Guardian Quiptic 1,028/Anto

by

Apart from two clues that aren’t cryptic, one that is faulty, seven other niggles and a complete lack of wit, I thought this was an okayish puzzle for the Quiptic slot. You?

 

 

 

 

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

definitions are underlined

Across

1 Property of a judge that’s missing in Lords?
SOBRIETY
Anto is whimsically suggesting that if you’re as ‘sober as a judge’ you wouldn’t be ‘as drunk as a lord’.

5 Cheers on queen after order demanding silence
OMERTA
A charade of OM for ‘order’ [of merit], ER for Elizabeth Regina, and TA for ‘cheers’. The clue doesn’t really work, because to define OMERTA you need ‘order demanding silence’ and the setter has already used the ‘order’ bit to clue OM.

9 Lab equipment containers tossed into river
TEST TUBES
An insertion (‘into’) of BUTTS reversed in TEES for the NE ‘river’. Not convinced that ‘tossed’ is an appropriate reversal indicator.

11 Poles picked up sound contents in parts of speech
NOUNS
An insertion (‘picked up’) of OUN (the middle letters of sOUNd) in NS for the two ‘poles’.

12 Expanded drying material extracted from metal casing
TALCUM POWDER
Well, TALC is hidden in the middle of meTAL Casing, and when you ‘expand’ that to its use as a ‘drying material’ you get TALCUM POWDER (which contains the same element), but I’m not at all persuaded that the clue is unambiguously leading you to the solution. This, like many of this setter’s clues in my opinion, has the feel of ‘that’ll do’.

15 Country wit visited by artist
IRAQ
An insertion of RA in IQ.

16 Lacking leader, Britain is to run riot — for starters
INITIATORS
([B]RITAIN IS TO)*

18 Disease creates strange itch on ribs
BRONCHITIS
(ITCH ON RIBS)*

19 She wastes every second in larking around
GIRL
You need to remove every second letter of ‘larking’ and reverse it: so G[N]I[K]R[A]L

21 Expert in dealing with gold and silver, perhaps
METALLURGIST
If someone can explain how this is cryptic, I would be very grateful.

24 Essentially, clunky chapter is not suitable
UNAPT
‘Essentially’ generally clues the middle letters of a word, so here it’s [CL]UN[KY] [CH]APT[ER]

25 Exclude benefits outside European range
DOLOMITES
An insertion of OMIT in DOLES. This doesn’t work either, because DOLE as ‘benefit’ is invariably singular. You can’t say ‘I’m on the doles.’

26 On the ground, holding small upright
HONEST
An insertion of S in (ON THE)* with ‘ground’ as the anagrind.

27 Duke happy after suit delivered
SERVED UP
A charade of SERVE, D and UP. Will the down clues serve beginners better than the acrosses? We’re about to find out.

Down

1 One supporting group trying to find aliens
SETI
A charade of SET for ‘group’ over I. SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Again, the clue doesn’t really work, because the definition needs ‘group’ and the setter has already used that to clue SET.

2 Try party beat
BASH
A triple definition.

3 Work to be done to make home on carrier
IN TRAY
A charade of IN and TRAY.

4 Fantastic notice on debut — and there’s more to come
TO BE CONTINUED
(NOTICE ON DEBUT)*

6 How fellows talk openly of a marking system excluding females
MAN TO MAN
This looks like another triple definition, although the last one is rather vague.

7 Where merry men gathered to play with each other
ROUND ROBIN
A cd cum dd: the first bit is referencing Mr Hood and the second is a tournament where each team plays against the other at least once.

8 Last buyers getting treated in an unusual way
ABSTRUSELY
(LAST BUYERS)*

10 Dirty joke perhaps is the last thing a bride needs
SOMETHING BLUE
Another cd cum dd. The second part is referencing the expression for a bride’s needs: ‘something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue’.

13 Medical direction not to swallow?
NIL BY MOUTH
If someone can explain how this is cryptic, I would be very grateful.

14 Comedian running school in settlers’ caravan
WAGON TRAIN
A charade of WAG for ‘comedian’, ON for ‘running’ and TRAIN for ‘school’. You have to take ‘caravan’ in its sense of a complete convoy of wagons.

