Guardian Quiptic 1,230/Pasquale

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You always know you are in for a carefully constructed and thoughtfully clued Quiptic when Pasquale is in the saddle.

This one went in steadily, with only one less well known word – a bit of a trademark from this setter. And a bit of biblical stuff as well, which could fall into the same category. Hopefully some less experienced solver will be marking this one as his or her first ‘I did it all without aids’ moment. We’ve had a few comments recently along those lines, which is always a delight to hear. We’re here to help solvers on that journey.

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 Try minimum of salt — enough
SAMPLE
A charade of S for the first letter of ‘salt’ and AMPLE.

4 Protection from sun on wild ground
SHEATH
A charade of S and HEATH.

9 Pets possibly calm — it’s mad noise that is troublesome
DOMESTIC ANIMALS
(CALM ITS MAD NOISE)* with ‘that is troublesome’ as the anagrind.

10 Bring up a diver, one released before time
ADVERT
A charade of A D[I]VER and T. ADVERT as a verb: it comes from the Latin advertere from ad, to, and vertere, to turn, so ‘to turn to’ or ‘bring up’.

11 Showered in little room, is he beginning to dry?
LAVISHED
A charade of LAV, IS, HE and D for the initial letter of ‘dry’.

12 State provides rescue vessel, plus a new special group?
ARKANSAS
A charade of ARK, A, N and SAS (Special Air Service, Who Dares Wins)

14 Regretted keeping in, becoming spoilt
RUINED
An insertion of IN in RUED. The insertion indicator is ‘keeping’.

15 Fellow, one Bill, is seen as someone insane
MANIAC
A charade of MAN, I and AC for account or ‘bill’.

18 I start to fall asleep in feeble poem
PALINODE
Quixote Pasquale often includes one less common word in a Quiptic, but it’s always clearly clued; and if it’s unfamiliar, that’s what crossing letters are for, aren’t they? An insertion of I NOD in PALE. My Chambers has:

palinode (n) a poem in which thoughts, feelings, etc expressed in an earlier poem are retracted; a recantation

It marks it as ‘rare’. Can’t argue with that.

21 Celebrity hugged by fathers who are not nice people?
DASTARDS
An insertion of STAR in DADS. The insertion indicator is ‘hugged by’.

22 Spotted copper catching criminal, finally
BLOBBY
An insertion of L for the final letter of ‘criminal’ in BOBBY. The insertion indicator is ‘catching’.

24 Unsympathetic French queen associated with a ‘pain free’ situation!
MARIE ANTOINETTE
A cd. You need to twig that pain is the French word for ‘bread’. Marie Antoinette is alleged to have said ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!‘ when told that the starving peasants had no bread. Except there is no historical evidence that she ever said it, or would even have been aware of the phrase, which comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

25 Accepting cheers, the monarch
TAKING
A charade of TA and KING.

26 Saintly northern ruler reversing some stupid laws, obviously
OSWALD
Hidden reversed in stupiD LAWS Obviously. Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and was venerated as a saint.

Down

1 Namely, senior who tells someone off?
SCOLDER
A charade of SC and OLDER. SC stands for scilicet, a mainly legal term meaning ‘namely’. It is shortened from scire licet: it is permitted to know.

2 Female graduate, woman falling from grace
MAEVE
A charade of MA and EVE. She who tempted her mate to try the apple.

3 Figure of speech unusual in TS Eliot
LITOTES
(TSELIOT)* Which as seasoned solvers will tell you, is also an anagram of TOILETS.

5 Dither when entertaining a number in German city
HANOVER
An insertion of A NO in HOVER. The insertion indicator is ‘entertaining’.

