Guardian Quiptic 1,305/Hectence

88 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 1,305/Hectence”

1. Just H short of a pangram.
   South-west harder than the rest.
   Thanks to Hectence and Pierre

2. ‘INHALE’ at 3d would have done it. When I see Hectence’s name I expect a pangram. Was this an oversight, or were we being teased?

3. I thought the left hand side was quite tough. I also thought there was a pangram which helped me with JARRED but it seems there’s no H!

   Ta Hectence & Pierre.

4. Balfour@2, I was thinking of HIVE, HIKE or HIRE at 2d.

5. Long time lurker, first time poster.

   Firstly, HUGE thanks to all contributors for all the effort that goes into these blogs!

   Secondly, enjoyed this one. Attempting these on and off for the last few years, being more on these days and (I think) getting better. What often stumps me is the words there for the surface – e.g., the last “in” in 5d. For that, I was thinking the outer letters indicated by “skirts” but couldn’t convince myself it should apply to Twiggy due to that “in”. I might just need another coffee.

   Thanks Pierre and Hectance

6. Yes, I’d forgotten in my haste to get the blog out that Hectence always produces a pangram in her Quiptics. Only she will know, but I imagine that the missing H is an oversight, and one of little consequence when it comes to enjoyment of the puzzle.

7. From memory, I never found any of Hectence’s “Quiptics” particularly easy. More like regular Cryptics, today included. This is not “a cryptic puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry.”

   New for me: CURLEW=wading bird (for 13d); Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C. (for 1d).

   Favourites: SUITCASE, BAMBOOZLES.

8. Welcome, Pauly @5, and thank you for de-lurking. Always good to have insights and thoughts from new contributors, especially those who are still quite new to all this. You are getting better, clearly. Savour the victory coffee.

9. I agree about bamboozle for cheat and without the crossers wouldn’t have been able to construct it but it was satisfying when I did.
   I also came for the parsing of QUANTITY. It took me an age to think of Mary Quant and I couldn’t figure out where the TY came from. Also once again, is a quantity a size?
   Still, these are just quibbles. Great crossword and reasonably Quiptic.

10. Really enjoyed this one, feared it would be hard from the comments on the crossword itself but was delighted to “get it out” even before this blog appeared. My faves were radiance, and bamboozled. Knowing about the usual pangram helped a lot with my LOI Quantity! Have picked that up (and where there’s an u look for a q) from all these helpful blogs. Many thanks to setter and blogger, due to this site am now a lot better at these than I was when I first began a couple of years ago!

11. Michelle @7, I disagree with you. This is a puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry. I have solved every single one of the 1,305 Quiptics and blogged every other one for the past fourteen years, and I can tell you that Hectence has been producing Quiptics since December 1999, so will be celebrating her 25th anniversary in a couple of weeks. All her puzzles in this slot are carefully compiled to fall squarely into the ‘easy-end cryptic’ category. That doesn’t mean that all target-audience solvers, all the time, are going to be able to complete them. That’s the point.

    The majority of your recent contributions on the Everyman and Quiptic blogs seem to contain only a list of the clues that were new to you, together with ‘not a Quiptic’ or ‘not for beginners’ comments. That’s your opinion, of course, but if you want to contribute a bit more explaining why you think that, or where the difficulty level lies, those comments would be welcome too, particularly for newer contributors or the many lurkers who are out there.

12. Thanks Hectence and Pierre
    BRIEFCASE would have been a better answer for 14a, as a lawyer is more often a “brief” than a “suit”. Pity it didn’t fit!

13. Michelle @7, you have my agreement. I thought this was an excellent cryptic which wouldn’t be out of place in one of the midweek slots.

14. So which of the clues, scraggs, did you think were unsuitable for a puzzle marketed as for beginners and those in a hurry?

15. Why is even=gradual? Intuitively it seemed right when I bunged it in from the wordplay but post solve I would have them as opposites and a quick search online says an antonym of gradual is uneven.

