Pasquale has a well-constructed and tractable Quiptic for our entertainment this morning.
Nothing to frighten the horses here, I would say, which is how it should be in this slot. An unusually large number of double definitions this morning, but otherwise the setter demonstrating how to write a cryptic crossword for those newer to the dark arts.
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 Gets on to bosses’ groups
BOARDS
A dd.
4 Admiral? Be nice initially and gesture respect
BENBOW
A charade of BE, N for the first letter of ‘nice’ and BOW. First thoughts were probably the inn in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; but there was a real Admiral of that name – John BENBOW (1653-1702), of some notoriety.
9 Retain castle’s feature
KEEP
A dd.
10 Church singers show off their cross
CHORISTERS
(THEIR CROSS)* with ‘show off’ as the anagrind. A clue made for my Quiptic blogging colleague Quirister, but sadly she’s not on duty this morning.
11 Money found on street or beach?
STRAND
A charade of ST and RAND for the South African currency.
12 Essential truth found in mad and unpleasant place
NUTSHELL
A charade of NUTS and HELL.
13 Belittle Ted in gear that’s unconventional
DENIGRATE
(TED IN GEAR)* The anagrind is ‘that’s unconventional’.
15 One pound for some tobacco
QUID
A dd.
16 One dad or two?
PAPA
And another. PAPA is decidedly upper-class, I would say, although Wills calls the King ‘Pa’, apparently.
17 Protection round the Queen once showing respect
DEFERENCE
Talking of which, Pasquale recognises that Wills’ grandmama is no longer with us, with ‘Queen once’ as the definition. It’s an insertion of ER for Elizabeth Regina in DEFENCE. The insertion indicator is ’round’.
21 Norma let loose in Canadian city
MONTREAL
(NORMA LET)* with ‘loose’ as the anagrind, for the centre of Francophone Canada, originally Mont Royal, ‘Royal Mountain’, although its etymology is the subject of some dispute.
22 Sailor‘s appraisal
RATING
Another dd.
24 A celebrant improvised a place of worship
TABERNACLE
(A CELEBRANT)* with ‘improvised’ as the anagrind.
25 Observed No 5 dropping out
SEEN
The ‘No’ or number, is seven: so it’s SE[V]EN, with the V being the Roman numeral for five.
26 Total set of books held in Ireland
ENTIRE
An insertion of NT for New Testament in EIRE. The insertion indicator is ‘held in’.
27 Where cobbler would work finally
AT LAST
A dd.
Down
1 The bear is shot — it will do this no more
BREATHE
(THE BEAR)* with ‘is shot’ as the anagrind, and a cad.
2 Leading character getting top grade
ALPHA
A dd. The first element is most often seen in the term ALPHA MALE.
3 Journalist turning up with drink for critical game?
DECIDER
A charade of ED reversed and CIDER. Since it’s a down clue, the reversal indicator is ‘turning up’.
5 Orders English dictionary — first requirement for solver
EDICTS
A charade of E, DICT and S for the initial letter of ‘solver’. Pasquale is right – a good dictionary is a key requirement if you’re going to seriously get into cryptics.
6 Dwelling in Somerset city — a building with water facilities
BATHHOUSE
A charade of BATH and HOUSE.
7 Sang in hostilities, having suffered injury?
WARBLED
A charade of WAR and BLED.
8 Going in a circle at all times
ROUND THE CLOCK
A dd cum cd.
14 Job wasn’t apt in time to change
IMPATIENT
(APT IN TIME)* with ‘to change’ as the anagrind. We need the prophet Job from the Old Testament, who was renowned for his patience.
16 Support a new source of energy — it’s a gas
PROPANE
A charade of PROP, A, N and E for the initial letter of ‘energy’.
18 Serious listener gets a cosy spot?
EARNEST
A charade of EAR and NEST.
19 Agreement to provide musical event
CONCERT
Another dd.
20 Nasty men are becoming nastier
MEANER
(MEN ARE)* with ‘becoming nastier’ ‘nasty’ as the anagrind.
23 Physics unit in graduate’s laboratory
TESLA
Hidden in graduaTES LAboratory. Nikola TESLA, the Serbian-American physicist, has the unit of magnetic flux density named after him.
Many thanks to Pasquale for this week’s Quiptic.
Thanks Pasquale and Pierre
Very good Quiptic. Loved the misdirection for IMPATIENT. First thought for the water-related Somerset city, was Wells, but crossers gave me BATH.
