Thank you to Pasquale. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
4. Fellow one met at church in tight garment (6)
BODICE : BOD(informal term for a “fellow”/person) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) plus(met at) CE(abbrev. for the Church of England).
6. Good Parisian, one brave saint (8)
BONIFACE : BON(French/Parisian language for “good”) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) + FACE(to confront/to brave, as in “to face hardship”).
9. Ronnie maybe is a 23? (6)
BARKER : Double defn: 1st: British comedian who is an example/maybe of someone called Ronnie; and 2nd: A dog such as a collie/answer to 23 across.
10. They offer more than one way of looking at things (8)
BIFOCALS : Cryptic defn: Spectacles with lenses of two halves, one through which you can focus on distant objects, and through the other on near objects.
11. Support teachers assessing work? They finish after everyone else (4,7)
BACKMARKERS : BACK(to support/to second) + MARKERS(what you might/? call teachers who assess students’ work/answers).
15. Pompous and dour, not funny (7)
OROTUND : Anagram of(… funny) DOUR, NOT.
17. Something distressing about the female, the one who warns of death (7)
BANSHEE : BANE(something distressing/causing suffering) containing(about) SHE(third-person pronoun for that/the one female person).
Defn: In Irish legend, the one/the female whose wailing warns of a death in the house.
18. One traipsed around in torment (11)
DESPERATION : Anagram of(… around) ONE TRAIPSED.
22. Not half clumsy cleaner in place where members gather (8)
CLUBROOM : Last 3 letters deleted from(Not half) “clumsy” + BROOM(a cleaner/implement used to clean).
23. Sheepdog that is found on Scottish island (6)
COLLIE : IE(abbrev. for “id est”/that is) placed after(found on) COLL(an island in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland).
24. Daughter is a tree-hugger, endlessly in dispute (8)
DISAGREE : D(abbrev. for “daughter”) + IS A + “green”(a member of a green/environment-protection movement, derogatively called a “tree-hugger”) minus its last letter(endlessly).
25. Note about inconsiderate people who behave priggishly (6)
PRUDES : PS(abbrev. for “postscript”/a note at the end of a letter, as an afterthought) containing(about) RUDE(inconsiderate/impolite).
Down
1. Yell ‘Get away!’ with first sight of enemy entering (6)
SCREAM : SCRAM!(Get away!/On your bike!) containing(with … entering) 1st letter of(first sight of) “enemy“.
2. Beacon lit, newly set on fire, finally becomes this? (10)
NOTICEABLE : Anagram of(…, newly) placed above(set on, in a down clue) last letter of(…, finally) “fire“.
Defn: … is what a lit beacon becomes.
3. Big car pulling up short in French region (8)
LIMOUSIN : “limousine”(a big and luxurious car) minus its last letter(pulling up short).
Defn: …, formerly.
4. Time for a lot of deliveries? (4,4)
BABY BOOM : Cryptic defn: A period when many babies are born/delivered.
5. Female priest who takes charge of things? (8)
DIRECTOR : DI(a female name) + RECTOR(a priest in the Church of England).
Defn: One …
7. Ban a revolutionary fellow in Bahrain, maybe (4)
ARAB : Reversal of(… revolutionary) [BAR(to ban/to prohibit) + A].
8. Animal heading off in a particular direction (4)
EAST : “beast”(an animal) minus its 1st letter(heading off).
12. Once again find left-winger is getting protection (10)
REDISCOVER : RED(a left-winger in the political spectrum) + IS plus(getting) COVER(protection/that which is placed on, over or around something to protect the latter, as in the acronym “CYA”).
13. Sang going round hotel, becoming animated (8)
THRILLED : TRILLED(sang/warbled, as some birds would do) containing(going round) H(letter represented by “hotel” in the phonetic alphabet).
14. Girl with not so much on the outside — requirement for many a model? (8)
LEANNESS : ANNE(a girl’s name) contained in(with … on the outside) LESS(not so much/a smaller amount).
Defn: A stereotypical …
16. Immature nude naughtily joining rave (8)
UNDERAGE : Anagram of(… naughtily) NUDE plus(joining) RAGE(to rave/to address someone in an angry, uncontrolled manner).
19. Reportedly ‘ated being on a train? (6)
ABOARD : Homophone of(Reportedly) “abhorred”(hated/disliked thoroughly).
I wonder why the “h” is dropped from “hated” in the clue. Of the 2 possibilities: it doesn’t make sense to drop the 1st letter in “abhorred” nor does it make any difference to the pronunciation of “abhorred” if its “h” is dropped.
20. Like something citrus maybe, giving help when cold is caught (4)
ACID : AID(help/relief) containing(when … is caught) C(abbrev. for “cold”).