16. michelle@7 I agree with you that this wasn’t a puzzle for beginners. I solved it but wondered whether a beginner would know about a printer’s EN or the use of waste to indicate an anagram, and how does business become custom?
    Pauly@5 I love your comments.
    Pierre@11 where would we be without Fifteensquared and all the talented setters, bloggers and contributors. Thanks to all of you. You never cease to amaze me.

17. Re 14 across, I took suit to mean ‘legal case’, so a suitcase is a bag that a lawyer might carry containing the paperwork for one

18. Pierre @14

    BAMBOOZLES, QUANTITY immediately come to mind, as does GRADUAL. I’ve no problem with the clueing (though with an eyebrow raised for even=gradual), I just find them more cryptic. But I’m reporting my subjective experience: I found this took me longer than quiptics tend to do, and roughly half of the grid remained blank without me finding my way into it, for a good while.

    There are also many times when my experience can be very different to that of others, but I come here to say how I find it, and see what it’s been like for others.

19. Where does COL come from in 24d?

20. This wasn’t fun. Didn’t even understand half the clues after I got them.

21. I thought that was a delightful Quiptic. Only COL = pass was new for me. I have sometimes struggled with Hectence’s surfaces in the past, but everything was fairly clued without any advanced techniques.

    Possibly the use of EN for space and Mary QUANT as the designer were a bit more crypticky, but definitely a good workout for the improving solver.

    Thanks H&P.

22. Thank you @Oakville reader, for adding to the discussion about ‘not for beginners’. Would a complete beginner know about EN = space? Maybe not. That’s why I made a point of adding that explanation to the blog – so that next time, they might. ‘Waste’ as an anagram indicator? Welcome to cryptics – anagrinds come in all shapes and sizes and you have to learn to spot them. Business for custom? ‘Thank you for your business/custom, sir.’ If you’re interested in learning to do cryptics, then you’re hopefully going to be well-read enough to know those two as synonyms.

    How do you get from being a complete beginner to a reasonable level of competence? And enjoyment, of course – crosswords are not exams. By doing them, ideally with someone sitting next to you helping and encouraging you. If you don’t have that luxury, choose to start with the Quick Cryptic or the Quiptic, and Fifteensquared is here to help. But understand that you’re going to have to attempt a good number of Quiptics before you are going to reach the endorphin rush of finishing your first one unaided; that doesn’t mean that puzzles like this, and most (but not all) of the other puzzles in this slot, are ‘not suitable for beginners’.

23. I thought at first that I would get nowhere with this but I figured out about half in the end. I thought immediately of Mary Quant for 5d and my limited football knowledge produced WANDERERS for 1d. I too thought ‘briefcase’, muffin@12, for 14a until I realised it didn’t fit. Surely the word ‘suit’ is used derogatively to describe a manager or a bureaucrat rather than a lawyer. I’m stuggling with some of the ‘insertion’ clues. In 12a, where do the B and the E come from? Is it ‘live’ = ‘be’? I don’t get 15a or 24a either. The charade in 24d is mystifying too. I tried to put in ‘loaf’ for ‘pass time’ as an anagram of foal! Ingenious, I thought, though there was no anagrind.

24. Morning, Amma. Yes, 12d has ‘be’ and ‘live’ as equivalent. 15ac is how I explained it in the blog – the ‘reduced’ is telling you to shorten GRADE to GRAD. 24ac is an insertion of RU for Rugby Union in C for College and X for the ‘vote’ that you put on your ballot paper. I will fess up to 24dn being my last one in, but with the two crossing letters it had to be COLT; then I worked out the parsing after that. Well done for figuring out half of it – all part of the fun.

25. Amma@23, this is one of my rare “Awakenings” moments of being active here, so in answer to your questions: “suit” is used in the terms you suggest, but a “suit” as in a lawsuit is something that might be in a lawyer’s case. Hence SUITCASE. BE = live yes – as in “to be / to live or exist”.

    I initially thought of FOAL for young horse too, but the T for time was the giveaway. I hadn’t heard of a COL, but the crossers helped.

