Thank you to Hectence. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
8. Move back in line at the same time (8)
TOGETHER : Reversal of(… back) GO(to move) contained in(in) TETHER(a line/a rope or chain to which an animal is tied).
9. Contact a church pursuing religious education (5)
REACH : [ A + CH(abbrev. for “church”) ] placed after(pursuing) RE(abbrev. for “religious education”).
10. Pops round for car ride (4)
SPIN : Reversal of(… round) NIPS(pops in/drops in for a quick visit).
11. Novel with overriding passion for country (3,7)
NEW ZEALAND : [ NEW(novel/original) + AND(with/in addition to) ] containing(overriding) ZEAL(passion/great energy and enthusiasm for a cause or objective).
12. Finally take in hand young becoming quarrelsome (6)
FEISTY : Last letter of(Finally) “take” contained in(in) FIST(one’s clenched hand) + Y(abbrev. for “young”).
14. Jotted down: ‘Tenner added on to fine’ (4,4)
TOOK NOTE : NOTE(eg. a £10 note/a tenner) placed after(added on to) [ TO + OK(okay/fine/no objection to) ].
“to” doing double duty?
15. Soldiers besieging southern capital retired in shame … (7)
REMORSE : RE(abbrev. for the Royal Engineers, a unit of soldiers in the British military) containing(besieging) reversal of(… retired) [ S(abbrev. for “southern”) + ROME(capital city of Italy) ].
17. … certainly bound to condemnation (2,5)
NO DOUBT : Anagram of(… condemnation) BOUND TO.
20. In Paris, I get fine on Metro regularly as someone selling trinkets (8)
JEWELLER : JE(as spoken in Paris, French for the pronoun “I”) plus(get) WELL(fine/excellent) plus(on) 2nd and 4th letters of(… regularly) “Metro“.
… not in Paris though.
22. Sorry when 60% of funds lost during revolutionary rule (6)
RUEFUL : 3 out of 5 letters deleted from(60% of … lost) “funds” contained in(during) anagram of(revolutionary) RULE.
Defn: …/remorseful.
23. Score with cover song (5,5)
SHEET MUSIC : SHEET(a cover/a piece of material or fabric placed over something) + MUSIC(a piece of which could be a song).
Sheet music by numbers:
24. Style of decoration reflected hollow decadence (4)
MODE : Reversal of(… reflected) OM(abbrev. for “Order of Merit”, a particular decoration/ award conferred as an honour) + “decadence” minus all its inner letters(hollow …).
25. First woman to enter students’ flat! (5)
LEVEL : EVE(the Biblical first woman) contained in(to enter) LL(2 x letter displayed by a learner/student driver).
26. Apples and pears up ahead on floor above (8)
UPSTAIRS : STAIRS(for which “apples and pears” is the rhyming slang) placed after(… ahead) UP.
Down
1. Finish challenge that’s over long (8)
COMPLETE : COMPETE(to challenge/to be in a contest against others) containing(that’s over) L(abbrev. for “long”).
2. Picked up self-satisfied mood (4)
VEIN : Homophone of(Picked up) “vain”(self-satisfied/to be proud about oneself).
Defn: …/a temporary attitude or state of mind, as in “he opened his speech in a lighter vein”.
3. Fake ring has ruby with no shine (6)
PHONEY : PHONE(to ring/call on the phone) plus(has) “ruby” minus(with no) “rub”(to shine/to polish a surface by rubbing it).
4. Attracted by doctor’s circle, desperately want to be involved (5,2)
DRAWN TO : [ DR(abbrev. for “Doctor”) + O(letter representing a circle) ] containing(… to be involved) anagram of(desperately) WANT.
5. May leave liberal West African country (4,2,2)
FREE TO GO : FREE(liberal/unrestricted) + TOGO(West African country).
Defn: You …, if you so wish.
6. Come to feel affection for fellow totally live on broadcast (4,2,4)
FALL IN LOVE : F(abbrev. for “fellow”) + ALL(totally/without exception) + anagram of(… broadcast) LIVE ON.
7. No reason to refuse theatre award Henry Winkler initially rejected (3,3)
WHY NOT : Reversal of(… rejected) [ TONY(short for the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre) + 1st letters, respectively, of(… initially) “Henry Winkler“, The Fonz ].
13. Holiday sailor can take on land, or else have at sea (5,5)
SHORE LEAVE : Anagram of(… at sea) OR ELSE HAVE.
