Quiptic 1,185 by Carpathian

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Carpathian usually shows up in the Guardian about once a month, either at the trickier end of the Quiptic range (as here) or in the regular Monday slot.

I wasn’t quite convinced by the two double definitions: they’re what I think of as one-and-a-half definitions, being two variants of the same meaning or one meaning derived from the other. But otherwise there’s lots to enjoy here. I liked the anagrams at 1a, 16a, 27a and 14d, which fitted very neatly into their surfaces; I think I may have seen the last one before but it’s good enough to deserve repetition. And of course I have to give special mention to the awful pun in 2d, which is probably my favourite. Thanks Carpathian for a fun puzzle.

Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

ACROSS
1 SCRAP HEAP
Paper cash exchanged for pile of junk (5,4)
Anagram (exchanged) of PAPER CASH.
6 MIST
Love lost in damp fog (4)
M[o]IST, losing the O (zero = love in tennis scoring).
8 COMMANDO
Punctuation mark at end of invitation to party for soldier (8)
COMMA (punctuation mark) + end letter of [invitation]N + DO (slang for a party).
9 REDRAW
Change sketch of jailer after reflection (6)
WARDER (jailer), reversed (after reflection).
10 DECAYS
Goes off Mon-Fri around city area (6)
DAYS (Mon-Fri) around EC (postcode of the financial district in East Central London, known for short as “the City”).
11 RAILINGS
Calls about trouble in barrier (8)
RINGS (calls, as a verb = telephones) around AIL (trouble).
12 HASTEN
Hurry from hotel in guise of X (6)
H (hotel) + AS (in guise of) + TEN (X, in Roman numerals).
15 PRESSURE
President with certain force (8)
PRES (abbreviation for President) + SURE (certain).

My engineering background tells me that pressure isn’t force: it’s force per unit area. But in common usage the terms can be interchangeable.
16 SOMERSET
See storm brewing somewhere in the south-west (8)
Anagram (brewing) of SEE STORM.

County in south-west England.
19 TIRADE
Harangue one entering business (6)
I (one in Roman numerals) entering TRADE (business).
21 PANORAMA
Picture of old king wearing hat (8)
O (old) + R (abbreviation for king, from Latin Rex), inserted into (wearing) PANAMA (a type of straw hat which, despite the name, originates from Ecuador).
22 SATIRE
Humorous writing about following it and it returning (6)
SA (short for sex appeal = “it”), then IT reversed (returning), with RE (about = on the subject of) following (at the end).
24 AIRING
Broadcasting first-class band (6)
AI (A1 = first-class) + RING (band, as in a ring-tailed animal).
25 FONDANTS
Warm worker’s sweets (8)
FOND (warm = affectionate) + ANT’S (belonging to a worker ant).
26 ANTE
Stake and nails trainee employs initially (4)
First letters (initially) of A[nd] N[ails] T[rainee] E[mploys].

An initial stake (bet) on card games.
27 ARCH-ENEMY
Nemesis of strangely cheery man (4-5)
Anagram (strangely) of CHEERY MAN.
DOWN
1 SHONE
Quiet individual excelled (5)
SH (sh! as a command = quiet!) + ONE (individual).
2 RAMPART
Something that defends bit of Suffolk, Lincoln or Herdwick? (7)
Suffolk, Lincoln and Herdwick are all breeds of sheep, of which the males are called rams. So a bit of one could be called a RAM PART.
3 PANTS
Rubbish underwear (5)
Double definition. Poor-quality or worthless; or knickers, though the US uses the word “pants” to mean trousers. I suspect this is not a true double definition because the first meaning may be derived from the second, but I can’t find anything definitive about that.
4 EGO TRIP
English proceed initially to Split for self-inflating experience (3,4)
E (English) + GO (proceed) + first letter (initially) of T[o] + RIP (split).
5 PERTINENT
Fitting part of expert in entertainment (9)
Hidden answer (part of . . .) in [ex]PERT IN ENT[ertainment].
6 MUD PIES
First of Man United passes over player’s head creates handfuls of dirt (3,4)
First letter of M[an] + U (abbreviation for United) + DIES (passes), containing (over) the first letter (head) of P[layer].