26. Amma @23

    Yes, be comes from live (as in being alive). 24a C for college and X is the vote mark.

    I also don’t get COL for “pass” in 24d, but guessed it would be COLT.

    14a “suit” as in “law suit”.

27. Pierre, for SUITCASE, I was thinking more along the lines of lawsuit but both seem to work OK. I see we crossed AR @26 and COL is a mountain pass. There was a reasonably watchable American series about a cutthroat law firm called ‘Suits’.

28. Pierre@24 – I understand the GRADE/GRAD thing and I see that the L comes from the first letter of ‘Linguistics’. What tells me to take the first letter of ‘university’ and the ‘a’ from the clue which I assume I must to complete the word?

29. Thinking: it’s Hectence there’s a pangram helped with JARRED and QUANTITY and I didn’t notice the missing H.

    I find I take longer solving Hectence than I do Pasquale or Picaroon in the Quiptic slot, but assume it’s a wavelength thing, some setters I get into their mindset faster than others.

    There wasn’t any vocabulary I didn’t know – I even knew a col from geography not just crosswords. But I do know that we haven’t covered EM/EN in the Quick.Cryptics yet. And insertion clues have only appeared 7 times out of the 34, compared with 30 crosswords featuring anagrams. (I can feel ens and ems having handled them building printing forms).

    Thank you Pierre and Hectence.

30. Amma @28 U for university is a recognised abbreviation.

31. Hello again, Amma. U for ‘University’ is an accepted abbreviation; then you have A simply from the ‘a’ in the clue; and L is the first letter of ‘Linguistics’. Does that help?

32. It seems my question @15 has been overlooked, so can anyone explain why EVEN = GRADUAL?

33. @32 Ron the jazz cat

    There is an Australian site, Lovatts Puzzles, where the daily cryptic is more at quick cryptic level. It’s a full size grid with nice letter reveal. They even have a game for cryptic clues.

    The clues seem “British” e.g. ER or ANNE for queen.

34. HG@34, I have seen GRADUAL used as a synonym for EVENLY. If something happens gradually, then it can be said to be happening step by step or in an even manner.

    EDIT: The thesaurus.com website, while not Chambers, gives it as part of the definition: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/gradual

35. Thanks all for the explanations.

36. HG@34
    Further to what Lechien@36 said…
    Can we say that an even slope is a gradual slope?

37. [KVa @38
    There’s a perfect example in the road over Hartside in the Pennines (above Alston). This was engineered by Thomas Telford, and involved a long stretch (5 miles?) of absolutely constant gradient for the benefit of dray horses.]

38. @36, 38 – thanks for both

39. KVa @38

    The slope of a steep hill or cliff face could well be even (constant-ish gradient, and flat) but not gradual.

40. Can I object to the clue for UNFAIR? In the cryptic grammar of “Aunt losing housing, just not right (6)”, “just” means FAIR in exactly the same sense as “right” does in the definition. In other words, it’s not all that cryptic. True, it makes a nice surface reading, and this is a Quiptic, so not-very-cryptic does fit the bill. But still…didn’t like that one much.

    The (failed) pangram helped me with BAMBOOZLED. That’s interesting because I normally don’t think to look for a pangram at all, and here it turns out the one time I did, it wasn’t one. I suspect that most setters do a pangram by making sure they have J, K, Q, V, W, X, and Z, and assume the common letters will have taken care of themselves by that point, so a missing H might come as a surprise.

    Amma et al.: U for University is in very common use here in the US, usually in casual references to various institutions. Nearby to here: the U of C is the University of Chicago, NU is Northwestern, UIC is the University of Illinois at Chicago, etc.

41. Apologies for a potentially stupid question…

    5d – how do you know to take the outside letters TY from TWIGGY?

42. I also found this difficult – more difficult than this week’s prize in fact. It may just be that I am not familiar with the setter, but I feel it is slightly more than that. Like Shanne @29 I suspect the setter and I are on different wavelengths. I also found the clues overly wordy, which adds a degree of difficulty for me.

