Pasquale can do tricky puzzles, but here he is in Quiptic mode.
All fairly straightforward with nothing too obscure; I had minor quibbles with the word-order in 1d and the hidden-answer indicator in 6d, but both were clear enough. I particularly liked the rather wistful 4d, 7d (I think I’ve seen the combination of AB + SENT before, but this was very well constructed), 11d (which despite the surface has nothing to do with team sports), and 15d where the numerical reference had me fooled for far too long. Thanks Pasquale for the fun.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | FANDANGO |
Dance enthusiast Daniel leading function (8)
|
| FAN (enthusiast) + DAN (short for Daniel) + GO (function, as a verb, as in “the car doesn’t go”). | ||
| 5 | BREACH |
Gap in seaside location penetrated by river (6)
|
| BEACH (seaside location) penetrated by R (abbreviation for river). | ||
| 9 | GLOSSARY |
A king in brilliant list at back of book? (8)
|
| A + R (abbreviation for Latin Rex or Regina = King or Queen), inserted into GLOSSY (brilliant = shiny). | ||
| 10 | ERASER |
One works on paper (Times) with hesitation (6)
|
| ERAS (periods of time) + ER (a spoken expression of hesitation). | ||
| 12 | TULSA |
Strange salute putting off English in US city (5)
|
| Anagram (strange) of SALUT[e] without the E (English).
City in Oklahoma. |
||
| 13 | ENTHRONED |
End on the back of chair, awkwardly seated in ceremony (9)
|
| Anagram (awkwardly) of END ON THE + last letter (back) of [chai]R. | ||
| 14 | ANNOUNCEMENT |
Report naughty nun at once when cuddling fellows (12)
|
| Anagram (naughty) of NUN AT ONCE containing (cuddling) MEN (fellows). | ||
| 18 | INTERMEDIATE |
During school period little boy and I had to be ranked ‘middling’ (12)
|
| IN TERM (during school period) + ED (short form of the male name Edward or Edmund = little boy) + I + ATE (had, as in “I had toast for breakfast”). | ||
| 21 | EASTER EGG |
Gets eager, excited, for seasonal treat (6,3)
|
| Anagram (excited) of GETS EAGER. | ||
| 23 | NIECE |
French resort entertaining eastern relation (5)
|
| NICE (coastal resort in south-eastern France) containing (entertaining) E (eastern). | ||
| 24 | TAILOR |
Outfitter produces end piece with gold (6)
|
| TAIL (end piece) + OR (heraldic term for the colour gold or yellow). | ||
| 25 | DOMINION |
Party underling in ascendancy (8)
|
| DO (party) + MINION (underling). | ||
| 26 | ROGUES |
Undesirable folk shooting grouse (6)
|
| Anagram (shooting?) of GROUSE. | ||
| 27 | EMINENCE |
Artist Tracey from ’ere gets fame (8)
|
| EMIN (artist Tracey Emin) + ‘ENCE (hence = from here, with a casually dropped H at the start). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FIGHTS |
Brawls with fifty denied journeys from airports (6)
|
| F[l]IGHTS (journeys from airports) without the L (Roman numeral for fifty). The order of the sentence is a bit clumsy, but the surface may seem all too familiar to some of those who’ve tried to get out of (or back into) the UK this bank holiday week. | ||
| 2 | NOODLE |
Stupid person offering a bit of food (6)
|
| Double definition. An idiot; or a long thin piece of starchy food, used in East Asian cooking. (Or Italian, but they call it pasta.) | ||
| 3 | ABSTAINER |
A bishop meets old church music composer who is teetotal? (9)
|
| A + B (abbreviation for bishop) + STAINER (19th-century composer John Stainer, best known for the oratorio The Crucifixion.) | ||
| 4 | GARDEN OF EDEN |
What started as blissful place sadly faded with no green (6,2,4)
|
| Anagram (sadly) of FADED + NO GREEN. | ||
| 6 | RARER |
Characters with flair are really not so common (5)
|
| Hidden answer (characters with . . . ? Perhaps in the sense of “characters that come with . . . “) [flai]R ARE R[eally]. | ||
| 7 | ABSENTEE |
Sailor dispatched to the ends of empire — one who can’t be here (8)
|
| AB (short for able-bodied seaman = sailor) + SENT (dispatched) + end letters of E[mpir]E. | ||
| 8 | HEREDITY |
They ride in order making descent (8)
|
| Anagram (in order) of THEY RIDE. | ||
| 11 | STANDING ROOM |
Reserve man of the match space on bus? (8,4)
|
| STAND-IN (reserve = substitute) + GROOM (a man in a “match” = wedding). | ||
| 15 | EXTENSION |
Annex that could be No 16 (9)
|
| Anagram (that could be) of NO SIXTEEN. Obvious when you see it, but it took a long time for the penny to drop. | ||
| 16 | DIRECTOR |
I had upset minister who runs a business? (8)
|
| I’D (I had) reversed (upset = upwards in a down clue), then RECTOR (church minister). | ||
| 17 | STASHING |
Storing wood — it’s a pain collecting it (8)
|
| STING (a pain) containing (collecting) ASH (wood from the ash tree). | ||
| 19 | LEGION |
Old army outfit, say, gathered by hero (6)
|
| EG (e.g. = say = for example) gathered by LION (a hero).
