Guardian Quiptic 1,140/Pan

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This one took a bit of teasing out. Could just be my slightly sleepy brain this morning, so let’s see what others made of it.

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 Bleak pictures inside arch
SPARTAN
An insertion of ART in SPAN. The insertion indicator is ‘inside’.

5 Treat old carbon in newspapers
PROCESS
An insertion of O and C in PRESS. The insertion indicator is ‘in’.

10 Pack animal carrying Tibetan leader
STOW
An insertion of T for the initial letter of ‘Tibetan’ in SOW. The insertion indicator is ‘carrying’.

11 Mortuaries where America is forced to keep rubbish back
CREMATORIA
An insertion of ROT reversed in (AMERICA)* The insertion indicator is ‘to keep’; the anagrind is ‘is forced’; the reversal indicator is ‘back’. I am not convinced that ‘mortuaries’ and CREMATORIA are the same thing at all: your body may be held in a mortuary before being taken to the crematorium for burning.

12 Start of line crossed by bird
FLINCH
An insertion of L in FINCH. The insertion indicator is ‘crossed by’.

13 Sweet grain topped with dough
ICE LOLLY
A charade of [R]ICE and LOLLY, which along with ‘dough’ is a slang word for ‘money’.

14 Group of soldiers in club initially train a brave individual
BATTALION
A charade of BAT, T for the initial letter of ‘train’, A and LION.

16 Soprano and tenor chat about roles
PARTS
A reversal of S, T and RAP.

17 Thorn from small tree
SPINE
A charade of S and PINE.

19 Bad grades get evenly distributed
STAGGERED
(GRADES GET)*

23 Roger excited about brilliant visitor to Newmarket?
RACEGOER
An insertion of ACE in (ROGER)* The insertion indicator is ‘about’; the anagrind is ‘excited’.

24 Crustacean is beginning to outgrow shell
ISOPOD
A charade of IS, O for the initial letter of ‘outgrow’ and POD. ISOPODS are an order of Crustaceae. Think woodlice.

26 False part of folio omitted from professor’s academic writing
PROSTHESIS
PRO[F]S THESIS

27 Ruler seen in reversible mirror
EMIR
Hidden in reversiblE MIRror.

28 Festivities in bar turn extremely rowdy
REVELRY
A charade of LEVER reversed and RY for the outside letters of ‘rowdy’.  The reversal indicator is ‘turn’.

29 Fellow hiding close to boundary to damage country
MYANMAR
A charade of Y for the last letter of ‘boundary’ inserted into MAN, followed by MAR.

Down

2 Rice dish containing a little bit of turkey bone
PATELLA
An insertion of T for the first letter of ‘turkey’ inserted into PAELLA. The insertion indicator is ‘containing’. The kneecap in common parlance, and the source of the famous clue: Two girls, one on each knee. It’s one of Roger Squires’ (known in these parts as Rufus) and is also the title of a book by Alan Connor (also of these parts – he writes the weekly blog on the Guardian crossword site as well as the Meet the Setter series).

3 Rook flying out of unusually narrow tree
ROWAN
(NAR[R]OW)* The removal indicator is ‘flying out of’ and the anagrind is ‘unusually’.

4 Local criminal drinking house wine?
ALCOHOL
An insertion of HO in (LOCAL)* The insertion indicator is ‘drinking’ and the anagrind is ‘criminal’.

6 Academic soldiers are upset over low mark
READER
A charade of RE for Royal Engineers and D inserted into (ARE)* The insertion indicator is ‘over’ and the anagrind is ‘upset’. D is certainly a low mark on the A-E scale.

7 China tea stirred with cool confectionery
CHOCOLATE
A charade of CH for the two-letter abbreviation for ‘China’ and (TEA COOL)* The anagrind is ‘stirred with’. Chocolate and ice lolly in the same crossword – it’s not the healthy option for us this morning, is it?

8 What’s been shot put in regular frying pan
SKILLET
An insertion of KILL in SET. The insertion indicator is ‘put in’. SET has about a squillion meanings, but here it’s this one: ‘We have our private French lessons at set/regular times each week’.

9 Butterfly buff‘s catalogue record set by exotic peridot
LEPIDOPTERIST
I’m not in love with Pan’s surface reading here, and – if I’ve got it right – the parsing is a bit complicated to boot. To ‘catalogue’ is to ‘put something into a list’. So I think the intention here is that EP for ‘record’ is placed next to (PERIDOT)* and all that is put into LIST. The insertion indicator is implicit and the anagrind is ‘exotic’.

15 Trump initially seen dithering about start of narcissistic visit to state
TENNESSEE
A charade of T for the initial letter of ‘Trump’, N for the initial letter of ‘narcissistic’ inserted into (SEEN)* and SEE for ‘visit’. The insertion indicator is ‘about’ and the anagrind is ‘dithering’.

18 Plain dish containing last but one portion of savoury spread
PRAIRIE
An insertion of R for the penultimate letter of ‘savoury’ and AIR for ‘spread’ in PIE. The insertion indicator is ‘containing’.

20 Dispute reaches many regulars
GAINSAY
A charade of GAINS and AY for the even letters of ‘many’.

21 Porn from ace trio reprinted
EROTICA
(ACE TRIO)* with ‘reprinted’ as the anagrind.

22 Source of bubonic and different plague?
BOTHER
A charade of B for the initial letter of ‘bubonic’ and OTHER.

25 Poem by second in command at National Theatre
ODEON
A charade of ODE, O for the second letter in ‘command’ and N. An ODEON was a theatre in ancient Greece and Rome; it’s also a cinema chain, of course.