    My favourites were COALMINERS, BARRICADE.

    Thanks Hectence and Pierre

43. MrP @42
    I actually entered UNJUST at first @9, and huffed and puffed about it!

44. Steffen, it’s the “skirts in Twiggy”. One of the definitions of “skirts” is “outlying parts.”

45. Steffen@43 – I don’t think it’s a stupid question; I couldn’t see it either. Thanks, mrpenny – I suppose it’s ‘skirts’ as in ‘outskirts’.

46. hi Pierre@11
    Sorry but I think you are asking me for deeper analysis of individual clues than I can give you today. Btw I sometimes also write a comment along the lines of “Excellent Quiptic, perfect for beginners” without going into a deeper breakdown of the clues. I apologise that my comments tend to be very brief! My notes about words that are new to me are perhaps more to let the setters know which words are less familiar to a person like me. I will stop noting them in future as it is probably unnecessary and unwanted information.

    I guess that in general my impression of a “puzzle that is for beginners and those in a hurry” is one in which I can solve half or more of the clues on my first pass, not just 5 or 6 of them as is sometimes the case. Now that we have the Quick Cryptic slot, I imagine that the Quiptic difficulty level could be like that but on a larger/regular-sized 15×15 grid. For some time now, I have worried that the Guardian Quiptic has more an effect of turning OFF beginners rather than encouraging more new people to try cryptics. Tbh I don’t think that the Quiptic slot with its current description is very useful as the difficulty level is inconsistent. Just call it a Cryptic and that would make life easier all round for everyone!

47. Michelle, if you’re still there: I for one do like your lists of “new to me” items, in part because they often match my own. The solvers of these puzzles, spread out as they are across a dozen countries and at least four continents*, have widely divergent cultures and dialects. That’s something worth emphasizing and learning from, not the reverse!

    *[Apologies if I’ve missed them, but I’ve seen (unsurprisingly) no South American and (more surprisingly) no African regulars here.]

48. Agree with mrp@49. I too like Michelle’s lists

    I agree with Michelle@48’s comments on the variability in difficulty of these puzzles. Last week was close to a write-in for me, whereas I struggled this week.

49. Ty @46

50. I’m another who enjoys Michelle’s lists: simple, direct, pithy and brief.
    I also agree with her observation that the difficulty of quiptics varies from week to week.
    Of course, I appreciate it may well be extremely tricky for a setter to assess how easy others will find a crossword – but surely that’s part of the editor’s job.

51. Thanks to Pierre and Hectence for this week’s quiptic. I thoroughly enjoyed this undertaking and found myself quite happy with the puzzle. Whether it feels like a quiptic or more of a mid-week cryptic is a subjective discussion point but to throw my own thoughts out there I found it to be a slightly tricky quiptic, but a quiptic nonetheless.

    For me I struggled with a couple of the longer clues/answers, although once it fell into place I did enjoy Bamboozles (though I do have a gripe about how many different accepted abbreviations/instructions come from the word doctor). I didn’t know the en = space trick, but I shall try and file it away for the next time, and having no idea who Mary Quant was it was only through my assumption of a pangram that I managed to get Quantity. It is good to know I am not the only solver who completely missed the lack of Hs.

    I think in the past it has been discussed that asking solvers to remove letters to find the final answer, as in Maintain, can be seen as a difficult clue type for beginners. In this instance I needed the crossers to find the answer before I could parse it. With that being said I did know what was going on and Hectence has clearly indicated what needs to be done. Whether that would have been the case when I started quiptics a few months back, I cannot say.

    My favourites were Suitcase, Kiosks, and Cyanide all of which I thought were well clued and fun answers

52. I agree with Michelle that this was a lot tougher than what I expect in a Quiptic. Pierre@22 – your point about needing some tougher clues to help graduate ‘up the chain’ is well taken. But the overall volume of crosswordese here seemed heavy.

