Pasquale in the driving seat for the Quiptic this week, which means a sound, carefully-constructed puzzle which should encourage newer solvers and briefly entertain older hands.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Put down in crude motel
DEMOTE
Hidden in cruDE MOTEl.
4 Male chiefs made to look silly with female about
HEADMEN
An insertion of (MADE)* in HEN. The insertion indicator is ‘with … about’ and the anagrind is ‘to look silly’.
9 Nurses eat out – wine provided
SAUTERNES
(NURSES EAT)* with ‘out’ as the anagrind.
10 Honorary Editor now with a sharp edge presumably
HONED
A charade of HON and ED.
11 A river in which to find large woman
ADELE
An insertion of L in A and DEE. The insertion indicator is ‘in which to find’. The three-letter river is usually a competition between EXE, DEE, FAL and TAY. DEE usually finishes top at the end of the season.
12 Religious lady snoops, tragic female in novel
PRIESTESS
A charade of PRIES and TESS. Hardy’s Tess is another crossword staple; Pasquale is being generous to newer solvers by including ‘in novel’ to point us in the right direction. Here are the last lines:
A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag. ‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.
13 Pleasant sounds from organisation UK left not to be trusted?
EUPHONY
A charade of EU and PHONY.
15 Go to have second drink and chat
GOSSIP
A charade of GO, S and SIP.
17 Component of brief agenda – final bit of little importance?
FAG END
Hidden in brieF AGENDa.
19 Mysteries in games being played
ENIGMAS
(IN GAMES)* with ‘being played’ as the anagrind.
22 Charlie hurried, being humiliated
CHASTENED
A charade of C and HASTENED.
24 One missing love, friend in the country
NEPAL
A charade of [O}NE and PAL.
26 Mum is chum, right?
MATER
A charade of MATE and R for what people like Jacob Rees-Mogg call their mother.
27 Word of prayer – it is full of energy in services
AMENITIES
A charade of AMEN and an insertion of E in IT IS. The insertion indicator is ‘full of’.
28 Shakespearean villain reticent, having shut up
SHYLOCK
A charade of SHY and LOCK.
29 Start wandering around area to find geological features
STRATA
An insertion of A in (START)* The insertion indicator is ‘around’ and the anagrind is ‘wandering’.
Down
1 A seed is sown, producing a social evil
DISEASE
(A SEED IS)* with ‘sown’ as the anagrind.
2 Jerry’s manually controlled device?
MOUSE
A dd. The first part is Tom’s nemesis, of course.
3 So the sports official has valuable material
THEREFORE
A charade of THE, REF and ORE.
4 This singer has absorbed such an audible sound of disapproval
HISSING
Hidden in tHIS SINGer.
5 A revolutionary fighter’s pains
ACHES
A charade of A and CHES. Señor Guevara is another crossword regular.
6 Stiltedness of two maidens – Queen Anne is keeping them apart
MANNERISM
An insertion of ANNE R IS in two Ms. The insertion indicator is ‘keeping them apart’.
7 Eccentric person receiving disrespect is one in birthday suit
NUDIST
An insertion of DIS in NUT. The insertion indicator is ‘receiving’.
8 Lively agent grabbing a bit of sleep
SNAPPY
An insertion of NAP in SPY. The insertion indicator is ‘grabbing’.
14 Polite remark with dismissal of fifty lowly workers
PEASANTRY
P[L]EASANTRY. L is the Roman numeral for ‘fifty’.
16 Unusual insect is beginning to tantalise lab worker?
SCIENTIST
A charade of (INSECT)*, IS and T for the initial letter of ‘tantalise’. The anagrind is ‘unusual’.
18 Men confused in gloomy country
DENMARK
An insertion of (MEN)* in DARK. The insertion indicator is ‘in’ and the anagrind is ‘confused’.
19 More than one twister in deed is found out
EDDIES
(DEED IS)* with ‘found out’ as the anagrind.
20 Rocky Isle is a location on old European map
SILESIA
(ISLE IS A)* with ‘rocky’ as the anagrind. SILESIA is a historical region of Central Europe.
