Guardian Quiptic 1,293/Anto

40 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,293/Anto”

1. Is 24a (T)ONE (T)OFF? So T x 2 ?
   Too hard for a Quiptic!

2. I looked couple of times to see if this edition was a misprint;no,it said Quiptic!
   If you’re a beginner,tough luck! I found it laborious and quit after 30 minutes.

3. I found this tough and not a Quiptic to recommend to solvers moving on from the Quick Cryptic crosswords – so many bits of crosswordese that hasn’t been covered yet, not many clues from hidden, acrostic, anagram or alternate letters, where the letters were given.

   That said I do like Anto and enjoy his puzzles, I just don’t think he’s a good fit for the Quiptic slot.

   Thank you to Pierre and Anto.

4. Thanks to Anto and Pierre (double duty this AM)

   I am pretty lax in my parsing so Anto’s imprecision doesn’t bother me – but I can see why it might annoy others

   I read one off as tone toff both missing T. This is pretty loose

5. 11a – There was I trying to insert ‘i c’ three times! No wonder I struggled with this one. Thanks A and Pierre. Enjoy your Sunday.

6. Agree this isn’t Quiptic.
   6d EULOGY – maybe “You lodge E” (with lodge = deposit, register in court, or in a bank account)?

7. “Quiptic”. I don’t think so.

   13a – I had EUROPEAN because it fit. That’s where I am at.

   6 clues solved and those had plenty of checks/deletions/re-tries.

8. For me, the clue for 16a, while being transparent enough, simply does not work, ‘Picks’ and ‘PIX’ are homophones in spoken language, but ‘the speaker’ does not refer to a line as ‘L’ (sounding like ‘EL’) – that abbreviation functions only in he written language. Thus, Anto provides fodder for for PIXL, with the E unaccounted for. I do not generally grumble about clues, but this one irritated me.

9. Not really a Quiptic, it was quite tricky. I do not recommend it to beginners. I don’t blame Anto – surely it is the Editor who decides what is/is is not a Quiptic?

   New for me: NAFF ALL = nothing.

   I didn’t parse 26ac – the ‘some Londoners believe so’ bit; 29ac; 6d – I agree with Pierre’s comments about the imprecise aural wordplay.

   Thanks, both.

10. I’ve been tackling quiptics for a few months, working back through old ones to build up confidence and I think this is genuinely the toughest one I’ve encountered. Huge thank you Pierre.

11. Well I liked it, although it was very hard for a Quiptic. This is the first time since it moved to Sunday that it has taken me longer than the Everyman.

12. Well that was a good cryptic with some lovely clues. I thought ONTARIO was patently wrong although Pierre has maybe bailed him out. FrankieG’s parsing of EULOGY makes sense but I can’t agree with Balfour’s objection to PIXEL @8, which was probably most solvers’ loi, including me. I thought FLOAT was excellent.

    Ta Anto & Pierre.

13. I found this tough but gettable, just not a lot of enjoyment to be had. Revealed the last 3 (doormat, messiah and seconding) because I got bored with it. A few nice clues though. Thanks to Anto and Pierre.

14. Slowed down by putting BAR ONE for ONE-OFF.

15. ADAM AND EVE: I was unaware of the rhyming slang for ‘believe’. Thanks, Pierre.
    FrankieG@6: Your parsing of EULOGY makes sense.
    It took me a while to get onto Anto’s wavelength, maybe because, as others have said, it wasn’t really a Quiptic. But lots to like, amusing double definitions, a triple definition, homophones and other neat clues.
    Ticks for DOORMAT, AUTOCUE, PIXEL, PRESS GANG, triple def FLOAT, and last in, WRINKLE.
    Thanks to Anto and Pierre

16. Definitely too hard for a Quiptic, partly because of the imprecision already noted. Maybe not so bad for people who are good at DDs (and a TD). There were several nice clues scattered about nevertheless. ADAM AND EVE was a write in for me, and I liked ROMEO, EUGENICS, HOLD FORTH, PRESS GANG and a few others. But too many that I just couldn’t see and no (or muddled) word play to help. It wasn’t the most helpful of grids, with so many solutions lacking a crosser for the initial letter.

17. ONTARIO, California, is where the airport is if you want to fly to that part of SoCal; it serves as a fourth airport for metro LA (after LAX, Long Beach, and Burbank); it also (today I learned) is a major cargo airport for the ports of LA and Long Beach. Some demographers treat that area (Riverside / San Bernardino / Ontario, also known as the Inland Empire) as a separate metro from LA, but it’s all continuous urbanization so it depends on how you define things.