    Eg
    Waste is an obscure anagrind
    CRUX was tough – RU and X are all valid, but you’re adding a lot of these together
    QUANT as designer (I revealed this clue and still found it very hard to parse after the reveal)
    RA as artist – for experienced solvers, obvious, but not intuitive to beginners.
    Also a large number of clues having to find the internal letters of words, with varying degrees of simplicity in finding the clue. (Aunt, travel, policed, clue, ewes)
    Some definitions were a little obscure, too – even for gradual is tough, and the charade is complicated – four stages and a deletion.

    Overall, my sense was that the surfaces were more important to the setter than the level of difficulty of the clue. Very nice surfaces, for sure! Some real skill in the wordplay there. But it meant that it was much more challenging than most Quiptics to find a new entry point if one area caused me to get bogged down.

    I’ve only been at this for a couple of months, but I now find the Quick Cryptics very approachable, and enjoy trying to get into the Quiptics and Everyman, normally finding it takes a bit of time to get into the right mindset and then I build up a head of steam. This one was much more stop-start – it felt just like the challenges I have in a regular Cryptic, where I can pick out the odd clue but there’s too many moving parts in the rest of the clues.

53. Thank you Pierre for the blog.

    I agree with others who found this more difficult than I’d have liked in a Quiptic, it required lots of deep thought and looking up words. Ones I found tough:

    GRADUAL (tricky definition, even though the UAL part came easily)
    MAINTAIN (a lot going on and even tougher when I didn’t have the final letter as a crosser)
    BAMBOOZLES (even more going on, although it was very satisfying to finally get it)
    PINE (loi – took a while to realise the definition, and there were two separate indications the answer might contain an L)
    QUANTITY (didn’t know Quant)
    I couldn’t pass OFF-LICENCE although I quickly wrote it in
    ENCLOSE (didn’t know EN and considered putting in the more archaic INCLOSE as a result)
    COLT (didn’t know COL)

    That said, I had a completed grid after about 2 hours without using the check button once. After a scan I realised I didn’t like INSANE which I had written in for 3D but I couldn’t think of anything else, so gave it a check. In the end I sussed the right answer. I also notice the lack of H!

    So I’d call it quite chewy for a Quiptic, but not unsolvable.

54. I’m really surprised how many posters didn’t know COL. It’s a common term in mountain walking, and also the Tour de France (Col de Tourmalet?).

55. Mr mcpenney, I am an African ‘regular’ here, though I rarely comment. Today is solved five, ie, quiptic, independent cryptic ,ft , everyman and the DT.

56. MrP @49, I remember when we had Bogdan from Botswana as a regular, and often the first, commenter, but haven’t seen his name for a long time. Glad to see we now have another solver from that continent. Re the other continent, as you say, it is not surprising. Wish I’d been into Cryptics when we lived in Caracas but that was late 60s so a long time ago, and dealing with a young family so little time for anything like crosswords.

57. Thanks for posting, Ong’ara @57 — it’s nice to feel part of an international community.

    I also hadn’t heard of COL, but managed to finish the grid fully despite that.

    In fact, I found myself a bit surprised by people saying it was a harder one than usual. That’s not a brag — gods know I’ve struggled through my fair share of these. It feels like nice validation though — must be getting better!

    Thanks S&B

58. I’m amazed at the number of people who have bothered of Mary Ouant. Miniskirts and tights have never gone away. Having Twiggy in the clue as well was just lovely.

59. Hello Pierre. I appreciate your sentiments about building up the beginners knowledge of cryptics, but I think this one overstepped the mark. Lovely puzzle – I did in about the same time as an easy weekday. As a beginner I would have walked away or hit reveal all and not got much insight from the answers.
    The grid did not help with 15 out of 25 not having an initial letter. Here is my list of crosswordese in this quiptic that we take for granted. Some are probably obvious but perhaps too many at one time for a beginner to cope with…?
    Ra artist.
    ID setter.
    Be live.
    U university.
    RU sport.
    X vote.
    C college.
    CE church.
    O old.
    On working.
    DIS detectives.
    EN space.
    Tar sailor.
    M money.
    Col pass.
    T time.

