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Beale was one of the original setters way back in the day when the Quiptic launched over twenty years ago before disappearing from the scene, but has reappeared recently. Whether he or she has returned to setting, or these are puzzles that the editor has kept in cold storage, I know not. The grid here was not solver-friendly, and there were more cds than many would consider appropriate for a Quiptic, so my sense is that newer solvers might have found this a tricky one to get into and complete. You are about to tell me, no doubt. As always, if the explanation is insufficient or unclear, just ask.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
8 Plant is no distance from river
CAMOMILE
If you were ‘no distance’ from the river that forms The Backs at Cambridge, then you could find yourself in a CAM O MILE place.
9 Keep going for Just a Minute
HOLD ON
A dd, but not a great clue because HANG ON works just as well, and was the option I chose, which knackered me for a bit with the intersecting down clue. Just a Minute should really be italicised, since it’s a long-running panel game on BBC radio.
10 Nervous of operating something sharp
ON EDGE
A charade of ON and EDGE. Not all edges are sharp, of course.
11 In favour of parent ditching husband for impresario
PROMOTER
A charade of PRO and MOT[H]ER. The removal indicator is ‘ditching’.
12 Craving starters in the curry house
ITCH
The initial letters of the last four words of the clue.
13 It’s always diverting
CONTRAFLOW
A cd, but a very vague one which I am guessing most solvers would need some crossing letters to have a stab at.
15 Perplexed to get the sack when full of inspiration
BEMUSED
Beale is inviting you to insert MUSE in BED.
16 Half missed moment Hal without king makes entrance
ENTHRAL
A charade of [MOM]ENT and R for rex or ‘king’ inserted into HAL.
18 Guiding principle of Midas’s reign?
GOLDEN RULE
A cd.
19 Resent some that escaped
HATE
Hidden in tHAT Escaped.
20 Unwelcome guest is, in time, less polite
INTRUDER
A charade of IN, T and RUDER.
22 Cutting off end of piece and unravelling yarn in two parts
BINARY
A charade of BI[T] and (YARN)* with ‘inravelling’ as the anagrind.
23 Note the listener’s mood
TENNER
A homophone (‘the listener’s’) of TENOR.
24 Real me is free to be less generous
MEASLIER
(REAL ME IS)*
Down
1 Live it up out with noted parent
PAINT THE TOWN RED
(WITH NOTED PARENT)*
2 Delivering rebuff, carrying on without emotion
COLD-SHOULDERING
A charade of COLD and SHOULDERING, but SHOULDERING is ‘carrying’ rather than ‘carrying on’, so you need to take the ‘on’ as a placement indicator for ‘next to’.
3 It shows the bigger picture
WIDESCREEN
Another cd.
4 Slippery character handed over cash without hesitation
SERPENT
An insertion of ER in SPENT.
5 Drive off, cutting short filming
SHOO
SHOO[T]
6 Get cross having to rush away before the opener
FLY OFF THE HANDLE
A charade of FLY OFF for ‘rush away’ and THE HANDLE for ‘the opener’. Or you could take THE directly from the clue.
7 Might a Tory often upset official delegation?
POWER OF ATTORNEY
A charade of POWER and (A TORY OFTEN)* A POWER OF ATTORNEY officially delegates your personal and financial affairs to another individual. Choose carefully.
14 It won’t flourish without support
RUNNER BEAN
Another cd.
17 Master wrestling holds in advance
SUPREMO
An insertion (‘holds’) of PRE in SUMO.
21 Jazz up weapon
DART
A reversal of TRAD, with ‘up’ as the reversal indicator because it’s a down clue.
Many thanks to Beale for this morning’s Quiptic.
I don’t mind the cds, but RUNNER BEAN was vague in the extreme. I also failed to parse significant chunks of the grid, including SUPREMO and COLD SHOULDERING. Horrible grid layout didn’t help.
The old chestnut about the Cryptic being easier holds very true today with Vulcan giving us an easy canter.
