Guardian Quiptic 1,086/Matilda

46 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,086/Matilda”

1. Thanks Matilda and Pierre

   An excellent puzzle, but not a quiptic. I think. Several quite sophisticated clues – SOLVED and  CONCLUSION for example. At least the Cryptic was harder than usual today, so no “wrong way round”.

   I liked NUCLEAR! My other favourite was DISREGARD.

2. After struggling with the tricky Cryptic, this was a perfect Quiptic, with all sorts of devices. I thought CELEBRATE and RISOTTO were top notch. Thank you Matilda for a fun solve and Pierre for the excellent blog.

3. Lovely puzzle. Good mix of clues. I am quite a newbie so, as you said Pierre, this was a good puzzle to help me as I progress (slowly I’m afraid – but I am really enjoying myself). Thanks to Matilda and Pierre

4. Thanks both. Great Quiptic.
   PAGE/PAGER in the “summon” sense is one of those obsolete uses that crossword solvers have to get used to, like T for model and AL for gangster. I can remember being issued with my first pager, and feeling quite important. A colleague brought me down to earth. “You are now at everybody’s beck and call”.

5. Just a thought. The Scottish pal is IAIN – that’s how us Scots spell it. (I await the deluge of disagreements)

6. The blog contains two references to Cultists. I have Googled but to no avail. Can someone explain what is meant, please?

7. Enjoyable Quiptic, not too easy

   Liked: GROUPS, RISOTTO, OUGHT.

   Thanks to Matilda and Pierre

8. Apologies, Pork Scotch – it was me being a bit obtuse.  I was just flagging up that there is occasionally disagreement about what constitutes a ‘fair’ clue – what ‘rules’ setters should follow.  Some folk don’t like the device, for example, of ‘first thing’ to indicate T, the word’s first letter, or ‘midnight’ to clue G, the middle letter of that word.  They will allow ‘First of November’, which Matilda used in the last down clue.

   It goes back to the person who I rather facetiously referred to as He Who Must Be Obeyed, a setter called Ximenes who wrote a book over half a century ago with prescriptive rules about what a setter could and couldn’t do.  Some setters aim to be Ximenean; others bend the rules at the edges.  I personally am relaxed about the latter approach, as long as the cluing is clear and unequivocal.  Others aren’t.  Perhaps describing them as ‘cultists’ was a bit harsh …

9. Pork Scotch @6

   I suspect that Pierre is making light-hearted references to strict followers of Ximenean principles.

10. And to be respectful, Ximenes was Derrick Macnutt, and the 1966 book was called Ximenes: On the Art of the Crossword.  And he was a legendary setter.

11. IMHO, crossword solving would be rather boring if the “cultists” had their way and setters were unable to expand the boundaries of their art. We can’t stop the English language changing, and crosswords have to evolve too.

12. I’m with you on that one, Shirl.  And I should have said ‘traditionalists’ instead of ‘cultists’.  But ‘expanding the boundaries of their art’ is a good way of putting it.

13. Re-Ximenean principles. There are rules, and there is Araucaria. Probably the first, and finest exponent of the ‘lateral thinking’ clue. Another legend.

14. Thank you, Pierre, for explaining that. Though a veteran of cryptic crosswords I am ignorant of any history and new to this blog.

15. greensward @13

    I remember Bunthorne writing off-the-wall clues at least as early as Araucaria.

16. Always a relief to see Matilda’s name on a Quiptic – it’s always pitched at the right sort of level without throwing away the playful surfaces and sideways thinking that I enjoy in cryptics generally, and as a relative novice I know I’ve got a decent chance of solving it without help. That said, this felt on the tougher side for one of Matilda’s – though still absolutely a Quiptic.

    Despite Pierre’s reservations, for me Charles I and doctors were both okay – the latter was clear enough even if not grammatically correct as an instruction to the solver. Neither seemed unfair at least. I personally ran into more difficulty by not being able to count the number of letters in Electra… Ho hum.

    Thanks to both Pierre and Matilda.