16. Seriously cunning catching mole (foreign nationalist) (8)
SOLEMNLY : SLY(cunning/wily) containing(catching) [ anagram of(… foreign) MOLE + N(abbrev. for “nationalist”) ]
18. One year’s hedging right behind spring border (8)
BOUNDARY : {[ A(article in grammar for one in quantity) + Y(abbrev. for “year”) ] containing(…’s hedging) R(abbrev. for “right”)} placed after(behind) BOUND(spring/leap).
19. Dash briefly in B&Q, uncle’s outside being surly (7)
BRUSQUE : “rush”(to dash/to move quickly) minus its last letter(briefly) contained in(in) B&Q + 1st and last letters of(…’s outside) “uncle“.
21. Breathe old beer covering husband (6)
EXHALE : [ EX-(prefix signifying “old”/former) + ALE(a type of beer) ] containing(covering) H(abbrev. for “husband”).
Defn: … out.
22. Screen abridged play with small intermission (6)
RECESS : Anagram of(… play) “Screen” minus its last letter(abridged) + plus(with) S(abbrev. for “small”).
Defn: …/a temporary suspension of formal proceedings.
24. Crazy about energy drink (4)
MEAD : MAD(crazy/insane) containing(about) E(symbol for “energy” in physics).
Defn: An alcoholic … of fermented honey and water.
Aka honey-wine:
In that vein, in that mood, yeah guess so. Didn’t breeze through this quite like the Vulcan, but no complaints, thanks Hectence and scchua.
Just what gratinfreo said with knobs on.
Good puzzle but not a Quiptic. I think the editor got the two puzzles confused today. I solved/guessed a few clues and parsed later.
New for me: Cockney slang apples and pears = stairs.
Thanks, both.
Very nice indeed. Favourites inc PHONEY, UPSTAIRS and BRUSQUE
Ta Hectence & scchua for the colourful blog.
Another who found this a nice Monday puzzle, but more challenging than Vulcan’s Cryptic (that took me three quarters the time of this).
Thank you to Hectence and scchua.
Finished Vulcan’s cryptic with no trouble, but there were several in this one that eluded me. Rhyming slang never works for me, and I’d never heard this one. Royal Engineers hasn’t appeared for a while — long enough for me to forget it. Couldn’t get 6d, and I groaned when I saw the parsing here. I thought nips/pops is a bit of a stretch.
Hectence usually gauges the level for a Quiptic quite well, so I put the chewiness of this puzzle down to my own ineptitude. I liked PHONEY when the penny finally dropped.
GDU@6 NIP to the sop, POP to the shop
They are both shops.
Found this a bit tough for a Quiptic, and didn’t help myself by putting BOLSHY instead of FEISTY on the strength of the last two crossers. I’m sure N for nationalist is documented somewhere – that’s the kind of person that shouts FREE TOGO! (I liked that one).
GDU @6 – yes, there was a time when SOLDIERS was always RE, but more recently, it’s been OR or MEN. A real blast from the past, which, just like you, I had also forgotten!
Surprised nobody’s mentioned that it’s a pangram.
Another here who found this chewier than the Quiptic, although no complaints. FEISTY and VEIN held out for a bit at the end, the latter partly because I wasn’t sure if it was a reversal or a homophone.
Thanks Hectence & scchua
After racing through the cryptic I struggled with this, mainly because I found lots of the synonyms less than obvious. Lovely surfaces though, especially PHONEY.
blaise@12: yes, I failed to notice this, so guessed SEEN at 2d – couldn’t thimk of anything better than MIEN which won’t fit.
Thanks Hectence and scchua
Seriously misjudged. Not only was this harder than the cryptic, it was harder than Saturday’s Prize. Several iffy single letter abbreviations too.
muffin @16, I found it about even stevens with Saturday’s Prize, but that I solved in about half what the Prize usually takes me, so I’d suggest it was Saturday’s Prize was on the easy side. This took me the bottom of the range of time that weekday cryptics usually do, longer than a regular Quiptic or the Everyman.
Agree with Muffin @16. Brendan’s prize on Saturday was a breeze compared to this and he is known as a tough complier. Some really good clues today but never a Quiptic.
Definitely a bit hard for a Quiptic, but some nice clues. I thought SHORE LEAVE was brilliant. I also liked LEVEL.