    So anyway, yeah, I at least have heard of that Ontario. But I am guessing that Anto was thinking of Ottawa or maybe Toronto and got confused.

    I agree with the sentiment that EULOGY doesn’t work, and that this was too hard a puzzle for this slot. Not hard in an absolute sense–I’d be disappointed if it were a Prize offering–but too hard to be labeled as easy.

    I liked the FIVE STAR HOTEL clue quite a bit.

18. Glad it wasn’t just me. Stormed through quick cryptic yesterday and felt I was getting somewhere. Today really struggled and had to reveal several to complete. And then had to read this blog to understand the parsing.
    Enjoyed Adam and Eve – got that straight away. Love Cockney rhyming slang.
    Now for Everyman which I’m managing to complete each week. So I guess I’m improving slowly

19. Some of these were tough. Can someone explain how information becomes GEN?

20. Gen is a slang word for information, Sebd. ‘Is there any gen on the Oasis concert?’

21. I have heard of Ontario, California, but I still think Anto was mistakenly thinking of Ottawa, Ontario – an erroneous shout out to my home town.

    Unless Anto was trying to write a Quiptic, I agree with Michelle@9 – this should have been placed in a mid-week slot, and it’s not Anto’s fault that it was too challenging for its Sunday spot.

    On its own, it was a very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks, Anto, and Pierre for the excellent and much-needed blog.

22. Thanks Pierre! Hard to avoid gen on anything Oasis-related right now 🙂

23. I really enjoyed this despite about half of it being on the tough side for a Quiptic. I had heard of the Californian city with the same name as my province (the On in my nom de plume) in Canada. There are so many names of places on this side of the pond that bear no similarities with their namesakes in the Old World. Eg in Ontario we have a Newcastle in Durham and a Sutton in York, and then Sussex is a town in New Brunswick.

24. [MarkOnCan: let’s not forget Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, whose British namesake is not particularly close, by British standards, to any sea. The one in MA is known for the deeply sad award-winning film named after it (and partly filmed there). It’s in that category “great movie, glad I saw it, don’t really need to see it again.” But that does count as a recommendation, next time you can tolerate a sad movie.]

25. I got through this with a lot of checks and some inspired guesses, but there weren’t very many answers which made me go “aha!” and smile with pleasure. Instead mostly I shrugged and went “I guess so”. If it hadn’t been for my sheer bloody-mindedness I would probably have given up halfway through as it was a slog, and the answers didn’t give enough pleasure to make it worth it. I prefer Picaroon and Carpathian. Maybe they are simply more on my wavelength.

26. I agree it needed a bit more editing and I also found it surprisingly difficult for a “beginner “ puzzle.

    I liked some of the double definitions and the great anagrams. But, like Rab@25, I had lots of shrugs and feel I need more puzzles to get Anto

    Thanks Anto and Pierre

27. Martyn and others: Anto has this habit of pushing the boundaries of the rules of this game. Not in a hard way, per se, just in an irregular way. It’s interesting, but it’s also not really for beginners. (It also feels like he’s sort of speaking a different dialect of cryptic-ese sometimes, where the grammar is different and the vocabulary a little bit off too, but if we spoke that dialect too, it’d all be fine.)

28. Pretty proud of myself for solving this one. Even if I had to come here to find out why a couple of my answers were correct. This was harder than last week’s Everyman…(the first one of those I’ve completed). I think I have been bitten

29. I managed all but 8 clues. I don’t feel too bad about the ones I didn’t get as a lot of it was GK I didnt have (CASTRATO, INGLE, LEANDER, GEN for info). Probably should have got WRINKLE though.

    I also thought ONTARIO is a city so didn’t mind that one.

    Thanks Anto and Pierre.

30. Agreed that this is a bit tricky for a Quiptic, with INGLE and ROMEO as fairly obscure (experienced solvers have the NATO alphabet by heart by now, but not so many others)! ADAM AND EVE for believe was OK for me, I’d never heard the particular slang but it was guessable from the rhyme.

    Agreed with FrankieG@6 about EULOGY being “You lodge E” but I have a hard time making LODGE into a vowel sound that would be in EULOGY. Then again, Paul has taught me that not everyone pronounces words the way I do.

