Guardian Quiptic 1,252/Anto

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Anto in the Quiptic slot this week, with a puzzle that will most likely, as usual, divide opinion. We’ll see.

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 Pub blasted into space? That’s not the main story
SUBPLOT
An insertion of (PUB)* in SLOT. The anagrind is ‘blasted’ and the insertion indicator is ‘into’.

5 Jeweller initially employed on fantastic work unit
FABERGÉ
A charade of FAB, ERG and E for the initial letter of ’employed’.

9 Host reluctant to provide name that’s real?
MCCOY
A rather strange cd, unless I’m missing something, referring to the phrase ‘the real McCoy’.

10 Researching optimistic outlook
LOOKING UP
A dd.

11 Disturbs a lunatic, one saying silly things?
ABSURDIST
(DISTURBS A)* with ‘lunatic’ as the anagrind.

12 Determined to attack
SET ON
A dd.

13 Poet‘s starting yearly excursion around the Shetlands
YEATS
The initial letters of the last five words of the clue.

15 Elegant but would become loud if Charlie replaced George
GLAMOROUS
One of the setter’s not universally admired ‘reverse’ clues: if you replaced the G in the solution with C for ‘Charlie’ you would get CLAMOROUS, which means ‘loud’.

18 Put additional backing into call; it’s quite an attraction
PHEROMONE
An insertion of MORE reversed in PHONE. The insertion indicator is ‘put … into’.

19 Consume with worry when facing judge
EAT UP
A charade of EAT and UP. ‘She’s up before the judge tomorrow.’

21 Creep sending bill back for present
TODAY
The setter is asking you to reverse the AD for ‘bill’ in TOADY for ‘creep’ to arrive at the answer.

23 Verbal submission pronounced while seated
SEDENTARY
Aural wordplay (‘pronounced’) for SAID ENTRY.

25 Admit rice is rotten – it’s fatal for mother
MATRICIDE
(ADMIT RICE)*

26 Country where its traditional energy source not available
CHINA
A charade of CHI and NA. CHI is a circulating life force in Chinese philosophy and an alternative spelling of QI.

27 System allowing force to arrest most senior officer
PROCESS
An insertion of OC for Officer in Charge in PRESS. The insertion indicator is ‘to arrest’.

28 Blessed group, a subject central to Chekov
THE MEEK
A charade of THEME and EK for the middle letters of ‘Chekov’. The Meek shall inherit the earth, says the Bible.

Down

1 Run-down but sounding warm and bright
SUMMARY
Aural wordplay (‘but sounding’) of SUMMERY.

2 Support senior team’s leads and get on behind the scenes
BACKSTAGE
A charade of BACK, ST for the initial letters of ‘senior’ and ‘team’ and AGE.

3 Blanket agreement joins basic political adversaries
LAYER
AYE ‘joining’ L and R.

4 Monarch in total disarray gets a scolding
TALKING TO
An insertion of KING in (TOTAL)* The insertion indicator is ‘in’ and the anagrind is ‘disarray’.

5 Suggest keeping nothing in apartment
FLOAT
An insertion of O in FLAT. The insertion indicator is ‘keeping’.

6 Sulphur most volatile in seawater
BRIMSTONE
An insertion of (MOST)* in BRINE. The insertion indicator is ‘in’ and the anagrind is ‘volatile’.

7 Quote Gorki piece promoting source of alternative meaning?
ROGET
Hidden reversed in QuoTE GORki. Referring to the famous Thesaurus.

8 Blows up as former partner criticises getting custody of daughter
EXPANDS
A charade of EX and D inserted into PANS. The insertion indicator is ‘getting custody of’.

14 Narrative has tiny roles getting cast
STORYLINE
(TINY ROLES)*

16 Two men interrupting occasional audit to make change
AMENDMENT
An insertion of MEN and MEN in ADT, the odd letters of AuDiT. The insertion indicator is ‘interrupting’.

17 Very large hint is placed inside bar
OSTRACISE
A charade of OS and an insertion of IS in TRACE. The insertion indicator is ‘placed inside’.

18 What to do with guests making fighting challenge?
PUT EM UP
A dd.

20 Talk about defender getting revenge
PAYBACK
A charade of YAP reversed and BACK.

22 The same one not drinking during party
DITTO
An insertion of I and TT in DO. The insertion indicator is ‘during’.

23 A prevaricating politician does this on reversing cuts
SPINS
A reversal of SNIPS. Not a great choice of definition, in my opinion: an MP might prevaricate, shilly-shally, flip or U-turn, but SPIN?

