Quick Cryptic 51 by Maskarade

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This week’s 11 x 11 crossword from the Guardian, intended to teach cryptic crosswords, found here

Maskarade has set a few of these Quick Cryptic crosswords. Today we have anagrams and hidden words with all the letters present in the clue, plus charades and a clue we have met a couple of times before, but not since week 25, cryptic clues, which do not usually have any word play. Last time I blogged these, I’m sure I said I don’t always find cryptic clues easy as you either get them or you don’t, and if you don’t they can be very challenging.

The whole point of these crosswords is support and encouragement of new solvers, so special rules for these crosswords apply – see here – those rules include not posting solving times.

This blog continues to develop in response to suggestions. We hide the answers and the wordplay descriptions (parsing) too.   To find the solution click on “Answer” and to find how the word play works, click on “Parsing” which will reveal the hidden information. You can choose to reveal everything using the “Expand All” button. If you have partially revealed the page, refreshing it will clear that, and allow you to expand all. The definition is in bold and underlined, the indicator is in red.

For additional help click here

There is a summary of the tricks used in the first six months here and a Guardian Crossword blog called the ultimate beginner’s guide has tips which may be useful for some solvers

For abbreviations and clue tips click here

Fifteen Squared uses several abbreviations and jargon tricks, there’s a full list here, of which I’ve used the following in this blog:

  • underlining the definition in the clue – this is either at the beginning or end of the clue
  • indicators are in red.
  • CAPITALS to indicate which bits are part of the answer, e.g. (SENATOR)* for the anagram, haVE ALtered meat for the hidden clue
  • Anagrams – letters used are shown in brackets with an asterisk – so (SENATOR)* becomes TREASON
  • Anagram indicator / anagrind – in this case it’s “arranged”.
  • charades – the description below only gives the example of words being added together, but charades can be more complicated, adding abbreviations or single letters to another word.  Examples previously used in this series are: Son ridicules loose overgarments (6) S (son) + MOCKS (ridicules), Get rid of dead pine (5) D(dead) + ITCH (pine) – D ITCH, and early on DR (doctor) + IVE (I have) to give DRIVE.
  • CAD or clue as definition– where the whole clue gives the definition, sometimes called an &lit. These are rare.
  • DBE or defintion by example – e.g. where a dog might be clued as a setter – often using a question mark, maybe, possibly or e.g. to show that this is an example rather than a definition.
  • surface – the meaning from reading the clue – so often cryptic clues use an English that could only be found in a cryptic crossword, but a smooth surface is a clue that has a meaning in English, which can be pointed or misleading.

TODAY’S TRICKS – from the crossword site – which can be found at here – because the clues have moved on from the clue descriptions below, I am now adding more to the descriptions hidden above.

Clues begin or end with a definition of the answer. The rest is one of these:

  1. Anagram An anagram of the answer and a hint that there’s an anagram
    ‘Senator arranged crime (7)’ gives TREASON
  2. Hidden word Answer hidden in clue’s words
    ‘Some have altered meat (4)’ gives VEAL
  3. Charade A combination of synonyms
    ‘Qualify to get drink for ID (8)’ gives PASSPORT (pass + port)
  4. Cryptic definition Whole clue is playful definition
    ‘Pair of braces (4)’ gives FOUR (a brace is two in sport, so 2 x 2 = 4)

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ACROSS Click on “Answer” to see the solutions
1
Snowdrop (9)
Answer

AVALANCHE
Parsing

cryptic clue – an avalanche is a drop of snow – misleading because the literal meaning of a snowdrop suggests the white flower.
8
Salerno rebuilt as Joan of Arc’s home city (7)
Answer

ORLEANS
Parsing

anagram of (SALERNO)* with anagrind of “rebuilt”

9
Letter written during last August (3)
Answer

TAU
Parsing

hidden (written during) lasT AUgust for the Greek letter

10
Little tabby, say, from Kent – it wanders (6)
Answer

KITTEN
Parsing

anagram of (KENT IT)* with anagrind of “wanders” with a “say” to indicate a definition by example, as a tabby is an example of a cat.
12
Tea-time talk (4)
Answer

CHAT
Parsing

charade of CHA (tea) + T (time) – using two classic cryptic abbreviations – cha for tea is still sometimes heard, and t for time comes from physics equations.

13
Juice obtained from luscious apples (3)
Answer

SAP
Parsing

hidden in (obtained from) lusciouS APples
15
RAC’s new vehicles (4)
Answer

CARS
Parsing

anagram of (RAC’S)* with anagrind of “new”
17
Outdo (6)
Answer

PICNIC
Parsing

cryptic definition a do (party) that is out (outside) could be a picnic – nope? took me ages too.
20
Some newsvendor’s conclusion (3)
Answer

END
Parsing

hidden (some) in newsvENDor
21
Die of cold (3,4)
Answer

ICE CUBE
Parsing

cryptic definition – the CUBE comes from die or dice, which, unless you play RPGs, tend to be cubes and the ICE comes from the cold. An ICE CUBE is a very cold dice/die whimsically a die of cold.
 