17. Pierre – Amazing blog but you are wrongly describing word splitting clues (eg 1 across) as “lift and separate”. See crosswordunclued.com for correct definition as coined by a well known Times crossword champion, Mark Goodliffe, in January 2007.

    As an accomplished solver of more than half a century, I do feel it important that beginners are not taught wrongly, particularly within a blog as accomplished as yours. It is also disrespectful to Mr Goodliffe and denies you the chance to explain a beautiful device at the heart of great cryptic compiling.
    (Incidentally, this is only the second Quiptic I’ve looked at. I was very impressed by last week’s; and this one is a great entry for beginners to our addiction, especially when blogged so comprehensively).
    Hope this helps. Many thanks, both and all.

18. Enjoyed the quiptic and the blog. RISOTTO and SOLVED were favourites.

    Your comment about Otto, Rene and Ian in a bar made me laugh out loud!

    Thanks Matilda and Pierre.

19. Thank you, William.  The site you’ve directed me to is large and busy, and I can’t find a reference to the ‘lift and separate’ definition.  If you point me in the exact direction, I will have a look at what you’re referring to.

20. Yes, a bit tougher than the average Quiptic, I thought. While there are many nice clues, I wondered about a couple. “Opening for cake, when leaving Australia”. Opening = gate – fine. Cake = gateau – good. But the cake is not leaving Australia: AU is leaving the cake, surely. And I am not convinced that ‘must’ = ‘ought’. Must is imperative, but ought is normative. Anyway, those are my excuses for completing the SE last. Thanks, Matilda and Pierre.

21. Pierre@19 – I’m not one for links, sorry, but if you type “crossword unclued lift and separate” you’ll find many references (including 15² back in 2012!). The first reference (the only one I’ve checked) explains perfectly and gives examples.

22. ….into Google…. should be inserted after “type” of course!

23. Newbie here. I think „dentist“ deserves an honorable mention – my LOI today ?

24. Thanks, William.  I have read the reference you highlighted – interesting. I’ve often wondered who invented the term, and it’s clearly Mark Goodliffe back in 2007.  What he was referring to was the technique of separating out two parts of the surface reading that seem welded together as a concept – the examples given in the piece are Welsh Rarebit, Spice Girls, strip club, etc, where one part was wordplay and one part was definition.  Fair enough.

    In all the ten years I’ve been blogging on 225, people have used it in the way that I did for 1ac – to physically separate a word into two elements so they could be considered individually to direct the solver to the answer.  I’ve never done or looked at a blog for a Times puzzle, so perhaps they still use the phrase over there as Mark intended.

    In a Humpty Dumpty kind of way, I’m going to carry on using it in the sense here (which is not a million miles removed from Mark’s usage).  No-one’s ever disagreed with it until today.  Disrespectful?  I don’t think so.  A bit like the earlier discussion on Ximenean rules – conventions evolve.

25. Welcome, Hugh, if this is your first comment.

26. With respect Pierre, I have made this point myself many times on 15² and seen others make it too so your claim that “no-one’s disagreed before today” is just plain wrong. I am also no devotee of TftT (something to do with my disdain for Murdoch or possibly the paywall?) so I picked up this info elsewhere.
    I’m sorry you’re not prepared to be corrected. It seems such a shame that you should take a cavalier attitude (it has nothing to do with conventions evolving – this is a clear definition from the guy who coined the term) given the otherwise terrific way you strive to give accurate explanations.
    I wouldn’t spend so much of my time responding to you if I didn’t consider it important. I don’t see how splitting a word into smaller parts is “not a million miles” from Lift and Seperate. They are totally separate things (just as a Spoonerism is different from a homphone or an anagram). They are different things!
    You talk of Mark’s (Goodliffe) “usage” as though he made some arbitrary choice in interpreting an existent term. Not so – he created the neologism – so he is, by definition, using it correctly. There is no explanation that justifies incorrect use. In fact, it’s only in recent years that I’ve seen it used wrongly.
    My concern is that this lack of precision may not worry you, but surely beginners should be given the facts rather than a woolly misinterpretation. This is not unlike the fact that bloggers here (including at least one of people’s favourites) regularly describe clues as “&lit” when they’re not!
    If 15² can’t get it right, who can?
    Or would you prefer I didn’t post the facts, and instead blithely sit by while this site (which many look to for authority) becomes lax.
    Please think again. You could coin a new term (after all “Lift and Separate” was itself a neologism just 13 years ago). Mark Goodliffe won the Times Championship a number of times – and I feel he deserves cruciverbal respect. As do I!
    How about “wordsplit”?
    Wx ?

