Pan has the Quiptic for us this morning, and she has produced one to stretch newbies, I fancy. No doubt you will tell me if you agree or not.
It is, as always with Pan, a sound puzzle (apart from one which I can’t quite parse). I think one of the reasons for it being a bit tricky (in my opinion, at least) is the grid. This Guardian grid has quite a number of solutions with less than 50% crossing. If you are one of the newbies, then I am referring to clues like 7, 8, 9 and 10 across (and their equivalents in the bottom half of the grid). For example, 7ac has nine letters, but only four that intersect with the down clues – hence ‘less than 50% crossing’. Some publications don’t allow this, because it’s against the ‘rules’; but the Guardian and the Indy certainly do and setters use these grids when it suits. As for the puzzle itself …
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
7 A man and I prepared to tuck into cheese from a large pan of hot water
BAIN-MARIE
An insertion of (A MAN I)* in BRIE. The insertion indicator is ‘to tuck into’ and the anagrind is ‘prepared’. The culinary device is a French borrowing, literally meaning ‘Mary’s Bath’. The great invention that is the internet tells me that the derivation is from Mary the Jewess, an ancient alchemist, but it doesn’t seem very sure. In the unlikely event that you want to write about more than one of them, you’ll need bains-marie.
8 Organ is in concluding part of performance
FINIS
A charade of FIN (which is certainly an organ if you’re a fish) and IS.
9 Verger’s first to see vicar forced into reciprocal relationship
VICE VERSA
A charade of V for the first letter of ‘verger’ and (SEE VICAR)* with ‘forced’ as the anagrind.
10 Woman with very little money
PENNY
A dd.
12 After a time, be inclined to go
ATTEND
A charade of A, T and TEND.
13 Crew visiting island by boat somehow reaching part of Canada
MANITOBA
A charade of MAN, I and (BOAT)* The anagrind is ‘somehow’.
14 Mother strict with dog?
MASTIFF
A charade of MA and STIFF.
17 Official set off to battle with duke
STEWARD
A charade of (SET)*, WAR and D.
20 Cheat to win at end of simple card game
CRIBBAGE
A charade of CRIB, BAG (‘she bagged the first prize’) and E for the last letter of ‘simple’. One for his nob.
22 Cover what journalists write about article
CANOPY
An insertion of AN in COPY.
24 Small narrow part of latch
SNECK
A charade of S and NECK. This word is northern English (and Scottish, according to Chambers) dialect, so I knew it; if you are a soft southerner you might have struggled.
25 Author of Blood very keen to return to Lima
GORE VIDAL
I can’t quite get this to parse. GORE for ‘Blood’ is fine; very keen is presumably AVID; and the phonetic alphabet gives you L for ‘Lima’. But to get VIDA from AVID requires you move the first letter to the end, and I’m not convinced ‘return’ tells you to do that. ‘Cycle’ might. Happen someone has a better explanation.
26 Speculate about Queen’s headgear
BERET
An insertion of ER in BET.
27 Tavern getting hold of popular vegetable
AUBERGINE
An insertion of IN for ‘popular’ in AUBERGE. A word English has lifted from French (perhaps best known to tourists in auberge de jeunesse for ‘youth hostel’). But the second part is cognate with Old English beorg, meaning ‘shelter’, from which we get the second half of HARBOUR.
Down
1 Damp home for China’s last chairman’s supporter?
MAOIST
An insertion (‘home for’) of A for the last letter of ‘China’ in MOIST. China isn’t needed for the definition, but it might have pushed you in the right direction.
2 Engage in experiment involving rattlesnake’s skin
INTEREST
A charade of IN and an insertion (‘involving’) of RE for the outside letters (‘skin’) of ‘rattlesnake’ in TEST.
3 Fellow with short list of things to be done with a stub
FAG END
A charade of F and AGEND[A]
4 Charming setter wearing women’s pants
WINSOME
An insertion of I for ‘setter’ in (WOMENS)* The insertion indicator is ‘wearing’ and the anagrind is ‘pants’.
5 Most beautiful female gets one place to raise a family
FINEST
A charade of F and I NEST.
6 Reprobate, said to go to pub, becoming bright red
CINNABAR
A charade of a homophone of SINNER and BAR. Shall we eschew a discussion about SINNER not being a homophone of CINNA for those with rhotic pronunciation? It’s a homophone for many careful speakers of English and this is a crossword.
11 Unite king and fool
KNIT
A charade of K and NIT.
15 Ordered a Republican to rank Democrat
ARRANGED
A charade of A, R, RANGE and D.
