Quiptic 1,268 by Pasquale

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An enjoyable Quiptic puzzle from Pasquale this week.

I liked the anagrams: particularly 11a and 24a for the surfaces, 2d (surprising, but obvious when you see it), and 14d for the very appropriate anagram indicator. I also liked the improbable surface image of 25a. There seems to be a bit of extra padding in the form of linking words in a few clues, but none of it really causes too much trouble. Thanks Pasquale as always.

Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

ACROSS
4 ACTION
Fighting extremists emerging from factions (6)
[f]ACTION[s] with the end letters (extremists) leaving (emerging).

As in “missing in action”.
6 SEARCHER
Wise man with inner cunning is a seeker (8)
SEER (prophet = wise man) containing (with inner . . .) ARCH (as an adjective = cunning).
9 LETTER
Landlord? A character (6)
Double definition. Someone who rents out a home to others; or a character A – Z.
10 SLACKING
Want to lie in grass, taking it easy (8)
LACK (want = have a shortage of) inside (lying in) SING (grass = slang for inform on someone).
11 GENDARMERIE
With police appearing, miner agreed to move (11)
Anagram (to move) of MINER AGREED.

The French police force. I think “with . . . appearing” is just there for the surface.
15 RESTING
Soldiers smart off duty? (7)
RE (Royal Engineers corps in the British Army = soldiers) + STING (smart = sharp pain).
17 HOSTAGE
Prisoner in house before part of journey (7)
HO (abbreviation for house, especially on maps) + STAGE (a section of a journey).
18 PAST PERFECT
Tense dad, holy person without blemish (4,7)
PA (dad = father) + ST (abbreviation for saint = holy person) + PERFECT (without blemish).

Grammatical tense (also called pluperfect), used to indicate something that happened earlier in the past, as in “I had seen it before but couldn’t remember where”.
22 ATELIERS
Workshops working to supply e-tailers (8)
Anagram (working) of E-TAILERS. “Supply” could also be an anagram indicator (meaning in a supple manner), but I think “to supply” is just a link between definition and wordplay.

Atelier = an artist’s workshop.
23 MATTER
Stuff for which mother needs extra time (6)
MATER (rather old-fashioned name for “mother”, from Latin) with an extra T (abbreviation for time).

Stuff = matter = substance.
24 AILMENTS
Man is let off, bringing complaints (8)
Anagram (off) of MAN IS LET.

Complaints = ailments = illnesses.
25 REVELS
Cleric and golfer in wild parties? (6)
REV (short for Reverend = title for an ordained minister = cleric) + ELS (South African golfer Ernie Els, whose surname is very useful to crossword setters).
DOWN
1 BODEGA
Ancient old boy set up wine store (6)
AGED (ancient) + OB (abbreviation for Old Boy = former pupil of a school), all reversed (set up = upwards in a down clue).

Spanish-derived term for a wine shop.
2 DEALERSHIP
Idle phrase wrecked authorised business (10)
Anagram (wrecked) of IDLE PHRASE.

As in “car dealership” = a business authorised to sell cars of a specific brand.
3 BRACKETS
They contain many a number here! (8)
Cryptic definition: each clue in this crossword ends with a number in brackets giving the letter count. This definition may confuse US readers, for whom ( ) = parentheses and [ ] = brackets.
4 ALLEGORY
Everyone wants end to the bloody story (8)
ALL (everyone) + end letter of [th]E + GORY (bloody).

A story in which the characters and events represent a deeper meaning.
5 TITANESS
Big goddess is nastiest around (8)
Anagram (around) of NASTIEST.

In Greek mythology, one of the original deities (Titans and Titanesses, regarded as giants) preceding the Olympian gods.
7 HAIL
Praise that comes down from on high (4)
Double definition. As in “Hail Caesar”; or pieces of ice falling like rain.
8 RAGE
Fury shown by king over time (4)
R (abbreviation for king, from Latin Rex) + AGE (time).
12 MAGISTRATE
Law officer providing wise men with unusual treats (10)
MAGI (plural of magus = wise men) + anagram (unusual) of TREATS.
13 PATENTEE
Inventor offering special plate given little support (8)
PATEN (a special plate used to hold the bread in a church communion service) + TEE (a small support for a golf ball).

A person who holds a patent giving them rights for something they invented.
14 FEATURES
Newspaper articles? Recycle after use (8)
Anagram (recycle) of AFTER USE.
16 IMPAIRED
Trouble-maker gets broadcast spoilt (8)
IMP (a mischievous sprite, or slang for a naughty child = trouble-maker) + AIRED (broadcast on radio or television).
19 REAPER
Harvester back to collect bits of produce everywhere (6)
REAR (back), containing (to collect) the first letters (bits) of P[roduce] E[verywhere].
20 HA-HA
That’s funny sort of ditch (2-2)
Double definition – an old favourite in crosswords. An expression indicating amusement; or a ditch containing a wall or hedge below ground level, used to mark a boundary (or contain livestock) without spoiling the view of the surrounding landscape.
21 BELL
Warning device‘s inventor (4)
Double definition. An audible warning device; or Alexander Graham Bell, inventor and scientist who patented an early version of the telephone.