Thank you Pierre. Solved it but never heard of either of the BENBOWs you mention.
I found the NE more troublesome, maybe because the GK load was heavier for me there. But before I googled Somerset cities, I stumbled into the BATHHOUSE, now pampering places.
Not too fussed about show off as an anagrind in CHORISTERS.
Felt sad for the bear in BREATHE.
Favourite by far was IMPATIENT as Job was cleverly disguised with the to-be-expected capital at the beginning of the clue, and the wonderfully quirky definition. Job wasn’t
And the fodder for TABERNACLE a celebrant was a good find.
I am impressed by Pasquale’s ability to adapt to a Quiptic level of difficulty. I was momentarily so convinced that A-star was the top grade, that I was already muttering to myself about the enumeration.
Yes, IMPATIENT was a favourite with me too – as paddymelon says, a clever use of the capitalisation at the start of the sentence to misdirect.
Excellent Quiptic, perfect for beginners.
Favourite: WARBLED, NUTSHELL, IMPATIENT.
I was unsure how to parse 25ac which seemed to be SE[v]EN but I couldn’t work out why!
New for me: John Benbow (1653–1702), Royal Navy admiral.
Thanks, both.
paddymelon@2 – me too, I felt sorry for the bear in 1d BREATHE 🙁
Didn’t know Bath was in Somerset, and never heard of Admiral Benbow. All else was hunky dory.
And apologies muffin@1 for not acknowledging your earlier and more succinct comment.
Knew the Admiral Benbow from Treasure Island but didn’t know there was a real Admiral Benbow !
Thought that this was just right for a quiptic.
In DEFERENCE to the CHORISTERS of the TABERNACLE – The Mormon Tabernacle Choir – and their CONCERTs, here’s a viewing which gets my ALPHA RATING ; it’s not WARBLED, it’s sung in EARNEST
https://youtu.be/C2arm5ydeJc
Thank you Pasquale and Pierre.
An answer in there was used quite recently (no spoilers, hopefully). Nice and quick, only the SW slowing me down. Thanks both.
For 20 down I had “nasty” as the anagrind and “becoming nastier” as the definition. I think this makes better sense
4a. The Admital Bembow, Chapel Street, Penzance. Frequented it often in my youth. Does anyone know if it is still a decent boozer?
Oops AdmiRal Benbow.
Oops again, Admiral BeNbow. Must ease off of the Viognier.
Very nice. I managed BENBOW from Treasure Island and liked IMPATIENT. My complaint is not about the crossword but about the Guardian web page. I bunged in REVERENCE from the crossers and couldn’t parse it, but left it there as the check button said it was correct. Not the first time this has happened.
There’s quite a well known folk song about the original Admiral Benbow. Here is a version.
Tilloubill@13 The Admiral Benbow in Penzance is still a great pub, and the one in Shrewsbury (where Benbow is buried) isn’t bad either
Thanks, DonRogers@11. Blog corrected.
As a novice solver, definitely can’t complain about the difficulty, seeing as this is the first quiptic I’ve managed to solve the morning of. Enjoyed the surface of 5d and the misleading pronunciation (is there a crosswordier term for this) of ear-nest and war-bled. Also kicked myself for struggling with 23d for so long – spent ages trying different combinations of degree titles and units in the hope of getting the name of some obscure research lab. The MPSIA centre for research does have a nice ring to it.
That said, for me a lot of unfamiliar general knowledge combined badly with a relience on double definitions to make the last quarter of the puzzle feel unsatisfying and like I was just brute forcing letter combinations. Examples include:
-Benbow and tabernacle (never heard)
-Impatient (I know know 100% more about Job than I did when I woke up this morning)
-Rating (the sailor term is new to me)
-Alpha (I’ve never seen this as a grade) [I also read the first half of the definition as “…of the Greek alphabet”, not that it changes anything]
It feels a bit churlish now I write it out, and learning new words *is* part of the fun, but finishing with so many “shrug, I guess this must be a thing” clues felt off.
Do any more experienced solvers have any go to tools for contextualising these new words/uses? I’ve checked alpha and rating in Chambers but all that does is confirm that they are “valid” words, without giving examples of usage.
DonRogers@17 Thanks for that. Good to know what with so many pubs closing. I live in SW France. Sadly both my car and I are too old to see the place again.
Pleased with how well I did on this as my first cryptic for a while. I was trying to understand how the usual word for sailor (TAR) got reversed into RATING, and had never heard of a cobbler’s last, but still stumbled through.
