Another delightful puzzle from Hectence, who is one of the original group of setters of the Quiptic (she perhaps won’t thank me for reminding her that when her first Quiptic appeared, IT geeks were still fretting about the millennium bug).
I thought this was pitched just right. I hope that someone out there today will remember this puzzle because it’s: the first time they’ve got more than halfway (well done); the first time they’ve completed it with a bit of help and judicious use of the ‘check’ button (all’s fair in love and war); or the first time they’ve completed it without aids (pubs re-open in a couple of hours). If that’s you, in any of the three categories, bravo or brava. But did you also notice in your excitement that it was a pangram?
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 At first, performance by hybrid yacht is variable
PATCHY
A charade of P for the first letter of ‘performance’ and (YACHT)* The anagrind is ‘hybrid’.
4 Saving a pound on fine carpet
FRUGAL
A charade of F, RUG, A and L. The last element is from the Latin word libra, for ‘pound’ (ultimately from libra pondo, a pound in weight). The libra, solidi and denarii were used to refer to the denominations of English currency in pre-decimalisation days, often referred to as L s d (even before drugs were invented). Our pound sign – the £ – is essentially just an L with a flourish. And it comes up a lot in crosswords.
9 Comic character in the end’s beaten danger
DENNIS THE MENACE
A charade of (IN THE ENDS)* and MENACE gives you the Beano character who made his first appearance in the comic almost exactly 60 70 years ago. He’d have know about pounds, shillings and pence. And halfpennies and farthings.
10 Many try to turn back shooter
PISTOL
A reversal of LOT and SIP. ‘Have a sip of my home-made lemonade.’ The reversal indicator is ‘to turn back’.
11 Sharp comment’s signal to pursue end of office party outside
BARBECUE
A charade of BARB, E for the last letter of ‘office’ and CUE. The party outside where the guests all huddle under the porch and the host gets drenched trying to cook soggy sausages.
12 Do without alcohol?
TEA PARTY
A cd. Hectence is in party mood this morning now that lockdown has eased further.
14 Guard posted by railway
SENTRY
A charade of SENT and RY.
15 Journalist’s piece covering cheap accommodation
BEDSIT
An insertion of EDS in BIT. The insertion indicator is ‘covering’.
18 Drive past public area with king cheered heartily
OVERTAKE
A charade of OVERT, A, K and E. The final element is the middle letter of cheEred. This is what setters mean when they say ‘heartily’: the middle letter, or ‘heart’ of the word.
21 Fail to turn up for trial, where posh politician’s boy is put in prison
JUMP BAIL
An insertion of U for crosswordspeak ‘posh’, MP and B inserted into JAIL. The insertion indicator is ‘put in’.
22 Answer article describing unknown meadow flower
AZALEA
An insertion of the mathematical ‘unknown’ Z in two As, followed by LEA. The insertion indicator is ‘describing’.
24 Danger sign with repeated awful rain over night regularly cutting off end of glen
WARNING TRIANGLE
Hectence is very good at concision of cluing, which I for one always appreciate in a cryptic. But she can do longer clues when the surface requires it, and this tells us a lovely story. It’s a charade of W for ‘with’, an insertion of NGT for the odd letters of ‘night’ in two lots of (RAIN)* followed by GLE[N]. Almost certainly one you’d have got from the definition and then reverse engineered, but it’s precisely clued. The anagrind is ‘awful’; the insertion indicator is ‘over’; the removal indicator is ‘cutting off end’.
25 Stick close by river
ENDURE
A charade of END and URE for the Yorkshire river.
26 Church meeting briefly reviewed space below ground level
CELLAR
A charade of CE and RALL[Y] reversed. The reversal indicator is ‘reviewed’.
Down
1 Correct point at end of summary
PRECISE
A charade of PRECIS and E for one of the ‘points’ of the compass.
2 Either way, note clear doctrine
TENET
A charade of TE for the seventh note of the tonic sol-fa and NET for ‘clear’ (as in profit). ‘Either way’ just refers to the fact that it’s a palindrome, so the construction works front to back as well as back to front.
3 Con man and cattle thief head off after horse
HUSTLER
A charade of H and [R]USTLER. H for ‘horse’ works with the ‘heroin’ correspondence; but someone was saying the other day on another blog that it’s also a common abbreviation on racecards, distinguishing a runner from a colt, or a filly (or something like that – I know naff all about racing).
5 Comments on targets
REMARKS
A charade of RE and MARKS.
6 Biscuit needs drink — get urn working!
GINGER NUT
A charade of GIN and (GET URN)* with ‘working’ as the anagrind.
7 Coat for one said to be in need?
LACQUER
A homophone (‘said to be’) of LACKER.
8 Plump for Conservative partner
CHUBBY
A charade of C and HUBBY.
13 Put off job organising open day
POSTPONED
A charade of POST, (OPEN)* and D. The anagrind is ‘organising’.
16 Mimic bird, teal maybe?
EMULATE
A charade of EMU and (TEAL)* The anagrind is ‘maybe’ and you know why I can’t.
17 Queen follows attendants in coach
TRAINER
A charade of TRAIN and ER for Her Maj or Elizabeth Regina. Without tempting fate, I imagine setters are turning their minds to CR clues.
18 Nothing felt different about America recently
OF LATE
A charade of O and A inserted into (FELT)* The anagrind is ‘different’ and the insertion indicator is ‘about’.
19 Investigate when chopper’s sent up with explosive device
EXAMINE
A charade of AXE reversed and MINE. The reversal indicator, since it’s a down clue, is ‘sent up’.
20 Gutting easier, after bottom of boat secured new cushion
KNEELER
A charade of N inserted into KEEL and ER for the outside letters of ‘easier’. The insertion indicator is ‘secured’. A KNEELER is one of those ‘cushions’ that you find in the pews at church and use when it’s hands together/eyes closed time.
