A tricky little number from Hectence to start the New Year. Apologies for the late blog, but it did take me a while to sort it all out. And I’ve also got the decorators in, who keep demanding large cups of strong tea with four sugars.
I thought it was going to be a pangram, but I can’t find a Q. For beginners, a pangram is a puzzle that contains all the letters of the alphabet.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letters removed
definitions are underlined
Across
9 Seaside entertainer‘s top banana at every party!
BEACH BALL
A charade of B for the first letter of ‘banana’, EACH and BALL.
10 Join fellows following a team’s comeback
AFFIX
A charade of A, FF and IX for a reversal of XI, or ‘team’.
11 Humming is about to finally irritate man
REEKING
A charade of RE, E for the last letter of ‘irritate’ and KING for the chess ‘man’.
12 Exhaust us with one big defeat
WEAR OUT
A charade of WE, A and ROUT. For me, ‘us’ is not the same as WE, because one is a subject pronoun and the other is an object pronoun. But we’ll not go there.
13 Dvorak composed with outright spirit
VODKA
Hectence is asking you to take out R (out right) from DVORAK and then make an anagram. (DVO[R]AK)*
14 Chippy has fish come in
CARPENTER
A charade of CARP and ENTER. ‘Chippy’ is a slang word for CARPENTER. Good surface.
16 Insignificant part of the whole Mariana Trench?
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
A cd.
19 Look at ingredients of face paint?
EYE MAKE-UP
A charade of EYE and MAKE-UP.
21 LP for a pound? Not sure about that!
ALBUM
A charade of A, L for libra or ‘pound’ and BUM!
Edit: this parsing isn’t correct and several commenters have given us the right one. Thanks.
22 Upset by rejection of offer to contain rust problem
DISTURB
An insertion of (RUST)* in BID reversed.
23 Southern ozone’s dispersion is dropping off
SNOOZES‘
(S OZONES)* Doesn’t quite work for me, because ‘is dropping off’ is what you do before you SNOOZE.
24 Little room has nothing with which to make music
CELLO
A charade of CELL and O.
25 Queen dejected in the shade
ROYAL BLUE
A charade of ROYAL and BLUE for ‘dejected’.
Down
1 Beaver a bit to sort out contract
ABBREVIATE
(BEAVER A BIT)*
2 Flowers for old tennis champion accepting downfall
LAVENDER
An insertion of END in Rod LAVER. It’s not an unfair clue by any means, but there are a lot of flowers and a lot of old tennis champions. That’s what crossing letters are for.
3 Australian woman‘s quiet about a romance
SHEILA
The archetypal Australian woman (her partner is BRUCE) is a charade of SH and A LIE reversed.
4 Joke about name of team
GANG
An insertion of N in GAG.
5 Florist’s son’s getting into River Dance
FLOWER SHOP
A charade of FLOWER for ‘river’ and S inserted into HOP.
6 Journalist’s leader’s in the style of writer on love — hot stuff!
JALAPENO
A charade of J for the first letter of ‘journalist’, A LA for the French way of indicating ‘in the style of’, PEN and O. JALAPENO is certainly hot and spicy.
7 Try to perform forfeit without involving me
EFFORT
(FORFE[I]T)* Me for I? We won’t go there either.
8 Brexiteer’s content to leave
EXIT
Hidden in brEXITeer.
14 Rent/buy car to get around city
CANTERBURY
(RENT BUY CAR)*
15 Mum has rest disrupted by call from big top manager
RINGMASTER
A charade of RING, MA and (REST)*
17 Take advantage of working to support production at university
PLAY UPON
Since it’s a down clue, it’s ON for ‘working’ supporting PLAY and UP for the rather old-fashioned way of saying that you’re at uni.
18 Sleep in the Spanish quarter, after eating first with Doctor Nick
EMBEZZLE
Goodness, this is getting a bit complicated for a Quiptic. It’s ZZ for ‘sleep’ (‘I’m going to get some ZEDS’) in EL for ‘the Spanish’, followed by E for
‘quarter’, preceded by E for the first letter of ‘eating’ and MB for ‘doctor’.
20 See about set-up of ISA with no trouble
EASILY
The ‘see’ is (as usual) ELY and you need to insert a reversal of ISA in that.
21 Moon mission gets ahead with initial orbit
APOLLO
I didn’t know this, but POLL is a slang word for ‘head’. So it’s A, POLL and O.
22 Pack ornament
DECK
A dd. Cards, and ‘deck the hall with boughs of holly’ and all that.
23 Scottish island‘s engulfed by the “Whisky Experience”
SKYE
Hidden in whiSKY Experience. It’s beautiful. Go there, and enjoy the whisky if that’s your bag.
Many thanks to Hectence for our first Quiptic of 2017.
I found this easier than the Rufus, but also much more satisfying.
Loved the Dvorak.
Thank you Hectence and Pierre.
A pleasant crossword after the rush of the “holidays” and the alphabetical. Of course you know POLL for “head” Pierre, think of “POLL Tax”, you must be suffering too, especially if you have the decorators in!
Agree about SNOOZES, perhaps “has dropped off” would be a better definition. I parsed ALBUM as A + LB + UM. Incidentally you have forgotten PEN, ‘writer’, in JALAPENO, clear enough, but a beginner might be confused.
I loved the ‘Mariana Trench’ clue!
I think 21ac is parsed A+LB+UM.
The Mariana Trench reference made me smile.
Thanks Pierre and Hectence.
Cookie and I were obviously on the same wavelength simultaneously there!
Thanks Hectence and Pierre.
Right sort of level for a Quiptic but some might not like ‘top banana’ for B and ‘eating first’ for E.
I parsed ALBUM as Cookie and swatty above.
I liked A DROP IN THE OCEAN.
us/we, me/I – Who are we? We are us, Who am I, I am me. Seems strange, have other setters used something like this? You hear it in dialect, “Us don’t deserve this” for instance – that reminds me of a little cousin who after Christmas dinner said “Carry I upstairs and put I to bed, but don’t bend I.”
Some clues are at the tricky end of the Quiptic spectrum, certainly, but I think overall it does just qualify. There are many very nice clues and I enjoyed it.
“Poll” is an older word for “head”, and a dialect one, rather than slang. The use of “poll” in the voting sense comes from that. “We/us” does niggle a little, but in this particular case “me/I” seems to work as “without involving me” could be interpreted as “I am/is not involved”. I also wondered about SNOOZES, but thinking about it, I often use “snooze” to describe that half awake, half asleep, sometimes nodding-off state. Online dictionaries equate it to “doze”, the definitions for which include sleeping fitfully or intermittently.
Thanks, Hectence and Pierre.
Thanks for the corrections – blog amended.
jennyk @8, that makes sense as regards SNOOZE.
With me/I Anthony Powell came to my mind, in ‘Infants of the Spring’ he remembers on returning home from a walk in Kensington Gardens at the age of about five or six having a revelation of self-identity, he writes “There was no doubt about it. I was me.”
Allow me to begin 2017 with the following hackneyed expressions:
“Rufus was easier”, and
“A bit hard for a quiptic”
I did enjoy it, though!
Happy New Year everyone.
Thanks Hectence and Pierre. I enjoyed this as a Quiptic.
I parsed 13a as Dvorak “with-out” right.
“Poll” as in the infamous “poll tax” I believe.