    [mrpenney@17: I once interviewed for a job at the Claremont colleges, at the very eastern edge of Los Angeles County, and when I was arranging my travel out they told me that it would probably be easier for me to get a flight to LAX rather than Ontario. My reaction was “Why would I fly to Canada?” So I have heard of the city thus… I confess I filled this in without even noticing that Ontario is a province rather than a city.

    Also MarkOnCan@23/mrpenny@24, and there are many Cambridges in the US that aren’t bridges over the Cam! I believe that Cambridge, Massachusetts was originally Newtown but once a college was established there the name was changed to copy the much longer-established institution in the UK. There’s a similar story about Cambridge, Vermont which I will not ramble on about!]

31. looking at one clue, and seeing the wordplay seemed to be leading me to finding a term for “nothing” that could be “F—/all” was a fun few minutes of confusion

32. Not enjoyable at all in afraid. Anto back to his old style, tiresome and unsatisfying.

33. Just adding my own agreement to those who found this to be a cryptic rather than quiptic puzzle. It makes for a bit of frustration: I mean, I enjoyed ROMEO, to give but one example, but while it’s a fun clue, I’d say it’s nowhere near quiptic level.

    I’m with Matthew Newell @4 in that my parsing isn’t the most precise, so I’ve no problem with Anto’s style in that respect. Nothing wrong for me with this puzzle except for the mismatch of category.

34. I’ll disagree with those who say this should have been a cryptic rather than a quiptic. I agree with the flaws that make it unsuitable for a quiptic, but they’re not merely flaws that make the puzzle too difficult; many of them are actual errors that make the puzzle unsuitable for the cryptic slot as well.

    One that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: PRESS GANG, when used as a verb (which is how it is defined in 19ac) must be either hyphenated or written as one word, so the enumeration should be (5-4) or (9), rather than (5,4).

35. Strong start for me, then let down by some confusing definitions. I’m still struggling with ATINGLE, I’m guessing it should be pronounced “Ah-tingle” but I can’t see it as anything other than “Attin-gal”, sounding like some Arthurian castle.

    Am I wrong in thinking that its unusual for there not to be a hidden definition? I think this is my first time where a crossword didn’t have one and it threw me off a bit.

    Most proud of getting Ontario entirely from the word play, working backwards (IO+TAR+ON) and then saying “ontar-rio” out loud repeatedly till it stuck. For once it seems being geographically illiterate was helpful, I didn’t even question it being a city.

    Least proud of immediately spotting the Hotel part of 9d and then spending 5 minutes after that trying to remember any fancy hotels besides the Ritz and playing with the remaining letters. In my defence, the VIER STAF Hotel definitely sounds like a thing🤦.

    Not technically a complaint, but does anyone else feel weird about the definition of castrato. Like it’s technically correct but very much feels, I don’t know, kind of insensitive. Kind of glib, skipping over some nasty history. Not sure why it sticks in the craw so much for me, it’s fairly clued, just feels off. Anyone else?

36. As a beginner / improver agree this is a tough Quiptic, but by no means impossible, and I suppose the fact it took me 80 mins rather than the usual 40 to solve means that I got more bang for my bucks this week.

37. Another beginner/improver here: this was nicely challenging and took me a few sessions to get through it. But got there in the end although with some letter guessing along the way. Parsed a good many but a few just felt a bit obscure or just off – like making EULOGY work or ATINGLE. 22d was loi for me and had to guess the letters and didn’t understand the wordplay until seeing the explanation here.
    Thanks Pierre for explanations and Anto for the chewy challenge.

38. Chambers definition 1 for TRIPLICATE is “threefold” which seems pretty close to “three times” to me?

    Tougher than average- not sure what the pecking order of difficulty is supposed to be these days with the QC, Quiptic, Everyman, Monday etc

    Cheers P&A

39. Beginner(ISH). Enjoyed this. Couldn’t fully parse Eulogy but thought it was just me being dense. I rather liked a tingle / at ingle. I presumed Ontario city rather than state was selected because of the opportunity for confusion with city and Rio (as in Rio de Janeiro).

40. Beginner/improver here – this was my first Quiptic having just finished working my way through all the QCs. I did manage to complete it, although it took me a couple of hours and I needed to ‘Check this’ quite a bit. And there were quite a few where I got it from the definition without understanding the wordplay, so Piere’s breakdown here was invaluable for my learning. I was also glad to see the comments here about it being a tough initial step up from the QC as I felt at first that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I now feel encouraged to keep at it, so thanks, all, and thanks Piere and Anto.

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