    I also dont know why essentially policed is lic and not I or olice.
    and as well why Twiggy’s skirts are TY not TS.
    ps probably more people alive today know Twiggy as Marylin Mansons guitarist and not the model.

60. Crackers @62 – I know that the beginners who’ve come in from.the Quick Cryptics have met at least half that list, I’d have to check my spreadsheet to know exactly how many. There’s a blog post listing out all the abbreviations and General Knowledge covered in the first 6 months linked to all the current Quick Cryptic blogs, which all beginners have access to.

    Essentially policed, as per the blog, is the middle 3 letters poLICed, and it could be LIC or I.

    Twiggy still appears in M&S adverts in the UK.

61. As a semi-novice, I found this accessible, especially when I realised it should be a pangram (eg for the designer once I had the second letter). I also overlooked the missing H. I would only quibble as a learner about 24a, this is for me really left-field. I worked the solution out from the crossers and the pangram requirement, but could not parse it. When the setter writes “sports”, is RU the only abbreviation possible? If not, what else could “sports” stand for?

62. I thought this was a very nice puzzle, although a couple of clues combined with this particular grid (the lack of starting letters really does make a diffference!) made this a bit trickier than most recent quiptics in my view. The surfaces were really nice though, especially for CREASE I thought.

    I was most displeased to see those dreaded Wolves at the top of the clue list – but it did mean I got it straight away. Point of order for the blog: Wolverhampton isn’t the Black Country and no matter how many maps, charts and vague definitions you pull out to try and tell me otherwise I will not accept it 🙂 even if you must include it, a reference to the superior area south of Wolverhampton should be a legal requirement!

    Thanks both!

63. Sorry about the missing ‘h’ – there was a last minute word change!

64. I enjoyed completing this in the time available for a morning coffee, though didn’t notice the ‘almost pangram’. Maybe I’m just getting better at cryptic crosswords, but I found the level just right – a Goldilocks puzzle!

65. I enjoyed completing this in the time available for a morning coffee, though didn’t notice the ‘almost pangram’. Maybe I’m just getting better at cryptic crosswords, but I found the level just right – a Goldilocks puzzle!
    Thanks Hectence & Pierre.

66. Thank you, Hectence @66. We can all sleep soundly tonight now.

67. Thanks Hectence@66! You’ve left me wondering which word/clue was changed, and why, though! Not that it matters; the mere belief that it would be a pangram was enough to help me place the Z and Q 😉

68. Took me a few visits to complete and came here to understand some of the parsing I didn’t quite get, like I didn’t quite suss I’d in IDLE and was wondering where the D came from, but now it’s obvious :-). And how MAINTAIN worked as I didn’t really see ‘head’ as ‘main’. I did feel this was a high end Quiptic with lots of interesting charade combinations (anagrams and letter removals for instance) but enjoyable. BAMBOOZLES , AVATAR, QUANTITY, CYANIDE, COLT were my favourites.
    Thanks Hectence for the challenge and Pierre for explanations.

69. I agree with Pierre, this is an easier-end cryptic rather than a quiptic.

70. I started reading this write-up, only to realise I hadn’t actually finished it when CYANIDE was new to me (I’d figured that I could get a toxic word from one of the two possible anagrams but hadn’t got 5 or 18 to help me figure out which one).

    I found this more difficult than usual – normally I can finish it the same day, but perhaps I was too eager to test myself on the Everyman.

    QUANTITY and CRUX defeated me, although I feel a visit to a thesaurus (that I freely allow myself to use) would have given me CRUX with more patience.

71. Can someone explain RA?

72. Thank you Hectence (ah, there’s the missing H) for the shout out at 4d.

    Re 5d QUANTITY, Twiggy is one of those ‘60s icons whose fame has outlasted her era, and Mary Quant was closely associated with her.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this challenging, educational and satisfying Quiptic. The surfaces were excellent.

    If it were as easy as a Quick Cryptic there would be less learning to be had. A little stretching is needed in order to get better.

    Thanks H & P for the saucy fun.