17 Cosy tale about apostles
ACOLYTES
(COSY TALE)*

20 SF writer announced when I’m leaving
ASIMOV
This clue is also all over the place. ‘Announced’ is a homophone indicator. The three elements of the clue are AS for ‘when’, I’M (which is pronounced IM as in ‘him’ in the writer’s name) and OV, which is meant to be a homophone of OFF. I looked up the pronunciation of the name and it should end in a V sound, but the writer himself accepted that it could be pronounced OFF since it was a transliteration of the family name into the Latin alphabet, done when they emigrated to the US.

22 Boss that is missing when responsibilities are brought up
STUD
A reversal (‘brought up’) of DUT[IE]S.

23 Russian state’s vice president asked to reply in French, initially
RSVP
The first letters of the first four words of the clue; you have to make ‘initially’ do its work twice. The French initials stand for Répondez, s’il vous plaît.

Many thanks to Anto for this morning’s Quiptic.

38 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,028/Anto”

  1. Ugh. Some of Anto’s Quiptics have been quite good. I lost the will to live during this one. But, it is free, and nobody forced me to do it!

  4. Thanks Anto and Pierre

    Usual mixed bag from Anto. I actually rather liked TEST TUBES and ROUND ROBIN. I didn’t parse TALCUM POWDER, METALLURGIST or DOLOMITES, and I now see why!

    I know that it’s Guardian style, but enumerating RSVP as (4) is just silly; it’s spoken as four separate words.

    In the unlikley event of anyone coming here before doing the cryptic, I can thoroughly recommend it – it’s an Orlando!

  5. Almost as many errors in Shirl’s reply as in the puzzle 🙂 There were good elements to this – “sobriety” was my last in and I thought it an excellent cd. I felt one could say that omerta demands silence – it is a code – and that SETI need not be a group, but can be an area of study. So those worked OK for me, but the rest I agree with. “doles” annoyed me as pluralising something which has no plural is like verbing a noun…it weirds language (to quote “Calvin and Hobbes”).

    There were some good surfaces too – “stud”, “iraq”, “initiators” to name a few, and “to be continued” an excellent anagram. But “Asimov” was a disaster, “tossed” is not a reversal indicated, and the cds were especially weak. “Round robin” was a good stab at a really witty surface but the definition (playing “with” each other rather than “against”) does not really define this kind of tournament, which is explicitly an all-play-all.

    Many thanks Pierre. For once the Monday cryptic is the harder puzzle!

  8. As Muffin says, a mixed bag from Anto. I thought the cryptic clues for METALLURGIST, MAN TO MAN, and NIL BY MOUTH were all terrible, and Pierre has noted the many instances of looseness in both wordplay and definitions, although they didn’t interfere with the solving, at least for me. On the other hand, there were enough clues to make the effort of solving worthwhile. I appreciated the construction of TO BE CONTINUED, the witty ROUND ROBIN, and the timely surface of INITIATORS.

    Thanks to Anto and Pierre.

  9. An excellent ‘Quiptic’ ion my opinion. ASIMOV is broken down by AS OF (‘when’ – phonetically ‘az ov’) and I’M in the middle. Thanks for a challenging puzzle, Anto.

  12. peter lawson: how does “leaving” indicate that I’M goes in the middle of AS OV? And anyway,  “as of” is not the same as  “when”.

    Pierre: I think 5a is (just about) OK if you take the definition as just “silence, with “demanding” as a link word. TILT: the word omertà is a dialect form of umiltà (sic – also spelt umilità), meaning “humility”.

  13. Re 9a: Maybe it’s different in your home country, Pierre, but on Shrove Tuesday in England, pancakes are traditionally “tossed” to turn them over during cooking. Thanks both.

  14. Muffin: I’m not sure why someone coming here before doing the cryptic is unlikely. I usually do the Quiptic first, as a sort of limbering up exercise.

