Quick Cryptic 26 by Maskarade

40 comments on “Quick Cryptic 26 by Maskarade”

1. Nice surfaces, and plenty of smiles. Perhaps HARMONIC was my favourite.

   I must say that I left the charades in the NW corner to last, needing all the crossers for SCARAB and ISLET. I had the same thought as Shanne about POOH-POOH.

   Thanks Maskarade and Shanne

2. Thanks Shanne.
   HARMONIC my favourite too. I liked the misdirection with musical, making me think about the name of a musical, a noun, rather than the adjective harmonic.

   My stab at just a in SLIGHT, is that it is enhancing the idea of something small, ie only/merely/simply (just a) minor….
   ( In another way, the whole clue could read more like a cryptic definition, with minor doing double duty. a minor discourteous remark. , but cryptic defs aren’t on today’s menu.)

3. DNF disaster for me as I’ve done this at 3:30am and felt under pressure to finish off the live solve video having spent 5+mins on SLIGHT / ISLET

   Useful for beginners to see these aren’t always a write-in. See me struggle over at https://youtu.be/AK-orxRapgg

4. Re: SLIGHT

   I simply double deffed it to be JUST and A MINOR DISCOURTEOUS REMARK

   To echo Paddymelon – just = mere = slight

5. I checked in Chambers to see if just was given for slight, because I wondered about triple definitions, and not in my edition.

6. Delightful puzzle.

7. HG@4. I would have broken down the double def slightly 🙂 differently, as JUST A …. MINOR DISCOURTEOUS REMARK.

8. For POOH-POOH perhaps the second definition is meant to be twice express disgust
   Hence the repetition

9. @Niall №8

   But then twice is doing double duty (applying to both Eeyore’s friend and express disgust) which is also bad form.

   Slightly misclued in my opinion should have been defined as dismiss

   These puzzles seem to be getting a bit trickier – may be my imagination. I hope it is just my impression as I think getting harder would be a mistake

   Thanks Masquerade and Shanne

   Thanks

10. I enjoyed this challenge but I think that some of the clues were perhaps a bit hard for a Quick Cryptic, especially as they do not fit the special instructions: TODAY’S TRICKS – eg 1ac, 12d. Also 8ac which I saw as def = spot of land and parsed as IS + LET.

    It’s fine to raise the level but beginners might need more special instructions for clues like these?

11. 10a was my LOI. I correctly parsed the clue as an anagram of choirman, but couldn’t see a resolution. I did wonder at first whether I was looking for the name of a well known (but not to me!) musical. Using the anagram helper to highlight the letters that needed shuffling helped me to see the overtones.

12. I took the definitions in 1 down to be “just a minor” and “discourteous remark”.

    I think this is rather tricky for a Quick Cryptic because of the mix of an adjective phrase and a noun phrase. When the word is both a noun and an adjective, we accept single-word adjectives in the clue (“Minor discourteous remark” would be fine), but turning the adjective part into a phrase makes it quite a bit harder to parse.

13. I hadn’t spotted 8 when I was solving these, taking it to be a charade, where IS + LET = ISLET would be fine. But it isn’t a charade, and the answer is (5), not (2,3), so I don’t think it fits as a double definition.

    13 does seem odd. I noticed the rather awkward “to twice express”, and thought “twice expressing” might work without suggesting “POOH-POOHING”, but it didn’t occur to me that POOH-POOH isn’t really an expression of disgust, but of disdain.

14. Remus @13 – we’ve had that trick of a double meaning created from a charade and an actual meaning -with NOTABLE and NO TABLE, back in puzzle #12 – the second time Maskarade appeared. (My instinct was to check Maskarade immediately as I find his cluing looser than that of Picaroon or Carpathian).

    I’ve checked Chambers for just and SLIGHT – and there’s no justification for slight meaning just in my version, whereas there are justifications for minor and a discourteous remark.

