
This was far too difficult for a quiptic. A couple of years ago I would have thought it was my inexperience that caused the difficulty but not now.
I came here looking for the parsing of several clues and found they were the same ones Pierre had trouble with. (sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition.) 11 was my FOI, perhaps I thought “it’s Monday, better be ready for Rufus’s CDs” Andrew@3 has explained it.
22 (Mister Bean) reminded me of Sam Dastayari, an Australian senator who has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons and who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mister Bean. His picture on Wikipedia does not show up the resemblance very well but if you google “Sam Dastayari” and click on images you will see lots of images and be able to make up your own mind about the resemblance. It would be interesting to see how many agree with me about the doppelganger.
Agree this was too difficult for a quiptic but thought this had some of the most inventive clueing I’ve seen for some time. I think if Paul had produced this, it would have attracted the usual accolades. No, I am not Anto!
Skin and hair – quite common in Lancashire as to describe a fight ‘There was skin and hair flying !” )as il a pair of Tom cats
@Herschel 10
I can’t agree, at all, with your comment “I think if Paul had produced this, it would have attracted the usual accolades”.
Setting to one side for a moment the question of whether or not this puzzle is “too difficult” for the quiptic slot, we should perhaps evaluate the clues themselves and simply ask “are they any good?”.
There are too many clues here where the definition does not match the word-play and where phrases – such as “beaten all ends up” and “the point of no return” – have been randomly sliced into chunks which do not work as standalone terms.
I’m also very surprised that BAG LADY and BUSHMAN made it into a Graun puzzle in 2016, and just because someone’s great uncle Jack once said “there was a row in our house last night and skin and hair were flying all over the place” doesn’t mean that it is fair game for a whimsical cryptic def., I suggest.
Thanks for the helpful blog – DNF, came here for 14vand 3. I thought 17 was ambiguous – I entered monogram to start with, sonogram might also fit at a pinch. Too tricky by far for a quiptic I thought.
Agree with most of the above; some very strange clues. In what sense does “Scored an ace?” mean “No-return”?
Gasmanjack @14
In tennis – a serve that isn’t returned is called an “ace”.
I’m glad to know I’m not alone. Ram raid was new to me but “skin and hair” and “ends up” had me truly flummoxed. For the latter clue, isn’t “after all” superfluous?
Muffin@15
“a serve that isn’t returned is called an’ace'”.
Indeed it is; but when have you ever heard a tennis player or commentator say that they “scored an ace?”.
And even if one accepts this, how does that get us to “no return?”.
“The point of no return” is where it is shorter to carry on than go back to the departure point?
I agree that “scored” is a bit odd.
Oh, come on Baerchen, its just as clear as “I got stuck into rising tennis star, one likely to get seeded; failed horribly.”
@Cookie
Ha!
Add me to the chorus saying this is totally unsuitable for the Quiptic slot. Looked at as if it was in the main Cryptic slot, there are some clues I’d say were clever (like AIRBRUSHES and YEATS) and some I would still think were quite bad.
I don’t think the clue to ENDS UP can be referring to “all ends up” as Collins and Oxford have that as meaning “completely”. baerchen’s “beaten all ends up” @12 works better but, as he wrote, you can’t just take those two words out of context. I didn’t know “SKIN AND HAIR flying”, but I do know “fur will fly”, and a fur is a skin with hair still attached, so I originally assumed that was the meaning of the clue.
Thank you, Pierre. You have my sympathy.
Much (enough?) has been said about this crossword.
And I do not want to rub more salt into the wound, as my opinion on Anto’s crosswords should be well-known by now.
However, some liked MISTER BEAN (22ac).
I didn’t because it is MR BEAN and nothing else.
What I actually do not understand is that this setter gets chance after chance to put him/her on the map.
Anto is either an established setter who is well appreciated by the editor.
Or – oops – a friend or otherwise someone close to the editor.
Or someone the editor has a believe in as he/she might be talented and could become one for the dailies.
Will the real Anto stand up, please.
I am completely with baerchen @12 and I could even be rude.
But I won’t.
(I am always on the setter’s side, ya know – always?)
Thanks Pierre.
It was somewhat of a relief to come here and realise I wasn’t alone in struggling with this. Anto’s quiptics had been getting better so let’s hope this is an aberration.
I think setters need to take care with cds and dds in quiptics. These are harder for beginners to solve – but that doesn’t mean exclude them, just to make sure it’s relatively straightforward – unlike the examples here.
Maybe the puzzle editor is testing Anto out to see whether his skin is thick enough to be a regular setter in the main series.
I detect a first-rate setter of really tough puzzles (albeit struggling to produce easy ones) lurking in there somewhere.
Araucaria used to cop a lot of (completely unwarranted) flak on these pages – to the extent that he ceased to read them (we are told) – obviously a lot of that was just ximenean axe-grinding – but even so.
Novice solvers, unaccustomed to untangling complex wordplays, may actually find CDs easier to solve than normal WP/def clues – as for &lits – why not – eg 22a, I thought, was rather good – it just pops out – you can justify the wordplay later – and I’m not really interested in whether some professor of beanology says that it should be Mr Bean – not Mister Bean.
I agree this was difficult for a Quiptic, but then again it is very hit and miss in this slot and I don’t even know why they bother to call it a Quiptic anymore.
I had better luck with this than with Chifonie today (where I failed to solve two clues).
New for me was RAM RAID, and I could not parse 20d or 14a,
Thanks Pierre and Anto.
Quite appalling.
Even though some clues make sense, or are approaching making sense, there’s no understanding at all of context. Obviously I don’t think this could be anywhere near good enough for the daily slot, but as a Quiptic it’s a disaster.
Lot of fuss as usual with Anto – find in particular the remarks @22 somewhat jaw-slackening; there is nothing out of the ordinary here and while I had trouble with ENDS UP (which I now get – thanks to Shirl@4) and ISMS (I have to yield that SMS=text and it’s an age thing) there were some beauties: YEATS,UH-OH (surely praise for this as a “regular” example), TROLL (nice Aha! for me anyway), FLOUNDER (cheeky), CYST (again an elegant e.g.) and so on through the 30 clues.
Really surprised at the ululations in chorus with Pierre, you guys can do better – this is not for you and the target audience will hit the reveal button and ponder and learn and find SMS and TROLL and come back for more – maybe. If not it’s 21a for cruciverbalism.
I enjoyed in particular the “old school” reference in LADIES FIRST.
Thanks Anto. Thanks Pierre – you’re not just being picky.
Glad you liked my comment @22 (and the puzzle), Alphalpha.
Some years ago, in a BBC documentary about Neil Young he said ‘I only care about the music’.
And that’s how it was when I wrote my comment.
Sorry, but I loved this crossword. I also loved that for once there were two decently challenging crosswords in t’Grauniad on a Monday.
I genuinely do not know why so many people here dislike Anto’s work. I can quite understand those who say his puzzles are too tough for a Quiptic: he should be upgraded to serving us Cryptics while others (Rufus, perhaps?) might sensibly be downgraded to make room.
I remember exactly this sort of stuff back in the late 1960s, as we all fought with the new ideas of Araucaria.
Oh, and 3A is surely obvious.
@14
And even if one accepts this, how does that get us to “no return?”
Because one of the main characteristics of a service ace is that the receiver isn’t able to return it.
I also dread tackling Anto’s so called quiptics, done immediately after the Monday cryptic, and always more difficult. With so many complaints every time he appears I cant understand why the editor doesn’t do something about it
At least Anto gets the Quiptic comments into double figures (and more!)
I know it’s a bit inappropriate but Anto could be an abbreviation of: Araucaria (not that one).