34 comments on “Quiptic 1,268 by Pasquale”

  1. Good Monday fare – I agree with Quirister’s likes. ACTION is nicely clued, with a very plausible surface. BRACKETS was my LOI and took me a while to spot.

    There’s usually something ecclesiastical in a Pasquale crossword. Here we have ‘paten’, the only unusual word in the puzzle.

    Thanks to S&B

  2. I found this OK, but not the quickest Quiptic solve, not helped by how long it took to spot BRACKETS, which was also my last one in.

    Thank you to Pasquale and Quirister

  3. Came across paten somewhere recently but it hadn’t stuck, only recognised it post-solve. The brackets clue, otoh, was a newie, on me anyway, and pretty cute. Thanks both.

  4. Thanks Pasquale and Quirister
    I thought this was much too hard for a Quiptic, especially the RHS. PATEN is really obscure. Also lots of padding words distracted from the wordplay.
    I liked MAGISTRATE.

  5. grantinfreo @3 Have you perhaps recently read or seen The Merchant of Venice? This is Lorenzo in Act V scene 1:

    Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
    Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: …

  6. Definitely harder than the usual Quiptic. I found it quite enjoyable, but I wouldn’t use it to lure a beginner in.

    At first I thought “supply” was the anagrind in 22ac, and that it didn’t quite work, but Quirister’s interpretaiton is undoubtedly right. As an American, I do call these things () parentheses, but fortunately I remembered that you all call them brackets.

  9. I liked this Quiptic, finished it more quickly than today’s Cryptic, but not saying it was easy. Have no quibbles with the clues, but I do with the English language – I know a lost cause. Usually the EE ending on a verb indicates the object of the action, but not so with PATENTEE. But then we don’t so often see the word patentor, so there’s really no ambiguity, just a curious choice.

    [A fun fact about patents, at least US ones, of which I have a couple of dozen: on the document itself are listed three groups that you might take to be the patentee. There is the Applicant, the person or company submitting the paperwork; the Inventor(s), the person or persons who came up with the idea; and the Assignee, the person or company who owns the rights. I was just Inventor. There is no mention of patentee.]

  10. One. Just one measly answer filled in with this. Glad other people have said they found it hard.

    I’ll have a go at the cryptic a bit later to see if that’s any easier.

  11. Thank you – I found this tricky, but satisfying.
    I justified “supply” in 22ac as: ATELIERS anagrammed (=working) to give (=supply) E-TAILERS.
    [Interesting to learn about U.S. brackets.]

  12. I thought the BRACKETS was a bit self referential for a quiptic. Took me a while to twig.
    I suppose the patentee is the beneficiary of the patent being granted. Not always the same as the inventor.
    I too didn’t parse REAPER but couldn’t see what else it could be.
    Thanks to Pasquale and Quirister.

  14. How about “supply” meaning “provide” — ATELIERS “works” (anagrind) to provide “e-tailers.”

    I’ve learned from this site that a BODEGA is a wine shop in the UK (and in Spain, I suppose). Over here it means a small corner grocery store.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Quirister.

  15. … meanwhile, hope today’s designated cryptic blogger is ok (unless there’s a holiday or …?)

  16. As a Yankee, “brackets” did indeed elude me, but all else felt straightforward. Took a while to figure out the GENDARMERIE anagram, but crossers pointed me in the right direction.

  17. I’m stuck in Spain. I’d have BODEGA as the wine store (as per the clue), or the wine maker. The wine shop is the supermarket…. 3.09 euros for a bottle of organic, vegan red. Mustn’t grumble.

  18. Valentine @14, yes. Our local bodega was a godsend back during the early days of the pandemic, when supermarkets felt unsafe and were often out of things. But a large fraction of this bodega’s space (about 1/4) is indeed devoted to wine and liquor, so they’re kind of a hybrid of the two meanings.

  19. Very enjoyable, and the first time in a while I’ve got the Quiptic on the Monday. PATEN(TEE) was new to me, and BRACKETS was my LOI.

    Isn’t Ernie ELS a bit dated now for ‘golfer’?