6 Entrance a daughter on special journey?
ADMISSION
A charade of A, D and MISSION.

7 Greek in nasty situation, with energy half gone
HELLENE
A charade of HELL and ENE[RGY].

8 Balance needed for climbs
SCALES
A dd.

13 Hit back? It could be somewhat unfair
A BIT THICK
(HIT BACK IT)* with ‘it could be’ as the anagrind.

16 Firm needs worker to join No 1 fellow
ADAMANT
A charade of ADAM, Eve’s mate who was also tempted, and ANT.

17 Hanging cloth needs one bit changed? Sure!
CERTAIN
Quixote is inviting you to replace the U in CURTAIN with an E.

18 Proposes job’s outside India’s capital
POSITS
An insertion of I for the initial letter of ‘India’ in POSTS.

19 Get Bible so translated for special interest groups
LOBBIES
(BIBLE SO)* with ‘get … translated’ as the anagrind.

20 Discussed action to restrict club
DEBATED
An insertion of BAT in DEED. The insertion indicator is ‘to restrict’.

23 The end — nothing very big
OMEGA
A charade of O and MEGA, and an appropriate clue to end a delightful Quiptic. Thanks to Pasquale for it.

43 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,230/Pasquale”

  1. My Latin (or lack thereof) was insufficient to parse ADVERT. Likewise scilicet. I wouldn’t have thought “a bit thick” meant “somewhat unfair”. Maybe it does in Britain. New to me LITOTES & PALINODE.

    Mostly enjoyable, thanks Pasquale & Pierre.

  2. I cannot see any novice solver managing this without aids. I had to struggle and, once again, I found the Cyptic easier than the Quiptic. Having sain that , there was a lot to like , OSWALDwas well hidden and took me a while to see. SHEATH made me smile and RUE turned up again, well disguised in RUINS.
    Thanks both.

  3. GDU@1 You don’t hear it so often now, but That’s A BIT THICK was quite a common phrase in the distant only yesterdays,

  4. I don’t know what beginners will think but I enjoyed it. Carefully constructed is right. And an equally tidy blog to go with it. Thanks, Pasquale and Pierre.

    By the way, Pierre, newbies might be confused by your reference to Quixote in 18a!

  5. I’m with Nicbach @2 on this one. A commenter on this site yesterday was saying he’d been recommended the Quiptic as he was a newbie with cryptics. I can see this one putting him off.
    I managed to complete it, but I’ve been doing cryptics for a long time.
    Some enjoyable clues, though, expecially 24 with its use of pain.
    Thanks to Pasquale and Pierre

  6. Adam and Eve in the same puzzle! Would a Cockney believe it? `Did others spend too long trying to make an anagram of “on wild”?

  7. HANOVER had me puzzled for a while – is it A NO in HAVER or HOVER? Neither I think – A N in HOVER seems the most plausible.

  8. Widdersbel @4. I’m confused by my reference to Quixote in 18ac. The man has too many pseudonyms.

  9. Having just completed the Carpathian Cryptic, which seems to be written as a Quiptic, can I be the first to say they should have been swapped?
    Petert @ 6 – me too

  11. This was fun, a great Monday challenge with the new to me word of PALINODE, which I built up from crossers and the wordplay.

    I agree with Shirl @9, I think the Quiptic and Cryptic are in the wrong slots. I loved this, like Pasquale’s crosswords and the extras I pick up along the way, but there too many new or challenging abbreviations or words for a newbie to cope with. I have spent a lot of time solving crosswords with my daughter over the last few weeks, who is a newbie and there was a lot she’d struggle with. Is it CERTAIN or curtain? No crosser to confirm – I guessed right.

    Thank you to Pierre and Pasquale.

  12. Nicely done. I flew through the Cryptic but this was definitely chewier in the top half. I had SHEBA instead of MAEVE to begin with although I couldn’t account for the fall from grace. DOMESTIC ANIMALS was excellent.

    Ta Pasquale & Pierre.

  13. Anyone else try SHE-BA for 2d?

    I have seen SC(ilicet) before, but not often enough to remember it here – rather obscure for a Quiptic, but that never stops Pasquale.

    MARIE ANTOINETTE made me laugh, and I liked the construction of LAVISHED and ARKANSAS.

    A BIT THICK/A BIT MUCH have exactly that meaning for me, so no problem.

  17. Thanks Pasquale and Pierre
    Not a Quiptic (again!) I struggled in the NW, not knowing SC or seeing how ADVERT could be “bring up”. “Female” is a loose definition for MAEVE, as is “wild ground” for HEATH. 17d could equally as well be CURTAIN, and the letter in question isn’t checked.
    Favourite ADAMANT.