Defn. and Answer: Adjectives describing/like things citrus/sour, as in “citrus fruit”, and “acid drop”.
21. Extras, perhaps, in theatrical sequences (4)
RUNS : Double defn: 1st: … in cricket; and 2nd: Continuous series of performances of a stage drama or musical, as in “the musical had record-breaking runs in the West End and in Broadway”.
Thanks Pasquale and scchua
I found this hard for a Quiptic, especially the top half. I take it from your blog entry, scchua, that you also think “hated” rather than ‘ated in 19d would have been better.
Favourite BABY BOOM.
I thought Pasquale was trying something clever here when the first four across clues all went in and started with a B. But, despite s as bunch of Cs and Ds, it didn’t pan out, sadly.
Ironically, I then got stuck fir a while on B(EAST), because all I could think of was Y(EAST), and I couldn’t bring myself to think that Pasquale would clue yeast as an animal!
I also wondered about ‘ated, but some people do pronounce ‘abhorred’ with a slight aspiration and Pasquale is a champion for precision of course.
I enjoyed BONIFACE the most, just because it reminded me of being on St Boniface Downs above Ventnor.
Boffo@2 – Absolutely agree with your “slight aspiration” – Pasquale all over!
I found this puzzle more fun than I had expected – thanks to P and s…
I concur with Boffo at 2, for I’m someone who pronounces “abhor” with a sort of semi-aspirate. A tad fastidious, I know – but a former English teacher was determined her pupils would be able to differentiate, vocally, between whither and wither, where and wear, etc. Thinking about it now, when I say “whom” there’s much more h than w in it!
[though at least I don’t go as far as Family Guy does…
https://youtu.be/xzBQlWBDJMM ]
CLUBROOM was fun, BARKER made me grin – and my first thought for 23a was Lassie (knowing how many Scottish islands there are, I had a quick look online: after all, there’s a Yell, an Eigg, a Hoy, a Rum…)
Thanks to Pasquale for the fun, and Scchua for the hard work
Wellbeck @4
I see what you mean about, for example, “wither” and “whither”, but the H in abhor would affect the pronunciation of the B, not the A, surely?
Hello Muffin.
I read the clue as being, “abhorred without the letter h“, therefore: ab-orred, or ABOARD.
You’ve now got me saying the word abhorred, out loud, over and over to myself!
No, I’m pretty sure the b stays exactly like any normal b – just that it has an h straight afterwards….
Like muffin, found the N half decidedly non-quiptic, and also struggled due to several Britishisms. Ultimately a DNF (NHO Ronnie Barker, guessed border).
NOTICEABLE: “this” isn’t a defn (just as DIRECTOR isn’t just “who” and ARAB isn’t just “fellow”); should include “beacon lit” & “becomes”, or perhaps the whole clue?
ABHORRED: In my pronunciation (and experience w/others) there’s a subtle but definite aitch sound, and dropping it makes a NOTICEABLE difference, sounding much closer to aboard… so for me the clue worked.
Would DISAGREE that “tree hugger” is inherently derogatory at this point. Just as certain racially charged terms have in part been reclaimed by those they are historically levelled at, so too has “tree-hugger” been embraced and proudly used by the enviro movement (see Wikipedia’s disambiguation page, or look over several pages of the Google results).
Nods to setter, blogger, and soon-to-be commenters…
Ah, I see what you mean. I took “ated” as an instruction to drop an initial H, so the pronunciation it was indicating was “habhorred”.
I liked BABY BOOM and DISAGREE but was defeated by BIFOCALS. I agree that this was quite tough. Ta scchua & Pasquale
A bit tricky in (the top) parts for a Quiptic, as others have said. I was stuck on three (2, 4a, 5) for a while, went off to do the Cryptic and came back, when they all came quickly. Not sure why NOTICEABLE took so long, as I had the right fodder and the ABLE ending and just could not make a word of the rest – must have been mispronouncing the correct letter order when I tried it. I saw 19d as Wellbeck @6 – ‘ated was an instruction to drop an “h”. BARKER indicated to me the definition part of 23a (I had also thought ‘Corbett’). Thanks Pasquale and scchua.
Yes, a bit tough for a Quiptic, but well crafted as always from Pasquale. Didn’t know Ronnie BARKER, but suspected that the answer was someone’s surname and came up with the right guess.
Count me in the “okay with ABOARD” camp.
OddOtter @7, I agree with some of your nitpicks about the definitions, although “this” and “who…” have become pretty standard constructions. However, the definition of ARAB is not just “fellow,” but “fellow in Bahrain, perhaps,” so it works.
Thanks to Pasquale and scchua.
I admire the Don for being able to flit from an excellent Quptic to a fully fledged Cryptic.
