Guardian Quiptic 1,263/Carpathian

37 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,263/Carpathian”

1. Never heard of yucca. Why are bolts arrows?

   All else was fine — and quick!

2. Bolts more associated with a crossbow?

3. As well as comparing crossbow bolts with arrows, you could equate the verb forms of bolts and arrows – he bolts/arrows through the woods.

   Straightforward solve, thank you to Carpathian and Pierre.

4. I think this is a good puzzle for beginners. There were a few clues that I solved via the word count & crossers then parsed later but I could not parse 6d.

   Favourite: RECKONING.

   Thanks, both.

   Geoff@1 – I thought of BOLTS as being heavy types of arrow shot from crossbows.

5. 24a Is caustic the opposite of acidic?

6. Very nice puzzle from Carpathian as usual. Curry favour made me laugh

   Colm @5 I wondered that too but linguistically caustic and acidic are synonyms. They may not be for a chemist of course.

   Thanks both.

7. A proper Quiptic from Carpathian as usual. Caustic and acidic substances are very different but caustic and acidic remarks more or less the same.

8. That was fun – a light start to the week.

   Thanks Carpathian and Pierre

9. I know I’ll be in a minority of 1, but, as has been said before, power and energy are two different things in the world of physics.

10. Perfectly pitched quiptic. Thanks, Carpathian.
    NUTS AND BOLTS reminded me of the story about the guy who escaped from a lunatic asylum, raped three clients in a laundrette, and ran off into the distance. The newspaper headline next day read “Nut Screws Washers and Bolts”
    [OK, I’ll get my coat…]

11. Crispy@9
    Let me double that population. 🙂

12. Thanks for parsing ACCURATELY: I know yucca as a tree, but not particularly as a pot plant. CURRY FAVOUR was fun.

13. Thank KVa @11!

14. Thanks Carpathian and Pierre
    An acid may be “caustic” – it just means able to dissolve things, and acids dissolve most metals. We are probably more interested in the effect on flesh; some acids will attack flesh, though most won’t. Strong alkalis all dissolve flesh because they react with fat (which is how soap is made).

15. I thought 24ac would get a bit of chemical reaction. Blaise @10, that is simply offal …

16. Tripled KVa@11. It seems to me that while many setters read the blogs of their own puzzles, and occasionally comment, they are not so interested in anyone else’s.

17. My first entry for 1ac was Swan Lake. Lad beginning L + (m)AKE = final piece of “to generate”. Sort of fitted.

18. Nice Quiptic from Carpathian. CURRY FAVOUR was tasty and MOTIONLESS is neat and succinct.

    To weigh in on the disputes: Power and energy are not the same thing in physics, but roughly synonymous in a general sense – which is where the words started life, after all. muffin @14 is right that ‘caustic’ is not the opposite of ‘acidic’ and some acids are extremely caustic., but not all, so the words are not chemically synonymous. In a metaphorical sense, a remark could be described as caustic, but we would speak of an acid comment, rather than an acidic one, but this is hair-splitting.

    My own (pedantic) little quibble is that ‘pale’ is not the same as ‘wan’. If it were, the only expression in which ‘wan’ is commonly used – ‘pale and wan’ – would be tautological. The ‘true’ meaning of ‘wan’ is ‘without a predominant hue’ – so it can apply to all shades of grey. ‘Pale and wan’ means not only light coloured, but without any pinkness.

    Lovely puzzle nonetheless!

    Thanks to S&B

19. I’m a physicist, and I’m perfectly fine with equating power and energy in the context of a crossword, for the reason Gervase gives. For crossword purposes, we certainly don’t require that two words be equivalent in all contexts — the setter’s job would be far too difficult if that were the case. Rather, we require that they be equivalent in some context, as these surely are. The same goes for caustic and acidic, as others have pointed out.

    I thought this puzzle hit the Quiptic mark perfectly I particularly liked 18ac (DELICIOUS), for the misleading definition, and 26ac (ENERGY), because it always pleases me when a hidden word, with the answer in plain sight, manages to conceal itself from me.