    However, this time I tend to agree with the general sentiment here, and am therefore not sure how limbered up I am.

  15. greensward @13 but “toss” there refers to the act of throwing them in the air, not the act of reversing them. You could toss the pancake and fail to flip it, for example, or flip it without tossing it, so the two things are mutually different. When a salad is tossed it’s not reversed, but mixed, so “toss” works as an anagrind.

  16. I had the same understanding of “tossed” as greensward (even though I’ve never succeeded in flipping a semi-cooked pancake neatly over, always ending up with a half-tossed lump).
    I, too, couldn’t see how METALLURGIST and NIL BY MOUTH were cryptic and tbh, had assumed the failing was all mine and that Pierre and other FS regulars would kindly explain the parsing for me.
    On the other hand, I enjoyed the wordplay in SOBRIETY, the misdirection in STUD, the economy of IRAQ, sniggered at ASIMOV, and had no problem with OMERTA: TA and ER being self-evident – and I assumed OM was from the beginning of Eastern religious chants (during which, if I’m not mistaken, those who aren’t actually chanting are supposed to keep schtum). Then again, I know as much about religion as I do about pancake-making.
    Thanks to Anto and Pierre!

  17. greensward, I could be persuaded that ‘toss’ as ‘flip’ works as a reversal indicator, and if that was my only niggle in the crossword then we wouldn’t be talking about it.

    peter lawson, if you think this is ‘excellent’, then I really don’t know how to respond.  Except maybe with the football chant: Are you Anto in disguise? (sung to the tune of Bread of Heaven).

  18. Hang on a sec, “omerta” IS a code of silence. The OM part has nothing whatsoever to do with religious chanting! Oh dear. Well, like BearOfLittleBrain, I do the Quiptic to warm myself up before tackling the Cryptic. Maybe I’ll be more on top of things there….

  19. Re 13d, recently when attending on a pre-surgery patient, I saw the sign NBM at her bedside. I didn’t know what it meant. I checked it on my mobile but there were a couple of expansions for that abbr. so I had to guess which suited most in the context Nil per os, as they say in Latin.
    Among the choices where I looked up the English abbr. was No Bowel Movement! I don’t know whether it was a facetious site.  

  20. I agree largely with Pierre’s reservations. Some of the cds were not! Anto seems to vary a lot in the quality of his crosswords but I don’t think this one was suitable for beginners.

    I did, however, quite like INITIATORS, STUD and ROUND ROBIN.

    Thanks Anto and Pierre.

     

  21. Thanks for recommending the cryptic Muffin. I’ve been doing the quiptic for a while now and, despite some ups and downs, I’m improving. After seeing your comment I had a look at the cryptic and was pleased to figure several out for myself.

  22. Is this your first comment, Cockney Robbo?  If so, welcome.  The Guardian Monday cryptic is generally at the easier end of the spectrum, so is a good one to persevere with.  The Quiptic is the one to keep improving with, though.  The standard of setting – as you’ve probably seen – is generally pretty good.  Don’t be put off by this one too much.

  23. Thanks Anto, Pierre

    I only did it because of the damning intro, but I think the general assessment is very harsh.

    Plenty of good clues – IRAQ, SERVED UP, TO BE CONTINUED, SOBRIETY

    I agree about METALLURGIST, but think there is a mildly cryptic element to NIL BY MOUTH: it reads more naturally (at least it did to me when I first read it) that the doctor is saying ‘don’t swallow this’ (eg a suppository), rather than ‘don’t eat or drink anything’.

    Otherwise:

    Silence is fine for omerta

    I can’t see anything unambiguous about TALCUM POWDER

    Why complain about benefits for doles?  It is wordPLAY

    SETI is obviously ‘trying to find aliens’, but if you start with the assumption it’s a duff clue …

    ASIMOV only needs the ‘announced’ to be bypass the ‘when I’m’, which is unfortunate, but not that heinous.  There’s worse in the regular Guardian cryptic every week

     

  24. Isn’t the cryptic element in METALLURGIST the use of gold and silver as examples, in the hope that the solver might think along the lines of moneylender or bullion dealer or numismatist. Not a great deal of deception, but I reckon that’s it.