Chapeau!
DaveinNCarolina: As in the past, no issue with the clues themselves; any other issues aside, find them quite valid. I’m addressing how they’re sometimes blogged, underlining just the contextless placeholder (“this”, “one”, “who”, etc) as “defn” (ala 2d), rather than including additional context needed for an actual defn (as appropriately denoted in 5d & 7d). The defn note under 2d does mention “beacon lit” and “becomes”; why not underline them too?
Good Quiptic, I thought.
As usual with pronunciations it’s best to consult the dictionaries. The ‘h’ is quite apparent there.
Thanks Pasquale and scchua.
Robi @14
Yes, of course, but I was expecting the H to be the first letter, as with hated/’ated. It’s a bit loose to use the ‘ated trick to mean “drop an H from the word, wherever it is located”.
Found 5 down very easy – we had a rector called Di. How could Pasquale know that?! Thanks to Pasquale for the puzzle, and to Scchua for confirming ‘runs’. I wasn’t entirely certain, because of the theatre bit.
muffin @15; I guess it depends on how you think a Cockney might pronounce ABHORRED. I thought the clue was fine.
muffin @15, I can’t agree that the clue for 19 was loose. The dropped h from hater led me unerringly to the solution; I didn’t have a moment’s doubt. It was unusual, but surely not in any way unfair or unclear?
This idea of doing crosswords to slow mental decline isn’t working. You know when you are not at your sharpest when you Google Ronnie Border but don’t think of Ronnie BARKER.
I thought the point of Extras was that they weren’t RUNS, but I liked the surface.
BANSHEE comes from the Irish, bean sidhe, (pronounced “shee”) or “woman of the fairies.” She was said to scream or keen when a family member had died or was shortly going to.
19D I do pronounce the H in abhorred, so I’d have to drop it to make ABOARD. Nothing subtle about it, the H is just like the one in “clubhouse.”
Why are runs in cricket extras?
OddOtter, to address your bugbear:
In the interests of brevity/conciseness, I underline the operative word(s) in the clue.
Eg. in 2d, “noticeable” is a direct replacement for “this”, giving “… being noticeable”.
Eg. in 5d “director” is a direct answer to the question “who takes charge … ?”
If necessary, I then make a further comment to show how my underlined word(s) relate to the whole clue.
Valentine @ 20. A cricket score is made up of runs and extras (wides, no balls, byes etc.) So in that sense extras aren’t runs, but the total score is expressed as runs.
I think that 24 across is D +IS + A + GREEN minus the last letter N
Valentine@20
An extra is run scored other than from a hit with the bat, credited to the batting side rather than to a batsman. a batsman only scores a run if he/her hits the ball.
Thanks Pasquale and scchua.
Thanks Cliveinfrance. The oversight is now corrected.
A DNF for me, as I couldn’t see “bifocals”. No one to blame but myself, as it’s a perfectly fair clue.
I also didn’t know about Ronnie Barker, but I did manage to guess that there must be such a person. And “bod” isn’t a familiar expression to me, but not hard to guess.
I agree with those who found it more difficult than the usual Quiptic, but very satisfying nonetheless.
I was so convinced that the collie was BORDER … sorry, Ronnie.
Liked the CDs for BIFOCALS and BABY BOOM.
me@21.
P.S. The example of “one” in your@13 I presume refers to 5d. In which case, I think that in your enthusiasm to illustrate your point, you failed to surmise that the ellipsis represent what I’ve underlined in the clue.
scchua: Many thanks for popping in to offer your thoughts on this; greatly appreciated!… though still see things as not fully consistent. FYI, for context, a similar discussion occurred late in the 28,293/Crucible blog (and continued over the next couple days), with several concluding additional underlining made sense.
Re 5d, I didn’t take the “?” as part of defn so didn’t read that phrase as question… can see how it confuses things, so let’s set it aside and look at other examples.
Both 10a & 11a have underlinings which aren’t direct grammatical replacements for the answers (otherwise would just be “they” for each), nor can be read as explicit questions to which the clue answers are responses. These seem akin to 2d, yet are underlined differently.
Re 2d itself, opening statement of the blog says “Definitions are underlined in the clues”… yet “this” alone surely can’t be presumed sufficient to make one think of NOTICEABLE? The added note makes it clear “beacon lit” and “becomes” are inherently part of the defn, so by the “… underlined in the clues” standard, seems they should be underlined? Or for those uncomfortable with disjunct defns, the whole clue makes a moderately reasonable &lit? Either approach yields an underlined defn that could lead to the answer, unlike “this”.