  20. What GDU@8 wrote.

    I found this plain sailing, but I did need to take time here and there. I actually parsed BRACKETS, but was not confident I had it right until I saw the blog. I had the same thought as Quirster about the great anagrams,

    Thanks Pasquale and Quirster

  21. I found this quite tricky, but fun.
    Normally, I prefer short, compact clues, but when the surfaces are as good as they are here, some extra padding is fine. My favourites today were the clues for GENDARMERIE and HAIL.
    Shaun@10 Please don’t be disheartened. The bloggers on this site are encouraging and are a terrific help, as are many of the commenters. Hope you enjoy the cryptic.
    Thanks to Pasquale and Quirister.

  22. Valentine @14 – BODEGA isn’t a.word I’d use for a wine shop in the UK, although there are some restaurants with that name. We’d call wine shops a wine merchant or an offie or an off-licence. Corner shops are just that. When I check online here, it gives me a Spanish derivation.

  23. WhiteDevil @19: Other than Tiger Woods, Els is the only golfer I can name, and I only know him from doing crosswords, so I don’t want that particular clue to be phased out!

    I might have solved SEARCHER and BRACKETS if they hadn’t crossed but as it was, I had to reveal both of them. A great quiptic nonetheless.

  24. In Canada, or at least in my house, () = brackets (or parentheses), and [ ] = square brackets. We do tend to adopt a mix of UK and US usages. Like some others, 3d was both my LOI and my favourite clue.

    Except for 13d PATENTEE (I didn’t know paten) I solved this faster than the Cryptic, so clearly the editor got it 25/26th correct. 😉

    Thanks Pasquale, Quirister and Alan for the Monday merriment.

  25. Three weeks or so ago, I flew through Pasquale’s Quiptic in a fastest ever.

    This one I gave up after spending almost 5x as long with PATENTEE / BRACKETS left unsolved and SLACKING not put in because I couldn’t parse it. Couldn’t parse REAPER either.

    Some of my slowness is on me just not being on it today but I felt it missed the mark for a Quiptic

  27. Shouldn’t there have been an indication that GENDARMERIE is not an English word? Not only the definition includes spurious words, but the French solution is not indicated at all. Is this ever fair, especially in a Quiptic?

  28. What an ugly (and never heard) word PATENTEE is! I have heard of patent holders, but never patentees (though no doubt someone will say “but it’s in…”). I was fixated on an anagram (“special” of PLATE) on TEE – but none of them seemed to be a word either. Thanks, Pasquale and Quirister.

  29. I got there in the end but found it much trickier than I usually do when I complete one (solved very few on the first pass). Felt like I really worked for it. I was also very lucky!

    Specifically, I (like TT@28) was trying to stick an anagram of PLATE on TEE. I was googling random assemblages in case it was a word I didn’t know, and google, very kindly, thought that I must have been misspelling PATENTEE. I saw it and thanked the crossword gods. That was my LOI.

    Had not previously heard of PATEN (though, I have read Merchant of Venice, so I guess that’s not true actually).

    Thanks S&B

  30. Came back to this today having left it to languish for a bit.

    I had initially thought of SEARCHER but I couldn’t justify ARCH = cunning in the dictionary.

    Never heard of a PATEN.

    I’m not American but I still consider ( ) = parentheses and [ ] = brackets, but also { } = braces, so this might not be a US distinction so much as a software engineer distinction. Anyway, they’re still a form of bracket so I suppose I just fair and square didn’t get this one.

    Bit miffed about REVELS, not only because I’ve never heard of Els, but also I’ve never heard of this as a noun, but it is in the dictionary.

    Anyway – quite a difficult one because of some obscurities like those, but the rest of the clues were fairly satisfying!

  31. I was all ready to fire off a righteous letter, thinking that PATENTEE involved a faulty anagram of “plate”. Good thing this blog is here.

    Dr WhatsOn @9 – “letters patent” are a kind of old-fashioned legal document where the king grants you the right to do something, such as being a lord (similar to letters of marque, which were basically a pirate license). That’s where the modern term comes from, so a “patentee” would be the person granted exclusive rights over an invention, rather than the invention itself. But, yes, that isn’t necessarily the inventor.

  32. At odds with many of the comments on this and the cryptic. I found this really easy but struggled to complete the cryptic. I wonder how subjective difficulty is? My sympathies are with the editor whom most of us blame for putting quiptic and cryptic in the wrong place.

  33. I was thrown by the number of question marks in the clues, as I have been led to believe they indicate a requirement for exercising some slightly more lateral thought to solve, or the setter asking for a but more leeway in the clueing. But here, they appeared in very straightforward clues. 9a could easily be “Landlord is a character” 14d “Newspaper articles recycled after use” and 15a and 25a just don’t need them IMO. “Soldiers smart off-duty” seems ok to me and a priest and a golfer are literally combined for the answer to 25a, so why the interrogation marks? Most off-putting, but not in a misdirection way, just unnecessarily employed.

  34. This was a brilliant but exceptionally difficult crossword. Well into cryptic territory at the more difficult end of the spectrum, let alone a quiptic!

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