  25. Re 22d Boss that is missing when responsibilities are brought up

    Nice wordplay, nice surface, but wouldn’t strict grammar rule require ‘who’ instead of ‘that’?

    Opinion sought.

  26. James, you ask “why complain about ‘benefits’ for ‘doles’,” saying that it is wordplay.  Of course crosswords are wordplay, but you have to play with words that are real.  Dole is benefit and only exists in that sense in the singular; you can’t make it plural just for fun because it fits the surface.  You have to play with words that are real and have relevant meanings.  The clue is faulty, full stop.  If you are trying to justify NIL BY MOUTH being cryptic by introducing a concept of swallowing something that’s supposed to go up your arse then I really am misunderstanding cryptic grammar.

  27. I thought that this was okay, some nice clues, not too taxing and I wondered if it had been the cryptic or by a ‘proper’ setter would the blog have had the same tone?

    Metallurgist isn’t great but the cryptic intent is clear to see, parsing of Talcum Powder is okay, I thought Asimov was fine (but can understand some not liking it) and to define SETI and Omertà as the groups engaged in them is just plain wrong.

    Regarding benefits and doles (even if ‘benefit s’ wasn’t the intention) there are enough precedents in clues using concatenation (e.g. ‘p ass’ for ‘p arse’) to excuse it .

    Rishi @ 25 No because a stud/boss is a what not a who (nice misdirection in the surface).

    Thanks to Anto and Pierre.

  29. Pierre, my point about NIL BY MOUTH is the difference between ‘not to be taken orally’, which is a real concept in medicine, and ‘don’t eat anything’.  I would say the clue reads like it means the former, but actually intends the latter.  That makes it a cryptic definition, in my book.

    A dole is a payment, it can certainly be made plural.  ‘Faulty, full stop’ is absurdly dogmatic.

    Robert@27, quite (your first sentence)

  31. Thanks Pierre, first comment though i’ve been using the site for a while- I wouldn’t have got to the standard I am without it!

  32. Can’t you pluralize “dole” by having it mean “more than one system of public assistance,” as in “the dole in Britain is more generous than the doles in Canada and Australia?”

    I agree there were a fair few dodgy clues here, but I don’t want to pile on except to note that RSVP could have been easily fixed by moving the “initially” to the middle of the clue.  The ASIMOV homophone is not as horrible as everyone seems to think; at least in my dialect, if I say “as I’m off” quickly enough, it comes close enough for Crosswordland.  The clue for INITIATORS has a nice surface (and perhaps a nice dig at Boris Johnson?)

  33. Re @25,27

    Boss = an object = stud. In the sentence “Boss that is missing when responsibilities are brought up”  boss, the subject,  is a person and so I would expect ‘who’ after that. I might say “The boss that fell and rolled could not be traced” where boss is a thing. In the clue 22d I see no misdirection and I cannot take ‘boss’ as an inanimate object. I am uncomfortable with it.

     

  34. Rishi @ 33 To clarify..

    You know from the solution that the boss is not a person.

    You know from the determiner that the boss is not a person.

    You know that ‘boss’ in the clue is the definition and should be read separately from the rest of the clue.

    But you think that the boss is a person because the last four words of the clue suggest (but don’t confirm) that when the surface is read as a sentence.

    And you still can’t see the misdirection?

  35. I can see what rishi means, but I think “that” to refer to a person is still acceptable anyway, even though “who” is more formal and grammatically proper. Eg Judy Garland sang “The Man That Got Away” in A Star is Born.

  36. I could not parse TEST TUBES or METALLURGIST.

    My favourites were WAGON TRAIN, TO BE CONTINUED, ROUND ROBIN, RSVP.

    Thanks Pierre and Anto.

  37. My chief reactions were,first, this s Quiptic and second that these crosswords do not appear entirely by the will of the setter – there is an editor who accepted it for publication

Comments are closed.