24 Mechanic held, for a time, specific job
NICHE
Hidden in MechaNIC HEld.

Many thanks to the setter for this week’s Quiptic.

35 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,252/Anto”

  2. Thanks Anto and Pierre
    Some nice clues. I liked THE MEEK, BACKSTAGE, and BRIMSTONE.
    You would need to pronounce SEDENTARY very sloppily to make it sound like “said entry”!
    It is perfectly possible to justify SNIPS as well as SPINS at 23d.

  3. The wordplay for TODAY & SEDENTARY eluded me. Couldn’t work out why OC was “most senior officer”. All else fell into place and was enjoyable. I second KVa’s parsing.

  5. Even though I understood the “said” part of SEDENTARY I couldn’t parse the rest. “Entry” never occurred to me.

  6. Enjoyable puzzle but quite tough for a Quiptic. I failed to solve 9ac and 3d. It is not often that I fail to complete a Quiptic which is supposed to be a ‘cryptic puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry.’ Maybe the Editor could be more considerate towards beginners in future?

    Favourites: FABERGE, SUMMARY, OSTRACISE.

    Thanks, both.

    I agree with KVa’s parsing of 9ac and also KVa@4 re the way that politicians spin their comments to avoid saying anything meaningful.

  7. I saw McCoy as KVa did. Lots of fun clues and changes of cluing.

    No one else has said it yet, but I found this much harder than the Cryptic. Some easy write ins, some much harder to solve and parse. It took me three times as long to solve yesterday”s (and the week before’s) Everyman – which I assume to be the same level, coming up for twice asing as today’s Cryptic from Brummie.

    I really like Anto, enjoy his cluing and variety, just find his puzzles tougher than I would expect to fit the Quiptic spot. Mid week Cryptic they’re fun.

    Thank you to Anto and Pierre.

  8. Failed to parse TODAY and since I say SEDENTARY (rightly or wrongly) with four syllables I didn’t get that one either.

    I like Anto’s reverse clues like GLAMOROUS, but today’s favourites are CHINA and the annual tour of the Shetlands in YEATS: nice surface.

  9. Enjoyed this. No quibbles, unless I was looking for a quiptic.
    Favs, PHEROMONE, MATRICIDE, SPINS, ROGET, SUBPLOT, PAYBACK.

  10. I put myself in the mostly-beginner category (rarely finish a puzzle) and most of these were fine with a bit of chewing on. And then there are some that even with Pierre’s help I can’t parse?

    ERG in FABERGE? Google now tells me it’s “a unit of energy” – is that “a working unit” and is that common? I’ve not seen it before

    Also EAT in EAT UP – I didn’t parse any of this but I can now see “UP before the judge”. I’ve not ever made a connection between EAT and “worry” though, even a dog worrying at a bone isn’t eating it, surely?

    Enjoyed myself working on this though, and only had to reveal 5 at the end.

  11. Enjoyed this, although it was tricky, and I agree with Muffin @2 that 23d was ambiguous – particularly if you’re familiar with Anto’s occasionally loose indicators.

    Liked ROGET, SUBPLOT, MATRICIDE, YEATS, ABSURDIST and OSTRACISE.

    Thanks both.

  12. SamW – ERG for a unit of work occasionally turns up. The usual justification for ‘eat’ = worry is something like “What’s eating you?” = what’s worrying you, but it’s quite crosswordy. And well done on getting a long way through it!

  13. Amoeba – thanks for the explanation. Happy to accept “it’s crosswordy” as an answer, just means I need to store it in memory 🙂

  15. I finished the puzzle but failed to parse a few, so thank you for the explanations.
    Could someone please explain how “for a time” indicates that “niche” is hidden in the first two words of the clue?

  16. I felt Anto made the clue for GLAMOROUS clearer than he sometimes does with this kind of clue. I’m beginning to think of “summery” as warm and wet rather than warm and dry. Otherwise what paddymelon said.

  19. Michelle@6 makes a plea to the editor. I suspect he doesn’t read this column though, but really I think the editor and the setters should be “obliged” to read both 225 and the G. comments – how else are they to know if they are doing a good job? [Most of the setters do a terrific job most of the time, and a lot do drop in here occasionally, but what about the rest? In particular I’d like to know they get the praise that’s sent their way.]

