Always a pleasure when I click open the Quiptic and see that Carpathian is the setter. Another delightful and accessible puzzle for beginners from her this morning.
There are two little points of interest which you may or may not have spotted. Firstly, it’s a pangram – all twenty-six letters of the alphabet make an appearance somewhere or other. Secondly, it’s anagram-free. The former is not that unusual; the latter is, especially in a Quiptic. I can’t believe it’s not deliberate.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
9 Pass on support stone
PROPAGATE
A charade of PROP and AGATE.
10 Weird and revolting rage suppressed by drugs
EERIE
An insertion of IRE reversed in EE for two ‘drugs’. The insertion indicator is ‘suppressed by’ and the reversal indicator is ‘revolting’.
11 Propose food schedule
TABLE
Not a dd, but a td – a triple definition. The last one is in its nounal sense – ‘a table of contents’.
12 Bury group with cross
INTERSECT
A charade of INTER and SECT.
13 Work in empty theatre following musical drama
OPERATE
A charade of OPERA and T[HEATR]E.
14 Pay bonus in post
STIPEND
An insertion of TIP in SEND. The insertion indicator is ‘in’.
17 Card to traitor returned
TAROT
A reversal (‘returned’) of TO RAT.
19 Study decapitated religious figure
CON
[I]CON. The definition is archaic – Shakespeare used it – but it comes up in crosswords a lot, so is worth tucking away for future use. ‘Religious figure’ used to be the only meaning of ICON, and some folk still insist on that; but the battle is long lost, I fancy. Pretty much every C-list sleb is an icon these days.
20 Dogs maybe tailing learner in this yarn?
LISLE
A charade of L and ISLE. The reference is to the Isle of Dogs, on the River Thames. Somewhat confusingly, it’s a peninsula and not an island.
21 Feeling of guilt about detective
REMORSE
A charade of RE and MORSE, the Oxford-based detective creation of Colin Dexter. The writer and his character were both keen crossword fans.
22 Bit of timber in a solid floor
ASTOUND
An insertion of T for the initial letter of ‘timber’ in A SOUND.
24 Run down lair with one fireplace
DENIGRATE
A charade of DEN, I and GRATE.
26 Drew together artist, king and journalist
RAKED
A charade of RA, K and ED.
28 Mostly hostile states
AVERS
AVERS[E]
29 Short, endlessly short and unwelcome occupants
SQUATTERS
A charade of SQUAT and TERS[E].
Down
1 Jerseys, perhaps, raised in particular place
SPOT
Not the milk producers, but the jumpers. A reversal of TOPS. The reversal indicator, since it’s a down clue, is ‘raised’.
2 Eccentricity of Foreign Office manual lacking introduction
FOIBLE
A charade of FO and [B]IBLE.
3 Criminal element following stag?
MALEFACTOR
A charade of MALE and FACTOR.
4 Oddly mean bloodsuckers getting bad blood
MALICE
A charade of MA for the odd letters of MeAn and LICE.
5 Discard stone — it upset child
JETTISON
A charade of JET, IT reversed and SON.
6 Time in Ross-on-Wye area
YEAR
Hidden in Ross-on-WYE ARea.
7 Appliances without charge and almost nothing showing at first
FREEZERS
A charade of FREE, ZER[O] and S for the initial letter of ‘showing’.
8 Following unknown into trap
NEXT
An insertion of X for the mathematical ‘unknown’ in NET.
13 Extravagant queen gets aquatic beast
OTTER
A charade of OTT for over the top and ER for Elizabeth Regina, our current monarch.
15 Not able to write and angry about liberal diet
ILLITERATE
An insertion of L and LITE in IRATE. LITE for ‘diet’ is marketing speak – think soft drinks, for example.
16 Following degree study fear
DREAD
A charade of D and READ. ‘She’s reading/studying physics at uni.’
18 Memo about bodyguard
REMINDER
A charade of RE and MINDER.
19 Charlie upset hoarder with empty storage for crack
CREVASSE
A charade of C for the phonetic alphabet ‘Charlie’, SAVER reversed (‘upset’) and SE for the outside letters of ‘storage’.
22 Approach a location
AVENUE
A charade of A and VENUE.
23 Maintenance of high castle
UPKEEP
A charade of UP and KEEP.
24 Sketch tug
DRAW
A dd.
25 Stream of gas upset some homeowners, initially
GUSH
The initial letters of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth words of the clue.