As in “making mud pies” = small children’s play in mud, pretending to cook or just throwing it around in handfuls.
7 SWAGGERED
Loot German journalist showed off (9)
SWAG (loot) + GER (abbreviation for German) + ED (short for editor = journalist).
13 ADORATION
Praise song and dance on allotment (9)
ADO (song and dance = slang for a lot of fuss) + RATION (allotment = allowance).
14 NOSTALGIA
Lost again, wandering in state of wistfulness (9)
Anagram (wandering) of LOST AGAIN.
17 EMOTIVE
Controversial and revolutionary book I have (7)
TOME (a large heavy book), reversed (revolutionary), then I’VE (I have).
18 TRAFFIC
Trade vehicles (7)
Double definition, though I think they’re really two variants of the same meaning. Buying and selling, especially when it involves moving goods from one place to another; or the vehicles using a particular stretch of road.
20 RAT RACE
Artist to draw relentlessly competitive way of life (3,4)
RA (Royal Academician = artist) + TRACE (draw).
22 SENSE
Reason partners enter cathedral area (5)
N + S (North and South, partners in card games) entering SEE (the area associated with a particular cathedral and presided over by its bishop).
23 RITZY
Stylish rector with appeal to unknowns (5)
R (abbreviation for rector) + IT (slang for sex appeal), then Z + Y (mathematical symbols for unknown quantities).

26 comments on “Quiptic 1,185 by Carpathian”

  1. I found that relatively straightforward, so we may be going though a phase where the quiptic is at a noticeably different level to the cryptic – hurrah!

    I agree on the not-quite-double definitions; doubles work for me if the two meanings are sufficiently separate to make it ‘clever’, less so when they are essentially related anyway.

    But a nice gentle start to the week. Now to tackle the cryptic…

    Thank you both.

  2. Thanks Carpathian and Quirister
    My favourite Quiptic setter. I took ages to see the hidden PERTINENT, which became one of my favourites. I also ticked NOSTALGIA.

  4. Enjoyed doing this with Anna, as she learns about how cryptics work. She was quicker off the mark with quite a few, notably the excellent RAMPARTS. There are quite a few ‘cryptics only’ bits of info shown here: SA/IT as Martin @3 notes, party = do, ‘end of invitation’ = N (and the like), city = EC and so on – which is all to the good for “beginners”. Thanks, Carpathian and Quirister.

  5. Thanks Quirister and Carpathian. I’m with muffin – my favourite Quiptic setter, always puts a smile on my face.

  7. Carpathian always seems to gauge the level for a Quiptic. RAMPARTS and ADORATION were my favourites, with the latter conjuring up a nice mental image of a shindig at my allotment.

  8. Not too hot on sheep breeds other than merino (there’s a Leicester I seem to remember), but the crossers soon gave the trick away. Ditto fondants, rang only the faintest of bells (not a sweet tooth, always take the icing off). Liked the cheery man, lost again but quite ritzy. Ta QnC.

  9. GinF @8
    Suffolk and Lincoln could have referred to any number of things, but Herdwick is the iconic breed of English Lakeland sheep, so was the giveaway.

  10. A pleasant solve with just enough trickiness to keep us on our toes – we also took ages to see PERTINENT as a hidden, and the penny was a bit slow dropping for HASTEN. But we guessed the upper-case S in ‘Split’ was a misdirection, and like muffin@9 saw Herdwick as a giveaway in 2dn.
    Thanks, Carpathian and Quirister.

  12. Quirister, I was interested in your comment on the double, or ‘one-and-a-half’ definitions. I agree that for a double definition, the further apart the two derivations are, the more satisfying it is to solve – because the metaphorical penny has further to drop. However, I think if you were to only allow dd’s where the derivations were entirely separate, that would be a very exacting standard to meet.