  20. THE MEEK requires misspelling the Russian playwright’s name, which is usually spelled “Chekhov.” Admittedly, that’s a choice the transliterators make from the Russian alphabet, but it’s the only spelling I’ve seen.

    I’d agree that this was harder than today’s Cryptic. More left blank this morning on the Q.

    Thanks to Anto and Pierre (condolences for the birdlessness)

  21. The unit erg is still used somewhat regularly in astronomy and astrophysics. The erg is much smaller than the standard unit, namely the joule, so it’s strange that astronomers, who tend to deal with big things, use it, but some do.

    Surely the definition for 7dn (ROGET) is the precise opposite of the truth: a thesaurus tells you other words with the same meaning, not alternative meanings. And as long as I’m complaining, I agree with FrauSue @15 that “for a time” doesn’t really work as an indicator in 24dn.

    “Sedentary” and “said entry” are far from homophonic for me, but I believe in homophonic permissiveness. Given the wide range of pronunciations in English, if we required a homophone to work for all speakers, it’d be practically impossible to have homophone clues. So I think the reasonable standard is that a homophone is fine if it is a homophone for any reasonably large subset of English speakers.

    SPINS is definitely a better answer than SNIPS for 23dn, but in a situation like this, where the crossers don’t resolve the ambiguity, I think it’s better for the setter to avoid any ambiguity at all.

  24. Further to the discussion on ERG, it was the unit of energy in the CGS (centimetre, gram, second) system of units. The SI system went with MKS units (metre, kilogram, second). In this system the unit of energy is the joule. As Ted @21 says, the erg is very much smaller than the joule – 10 million times!

  25. Commiserations, Pierre. You avoided the dreaded h-word in your explanations of 1a SUMMERY and 23a SEDENTARY, but nevertheless some commenters insisted on imposing it on the clues. Sigh.

    This Quiptic took me one whole minute longer than the Cryptic today. Shame on the editor for getting it so egregiously wrong. 😉

    Thanks Pierre for the excellent blog, and for parsing 26a CHINA, which earned a tick once I saw your explanation.

    And thanks Anto for another fun puzzle.

  26. …and re 5a FABERGE, “Jeweller initially” misdirected me to the letter J, which then sent me looking to work joule into the answer. Nicely done, Anto.

  29. I’m probably too late to the party now, but I’m with FrauSue@15 and Ted@21 in failing to see how “for a time” is indicative of the solution being contained in the wording for NICHE – can anyone shed some light on this?

  30. A good puzzle from Anto, some of it was quite tricky for a quiptic. Favourites were MCCOY, CHINA, AMENDMENT and the very lovely THE MEEK. A number of nice dd’s too, such as PUT EM UP. I wasn’t hugely convinced by SEDENTARY but it’s not unfair. Thanks to Anto and Pierre.

  31. The party is never over on one of my blogs, TanTrumPet. The indicator for the containment clue giving you NICHE is indeed ‘for a time’, which I’m guessing the setter meant to lead us to think ‘for some of the time when you are reading the two words, the letters N I C H E will appear’. I think the shorter answer to your question is that’s it’s not one of Anto’s finest clues, so don’t beat yourself up about it.

  32. ROGET and ERG are new to me. Into the memory bank they go.

    Can someone please explain 17? How does “very large” mean OS? I presume it’s some crosswordese that I haven’t encountered before.

  34. Did this a day late. I had SNIPS rather than SPINS, and was annoyed that the other one was needed. But that subject has already been covered. Anyway, it’s an easily solved glitch: “A prevaricating politician does this when cuts are reversed (5).” Reversal indicators are like homophone indicators, in that putting them in the middle is a great way to make a bad clue.

  35. I’m new at this but somehow I thought 9A EMCEE would do for “host “ although the penny dropped with name that’s real.

    I recently retired at the impressionable age of 72. I discovered the quiptic as the way into crosswords some 3 years ago. Went through all the quiptics. I think Anto gets a bad press. He was in my ‘public enemy list’ and too hard basket for nearly 2 years but I got better at it. I started cryptics about a year ago, found Rufus and then a few more and I’m at 25407. Anto has been replaced by Araucaria on my enemy number one list.

    I’d like thank all of you bloggers and commentators. Without you I would not have stayed the course.

    Please keep doing what you do while I catch up .. right now I have a headache struggling with ‘you know who’ on my enemies list but I’ll get there.

    A great many thanks
    Allanr

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