27 First part of dinner is hot soup, perhaps
DISH
A charade of D for the initial letter of ‘dinner’, IS and H.
Many thanks to Carpathian for this week’s Quiptic. If you’re still a newish solver, look out for crosswords by her alter ego, Vigo, in the Independent. They are always well-constructed and tractable.
Thanks both. For once I saw the pangram, but only after I’d done the J Q and Z clues!
I enjoyed this. From fairly early I felt the absence of anagrams, kept thinking there must be one coming soon, though it never did. Must be deliberate, surely, and a particularly tough challenge for a Quiptic setter to set.
It’s probably not connected to what felt like a surfeit of anagrams in yesterday’s Everyman, but makes for a nice counterweight.
I did notice the pangram ( and it helped ) but not the absence of anagrams. A pleasant solve. Ta to C and P.
The pangram helped with NEXT. DENIGRATE and STIPEND were mu favourites.
Thanks Carpathian and Pierre
Favourite LISLE. They used to reckon that it was an island if all the dock gates were open!
Not keen on “Bit of timber” for T in 22a.
I noticed neither the pangram (not unusual) nor the lack of anagrams. Got held up in the NW somewhat, but not too long. Liked RAKE, SQUATTERS, JETTISON and CREVASSE. Thanks, Carpathian and Pierre.
Lisle is the sort of UK GK that throws off poor south Indians making a valiant attempt to solve cryptics in English. At least this one is small and was “gettable” using crossers.
I am subscribing to Guardian only for the cross words. My news interests, USA, South India and India are not covered well by Guardian. I don’t read sections other than quiptics at all.
Given my background Quiptic is the hardest cryptic I can attempt. One UK GK, or an obscure dessert dish, complex wordplay etc will throw me off. I have exhausted the archive, solved every Quiptic ever published, all the way back to 1999. So only fresh ones for me hereafter. That means I am getting just 52 a year for 100$. And when setters like Anto make it an impossible drudgery, as tough as regular cryptic, I would hardly get 40 a year, $2.50 a puzzle.
Times Quick Cryptic on the other hand, I get 270 a year, all well within my feeble grasp of English. Under 40 cents a puzzle. Took me 4.5 years to do 1166 works out to 0.7 puzzles a day. I am able to do nearly 1.7 a day in Times Quick. (107 in 59 days) Their editor seems to care to tone down the chewy bits, or they have a better process to judge the difficulty level.
This quiptic is perfect. Carpathian seems to care and make it nice and will expand the audience and groom and cultivate the next generation of Cryptic lovers. Anto will just show off among the newbies and non-English natives like me.
[Ravilyn Sanders @7
You don’t need to subscribe to get the crosswords – they’re free here ]
Nice puzzle.
Liked AVERS, ASTOUND, LISLE (loi).
Thanks, both.
Like TassieTim, I noticed neither the pangram (not unusual) nor the lack of anagrams.
Ravilyn Sanders @7 – the Quiptic is often no easier than the regular Cryptic or Everyman. Sometimes the Saturday Prize is also quite easy. You might want to try the other puzzles sometimes. Or go back and do the old Everyman puzzles when the previous setter was still creating them (several years ago? I forget when he retired.)
@muffin
When I was a poor starving grad student I enjoyed all the legal freebies I could get on the internet. Now I feel a little twinge of remorse when I take something free. So I pay. But the habits developed to survive grad school poverty won’t go away. I still do dollars and cents calculations when it does not really make sense. …
Should have swapped places with today’s Cryptic!
Phew! After last week’s toughie, this one was an easy solve even for beginners like me. And without anagrams too! Didn’t get Lisle though.
Thanks Carpathian and Pierre.
Ravilyn Sanders@10 – grading cryptics is quite difficult, subjective and/or not quite yet mastered by the Guardian. We discussed this a few months ago and there were some good suggestions on how to improve this, including some by a person who was also a Times solver.
I use my solving time as a proxy for difficulty. Based on that, this was more difficult than the “harder” puzzles last Thurs, Fri and Sat. Spread your wings if you haven’t already. Also look at the Independent. I recently did a Tees puzzle and it was clearly clued and quite enjoyable. That’s if you don’t have an ideological objection to that paper 😉
For me, I’ve noticed it’s about being on the same wavelength eg at the beginning (about Oct last year), I was lucky if I got two clues from Picaroon and now I really enjoy his puzzles. I also think there are some setters who are scrupulously fair. In the Guardian, to name a few, Picaroon, Brendan and Nutmeg come to mind (there are others I’m blanking on) and, from my limited exposure, Alberich in the FT (free) and Tees.