20. An absolute delight, only ACCURATELY evading parsing, but easy enough to get from the crossers.

    Re BOLTS for arrows – those of us who grew up in the West Midlands in the 70s would remember Bob Monkhouse (among others) calling for ‘Bernie – the bolt!’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Shot

21. I agree with Ted@19 – being in a dictionary seems to be ample justification for inclusion in a crossword.

    And funnily, a couple of the clues under discussion were my favourites – SWAN SONG and ENERGY. I also liked IGNORAMUS and DELICIOUS for their surfaces

    Thanks Carpathian and Pierre

22. Could I please ask for some help?

    I have completed half of this on my own; I could do with some pointers for

    19a
    25a
    27a

    11d
    13d
    14d
    21d
    23d

23. Steffen @22
    This might be a more appropriate site for this sort of query. A very useful site with lots of helpful contributors.

24. Thanks @23- I bombard them with questions for each week’s EVERYMAN. They don’t seem to comment on Quiptics from what I can see.

    2d – where does TE come from in the clue?

    3d – where does LL come from?

25. Steffen@24
    TE is a note from the “do, re, me…” musical scale. “Note” I always find tricky as it can be any of these (which all have multiple spellings), any musical note (A – G), as well as other synonyms.
    L is an abbreviation for Line, so “Lines” from the clue can be LL (here they’re “in” a synonym for “for example”, SAY)

26. Steffen @24
    I’m sure that they would help with the Quiptics if you asked. It’s true that the discussions tend to focus on prize puzzles though, as the solutions aren’t immediately available.

27. Managed to complete this today, so happy I was able to parse everything too.

    Struggled with DELICIOUS (I somehow saw DELI, but was scratching my head thinking it was DELI_VOWS for ages), which then gave me my LOI: RECKONING. Not heard of SALLY for witty (pretty sure I’ve said the same before for an advance of troops!)

    Favourites were ACCURATELY and CURRY FAVOUR

28. Thanks muffin. I’ll see what I can do with that.

29. Pierre doesn’t like the word PROMISEE. As a student I found it very useful when trying to remember who is the -or and who is the -ee in other words, especially in real estate law. Lessors and lessees both rent properties, and mortgagors and mortgagees both mortgage properties, but which is which? Promisor and promisee are easy to distinguish, and helped me make the correct distinction in the other cases.

    Re ENERGY/power and ACIDIC/caustic, Ted@19 explains it perfectly. Words can have ordinary meanings and scientific meanings that differ. (The ordinary meaning is often metaphorical.) Setters are entitled to use the ordinary meaning, and solvers should be able to understand that use, whether they are scientists or not.

    Thanks Carpathian for the well-pitched Quiptic, and Pierre for the excellent (as usual) blog.

30. cellomaniac @29
    2nd para – the examples aren’t exactly the same. There is an argument that energy and power are not the same, but there isn’t any problem at all with acidic/caustic.

31. I’m struggling with 18A.
    How is DELICIOUS “choice”. I can’t seem to find that deffinition

32. Hi Chris

    ‘The chef used a delicious/choice cut of meat to prepare the main course.’ Not a great overlap, I will grant you, but I think it works well enough.

33. Scientists have, in the past, appropriated words in common usage and redefined them more narrowly. Power and energy are two, as is work. This, of course, can cause difficulties for school kids – and crossword solvers…

34. Re Power/Energy: I’d also say that power can be a synonym for electricity – as in power cut, for example – which is a form of energy.

35. Interesting that most people enjoyed this. I thought a lot of the clues were rather forced in their construction. Thanks as always to the fifteensquared contributors for their explanations.

36. Enjoyed this. For 23 down stuck for a while and grateful if anyone can tell me how they knew to discard the ‘str’ from ‘Strive’

37. JonS@36: The clue asks you to come up with a synonym for ‘strive’ (‘vie’) and insert a British ‘B’ into that to get something that means ‘feeling’.

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