73. Dylan N.@74 RA is from the Royal Academy (of Art). I don’t know the exact terms of qualification, it may be that one’s entry into the annual exhibition qualifies, but after which you are allowed to put RA after your name, whether signing your painitings or in general correspondence. I’m sure Wikipedia will clarify most of my nonesense!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Academy_of_Arts

    Hopefully this will help.

74. Great start to the week. Couple of clues that I couldn’t quite parse and needed a little more general knowledge than I have. Thanks Hectence & Pierre. Live Solve: https://youtu.be/RL78-uI0pQk

75. I’m throwing my vote in with the “not at Quiptic level” camp. I’ve been learning how to do cryptics for a few months now and have been working my way through past Quiptics and having a go at the daily puzzles. I can generally complete (or nearly complete) Quiptics and Monday puzzles.

    I ended up DNF in this one because I was plain not finding it fun. Totally new to me were COL, RA and EN. I know nothing of football so Wolves escaped me. I’m perhaps too young to be acquainted with Mary Quant for “designer” (though I have heard of Twiggy!) I’m also not sure how GRADUAL = EVEN.

    @Pierre I have to admit I find your insistence that beginners saying this wasn’t a good beginner puzzle are wrong a little on the forceful side. IMO a beginner-friendly puzzle should be challenging but largely solvable, with more obscure tricks being supported with crossers or easier-to-spot definitions. It seems I’m not alone in thinking this week was lacking that newbie-friendly support.

    Thanks to Hectence and Pierre

76. For 18d, I would take “under cover” as the definition

77. I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, good to see Hectence again, but I do agree that it was harder than usual for a Quiptic–not to say that it was bad, as some Quiptics will inevitably be harder than others, but that I do sympathize with some making the observations. In particular “skirts in Twiggy” for TY seemed tricky (also don’t recognize Quant but I expect she’s more well known in the UK) and some clues like CREASE and CRUX have a lot of moving parts.

    As a couple of others said, I used the pangram to help get BAMBOOZLED and QUANTITY only to come here and find it wasn’t a pangram! Bamboozles for cheats didn’t seem odd to me because of the “hoodwinked! bamboozled!” speech that Spike Lee gives to Malcolm X in the movie.

    Thanks Hectence and Pierre!

78. To chime in on the difficulty debate: as an intermediate solver (usually finish the quiptic/everyman/Monday and occasionally the prize) I found this moderately challenging but I did finish it. As others mentioned there were quite a lot of crosswordese abbreviations which I think deter newcomers (“how on earth could I have known that?”). And frankly I think it leads to repetitive and dare I say lazy clueing. However as difficulty goes this was, imo, appropriate to the Quiptic (though at the higher end of that spectrum)

79. I’ve been trying this one for two days and after only managing about half of it I gave up and started revealing.

    I had to Google curlew and col to get those clues. NHO the designer nor EN so I had no chance with those. I’d never have thought of GRADUAL as being a synonym for even, and I agree with the blogger about bamboozle meaning confuse rather than cheat to me, but both definitions are in Chambers so it’s fair enough.

    I have no opinion on whether it constitutes a quiptic or not but I did find it hard.

    Thanks Pierre and Hectence.

80. A fun challenge but defeated by RADIANCE and QUANTITY. I was close with the former, realizing that movement could be dance and artist could be RA, but for some reason just didn’t put two and two together. Can you really say quantity fulfills the definition of size? QUANTITY did not occur to me. Still fun though. Have never heard of Mary Quant. Not a fan of the famous people trivia based clues, but that’s just me. I was quite pleased with how I parsed some of the answers. Definitely getting the hang of these Quiptics thanks mainly to this blog. Thanks for the detailed and clear explanations as always Piere. Thanks for the challenge and for teaching me another fashion icon, Hectence.

81. I found this one very hard for a Quiptic. The number of acronyms involved in the clues was quite large, and some of them pretty obscure; they’ve been listed already above so I won’t repeat them all.