A division of the ancient Roman army. |
||
| 20 | SEANCE |
Spooky session of political party in Durham, for instance (6)
|
| ANC (African National Congress = political party in South Africa) in SEE (the location of a cathedral in an area presided over by a bishop, for example the Bishop of Durham). | ||
| 22 | EVOKE |
Suggest it’s all right for woman in 4 to eat (5)
|
| EVE (woman in 4d, GARDEN OF EDEN), containing (to eat) OK (all right).
Suggest = evoke = give an impression of. |
Thanks Pasquale and Quirister
I thought that this was pretty difficult in places. I failed to parse EXTENSION – indirect anagram? Not impressed by “shooting” as an anagram indicator.
Favourite STANDING ROOM.
We also failed to parse EXTENSION, and ENTHRONED seemed to take forever, until it suddenly dawned on Anna while cooking dinner (me working on ‘R + seated in’ for fodder didn’t help). Neither did carelessly entering a couple wrongly spelt (neice, rouges). But we got there. STANDING ROOM was the pick of them. Thanks, Pasquale and Quirister.
New: Stainer, Sir John (for 3d).
Liked ABSENTEE, EXTENSION, HEREDITY, ERASER.
Did not parse 11d.
Thanks, both.
Nice puzzle. Easy enough for a quiptic for a change, but had to look at the blog for the parsing of 11, 13 and 15. Thanks all.
I thought this was OK as a Quiptic, maybe slightly more challenging than the Cryptic.
I rather liked EXTENSION as a quirky anagram, RARER for being well-hidden, STANDING ROOM for the ‘man of the match’, and STASHING for the surface, where I was convinced for a while that ‘it’ would appear in the answer.
Thanks Pasquale and Quirister.
A good Quiptic at just about the right level. No real obscurities apart from John Stainer who didn’t ring a bell with me.
Pasquale is generally the arch-enemy of indirect anagrams, so was 15d one? (muffin @1) – I suppose so technically, but it’s the slightest degree of indirectness to get SIXTEEN from 16. I thought it was clever and reasonably fair.
Thanks Pasquale and Quirister.
Good start to the week. I loved STANDING ROOM. I got EXTENSION from the annex part and missed the clever numeric trick. LOI was DIRECTOR, I spend far too long assuming it was an anagram of minister…
Hilariously it took me a while to work out the French resort in 23 and I actually live here 🙂 Sometimes the brain overlooks very obvious answers…
Man of the match was pretty cute. And yes, Quirister, the “no green” bit of 4d was indeed wistful. [Reminded me of a strip by our cartoonist Leunig, about The Fall, in which, post The Apple, the banished pair return with flame throwers, bent on revenge]
Not always Pasquale’s biggest fan, but there was lots to enjoy here. STANDING ROOM was particularly good.
Didn’t like 15d, which is indeed indirect – Paul’s infamous ‘Kinky full S&M’ used the same trick to much acclaim, but then that wasn’t in a Quiptic. Apart from that and STAINER (who he?), this was a nicely-set Quiptic.
Thanks to Pasquale and Quirister.
Anybody else have HORSEMEN for 8 down?
Biffed in STANDING ROOM without the least idea of why. Thanks, Quirister. And thanks Pasquale.
One of Pasquale’s churchy ones, with Eve and the Garden of Eden and Stainer, bishops and naughty nuns.
Thanks for explaining go=function, which stopped me parsing FANDANGO. Took me a while to stop trying to fit an INDEX into what turned out to be GLOSSARY, but I got there in the end. Favourites ABSENTEE and of course STAND IN GROOM.
Another fun puzzle, although 13a stumped me
Big smiles at FANDANGO and STANDING ROOM.
gladys @11: ….not to mention the rector in DIRECTOR, and possibly a bishop being ENTHRONED as well. And yes, Valentine @10, I had HORSEMEN for a while at 8dn, which fortuitously helped with ERASER, but drove a coach and horses through the rest of the NE corner.
Nice to see a see that wasn’t Ely.
I completely failed to see the NO SIXTEEN anagram for EXTENSION, so thanks Quirister for the explanation. I just put the ‘could be No 16’ part down to a cryptic-ish reference to telephone extension numbers. In days gone by, office switchboard operators might ask ‘Do you know his/her extension?’ and they were often written as ext. no. But as to why the ext. no. in this case should be 16, I hadn’t the foggiest.
So overall quite chewy I thought, certainly gentler than an unbridled Pasquale, but not as beginner-friendly as his previous outings in the Quiptic slot. Thanks to him and Quirister.
Yet another fan of the replacement betrothed… It’s one of those clues that you delight in recounting to people who don’t do cryptics, in hopes that (1) it’ll amuse them and (2) they’ll stop looking astounded when you suddenly punch the air and shout “YES!!!”
Thanks, Pasquale, and Quirister. I was another who missed the anagram in EXTENSION, and entered based on the definition alone. 16 down reminded me of a Morecambe and Wise sketch which went something like:
Eric: The curate’s wife has had sextuplets.
Ernie (correcting): Rector!
Eric: I’m not surprised!
Great stuff – thank you Pasquale and Quirister. all very enjoyable.
… Ah, SomeNameI’veForgotten is actually vogel421, it turns out! That’ll teach me to clear my cookies without making detailed notes …
I eventually got ENTHRONED but found the clue a bit clumsy and now I see why: it seems I got it for the wrong reason. I had a few letters from intersecting clues and thought THRONE (because it’s a kind of chair!), and I got the rest because it’s THRONE surrounded by END, so I got: EN-THRONE-D.
Thank you for your service. I got EMINENCE but past EMIN I didn’t know why, 13 stymied me completely and embarrassingly, and I got 15 without knowing why until now.