27. The final “?” was meant to be a 🙂 but site doesn’t seem to recognise emoticons (which I knew but had forgotten!)

28. William F P @26

    I’ve read your link, and I think the way Pierre is using “lift and separate” is more natural than the original coining – which wasn’t invented by Goodliffe, or course; it was the advertising slogan for Wonderbra!

29. A very efficacious Quiptic as ever from Matilda, although I fear she might have been spending too much time in Paul’s company to come up with 16a.

    I think it helps for a Quiptic to be more Ximenean than – say – Philistine at his most wayward, but the examples here are relatively mild.

    I found the NW corner something of a struggle until comfortably into lunchtime: I’d happily take this in a Cryptic slot.

    Favourite clues of the day were ANNEXE and the oddly pleasing anagram in SPECTRUM. DENTIST is an overused alt-definition but it rarely fails to raise a smile.

30. @ William F P and Pierre. As a relative beginner, I am still confused. Is the problem the difference between splitting a phrase and splitting a word? Or is it that one half of the word has to be definition and one cryptic? Where does the lift come in? It seems to me that the first stage is to separate in either case, so “separate and re-interpret” makes more sense to me. More importantly I wanted to express my appreciation of how Matilda consistently offers just the right level of challenge to people like me.

31. Great Quiptic and blog. Favourites were EDITION, PAGE-TURNER and DENTIST. I completely agree with Shirl@11 and greensward@13 – I would never have got into Cryptic without Araucaria and it is lovely to see how the setters’ work evolves. I don’t feel qualified to express a view on the “lift and seperate” debate, although the term always makes me smile. A big thank you to Matilda and Pierre.

32. William F P, I really am not hitting the spot for you today, am I?  Disrespectful, not prepared to be corrected, cavalier attitude, woolly interpretation, lax.  Were you a teacher or a preacher in a previous life?  I clearly am leading a whole generation of newbies like Hugh down the garden path, so I must repent and believe in the gospel, apparently.

    As muffin has pointed out, Mr Goodliffe did not invent the phrase.  It is you who are ‘plain wrong’ when you say he created the neologism.  It was the punchline for Playtex bras adverts.  Google ‘lift and separate bra advert’ if you can stand the excitement.

    Mark Goodliffe definitely deserves respect (are you related, btw?)  I’ve met him briefly on a couple of occasions, and he struck me as an intelligent, interesting and amiable man.  I don’t think he would consider that I have dissed him, but he knows where to reach me if he does.

    Finally, since you’re clearly interested in precision, I think you’ll find that there are only two Es in separate.

33. Re “lift and separate”, so interesting to see how, just as with words in general and language as a whole, cryptic terminology itself is subject to different interpretations and evolution over time.  Being curious I checked the referenced websites.  Seems like the original 2007 post simply used the phrase as a title, not with the intention of coining a new term; the text of the blog simply advises one to “separate two-word phrases” because they often don’t “mean what they say”.  Seems like others (e.g. those at Crossword Unclued”) then adopted the blog title and ran with it, thus giving it a life of its own.  In the original post it is not specifically indicated that the split results in a portion of wordplay and a portion of definition (rather than two pieces of wordplay); that appears to have been inferred by others and made explicit later on by some (again, e.g. Crossword Unclued).  Though the original examples were two-word phrases, the initial advice of “separating” things that don’t “mean what they say” would seem applicable to cases where words themselves must be split as well, so perhaps that’s a reasonable extension; each will judge for themselves, just as with whether To Xim, Or Not To Xim.  If, however, one does prefer to cleave more closely to the definitions on Crossword Unclued then no need to invent a new term, as they already have covered the case of 1A: it’s an example of an “encapsulated indicator” (a wordplay indicator as part of a longer word, https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2009/04/tricky-indicators-part-i.html), which is a subset of what they refer to as “elision” (wordplay pieces joined via removal of spaces, https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2011/11/elision.html).