16 Arsonist originally restricted by appropriate court order
FIAT
I was so into French borrowings that I stupidly put FAIT here to start with, which knackered me for CRIBBAGE. It is still A for the first letter of ‘arsonist’ in FIT, though; but its derivation is Latin, not French.
18 What bookies pay out after Worcestershire’s first spell at the crease
WINNINGS
A charade of W for the first letter of ‘Worcestershire’ and INNINGS, and a black mark to Pan for reminding me how much I’m missing cricket. I’ll survive.
19 Correct behaviour shown by English company during strike
DECORUM
An insertion (‘during’) of E and CO in DRUM.
21 Argue with Hell’s Angel about source of cannabis
BICKER
An insertion of C for the first letter of ‘cannabis’ in BIKER.
22 Conservative party’s flipping smart!
CLEVER
A charade of C and REVEL reversed.
23 Clergymen in the army wanting tea in open country
PLAINS
[CHA]PLAINS. It wasn’t PADRES after all, was it?
Many thanks to Pan for this week’s Quiptic.
Really enjoyed this but thoroughly agree on GORE VIDAL-i just wrote it in on instinct without connecting the sprocket.
I hadn’t noticed the problem with 25a. I’m not convinced by 8a: I’m not sure that a fin counts as an organ in a fish, and the clue appears to lead to ‘fisin’ rathe than ‘finis’.
Nonetheless, a welcome distraction. Thanks setter and blogger.
My best explanation for “gore vidal” is (another) Grauniad error! Many thanks Pierre, especially for the etymological asides – one of my favourite things about words is their origins and links. And thank you Pan for the fun puzzle. I’m not sure why a bain-marie has to be large – I occasionally melt chocolate over a small one, e.g. to dip strawberries in.
Cinnabar was lovely – a great word and neatly clued.
Thanks both. Looked at 25a, thought “it’s AVID backwards”, bunged it in – how strange that it’s wrong!
Quite tough for a Quiptic
Thanks for the blog, Pierre.
Strange how the mind plays tricks – I’m with copmus and Shirl re GORE VIDAL. Perhaps if I’d been blogging I’d have noticed [or not]. ‘Cycle’ would have made it a great clue.
I agree about the less than 50% crossers, particularly with the 5-letter words. 10ac could have been almost anything [and I wondered about SNICK for 24ac but I see that’s cricket – sorry Pierre]. The longer ones [except 25ac 😉 ] were less of a problem, because of the meticulous wordplay. [I queried ‘large’ in 7ac, too.]
Like copmus, I enjoyed this, as a bit more of a challenge than the Cryptic – many thanks, Pan.
Shame about the error in 25 and the superfluous ‘large’ in 7 (although being generous it does have to be larger than whichever pan goes in it) as this was much better than the cryptic today.
Thanks to Pan and Pierre.
Is anyone else struggling to get the Quiptic on the Guardian app? I just get an error saying I should check my internet connection. I have the Cryptic but today can’t get either the Quick nor the Quiptic. Same last Monday. I emailed them last week but no reply.
Ouch! me @5: fewer than 50% crossers! I can’t believe I did that – I looked back quickly at Pierre’s preamble and meant to say ‘less than 50% crossing‘, as he did.
Thanks Pan and Pierre
I’m afraid that Pan has returned from the Cryptic having forgotten how to set Quiptics. This was far too hard, loose and careless (I’m sure VIDAL is just an error).
I did like CINNABAR. It’s also the name for a bright red ore of mercury.
Sneck – great word! Jennings do an ale called ‘Sneck Lifter’, I guess because it was an inducement to lift the sneck of the alehouse door.
Morning George @2. I was always happy with FIN as ‘organ’, but for confirmation, Chambers has: ‘an organ by which an aquatic animal steers, balances or swims’.
steveb @ 10. In parts of Scotland ‘sneck’ also means ‘nose’. To ask someone to ‘mind their own business’ one might say ‘keep yir sneck tae yirsel’.
However on checking this on the internet the Urban Dictionary asserts that it can mean another organ of the human body. If this is what Jennings intended when naming their ale then the Advertising Standards Authority should take note.
I agree this was on the hard side for a Quiptic. I’m a DNF – SNICK seemed OK to me. I parsed CLEVER differently, with flipping giving lever. Well, it seemed to work at the time. Thanks to Pan and Pierre.
This was indeed tough for a Quiptic, with three words unfamiliar to me (BAIN-MARIE, AUBERGINE, SNECK). No complaints about that, since it stretched my solving time, but it was a bit less satisfying than Pan usually is for me, not sure why. Nonetheless thanks to Pan and to Pierre for his usual thorough explanations.