    Having blogged Maskarade three times now, and solved a number of his puzzles in the Guardian and the FT (I don’t tend to do the big prize puzzles, as they need printing off), I expect looser cluing, which is why I sat with Chambers next to me double-checking anything I wasn’t sure of. My immediate thought for POOH-POOH was that’s not quite right, which was confirmed.

15. 3 is an &lit (I know Shanne mentioned this in the blog, but I hadn’t noticed till zurichwelsh pointed it out in the Guardian comments). Is this the first one of these we’ve had in a Quick Cryptic? Is it fair?

    It’s a lovely clue, and I think it should stay, but how should this type of thing be introduced to new solvers? Perhaps it should be quietly ignored.

16. Remus @15 – it’s definitely the first &lit / clue as definition I’ve blogged in this series. I’ve blogged them in the Quiptic and Cryptics, and the row about whether it’s a true &lit or not means I use clue as defintion, which is also clearer for new solvers (no jargon I need to explain).

    A couple of weeks ago, later than most people saw it, some newer solvers commented that they found it depressing to read comments from experienced solvers that various clues were too difficult for them, when they’d solved them fine.

    As someone who’s been solving on and off for 40 odd years, I cannot replicate the experience of those learning, so other than quibbling about loose cluing, I’m not commenting on difficulty.

17. This was tricky but did it in a couple of chunks. The double defs are a bit of a weak spot for me so this was the main struggle. 1a using an abbreviation (shortening) of a clue word in a charade was a first for the QCs (I think?) and may have thrown some. Wasn’t that bothered about POOH-POOH as I read it as twice expressed disgust but equally see that that’s more express disdain. And 3d as clue as definition plus anagram doesn’t strictly fit the rules for QC to my mind but doable.
    Thanks Shanne and Maskarade.

18. As someone who started the journey pretty much when the QCs started, I do feel that the instructions at the start need a review, e.g. that an element of a charade could be an abbreviation, or just one letter sometimes. A very enjoyable blog, thank you Shanne.

19. I’d classify myself as an improver, having been solving for around two years now (with much appreciated help from this site). I found this to be challenging, especially in the NW corner – I only had ALLURE in that area after my first pass.

    SCARAB was my LOI, and I needed the blog to understand why SC was “sculpted, in short”.

    ALLURE wa my favourite for the lovely surface.

    Thanks Maskarade and Shanne.

20. thecronester@17 – we’ve had abbreviations in charades before – DR + IVE – doctor + I have was an early Picaroon clue, but sc for sculpted was a new one on me too – which is why I looked it up.

21. I can’t see how 3 down can be a ‘clue as definition’ when an astronomer is a ‘star-starer’. Whilst he might stare at the moon, he might polish his telescope too….

22. Shanne @14 and @16. Thank you for your comments.

    I checked the discussion in QC #12. It is clear that people liked NOTABLE/NO TABLE, although it caused a bit of head scratching. ISLET/IS LET isn’t quite as fun a clue, but it seems my complaints about it are unjustified. Arguably ASTRONOMER is a bigger departure from the Special Instructions.

    Perhaps some of the Special Instructions ought to be rewritten. Including an abbreviation or piece of crosswordese in the example for Charade would help new solvers when they encounter it for the first time, and the example used for Deletion [S(p)IN] ought to be explained. But I have no idea how things like ISLET/IS LET or clue as definition can be adequately described.

23. Tim @21 – it’s also a definition by example, so the question mark at the end. Granted astronomers look at stars, planets, moons and all, but moon starer is a fun anagram for ASTRONOMER, so occasionally turns up.

24. Remus @22 – I’ll rewrite the examples I use to include abbreviations in the description of charades – and I’ll include some of these more interesting clues, probably now, so I don’t forget.

    Edited to add – done.

    I always add the explanation for S(p)IN when deletion clues are being used – if you look, my explanations explain the clues below, and I try to remember to check that they fit what is being discussed below

25. 1, 8, 16, 19a all way above my solving abilities.

    I’ll be honest and say I couldn’t figure out 1d or 2d either.

    I found this extremely difficult.

    Thank you for the explanations.