    Let’s all be good to one another… despite the inevitable differing viewpoints, we’re all joined by the same thing… a love of words, language, and puzzles, all tied together in that lovely knot we call a cryptic.

    Tip of the hat to our setter and our blogger for today’s fun and enlightenment!

34. 16:  Why ‘Too vague for a bird link’?

    Are not tits birds?

35. Yes, Jeremy, tits are definitely birds, but it’s another ‘rule’ (and one I invented, so I am confident following it).  The answer has to be a bird, the whole bird and nothing but the bird before I am allowed to insert an obligatory Pierre bird link.

36. Very much enjoyed this and the mixture of devices. For me it worked well as a Quiptic and I was happy to recognise the device in RAISTORM (whatever we call it and DOCTORS as the anagrjnd (it works for me in a telegraphese sort of way. Many thanks to Matilda and to Pierre.

37. Still a noob at cryptics, but I thought “Charles I” was cute and clever. 25d and 27a were also cutely-clued. And hey, I remembered service=RAF from last time!

    Did not know STIR=prison, as Pierre predicted (Not that I’m up on US slang terms for prison either!). Had similar trouble with princess ANNE, as my knowledge about the royal family pretty much extends up to ‘the queen owns corgis’. I had further difficulty with 12a because I usually spell the word as ANNEX, but I think that’s just spelling variation as opposed to regional variation (i.e., more ‘axe vs ax’ than ‘color vs colour’*)

    Shirl@4 Is PAGE=summon really that obsolete? I’ve definitely heard “Paging $name to the front desk” or, facetiously, “$name, you’re being paged” when someone in the household is calling.

    *I hope this text box is being spellchecked by my computer and not by the 15^2 website, because the squiggly red underline is insisting that ‘colour’ is a typo.

38. Khitty Hawk, well done with the Britishisms – with the royal family, Princess = DI (or very occasionally, as here) ANNE and Queen = ER will get you out of jail most of the time. Talking of jail, when I was checking out STIR-CRAZY as I was writing the blog, online dictionaries at least marked it as ‘American English’.  Maybe not.

39. STIR for prison derives from the “stirabout” porridge the inmates were fed on: “porridge” for prison comes from the same source. It must have been memorably awful stuff!

40. The source I looked at, gladys, suggested a Romany word as the origin.  The other option is from Start Newgate, an old London Prison.  The truth is that – like many words – nobody really knows for certain.  Your derivation is compelling, though – it certainly fits with the ‘porridge’ synonym.

41. Lovely quiptic, just about right level of difficulty.
    Thanks for the hints.

42. Thanks Matilda and Pierre both. I found this one ludicrously difficult and I don’t even know why: I usually have no problem getting on Matilda’s wavelength so it’s probably just me. I’m interested – or somethinged – by the lengthy discussion of L&S, and I’m shutting up now.

43. Pierre,

    Thank you very much for the blog. I am a relatively newcomer to cryptics and always find the explanations incredibly useful, as I slowly get to grips with all the different devices etc. I thought it was high time I commented to display my appreciation!

    P.S. Favourite clues here were EFFICIENT, NIRVANA, and the cheeky BIRDS.

44. I am very impressed by a blogger who takes the trouble to treat the Quiptic not as simply a quicker Cryptic (which this one isn’t), but as an educational tool for beginners. It must have much trouble spelling things out so clearly, and I’m sure there will be many who appreciate the effort.

    But a thought: do genuine beginners ever find their way to a site such as this?

45. Yes, I think so, Roger@ 44. Via posters’ comments on Guardian site, for example. They quite often point newbies here.

    Yes, Pierre is very thorough. A good educator. And clearly much appreciated.

46. Pierre, your comment at 32 made me laugh out loud. Well done 😉 And I mean no disrespect to William at 26.

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