23 Invalidate points, blocking gold medal finally
ANNUL
More compass ‘points’: two Ns inserted into AU for ‘gold’ followed by L for the last letter of ‘medal’. The insertion indicator is ‘blocking’.
Many thanks to Hectence for this morning’s Quiptic. If you like your setters to remain dark, mysterious and anonymous, thanks for coming and see you next week. If you’d like to learn a little more about our guinea-pig loving setter, there’s a profile here in Alan Connor’s excellent Meet the Setter series.
Agree with Pierre about the difficulty level, and would add that Pierre’s own commentary is perfectly pitched for newer solvers too…
AZALEA gave me difficulty as I suspected a pangram and hadn’t yet dropped EXAMINE in. Cue much hunting of the memory banks for meadow flowers with an X in them…
Fun puzzle.
Favourites: CHUBBY, JUMP BAIL.
Thanks, Hectence.
Pierre – I loved your intro!
Quiptics don’t get much better than this and twigging the possible pangram made my loi, AZALEA, easier. Interesting to note a link to the cryptic but no spoilers.
Ta Hectence & Pierre
I don’t think I’d yet anticipated a pangram, but with the first two As of AzAlea in place and Z an obvious candidate for “unknown” I wasted quite a while trying to justify AMAZON as the flower [perhaps because my favourite tipple at the moment is a gin with botanicals from the Amazon rainforest].
[…which just reminded me of the scene from The Man with Two Brains where the the servants are standing outside the front door to welcome Steve Martin with his new bride Kathleen Turner. She asks “What are those two arseholes doing on the porch?” To which he replies “Huh-Huh… it’s pronounced azaleas…” I’ll get my coat.]
Identical answers in Cryptic and Quiptic, recently.
Thanks both. Nice Quiptic.
[Pedants corner: I believe Dennis was born in 1951 (same year as me). That makes him 70, not 60. So he lived with farthings for 10 years, and shillings and old pence for 20.]
An ideal Quiptic which has restored a little confidence after last week, just held up by having ARIGHT instead of FRUGAL, taking l (a pound) out of alright (fine) and carpet someone is to set them right.
Not pedants’ corner, Shirl, but blogger-can’t-do-mental-maths corner. It was 1951, so the old lad would be getting up to no good on the senior day trips to Llandudno these days.
I never do the Quiptic because it is not in the actual newspaper, just came to have a look today because of the matching solutions to the cryptic.
Just feel I have to say wow , what a fantastic blog, I wish this had been around 25 years ago.
Incidently , the setters should remain dark, mysterious and anonymous, after all they are the enemy.
I also had difficulty separating the meadow from the flower for AZALEA, and trying in vain to work out why a HEN PARTY would be alcohol free (duh!) Not convinced by SIP=try, but otherwise enjoyed this, especially as a relief after getting shipwrecked by Anto.
Absolutely terrific. The surfaces were smooth and the wordplay entirely fair. Lots of smiles on the way. Nice to feel clever occasionally.
LOI was AZALEA – couldn’t see beyond X and Y as ‘unknowns’ – so missed the pangram.
Many thanks to Hectence and Pierre
In 22, Z was one unknown too far for me, looking for a pangram might have helped.
For 2, I had note as paper money and thus a ten, both forward and backward with the n overlapping. Definition becomes “clear doctrine”. In retrospect I was being much too “clever”.
@blaise Amazon could be a flower (using the cryptic definition of a river being something that flows) without redress to amazon botanicals. Alas, the crossers and rest of definition do not cooperate.
I thought that the UK spelling of the place of imprisonment was GAOL, so I might have expected US-spelling indicator for the use of JAIL in 21ac. But Chambers lists both spellings and doesn’t insist that the second one is American, so I guess I was wrong about that. The Google NGram viewer confirms that the J-spelling is common in British English, and in fact suggests that it has been the more common spelling for my entire life. Much of my knowledge of British English comes from old books, so I sometimes get a distorted view.
I did notice the pangram, and it pointed the way to AZALEA (my LOI).
I agree with the consensus that this was an entertaining and well-judged Quiptic.
UK Monopoly uses ‘Jail’, not ‘Gaol’
In Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit’, a considerable part of which is set in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison in London, ‘jail’ is used throughout. In William Godwin’s 1794 novel, ‘Caleb Williams’, likewise. So it has been a common spelling for quite a while!
‘Jail’ vs ‘Gaol’ is interesting, Ted. As Katherine says, ‘Jail’ is commoner, and my own sense is that the alternative spelling is increasingly looking rather old-fashioned. Here is what the Guardian style guide says:
jail
not gaol (inexplicably, the Guardian persisted with this style well into the 1980s, long after everyone else had changed)
That was lovely, though how odd to have the same answer here and in the Quiptic. I didn’t spot the pangram, annoyingly. When I think to look it never is!
Thank you to Hectence and Pierre,
Pierre @17 (and others). Just to be awkward, I persist in spelling it GAOL…
Only my second ever Quiptic and this was a joy.
Thanks Hectance and Pierre!
Thanks Hectence (for this nice pangram, as ever) and Pierre (for the nice blog, as ever).
Will there ever come a time when we don’t get comments like @6 anymore?
[Thanks, all, for the fascinating information about JAIL / GAOL. The latter spelling has always seemed inexplicable to me anyway, as words starting with GA generally have a hard G sound. I can’t immediately come up with any exceptions besides GAOL.]
You can blame the Anglo-Normans, Ted. There’s a well-written and informative article here.
Lovely puzzle and blog – thanks both!
I was stuck for a while on 21a but I can’t see why, now I know it … perfectly logical! Ho hum.
I don’t understand how it is a pangram?