    I have to say, and this drove me to write this comment in the first place, that I really do hope that Pierre reflects on their previous comments and notices how utterly unwelcoming they are. Michelle, amongst others, took the time to contribute to this discussion and was admonished for doing so, quite unfairly. Any positive contribution is a good thing for this community.

    “If you’re interested in learning to do cryptics, then you’re hopefully going to be well-read enough to know those two as synonyms” – I also hope that he reflects on any further thoughts along this line of thinking, which is at best dismissive to anyone who didn’t already have this particular piece of knowledge, and at worst rather classist. As they very rightly described somewhere else, “crosswords are not exams” and everyone, regardless of their starting point should feel welcomed to do them. Everyone who visits here is eager to learn the ways of solving cryptics and we would all do well to encourage that at every opportunity.

82. Is this your first comment on Fifteensquared, neverstew? If so, welcome.

    Utterly unwelcoming? I don’t think so. Disagreeing with someone is not admonishing them. Dismissive or classist? Not at all. If you want to enjoy solving cryptic crosswords then you are going to have to have a reasonably wide passive vocabulary which comes in part from being widely-read. If that’s not your bag, then other hobbies are available.

    There has been an interesting and enlightening discussion on this thread about whether this Quiptic met the objective of being a puzzle for newer solvers, with some finding it too tricky and others in the slot. So I’d say that suggests that it’s about right; but we will of course continue to welcome contributions about the Quiptic in future blogs, which will be helpful, I’d say, for those ‘eager to learn’.

    And, if I may, a couple of things for you to ‘reflect on’: you forgot to thank me for the blog, which could in some circles be considered impolite; and I am a ‘he’ and not a ‘they’.

83. I’m with the more cryptic than quiptic brigade on this one for the reasons many have already touched on and the fact that it took me twice as long as my average solving time. It was a fine puzzle, no doubt about that, but chewy and rather too many unusual or unfamiliar devices, hence why I felt it was a midweek cryptic strength.

    For those of you who’d like to see a brilliant cryptic, look at the Wednesday offer from Arachne. A joy to behold, perfectly crafted, wonderful surfaces and clear definitions which help you unravel the wordplay. Study each in turn and take your time. Spoiler alert, the SW corner proved most difficult to me and others. You might not get them all, but those you do will be very satisfying, honestly.

    Meanwhile, thanks to Hectence for a stiff but nevertheless enjoyable puzzle and to Pierre for the very informative blog and also for keeping up the narrative in the comments.

84. Pierre, you’re right – I didn’t thank you for your blog and I know that’s a custom here that I would like to uphold. Sincerely, thank you! I don’t know where I’d be without the superb efforts that go into each solution here. I’ll be sure to remember your pronouns from now on as well.

    I fear that you didn’t spend much time reflecting though… I’m all for disagreeing agreeably, but there is something to be said for spending some time empathising with another’s point of view before stating your own, especially in such absolute terms as your writing style is fond of.

    Perhaps, for example, that people who aren’t as well read as you are enjoy cryptic crosswords precisely because they uncover new words. Perhaps it’s not, as you suggested, a pre-requisite for enjoying the puzzles but rather something that evolves over time alongside your solving expertise. We all come at this from a different start, and all are equally valid.

85. Dylan N @ 72. RA = Royal Academician

86. Hectence, there was no H missing: it was right at the top- “set by Hectence”. Thank you for the Quiptic.

87. Got stuck thinking 5d ended in “ino” but I couldn’t make “Valentino” work. “in” as a literal and one thing I remember about (the delightful) Twiggy was she was a size 0!

88. I’m close to a beginner, and I managed a lot of this one. The shortest words often give me the most problems, particularly when the clue is very long!
    I was never going to get CRUX. I just couldn’t see anything in it. I had the C and the U, and thought there should be an X somewhere, so perhaps I should have worked it out from “essential principle”. But I could not see how to fit “sport” and “vote” into the answer. I’m from somewhere (Australia) where “X” would be an invalid vote, so didn’t even think of that. And Rugby of either variety is not played in my state, so again, just didn’t think of it. Kicking myself now of course!

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