  18. I agree with Shirl@9. This was an enjoyable puzzle but I think that the Editor made an error with today’s pair of puzzles. The Cryptic and Quiptic puzzles should have been reversed. Perhaps the Editor could organise a group of solvers to help them by solving and testing puzzles for the relevant slots? It would be great to encourage new solvers to become interested in Cryptic crosswords.

    I could not parse 1d SCOLDER.

    Favourite: ADAMANT.

    New for me: A BIT THICK = unfair.

    Thanks, both.

  19. I agree this was not a good introduction to cryptics for newcomers. ADVERT and SCOLDER were “bung and shrugs”. I too thought of SHEBA for 2D though of course she was the Queen OF Sheba. Like RR@7 I thought of NO in HAVER for 5D, though rather than to dither, that lovely Scots word means to talk at length about nothing much. Many years ago, a Scottish acquaintance of mine was highly amused to discover the adjacent London Boroughs of Barking and Havering.

  20. A NO in HOVER gives HANOOVER – it must be either A N(umber) in HOVER or NO in HAVER (wrong meaning or not).

  21. I must have found this a bit easier than some others, then. Didn’t think it was too bad.

    MARIE ANTOINETTE was glorious. I suspect any other setter would have dispensed with the inverted commas.

  22. Well, I pieced this one together; some Quiptic clues, others not so – MAEVE [female, and I tried Sheba], ADVERT as a verb, PALINODE DNK. Another who thought the Quiptic and Cryptic should have been switched.

    I did like the pets anagram, BLOBBY, and the well-hidden OSWALD.

    Thanks Pasquale and Pierre.

  23. A crossword of two halves. Bottom half went in fine but top was a strain. Like being two nil up at the break and finally being grateful for a two all draw.

    Tx Pasquale and Pierre.

  24. I knew that PALINODE was a word I’d seen before and thought it had something to do with poetry, so I popped it in. Now that I know, what a curious kind of poem!

    Thanks to Pasquale and Pierre. No birds today, though.

  25. This is much too hard for a Quiptic and as for doing it without aids, I think that’s wishful thinking. 1a and 4a are very difficult clues to attempt without any supporting letters so it was hard to get into this puzzle.

    Never heard of A BIT THICK meaning unfair and also had SHEBA for 2 down. The trouble with 18a is that “poem” suggests ODE so you are then thrown off track in considering a word that means something other than poem.

    A frustrating start to the week.

  26. “only one less well known word”
    It stretches my credulity that anyone could make this claim about a puzzle that required the solver to know “litotes”, “palinode”, and “scilicet”, to know “advert” in that sense of it, and also to know the names of 7th century Northumbrian kings. “That’s a bit thick” is also antique—I think I remember my grandfather saying it, but no one younger, and I’m 40. Tbh I don’t understand how this is a Quiptic.

  27. My favorite example of LITOTES: once while I was waiting to board an el train in the Loop, the conductor got on his loudspeaker to scold a wayward passenger thus: “Please stand behind the yellow line. If you fall…it’s not gonna be good.”

    I agree with everyone that while this may still be on the gentler end of Pasquale’s spectrum, it is in no way suited for the Quiptic slot. The top half in particular was very chewy indeed, and no one has heard of a PALINODE. Beginners, take heart–they do come easier than this. Not to say it’s a bad puzzle–of course it’s well-crafted as always.

  28. LITOTES is taught as standard terminology in GCSE English in England, particularly for describing poetic forms, along with hyperbole, so it’s less abstruse than PALINODE, which I suspect would only be taught if one of the set poems fitted the description.

    Saint OSWALD is pretty well known, particularly in the north-east of England – I taught about him as part of a northern saints unit, but there are churches and a long distance footpath named after him. He’s linked to St Aidan, who is known for founding the monastery on Lindisfarne.

    IT’S A BIT THICK is used in the Wallace and Gromit films, so I suspect it’s more in use than people realise.

    I still don’t think this is a Quiptic, but I didn’t find it as much of a problem of others did. Took me nearly twice as long as the Cryptic, but I did that one pretty fast.

  29. We were married in a St. Oswald’s church (in Knuzden, near Blackburn).
    I was going to add that it was King Oswald who called the Synod of Whitby, where it was decided that England would follow Roman rather than Celtic dates for Easter – but Wiki tells me that it was his brother, who succeeded him.