I entirely agree with your comments, Pierre. I also had HANG ON. CONTRAFLOW is not only vague, but also not a word I have come across except in those endless UK motorway holdups. If I had never driven in Britain, I don’t think I would ever have heard it. I did like BINARY. Buffo @1 – spot on, concerning this and the Cryptic. Thanks, Beale
Not a brilliant Quiptic – like Boffo I’d not parsed a lot of clues, mostly because it hadn’t held my interest long enough to be that bothered by the time I got to them – I was mostly banging in likely answers from the crossers by that point. Perhaps my fault rather than Beale’s – the Cryptic will show whether I’m just in a grumpy mood or not.In defence of one CD though, without GOLDEN RULE I might not have got a foothold on solving this at all – there weren’t a lot of easy write ins to get a beginner (or at least this beginner) started.
I really enjoyed this, especially after the pleasant but gentle offering from Vulcan. I liked RUNNER BEAN which I thought was fair and the simple ITCH. Ta Pierre & Beale
That’s an interesting observation, Ben T, and one I sometimes forget – how ‘easy’ a puzzle is for a beginner is often to do with how ‘easy’ it is to get a foothold. So a few judiciously placed easy anagrams or write-ins will often let you get some crossers that aid you with the tricksier clues.
I found this a bit tricky – needed some help for 16A and 7D. I thought I was being soooo clever by remembering ‘Hal’ is ‘Henry’, so ‘Hal without king’ is HENY…Thanks Pierre and Beale.
Much trickier than the cryptic, I thought. As others have pointed out the grid with lots of long answers is not very friendly for beginners (I used word searches for some of them).I tried fullscreen at the beginning, although that is usually written as two words.Thanks Beale and Pierre.
13a and 14d were late in for me, emphasising their vague nature. With the B and A of 14d in and “support” in the clue I was, for sometime, convinced the solution was ______ BEAM , I’m still hugely unconvinced by the actual solution; FRENCH BEAN fits the definition just as well, so it was ungettable without the crossers.
I thought 1d and 6d provided suitably easy routes into the rest of the grid.
Was unsure how to parse HOLD ON, CONTRAFLOW (new word for me).Liked ENTHRAL, TENNER, INTRUDER, BEMUSED, SERPENT, CAMOMILE (loi).
Thanks to Beale and PierreI thought this really missed the brief for a Quiptic. It was very difficult (I found it much harder than Saturday’s “Prize”, for example) and very loose in lots of places. 14d in particular could refer to almost anything.I did like CAMOMILE, but not much else.I think you’ve underlined the wrong word in21d, Pierre.
[My post at 10 has deleted the line-breaks for some reason.Let’s see if it will do it again!]
Obvious anagrams are a good way in to a crossword – so guess who spent forever trying to unravel the obvious anagram of “Might a Tory often” at 7d?
I considered “talk on” for 9 for quite a while, which would have been weak, but so was the correct answer. For 6, I would never have thought of HANDLE for “opener” so took a long time to see this, and still don’t really see the connection. RUNNER BEAN was also vague but I was lucky and wasn’t sidetracked by an alternative. 7 was my LOI because I was looking for an anagram of “might a Tory often”, and when that didn’t fit the crossers, a rather unlikely “a Tory often upset”. SERPENT was quite nice, but Not Slimy!
Why is Jazz trad? Trad for me is Folk …
Overall, the west side was fairly easy for me, and it was hard to get much of a foothold in the east.
Penny just dropped on HANDLE. Ah well.
I too found the cryptic definitions a little rough, and some parts a bit unfriendly for a Yank (not that that’s anything the setter is obliged to accommodate!). I looked at 23, said “Mood could be tenor but what sounds like that that’s a synonym for note?” And 16ac tells me where the extra L in “gruelling” et al. comes from…. and I think runner beans aren’t quite as common here.
Monkey@13: “Trad jazz” was a huge movement in UK jazz in the 50s and 60s or so, Ken Colyer and Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk and so on. (Here my jazz fandom trumps my Americanness.)
18ac is a dd not a cd I think, “guiding principle” is a golden rule, and Midas’ reign was a golden rule too. The line between cd and dd can be pretty thin.
Not much fun I’m afraid.
A mixed bag for me as a beginner
1d and 6d were quick ins that gave me something to work from.
Did not like 16a – should have said “will captivate” instead of “makes entrance” IMO.