    Because it piqued my interest, I had a look at some of the other dd clues we’ve had over the last week:

    Today’s Vulcan
    ALL CLEAR ‘no danger of fog/it’s understood’ – the same idea in both defs:
    literal/metaphorical absence of fog

    Picaroon
    ROLL UP ‘barker’s call/cigarette’ – derived from same verb ‘roll’, and essentially coming from the same meaning of that verb

    Brendan
    STATES ‘announces/conditions’ (the verb ‘to state’ is derived from the noun ‘a state’ (position/condition), via the sense of ‘placing’ something on the record)

    Nutmeg
    GONE ‘left/over’ – though to be fair Andrew did raise an eyebrow at this

    Vlad
    BROGUE – ‘it could be an Oxford/way of speaking’ – both derived from Irish bróg (probably)

    Matilda (previous Quiptic)
    SENTENCE – ‘time/a few words’ – both derived from Latin sententia
    CARROT – ‘vegetable/inducement’

    Everyman
    LASHINGS – ‘punishment/masses’
    SPIRITS – ‘apparitions’/drinks – same root
    NOTED – ‘celebrated/what a melody is’ – both from Latin nota
    ISSUE – ‘problem/children’ – both derived from French issue (exit → coming out → that which comes out)

    My feeling is that we would be missing a lot of fun if we eliminated these and similar clues, and that Carpathian’s TRAFFIC today is no ‘worse’ than some of the above. It certainly wasn’t so obvious as to be a write-in for me, probably because ‘trade vehicles’ sounds like a ‘thing’. PANTS was a write-in, but only because there has been some discussion recently about its use as an anagrind – which the ‘target’ Quiptic-solver wouldn’t be aware of.

    Apologies for the long post. Many thanks C & Q.

  14. Eb@12 I was just thinking it would be interesting to know how many dds were truly unrelated, when up popped your POST (the many definitions of which I imagine are related. Thanks.

  15. Great reference, White Devil @11 – one of my all-time favourite songs.

    Also, nice list, essexboy @12, ta!

  16. eb @12 – thank you for your thorough research! It’s subjective, of course, but I think it’s a question of proximity between the two definitions… there will almost always be some root connection (unless two coincidental spellings arose from different concepts) but some cases are more worthy of comment than others. I’m minded to agree on TRAFFIC now. My issue with PANTS is that it’s a relatively recent coinage and one meaning is irrefutably a direct source for the other. But I agree that we shouldn’t be absolutist about it as we’d miss out on lots of clever and interesting clues!

  17. [Thanks Petert/Widdersbel/Rob T. Just to come clean – there were three clues I missed out of the above because they didn’t suit my argument!

    In today’s Vulcan:
    GROUSE (the bird possibly from Latin grus = crane, the grumble maybe from Old French grousser, whence also grouch)
    BUTT (‘bottom’ sharing a root with buttock, ‘to hit’ from Anglo-Norman buter)

    and Brendan’s DEAL (dealing out cards from a root meaning division/part, cognate with German Teil, and the Kentish town from ‘dale’, cognate with German Tal) ]

  18. Failed on the parsing 22a, as I didn’t know SA for sex appeal. The sheep quickly yielded to a web search on the place names (although there IS a Lincoln in Pennsylvania=PA, a slight mis-direction!).

    I was a surprised to see “jailer” instead of “gaoler” at 9a.

    No problem on the dd’s. Many thanks to essex boy for all the documentation.
    [After muffin told us a few days ago that “pants” means “bad”, I searched for the derivation. Finally found a claim it come from “Liar, liar, pants on fire”. Still seems a stretch…]

  21. Very interesting discussion of dds which I love. (Enjoyed the chewy Goldilocks puzzle btw.) (ANd the blog – interested in that PANTS/3d discussion.)

    I have never in life encountered PANTS as meaning ‘rubbish’ outside of a crossword. Is it a USAnism? (Calgal@18 would offer perhaps to support the proposition.)

    Perhaps it’s just me.

    eb@: I would have thought that too if I were’nt too lazy to begin. Clearly there are dds (@12) and DDs (@17).

    Hi Sarah. I think I can speak for myself when I say we’re all learners here.

  25. eb@12 I think it’s less a question of where the two meanings came from way back when (the Roman Empire, say?) as of how far they’ve diverged from each other since. So I’d say that the two ALL CLEARs in this puzzle are not very far apart, while the two SENTENCEs for instance (set of words that make a statement, length of a prison term) have become really different.

  26. Alphalpha@21 – USian here; heh, I’ve never heard ‘pants’ used that way outside of a cryptic, so I figured it was a Britishism!

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