For 2D I don’t think the setter intended to refer to an alpha male – it’s simply the leading character of the Greek alphabet.
Failed with DECIDER; I had DECANTER.
17a beat me.
22a: SAILOR = RATING is new for me.
27a: where cobber would work…I don’t understand this.
5d, 18d, 19d were beyond my abilities.
Steffen @22
A cobbler’s last in the form/mould on which he builds a shoe. Posh people have their personal lasts at cobblers so that a shoe he makes is a guaranteed fit.
Another novice solver here, and I also thought this was a god level of difficulty. Never heard of Admiral BENBOW, but it was obvious once I had the initial B and the N from crossers.
Had to come here for the parsing of SE[V]EN – I knew it was going to be a V dropping from some other word, but couldn’t for the life of me figure our why 7 was the starting point. Seems obvious now I’ve seen it!
Like TheMaskedGecko@19 I’ve never seen ALPHA used as a grade, and I worked as a lecturer for many years – but it was obvious from the crossers, so in it went.
Thanks to P&P.
good level, not “god level”!
DonRogers: The Admiral Benbow in Shrewsbury is one of the best pubs in town!
I’m another who didn’t know that Admiral Benbow was a real person, but I did remember the inn from Treasure Island.
I’m always impressed by Pasquale’s ability to set puzzles at different difficulty levels. I find him to be one of the tougher setters in the regular cryptic slot, but his Quiptics hit the mark perfectly.
Favorite clue today was 14dn (IMPATIENT), for the ingenious misdirection in the definition.
Loved this and got them all out, but could someone please explain 25 to me – as others have said I got that number 5 meant V and if you drop it from seven you get seen, but where does the seven come from in the first place? It’s no doubt perfectly simple but I don’t understand and it’s making my head hurt.
I took “number” in the clue to refer to 7, not 5. A bit loose – there are quite a lot of numbers!
Muffin@29 – of course you are right – if you attach ‘number’ to 7 rather than 5 it makes more sense. You are also right about the looseness, it seems to have confused a lot of people.
Alison m and muffin:I don’t think no. being seven is any looser than horse being pinto or furniture being sofa. With only 5 letters, it’s quite restricted.
TheMaskedGecko@19 No, I don’t know of any tools, but we have a term. A Jorum is a word you assemble in a crossword from the wordplay and then find on looking it up that it really exists. Eileen introduced us to it.
Thanks, Pasquale and Pierre (sorry about the lack of birds)
For a Pasquale puzzle, this was certainly a record-fast solve time for me, which indicates that he hit the Quiptic sweet spot perfectly. I hadn’t heard of Adm. Benbow, but the clue was clear, so it didn’t slow me down much.
Gecko@19 and others: no, unfortunately there are no shortcuts. You sort of just have to learn some things, and there will always be obscure corners of the dictionary plumbed by the setter to keep us on our toes. But RATING for sailor is one to keep squirreled away for later, because it often shows up in the other direction: another old Royal Navy term for an enlisted sailor is AB, a useful letter combo which is often clued as “rating.” (I’m a non-old American. How did I learn these random old British usages? By doing these puzzles for a decade, and being unafraid of asking dumb questions on this site while I learned. Keep at it, young paduwan.)
Pierre, it’s interesting that you read PAPA as upper-class. And I suppose it is if you put the stress on the second syllable and are British. But if you put the stress on the first syllable and are American, you wind up with no such implication. The papas in Papa Was a Rollin Stone and Papa Don’t Preach are both obviously working-class papas.
That’s true, and interesting, mrpenney. Another example of how AmEng and BrEng usage varies.
Fully completed! That’s rare. Maybe I’m improving, but definitely testament to Pasquale’s clueing. Enjoyed BENBOW because I got to feel smug about knowing the name already. Didn’t know QUID meant tobacco, but it was obvious from the crossers.
Thanks both!
Bravo, altreus. An increasingly less rare occurrence from now on, I hope. Always a pleasing feeling when it all starts to come together.
Delightful Quiptic, blog and comments. Thanks, all!
I feel like “Dwelling in Somerset city” should lead to “house” appearing *inside* “bath”, grammatically speaking.
Can someone explain how this construction leads to house following bath?
A BATHHOUSE is a “house in Bath”, hence “dwelling in Somerset city”.
That makes perfect sense, muffin. Thanks very much.
In 5d, are we supposed to think of S as the “first requirement” of solver? How is a letter a requirement?
I had POPS for 16, which i think works as well. Perhaps too American.