21 Mischief-makers quietly participating in tricks
SCAMPS
An insertion of P for the musically ‘quiet’ in SCAMS.
23 Part of body doctor sometimes holds
TORSO
Another hidden clue: this time in docTOR SOmetimes.
25 Demure adult is first in Rome
PRIMA
A charade of PRIM and A. More Latin to go with MATER; but not unknown to English speakers in phrases like PRIMA FACIE, or (via Italian) in PRIMA BALLERINA or PRIMA DONNA.
Many thanks as always to Pasquale for this week’s puzzle.
Very enjoyable Quiptic.
New for me: EUPHONY.
Thanks Pierre. Pretty good run unitl I got to the NE and slowed down a bit.
I wondered if 17 FAG END was a triple def. The hidden, the final bit, and of little importance?
Lots of Pasquale this weekend and no complaints from me about that. My favourites were AMENITIES and PEASANTRY. I do question ‘stiltedness’ as a definition for MANNERISM though.
Thanks very much to Pierre and Pasquale.
Pasquale has now set the Genius, Prize and Quiptic all in the same month. If he were to also set a mid week cryptic in the coming days, I wonder if that would have been done before? 🤔
Many thanks, Pasquale. This was good fun. I missed on eddies because I thought ‘twister’ was the anagrind. Haven’t come across ‘found out’ as an anagrind before so will file that away for the future. I’m not a huge fan of a clue using a random river for a random woman’s name – especially for those of us not in the UK so not familiar with your rivers. It was gettable from the crossers but still a bit of a stretch. But this was excellent for my level so thanks again.
Thanks to Pasquale and Pierre – an enjoyable Sunday morning offering for me. Never heard of Euphony or Sauternes before but was able to parse both so that’s always a pleasing situation!
Pasquale and Picaroon my two favourite setters and while Picaroon has now departed the paper I hope we continue to get many more gems from Pasquale like this one. NE corner the last to fall with the crossers. Thank you for the blog Pierre. I should brush up on the music indicators (SCAMPS) as I still overlook them.
@ Ron The Jazz Cat on no.6:
M is used on cricket scorecards to indicate a ‘maiden over’, i.e. six consecutive bowls resulting in no runs.
A solid puzzle, with a couple of bits of GK (SAUTERNES, SILESIA) coming from anagrams that I had to make an eductaed guess at and look up. Faves were PRIESTESS and EUPHONY.
Thanks both
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks Pasquale and Pierre
There was plenty to enjoy here. SAUTERNES new to me, as was EUPHONY, but both clues worked well.
Did anyone else get a feeling of déjà vu on 19a?
nice variety of clues this week. “so” as definition is a fun choice since it’s so often a filler word to smooth out the surface, and I rarely see longer words like PLEASANTRY or HASTENED in the wordplay.
URE is the 3-letter river that I clock most often, but that might be a Puzzler cryptic quirk. certainly it has its use as a common word ending
SAUTERNES was completely new to me as I am on the benefit and drink blue nun. I knew what the wordplay was and that it was probably French, and even then no hope of getting it without cheating given how French spelling is. however, EUPHONY was gettable from my classical education. Class is a strange thing.
Great explanations with some very helpful hints that I will be squirreling away for future 🙂
After a slow start where I solved only four clues, I had a break and then it all came together nicely. Having solved the Thursday Paul cryptic, I’m wondering if I can class myself as an improver rather than a beginner! I’m beginning to recognise clue types more often now and remember that a revolutionary is likely to be Che. My confidence will probably be shattered though by about Wednesday.
Solved before the end of the day (or the day or two following) so pretty pleased with that.
Had to look up 8D in the crossword dictionary as I had got down to three unsolved clues (12A and 6D being the other two) and was completely stumped. Kicked myself as soon as I saw the answer as I had agent == spy running round my head for ages but couldn’t make that next small step to solve it. That then sorted out 12A which was much more obvious with the starting letter in place and a bit of a guess for 6D to finish off. Also managed to parse most of the clues as well without too much effort – 21D was the obvious one that I missed so I definitely need to pay more attention for use of musical terminology and 6D was definitely a bit of an effort but overall a pleasing run out today.