26. Shanne@20 Ah, great, thanks. I wasn’t sure.

27. I found this hard, and was only able to manage just over half of it, and a couple of the ones I managed I didn’t understand. Agree with Remus@15 about 3, how are we meant to find an &lit if we aren’t told to look for them?

    OATH meaning rude word is the only thing here that’s new for me.

    Got my nose put out of joint a bit by a comment under the puzzle from someone that apparently started doing cryptics when this quick cryptic feature was introduced six months ago, saying (paraphrasing) “I found it fairly straight-forward, but I appreciate these are for beginners and not everyone has six months’ experience and would therefore find them harder”. I’ve been knocking my head against cryptics for about 7 years!!

    Thanks Maskarade and Shanne.

28. Brilliant fun! I understood the workings of every clue today – some immediate solves, some requiring a lot more thought – and really enjoyed reading your blog Shanne as always. Thank you : )

29. I enjoyed this and completed it fairly easily. As a beginner who started with the first Quick Cryptic, I suppose I don’t examine the clues forensically in the way more experienced solvers might so any looseness passes me by. I’m just thrilled to hit on an answer and find that it’s correct.

30. Another wonderful example in this very useful series. Much fell into place on the first pass, the rest following with some hard stares and focus. I’d skipped by 1A and when I returned I could see from the crossers that it was obviously SCARAB which I associate with sculpted Egyptian antiquities, the Arab part was obvious, had taken ‘S’ from the shortly and didn’t much care to look for where the C was supposed to come from, so many thanks to Shanne for that and the rest of the fine blog and also to Maskarade for a splendid puzzle.
    Let’s hope the Q tomorrow is on a par with last Sunday.

31. Tim@21 our middlesprog is an astronomer and SHE does stare at the moon frequently.

32. In the explanation for 14 Shanne gives ‘tent’ as being or linking to ‘wine’. Could someone enlighten me please

33. JCH48 @32 – tent is Spanish red wine, which I only know as something that appears in crosswords, but it was worth adding to the list of crosswordese obscurities that setters regularly employ.

34. No one else like ASTRONOMER? I thought it was a smart clue, and gently introduces the newbies at which the QC is aimed to clues which fit in multiple categories. For me this was the first one in a while I had to ponder – as always not some humble brag (or indeed the opposite), but rather an observation of the learning curve in general. I find the curve to be rather smooth and then occasionally a QC appears which causes some head-scratching. That’s the beauty of it, I suppose!

35. Shanne @32, thanks. I’ll stick to a tinto

36. Only recently started these, a friend in the pub had tried to teach us years ago and the blog is brilliant for understanding how the answers come about. Found the last couple much easier than this week which. Bizarrely the double definition ones were a bit easier than the charades, still a bit baffled why yard means take a y!

37. I don’t understand what “here” is doing in 15. What does it add to “principal gas supply” as a double definition?

38. Tom @37 – your two definitions to make the double definition are:

    1. principal means main – as per Chambers second dictionary definition for main: the principal part;
    2. gas supply here – the mains are the pipes in which the gas (or electricity) supply are carried – the 6th definition in Chambers for main: the water, gas or electricity supply available through such a system as (5th definition): the pipework or conductor of a branching system distributing gas, water or electricity.

    The gas supply alone isn’t a main, it’s found in a main, so here.

    Does that make sense?

39. Awesome, thanks. Yup, as you suspected I’m let down by my shoddy knowledge of civil engineering.

40. I got very stuck on 1d, due to the ‘just a’, and hung up for a while with 1a sure to bring unfamiliar with the sc abbreviation, but I got there eventually on both with the crossers. Seeing that 1d is a point of some contention/difficulty for others is also encouraging.
    Astronomer also confused me a lot, as I couldn’t identify the definition, but I spotted that it was an anagram and brute forced it, even if it wasn’t the satisfying ‘click’ of understanding I’d have hoped for.
    Those aside this cryptic went far better for me than the last one, which is really encouraging.
    Thank you for providing this blog!

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