I agree that UK GK is always going to be trickier for those who don’t live here. But all of us are ignorant about some things that pop up in crosswords. Almost all my knowledge of meat/game, alcohol and cheeses comes from crosswords. So much so that when I do the Quick with my SO, she’s constantly surprised how I know so much about those topics!
[[ Ravilyn Sanders@7 and 10, I have a similar attitude with choosing between accepting free stuff on the internet and paying for it – like you, habits developed during periods of poverty are hard to break. Here’s how I deal with the Guardian cryptics (since I don’t read the rest of the paper). I guess roughly how much I would pay for a book of Guardian cryptics, divide by 2 to account for my printing costs (I do not do them on line), and send a one-time contribution to the Guardian in that amount. I do this about once a year. This way, I’m paying for what I use, and not for anything else.
To elaborate on pdp@13’s suggestions, the easiest Guardians are the Sunday Everyman and the Monday Cryptic and Quiptic – all about the same degree of difficulty in my experience. Another source of easier puzzles (but not serviced by any fifteensquared-type blogs) is the Daily Telegraph. They publish books of their puzzles. I would also second pdp’s recommendation of Brendan’s puzzles (whenever they appear) – they may be more difficult but they are well constructed and lots of fun, even if you don’t get very far with them. Good hunting. ]
I didn’t notice the lack of anagrams. I did spot the pangram, which helped me with my LOI, namely FREEZERS, which in hindsight seems easy enough that I shouldn’t have needed the help.
(I was going to complain that TAROT was the deck of cards, not a card, but a trip to the dictionary tells me I’m wrong: “any of the 22 trump cards in this pack, which are decorated with allegorical pictures.”)
Re 1d SPOT, with the indicator “raised” placed between the two possible definitions “Jersey, perhaps” and “particular place”, this clue could work either way. Only the crossers tell you which is correct. This bothers some people, but not me, as I discussed @46 in the blog for Vulcan’s cryptic today.
As usual, I didn’t spot the pangram, and the anagram deficiency, but that in no way spoiled the pleasure of this very nice puzzle. Thanks Carpathian and Pierre.
[Ravilyn Sanders @7 — we find the Guardian covers US political news in better depth than our American papers. Maybe it’s the perspective of being on the outside looking in.]
Last trip to London, we took a Thames boat trip past the Isle of Dogs and to the Greenwich Meridian. In the safety lecture, after telling us where to find life vests, we were told that in the event of the boat sinking we were to get out and walk to the nearest shore!
@Calgal
I would agree, UK covers US News better than many American newspapers. Well, I am in general disengaging from all news. Its all so depressing.
Late to the party but just wanted to say thanks for the blog Pierre, and that I share your delight in seeing Carpathian’s name at the top of a puzzle. What a pleasure this was to solve.
Contrarily, I found this one very hard. Sticking together synonyms is not my strong suit, apparently. Nor is finding synonyms in the first place, to solve the definitions! Oh well.
I did, however, spot the pangram – I was clued in by finding an X and Y in close proximity to one another (no pun intended).
I thought this hugely harder than the Monday Cryptic, but this doesn’t seem to have been the case for many others! One slight quibble – I’m not sure ‘dogs maybe’ is entirely fair for ‘isle’ without the ‘of’, just because it’s one of the few isles where you wouldn’t refer to it just by its given name (you might say that you were going to Skye, but it seems unlikely that you’d say you were going to Dogs. Although perhaps I’m wrong and locals do refer to it as such…)
@altreus
Synonyms, especially the stretched tenuous ones, are hard for non English speakers. The passive vocabulary (ability to understand meaning of a word) is much larger than the active vocabulary (finding words to match the meaning they have in mind) for most people. And the gulf is much wider in non-native language.
I can fetch an obscure usage, even the highly contrived ones conjured up to fit the meter or rhyme of a film song lyric, not seen or heard for 30 years … in Tamil. In English … can’t even connect the buzz word used by the CEO in the quarterly all hands meeting after two days. On the other hand, though, these buzz words have no real meaning. But, that term of endearment of the hero professing his undying love and affection to the heroine by calling her a cashew nut from the garden of God Indra? No one ever forgets that.
MediumOne @21, I completely agree.
… and altreus @20, I completely agree with you as well!
DNF. Not even close.
Took me all week but I got there in the end ! ?