Yes, I thought this was too hard for a Quiptic, not helped by the fewer than 50% checks in some clues – I gave up on FINIS [like George @2, I queried the organ but I guess it can be used in that way.] I also didn’t know BAIN-MARIE, although I have a feeling that it was in a crossword a few weeks/months ago. However, not a very good way to start a beginner’s crossword, I thought.
I also had word-blindness over the returned ‘avid.’
Thanks Pan and Pierre.
Too hard for a quiptic. Did anyone else put LIVER for 8a? It’s an organ and is near the end of DELIVERY = PERFORMANCE? Had to resort to on-line checks to sort it out.
But thanks all for the entertainment!
I had liver too for 8a. Yes, as newbie, I struggled to compete, though some sections went in very quickly
Is this your first comment, Petert? If so, welcome. But that’s the good thing about crosswords as a beginner – if you get a foothold with a few of the easier clues, then you can chew over the trickier ones. And it’s not a competition to complete every puzzle you do. When I started back on cryptics, most days I couldn’t finish. But it’s the old story – the more you practise, the better you get …
I’m relieved that others found this hard. I certainly did. I got stuck on 22ac and 23dn. I had to troll through a dictionary for words starting with CAN to get 22ac, and then the other jumped out at me. In hindsight, they’re perfectly fair and not too difficult clues; I just couldn’t see them for some reason. I also bogged down in the SE for quite a while, but eventually bushwhacked my way through.
Too bad about 25ac.
I agree with Pierre’s assessment. The southeast corner kept this puzzle from qualifying as a true quiptic – along with sneck. The seeming Gore Vidal debacle didn’t help.
I also agree with the decision to eschew (LOVE that word) arguments over sinner/cinna. As an extremely rhotic American, I have learned to immediately drop all r’s when trying to work out answers. And I’ve mentioned this before here but it bears repeating: the stereotype of my regional dialect (Southern US) is non-rhotic, but it is totally not a thing. If you hear someone talking like Scarlet O’Hara (most likely at politician), you can be sure that every word is a lie.
Thanks to both. Although I had the correct words in the right places, the parsing of AUBERGINE completely eluded me. In this part of the world a tavern can be a pub, inn, hotel, bar or watering hole but even the most airheaded of regions do not call it one of those French things. Yet.
Another week of lockdown and then some relief. Best wishes to all.
I enjoyed this puzzle very much. If the editor had flipped this with the Vulcan puzzle, I think both remits would have been well fulfilled.
Shame about the GORE VIDAL error. The replacement of “return” by “cycle” gives a great surface too! MAOIST and WINSOME were both very good. DECORUM was last in and I blame the unhelpful crossers for that.
Thanks, P&P
Bleudot @20 These days, I’m convinced if you hear a politician talking, you can be sure that every word is a lie, regardless of accent 🙂 .
Couldn’t finish due to GORE VIDAL… hey ho. I found it “a bit hard for a quiptic”… but then I often do! Let’s have a late look at today’s cryptic…
This was difficult for a Quiptic. My only problem with Quiptics not being ‘fast and easy’ to solve is that I do not have unlimited time on Mondays, and doing the Cryptic and Quiptic can end up taking a lot of time if the Quiptic is a difficult one.
I failed to solve 25a – glad to see it was an error, and I solved but could not parse FINIS – I had never thought of a FIN as an organ.
New for me was SNECK.
Thanks B+S.
Hmmm. Well anyone who’s a beginner would be justified in giving up in disgust. Thanks for the blog anyway!
8a. The concluding part of a performance is a coda. Finis is the end point.
Had to guess at BAIN-MARIE. Never heard the word before. My mom had, but we usually use the term ‘double-boiler’. Never heard of SNECK either, but had heard of AUBERGINE (thanks to, of all things, Neopets), and I’m pretty sure ‘auberge’ had been in a recent crossword before, so I managed that. FAG END tripped me up, not being British; I had —E-D from the crossers, figured we were aiming for a synonym for ‘stub’ and so parsed ‘done’ as the clue for ‘end’. Ended up plugging in as many three-letter synonyms for ‘fellow’ into the on-line checker before falling into FA-END; then it was just a matter of running through the alphabet. MANITOBA took me a while too, alas. All I had was the T and my brain was stuck on ‘Ottawa’. Managed to get GORE VIDAL, PLAINS, and a couple others via guessing by having a couple crossers. (Note to self: gotta remember that ‘pants’ is an anagram indicator…)
@Bleudot – Isn’t that just the Transatlantic accent? But yeah, I’ve run into enough punsters relying on a non-rhotic accent to make their jokes work that I just accept it.
Words: 2
Characters: 7