Was convinced 8a was “Bankside” (the power plant)
And 4d annoys the herpetologist in me – snakes are NOT slippy
That was by far the hardest Quiptic in my memory! I failed to finish, having to cheat, I believe, a total of four times. I haven’t had that poor a showing on a Quiptic in many years.
I agree with Ted: this was a seriously tricky quiptic. Maybe I’ve misunderstood them, for I’m sure that somewhere along the line I gained the impression that they’re meant to be a tad easier than the daily cryptics. This one definitely wasn’t!
I also agree that anagrams help one gain a foothold – and so, like, Gladys at 12 & Monkey at 13, I spent a silly amount of time trying to turn “might a Tory often” into something workable.
I, too, wasted heaven knows how long by taking the R out of “henry” for 16a….
I’m not convinced by HOLD ON, nor by RUNNER BEAN.
Excelsis at 17 makes a good point: “bankside” is a neat, and I would say perfectly viable, alternative for 8a.
On the other hand, the deceptive simplicity of both HATE and SHOO was pleasing. I also rather liked CONTRAFLOW, and was completely taken in by 12a – spending a while running through sundry indian dishes, before the d’oh moment…
So, on balance, a curate’s egg.
Thanks to Beale for the mental exertion and to Pierre for the soothing balm of the explanations
Tricky indeed.. I wonder if I can post? Last night I could not.
.. But this morning I can.
hi, I’m just curious- why is without used for a insertion?
Hi- I’m just curious – why is without used to indicate an insertion?
Morning Gywas. ‘Without’ in this sense means ‘outside of’, and is the opposite of ‘within’, so is often used as an insertion indicator. In regional speech, I hear it more often from Scots, who will say ‘within our without our country’, for example.
As a relative beginner (working back through old Quiptics with my Mum remotely as a pandemic thing to do), I did find parts of this one hard. Probably too many cryptic clues only and part of the fun is working through the two or more parts of the clue. I liked binary, promoter, camomile and golden rule. It’s only taken fifty-nine years for me to start on cryptic clues – have been more of a hard pattern type puzzle person before – but this blog has been brilliant. At least Mum doesn’t spend half our run through telling me how obvious clues are now, which means I must be progressing! Thank you!
I think your judgement of this one as ‘hard’ is about right, Andrée. Nearly six decades is a long run-up to your cryptic career, but keep enjoying them with Mum and visiting the blog.
Thanks Pierre – it’s good to be able to comment on the current one as the blog has been a godsend for the ones going backwards to 865 Pan so far!
Hello, noob here. regular reader, first time poster. finally finished thanks to the thesaurus and anagram solver! however….quick question…
could someone explain how clues 16 A and 4 D use the word ‘without’ to mean to include it?
i would have thought ‘with’ would have been better as an insertion indicator- or am i missing something? many thanks in advance and i love this blog, it really helps! thank you 🙂
johnnyjazz@28 “without” means “outside of”, opposite of “within”, as well as “omitting”.
I realise I didn’t really explain in 29 – the *other* word is to be put without the inserted word. It works on many levels, since before the insertion it is currently without it… Isn’t English fun?
Thanks so much Altreus! really appreciated, makes perfect sense now.
-and English is wonderfully fun but some of these crosswords get me scratching my head! very best from a snowy NYC 🙂
I think 9A was intended as a charade of HOLD (keep) + ON (going). This avoids the HOLD ON/HANG ON ambiguity of the double definition interpretation.
I first came across “without” in the old hymn “There is a green hill far away without a city wall”. Of course as children we all thought it meant a hill that didn’t have a wall around it until some kind adult explained that it was a hill outside Jerusalem. We we’re flummoxed by 7d as well – spent ages trying to make something of Might a tory often, but also had enchant rather than enthral for for 16a.
After 5 days I had hardly gotten anywhere with this. Read the comments, went to do Vulcan’s Monday crossword as a result. Did that in 17 minutes: a record by a long long way!
I found this hard but fun. I was stuck for a ridiculously long time with SERPENT (fixated on EEL!), SUPREMO and ENTHRAL. I thought POWER OF ATTORNEY was rather good. Thanks Beale and Pierre