I don’t think “to” is necessarily doing double duty in 14a. You have to read it as “Tenner” (NOTE) added on “to fine” (TO OK).
Many thanks Hectence and scchua.
TOGETHER and COMPLETE would not be out of place in a puzzle a couple of levels up from a quiptic, I think.
Another agreement with muffin @16. Much too knotty for a Quiptic, but containing some great clues: FEISTY, WHY NOT and SHORE LEAVE were my favourites. I’m not fond of ellipses which are only there for the surface, but they did serve to distract me and made NO DOUBT a wee bit harder to see.
All in all a good puzzle – pity about its placement.
Thanks to S&B
I think if I’d come across this as a beginner I might have stuck to Scrabble
Perfectly ok crossword just not quiptic enough
Cheers S&H
I also agree with Muffin @16. I think the Prize was easier than usual, but this was harder because of some of the synonyms escaping me. Thanks to S for parsing those I bunged in using the crossers.
It’s all been said but to add my voice (as this is admittedly a hobby horse of mine) this was too tough for a Quiptic. The puzzle series is described on the website as being “A web-only, cryptic puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry” and I think it would do the crossword editor well to re-read that sentence now and again!
Nothing much to add on the difficulty front, there seems to be quite wide consensus both here and on the cryptic page.
There was one curiosity that stood out. In 17a, “certainly” and “no doubt” are in some circumstances exact synonyms. (“Is he going to make it?” “No doubt/Certainly!”). This has nothing to do with the mechanism of this particular clue, but it makes me think there is the possibility of a more self-referential version of it. But not for quiptics.
Whoops, I meant “bound to” in me@25. Too clever for my own good.
I’m with the majority here – nice puzzle, shame about the slot it was in.
I think TOOK NOTE can be interpreted without the ‘to’ doing double duty – either by Lord Jim’s reasoning @19 (in which the ‘added’ is really superfluous, and just there for the surface), or by imagining a comma between the ‘on’ and the ‘to’, i.e.
‘Tenner added on, to fine’ = ‘To fine, (with) tenner added on’.
However, my quibble was with the definition. TOOK NOTE means ‘paid attention’ (see Collins), not ‘jotted down’ – surely the latter is TOOK NOTES?
I think also there’s a slight parts of speech mismatch in 5d – ‘may leave’ = ‘is free to go’.
Good to see Fonzie though, thanks Hectence and scchua.
Thanks both and by the time I had finished I hadn’t the puff to parse TOGETHER and PHONEY.
Felt a bit like embarking on a 2k run only to discover that it was all uphill. I’ll be on the lookout for Hectence in the future – that was a really nice puzzle.
As with others, I thought this was a hard one. Usually this means that I missed a lot of them, but I was very pleased to only miss one. It was disconcerting, but satisfying, to recognise clues of a sort that I would often not get, but had gotten here. Am I getting better, or was I just lucky?
The one I didn’t get was TOGETHER. Annoyingly, I had parsed it perfectly (you need to find a word for move, reverse it, and stick it in a word for line), but wasn’t able to bring it over the finish line.
I got MODE, but did not parse it (didn’t think of order of merit for decoration — I think this is a new one for me).
I also incorrectly parsed TOOK NOTE — I’d constructed a story in my head whereby if someone added a tenner to a fine, they were essentially taking the note for themselves, turning it into an allusive double definition. This does do away with the awkwardness of “to” doing double duty that sschua points out.
Thanks All!
Horexio Helgar@29, I haven’t seen your name here before – if you are new to the site, welcome. To answer your first question, I’ll venture that you are getting better, thanks in part to Quiptic setters like Hectence who, by challenging beginners while staying within the Quiptic mandate, expand their understanding of the wide variety of clue types they will encounter later in the week.
Incidentally, on your final point, esssexboy@27 and Lord Jim@19 have explained that “to” is not doing double duty in 14a TOOK NOTE (notwithstanding scchua’s query in the blog).
Thanks Hectence for the fun and scchua for the honeyed jewel of a blog.
Shore leave was a beautiful clue. Lovely surface and just what I’m looking for in a quiptic. Agree was a tad tough possibly for a quiptic but possibly just a wavelength thingumy. Off for a celebratory curry (treat day and all)
A curate’s egg for me. I thought SHORE LEAVE was a lovely surface, but some of the clues just seemed weak, and I put them in wondering if there was some hidden meaning that I wasn’t getting.