  30. It was only after I’d decided to ditch SHEBA that I managed to complete the last two – 1 and 10 across. Never heard of PALINODE, but put it in as it fitted. Finally checked it was a word and that ADVERT could be a verb, so -hey presto! – one completed quiptic. Many thanks Pasquale (or whoever you are!).

  31. Erike84 (and others who might be wondering the same thing), Don Manley is the setter, who uses as noms de plume all sorts of famous Dons or Donalds. In the Guardian it’s Don Pasquale, after the opera of the same name. Elsewhere, it’s Quixote or Bradman or Giovanni or Duck.

  33. I agree with everyone else that this was much harder than the Cryptic today. PALINODE was new, and I agree that it must be NO in HAVER, having never heard ‘hover’ as a synonym for ‘dither’.

    I also think the second part of HELLENE could be read as Energy half goNE – an example of associative clueing?

  35. Am I allowed to ask for some advice please?

    Not the answers, but maybe what kind of clue some of them are?

    I’ve managed to get 3d and 19d but lost with everything else.

  37. Steffen @35 – it’s interesting that the two you got were the two short(ish) anagrams. That’s one of the problems with this puzzle – there aren’t any more!

    (For my money, every Quiptic should have at least half a dozen friendly anagrams. That was certainly my way in to cryptics – there’s only a small number of letters to work with, you can be pretty sure you’ve got the right answer, and if there are enough of them spaced throughout the grid, they give you a ‘foothold’.)

    There are 2 other anagram clues –
    13d, but you might not know the phrase unless you’re in the UK and over 40
    9a, but it’s too long for the anagram fodder to be helpful without crossers – that’s if you can identify the anagram fodder!

    There are 7 insertion clues. Gettable are –
    14a – IN inside a synonym for ‘regretted’
    21a – syn. for celeb inside syn. for fathers. It helps if you know Wacky Races.
    22a only gettable if you’re in UK
    5d you could get just by going through a list of German cities
    18d – first letter of India inside syn. for jobs
    20d – syn. for club (in the implement sense) inside syn. for act

    Otherwise it’s mainly charades.

    But seriously – don’t feel bad if you don’t get far with this one – as others have said above, it’s not really suitable as a Quiptic.

    My recommendation – if you haven’t already done so, take a look at the Monday cryptic by Carpathian – much friendlier!

  39. Definitely hard for a Quiptic, but lots to enjoy. I laughed out loud when I spotted MARIE ANTOINETTE.

  40. This was not really a Quiptic. I didn’t finish it and a normal Quiptic is a gentle stroll. Defeated by ADVERT – still don’t see how that works as “to bring up”. Found, but didn’t parse, SCOLDER or HANOVER. Found and parsed PALINODE but had to Google it – never heard of it. Didn’t have a problem with LITOTES – learnt in the same English lesson, I suspect, as hyperbole. Didn’t find SHEATH or ARKANSAS or A BIT THICK.
    In a Quiptic it should at least be fairly obvious what you are looking for. Here it often wasn’t. Wrote MARIE ANTOINETTE straight in – but then I spend most of my day speaking French.

    For those who have bothered to read this (no one) can I point out that there is no point in inverting the Quiptic and the Cryptic on a Monday. The Quiptic is an on-line special that you don’t get in the printed paper. The printed Grauniad thus kicks off the week with a gentle cryptic which is often very easy. We online solvers are lucky; we get 2 gentle crosswords on a Monday except that this week we didn’t.

    I don’t expect to give up on a Quiptic but I’m glad I did this time.

  41. Lovely grid well clued and fair, but in absolutely no way a suitable difficulty for a quiptic. This was mainstream cryptic level of difficulty. Absurd to put this in the quiptic spot if indeed quiptics are still intended for “beginners”

  43. It’s Friday and I have given up after getting barely half the answers. Reading the blog, there were a couple I should have managed, but after being so stumped by so many, one tends to lose confidence, so I just assumed they were all too difficult. A decent portion of the answers and explanations above are beyond me. Never heard of ADVERT as a verb, LITOTES, PALINODE. MAEVE was fine when you know it but “Female” was far too broad; in a Quiptic, I would suggest it is only fair to clue a name by a known example of that name, not just the generic concept of which gender it normally applies to.

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