Many thanks to Pan for this morning’s Quiptic.

22 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,140/Pan”

  2. Thanks Pan and Pierre. I also found this tough going, and had the same quibbles over 11a and 9d (the surface of 9d is just a bit odd). Couldn’t parse PRAIRIE. Also tried to convince myself there was such a thing as the PITLAFF bone… I think in my case it’s definitely down to mondaymorningitis, so my performance is possibly not the best yardstick.

    Some good clues here though – I enjoyed PROSTHESIS and REVELRY.

    Still struggling with Brendan. Feel like it’s going to be one of those days…

  3. Same quibble re CREMATORIA, and I couldn’t parse PRAIRIE either. I came to this after throughly enjoying Brendan’s Cryptic, and wasn’t in the mood for the laborious parsing of TENNESSEE and LEPIDOPTERIST and BATTALION, though there is nothing technically wrong with any of them. Just me. I liked RACEGOER and PROSTHESIS.

  4. Another PITLAFF here. Strange how hard it is to clear your mind of a bad idea. PRAIRIE took a long time and ISOPOD was a bit of a bung in and hope. The rest, I thought were all good Quiptic fare. Thanks, both.

  5. My 2D was operated on two years ago this week, so I should have solved this clue a little quicker, but spent some time trying to make it RISOTTO.

  7. Solved SE corner last. Compared to today’s Cryptic, I found it harder to parse several solutions here, but otherwise it was quite rightly classified as a Quiptic. By the way, I never fault setters on this: I imagine that puzzles are submitted and it is the editor who decides whether a certain puzzle is slotted in as a Cryptic or a Quiptic, but I may be wrong about this.

    Favoruites: READER, ISOPOD.

    Thanks, both.

  8. Another one who failed to parse PRAIRIE, which was my LOI.

    I agree that the clue for LEPIDOPTERIST is a bit of a car crash. I confess that it flew in without my bothering to check the parsing. I have checked to see whether there is a butterfly known as a ‘peridot’, but there isn’t, sadly. (Google ‘peridot butterfly’ and you find links to pendants set with the gemstone).

    Nevertheless an enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to S&B

  9. Too tough for a Quiptic. Some parsings are too complex and the grid is not over-helpful. It would have been fine for a cryotic.

  11. PeterT @4 – so glad it wasn’t just me who went down that road! And I know exactly what you mean about clearing your mind of bad ideas.

  12. michelle @7, re ‘who decides if it’s a quiptic or a cryptic?’

    I’ve read some recent ‘Meet the Setter’ interviews with Carpathian and Anto, in both of which the setter is asked ‘How do your quiptics differ from your cryptics?’, so I think the setter does know in advance which is the intended slot.

    In Carpathian’s interview (answering the question ‘What are the tools of your trade?’) she says: “I’m lucky to have excellent test solvers (not that I would call them tools) in the form of setters Harold and Serpent from the Independent and super-speedy solver CrypticSue, whose timing determines whether a puzzle is fit to be quiptic (over eight minutes and it doesn’t qualify).”

    I’d be interested to know if crypticsue has tried today’s Pan, and if so whether it broke the 8 minute barrier. It certainly broke mine! For me, the extremely convoluted parsing (eg LEPIDOPTERIST), and equivalences stretched to the limit (eg air = spread), put it well beyond quiptic territory.

    Thanks P & P

  13. I enjoyed both of today’s puzzles but thought that the Quiptic label should have been attached to Brendan’s rather than to Pan’s.

    Thank you P and P.

  14. DNF for me, so I agree that this was very tough for a quiptic. Having ICE CREAM for 13a made the NE impossible. I couldn’t parse it fully, but then, given I couldn’t parse PRAIRIE either, I assumed I would find the parsing here. Thanks, Pan and Pierre.

  15. It seems I’m not the only one who found this trickier than today’s cryptic, and that itself is a bit of a puzzle. Isn’t the whole point of quiptics to be easier than cryptics, as a kind of gentle on-ramp for newbies or those not up for a lot of effort? Maybe the editor doesn’t test-solve every submission.

  16. Catalogue and list can both be verb or noun and are synonyms either way, so I can’t see the problem with the parsing

  17. Martin S @16 — I don’t think the parsing of 9dn is wrong, but it’s surprisingly tricky for a Quiptic. Catalogue and list are indeed synonyms, but to make the clue work we need an additional trick: the parsing requires us to say, not CATALOGUE = LIST, but CATALOGUE = PUT INTO LIST, and then to interpret “put into” as part of the cryptic instructions. Otherwise, we’re missing a containment indicator.

    It’s a perfectly legitimate construction, and things like it certainly show up in Guardian puzzles, but it’s tricky enough that I for one wondered for quite a while about the missing indicator until the penny finally dropped.

  18. I should add that, fortunately, the definition was extremely clear. Especially in a beginner-friendly puzzle like a Quiptic, it’s good for the setter to pair a tricky construction with a straightforward definition like this.

  19. I thought that this was ridiculously difficult for the Quiptic – the Cryptic was far easier. What is the editor thinking of?

  21. Gave myself another morning but still DNF. Several answers I didn’t understand, so judicious use of the check button.

    9a was very confusing to me because I couldn’t figure out what “catalogue” meant; I got LIST from “set”, and I took “by” to be an insertion indicator that I’d not seen before.

    Generally I’m not on the same wavelength as Pan, but this time I agree with people saying that some of the equivalences are very stretchy.

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