As ever on this forum differing opinions/approaches will exist, and this may well be one of them. If so, so be it… just wanted to attempt to spell out my confusion for you.
scchua: Actually, no, “one” wasn’t a 5d ref. Was simply offering general examples of placeholders sometimes seen underlined in isolation rather than with additional context (and by other bloggers too, not just here). I think the underlining in 5d just fine, even sans the extra note, and ref’ed it as an example where full defn (by description rather than synonymy or replacement) IS underlined, instead of just “who”. Sorry if there was confusion on that.
Once more I found it took longer than the cryptic
For the times thet are a-changing…..
Hi all, haven’t been on here for years, largely because I’ve been doing other things with my retirement. Back then I would often comment on puzzles being harder than they should be, so being desperately short of match practice, I’m surprised to find myself puzzled by the above difficulty assesments as my only problem was not knowing OROTUND, but then at the end it became an obvious anagram.
So I’m going for a lie down whilst I contemplate the apparent miracle of getting better by a total lack of practice!
Many thanks to Pasquale and scchua. BABY BOOM my favourite. Also liked ABOARD and had not problem with the dropped h. Tes@25 had a chuckle at “I couldn’t see bifocals”. Great Cryptic and great Quiptic – lovely start to the week.
[Valentine: analogies from cricket to baseball work pretty well until they don’t. But if you imagine cricket as baseball where there’s only two bases and the bases are always loaded, an “extra” is exactly analogous to {a walk or a balk or a hit-by-pitch or a passed ball}–and therefore always scores a run. The equivalent of a walk is called a “wide”; a balk is a “no ball”; a hit-by-pitch is a “leg bye”; and the equivalent of a passed ball is a “bye.” The strike zone in cricket is enormous compared to baseball, so wides are quite a bit less common than this makes it sound; the other three are approximately as common as they are in baseball.]
Unusual to see Pasquale in the Quiptic slot; I enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks to both blogger and setter. ABOARD works in my dialect; but then we Americans tend to elide fewer consonants than y’all do. I did read it as a simple instruction to drop an H, not an instruction to make it Cockney per se.
OddOtter, if you’re still there.
You asked about 10a and 11a and why their underlined defn. was not just “they”. My answer:
10a is a cryptic defn. with no wordplay (ie. building up the solution from its components) in the whole clue, which thence becomes the defn.
11a is an example of a conventional clue where the defn. is the contiguous part at one end of the clue, and the wordplay at the other, so the whole of the former end is the defn.
The above brings up another consideration: Not to underline any of the wordplay, and as mentioned previously, rather, to highlight the link between the defn. and the rest of the clue. This is to avoid, as you say, disjunct defn. parts. The alternative which you suggest of underlining the whole clue, ie. treat it as an &lit, also has its problems. I didn’t want to spark a debate on whether each and every word of the clue is an essential and necessary part of both the defn. and the wordplay. ie. whether a clue is a total &lit or not. Eg. in 2d, is “this” part of the wordplay?
There is some method in my madness!
scchua: Once again, many thx for sharing your reasoning. We differ on this one, but I appreciate your taking time to consider my view, and to think through/explain yours. Some final thoughts…
Re 10a/11a, thx, and wasn’t at all suggesting those be underlined differently, just contrasting w/2d.
Re 2d, clearly tougher to blog than most clues. Given the “… underlined in the clue” goal, would personally err on underlining more rather than less… but it’s your blog/prerogative 🙂 Do wonder if it might be better to clarify “Defn (barring wordplay) is underlined…”, tho that might open a different can of worms for some.
Re your query, I do think “this” could be seen as wplay… as in: {doing wplay on some letters} results in (i.e. “becomes”) {“this” new arrangement of letters}. But even w/out that, could be a semi-&lit (or partial cad, depending on pref), which isn’t uncommon and could still justify seeing the whole clue as defn… tho some frown on that clue form as well.
Fascination w/cryptics is indeed a madness… which we all approach in our own way… yet are all so glad to be able to share together via this forum 🙂 Thx for your contributions to that end (and for putting up with snooty pedants like me).
Gosh this is still going on.
Only popped by to reference that Valentine@20’s example of “clubhouse” for equivalence of pronunciation of the “h” in “abhorred” inveigles one towards to the Cockney pronunciation “Club’ouse”, so a Cockney would say “ab’orred” and the clue is saved. Yay!
mrpenney @33 Thanks for the explanation, which sticks in my brain better than most cricket talk because it refers me to the only sport I can make sense of on either side the pond. Very helpful. Not knowing about passed balls, I googled that and now that’s part of my baseball vocabulary too!
Enjoyable puzzle.
Liked REDISCOVER
Failed BIFOCALS, LENNESS
New BACK MARKERS
Great all round, thanks both. Wonderful discussions re abhor and blog format inter alia. Well done all!