That was a fun Quiptic. Our revolutionary friend is a busy man in Crosswordland. EUPHONY was known to me by being forced to learn the euphonium at school. Listening to a classroom of schoolboys butcher scales on the instrument does lead one to believe that its inventor named it with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
Thank you Pasquale & Pierre
As I’ve observed before, Pasquale is ideal for this slot because his clues are always precise; his “normal” cryptics are hard mainly because he includes a lot of obscure words, so all he has to do to dial down the difficulty is to dial back the vocabulary lesson. Perfect example here.
During his career as a math professor, my father had a long-standing group of colleagues at the University of Wroclaw (known before 1945 as Breslau); I accompanied him there one summer while I was taking a gap year, so I can say that I have been to SILESIA. (We also went to Auschwitz (modern Oswiecim) while there; definitely memorable; and of course to many places outside Silesia.) It corresponds roughly to the southern half of the chunk of Germany that Poland absorbed after the war.
[PS: Wroclaw is pronounced VRATswav, but if you say it that way to a non-Pole, they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. Similarly. Warsaw (Warsawa in Polish) is varSHAva; Lodz, which has diacritical marks I don’t know how to type on three of those four letters, is pronounced Woodge.]
As usual, Pasquale produces the perfect Quiptic. Thanks to him and to Pierre.
Great Quiptic. Took a few visits as I was out and about today. Worked out many of these especially after getting on the wavelength of the unusual anagrinds but still guessing a good few via crossers and then spotting the wordplay. Favourites were MANNERISMS, SAUTERNES, and FAG END. Thanks Pasquale and Pierre.
I wasn’t on the Pasquale wavelength.
I actually found this hard. In fact it took me longer than the Prize by the same setter. Maybe I am just a bit tired at the end of the week. I see the comments don’t concur.
Great fun though. Lots of good surfaces. Liked: SCAMPS & STRATA. Some neat anagrams as well.
Thanks P&P
@mrpenney and I thought Gdansk was hard to pronounce
Wasn’t quite able to finish this. NHO SAUTERNES so had no chance with that (originally thought it was SAUVIGNON, but couldn’t make it work). Also NHO SILESIA or EUPHONY but managed to get them both from the wordplay.
I’ve seen DIS as an abbreviation for “disrespect” before but it always catches me out as I usually see it spelled DISS. Also re: 6d, I assume the R comes from “regina”?
FAG END was my favourite.
Cheers Pierre and Pasquale.
Got through by willpower. And some guessing, with lots of ‘oh, I see’ moments. I can imagine that if we had a run of Pasquale sets I’d speed up a lot by the end of a week, but with a different setter each Sunday it’s a lot trickier. All good fun, though. Thank you!
Staticman1 @24 – I’m with you! Found this tougher than the Prize, which mostly went in one sitting (albeit one clue I still can’t fathom and will have to wait for next week for enlightenment), whereas this took several efforts. Got there in the end though.
Tough puzzle this, imo. But very enjoyable and a few moments of enlightment when it clicked. But beaten by HEADMEN even with all crossers, I just couldn’t work it out.
Ta 2xP!
Re 28a, I would argue that SHYLOCK is not a Shakespearean villain. He is the principal victim in the play – victimized by the virulently antisemitic Antonio, the antisemitic Viennese society as represented by the Duke, and the hypocritical Portia, for whom the quality of mercy as a component of justice does not apply to Jews.
Rant over, and I’ll add my voice to the praise for Pasquale as the master-setter of the quiptic crossword. And thanks Pierre for the blog.
Cellomaniac @30
Mmmm – I think you mean Venetian rather than Viennese, unless there has been a modernisation I’ve missed 🙂
I take your point about Shylock, but it’s very much a modern perspective; the Elizabethans would have sided with Antonio.
btw I didn’t think much of Portia either – she cheated with the caskets for Bassanio
I agree with Cellomaniac. Using “Shakespearian villain” as a definition for Shylock, who was indeed the victim, is an example of casual antisemitism. The play has been used through the centuries to stigmatize Jews. We don’t know what Shakespeare thought, but antisemitism is a known evil. Particularly in these times of increased antisemitism, Pasquale should not have used this definition for 28 across.