The side commment about RPGs (role playing games, say Dungeons and Dragons) is that dice come in all sorts of polyhedra and the cube is a 6 dice, as opposed to a 4, 10, 20 and etc.
22
Exhaustion of unruly dissenter (9)
Answer

TIREDNESS
Parsing

anagram of (DISSENTER)* with anagrind of “unruly”
DOWN
2 Attendant bidding farewell to model? (5)
Answer

VALET
Parsing

charade of VALE (bidding farewell to) + T (model) – “Vale” is the Latin for farewell, the sort of thing I’d half expect Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg to say and T comes from the Model T Ford and is one of those crosswordland bits that have to be learned.
3
Rents out easels (6)
Answer

LEASES
Parsing

anagram of (EASELS)* with anagrind of “out”
4
Home in suburban estate (4)
Answer

NEST
Parsing

hidden (in) suburbaN ESTate
5
Trouble bringing success to church (5)
Answer

HITCH
Parsing

charade of HIT (success) + CH (church – as found on maps). “Bringing” seems to be a fancy way of saying “connect these two parts” as a way of linking the clue together, but some of the purists would frown on that.
6
Bottle opener for Irish county’s eight (9)
Answer

CORKSCREW
Parsing

charade of CORK’s (Irish county’s) + CREW (eight) – and here you have to use the “‘s” from the clue to get all the letters in the solution.
7
Bill of fare (3,6)
Answer

BUS TICKET
Parsing

cryptic definition technically a TICKET could be a bill, something in writing to show that the fare has been purchased, but it would equally apply to a TRAIN TICKET. The BUS only comes from the crossers and enumeration.

11
Forty winks in Annapolis (3)
Answer

NAP
Parsing

hidden (in) AnNAPolis – and more about the phrase forty winks meaning a short nap can be found here
14
Homing bird from Iron Age (6)
Answer

PIGEON
Parsing

charade of PIG (iron – a way of casting iron – more here) + EON (age).
 
EON is one of the very useful measures of time in crosswords along with AGE and ERA.

16
More than one spoke (5)
Answer

RADII
Parsing

cryptic definition a spoke of a bicycle wheel, for example, goes from the wheel hub (centre) to the rim, so is a RADIUS – more than one are RADII

18
Number one in France’s part of speech (5)
Answer

NOUNS
Parsing

charade of NO (abbreviation for number, often seen written No.) + UN (one in France) + S (from France’s) – and I am quibbling about the equivalence of part of speech and nouns – I think it should be partS of speech to match nounS, a part of speech is a noun (or verb and etc). The inclusion of the apostrophe S for the second time is a little interesting too.
19
Do not disclose somewhat foolish idea (4)
Answer

HIDE
Parsing

hidden in (somewhat) foolisH IDEa.

 

 

38 comments on “Quick Cryptic 51 by Maskarade”

  1. I enjoyed this puzzle from Maskarade and the the introduction of the Cryptic Defs making for pun fun although I know they can be impossible if you can’t get on the wavelength.

    My talkthrough solve of the puzzle available at https://youtu.be/XiyHpHpqwGE giving tips and tactics on how to approach it.

  2. Thank you for the blog.

    I failed with all the cryptic definitions. I have never heard of VALE, and if it the kind of word that BJ or JRM would use them I don’t ever want to use it.

  3. The cryptic clues for AVALANCHE and ICE CUBE are absolute classics in crosswordland, and it’s lovely that new solvers can have the joy of solving them in this Quick Cryptic. I believe the original version for AVALANCHE was “The greater snowdrop? (9)”.

    RADII and PICNIC may well be original, and they tickle me. I also thought the “divide and conquer” of Ice Age to give PIG and EON was lovely.

    Thanks to Maskarade for the fun, and my continued respect to Shanne for producing such excellent posts for these puzzles.

  4. Thanks Maskarade and Shanne
    Some entertaining clues, though harder than expected – “snowdrop” and “ice cube” for example.
    I agree about the mismatch in NOUNS.
    I have visited Joan of Arc’s birthplace – it’s in Domremy la Pucelle, about 200 miles from Orleans!

  5. I got most of this very quickly but stumped on a couple, and even reading the blog (eg 2D) am still none the wiser on those – more of an ‘oh…OK’ rather than an ‘oh! I see!’. I got 1A straight away but only because of the pub in Lewes. I really enjoyed the cryptic clues in this one.

  7. Mmm. I too won’t manage crosswords if there is a lot of latin- i got valet but didn’t know why exactly. Thanks Crossbar@7 – helpful mental link. I was very amused by 21A and 17A , – thanks Maskarade! -and enjoyed 6D so the charades are gradually beginning to make sense. I still can’t manage. without Shanne. This is a really helpful community.

  9. I had to ponder the cryptic definitions but found them all in the end. Very satisfying when you see it. I know VALE from Latin lessons long ago.
    Thanks Maskarade and Shanne.

  10. Hang in there, Mary and Steffen. There isn’t that much Latin to contend with. I’m afraid I’m of the generation when it was still commonly taught in schools.

  11. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’ve been using this blog and the quick cryptic to train myself, and that was my first one [redacted]. Though [redacted] of those were staring at 1A, which then unlocked others.

    Many thanks for the explainers on these and other more complex ones!

    (I have edited this post to remove solving times, because that is explicitly against the special rules for the Quick Cryptic crosswords – see the notes/link above.

    Sorry it’s taken me all day to get to this comment, I’ve been running something locally. Shanne)

  12. Die of Cold and Bill of Fare held me up for a while and I only got 18D from the “part of speech” bit of the clue. But I managed to complete it all without help, which was satisfying.

  13. I appreciate that many (most?) younger people won’t have learnt Latin but I think that’s a shame. I loved studying Latin and briefly taught it to a group of interested 15-year-olds at a comprehensive school about ten years ago. It’s such a useful language to know. It’s a pity if it’s associated with the likes of Boris and Rees-Mogg. Anyway, I think 2d was gettable from the clue and crossers. I didn’t know about the Ford car thing but at this stage I don’t worry too much about full parsing.

  14. I can’t remember the last time I finished one of these. Don’t get 7D at all. 6D made me smile, as did 21A.
    I agree that 2D is challenging for younger solvers.

  17. My favourite was ICE CUBE. The cryptics had me stumped for a while. Didn’t like 7 Down as no reason for it to be BUS other than the crosser. Nevertheless, an enjoyable puzzle, and again a useful blog. Many thanks.

  18. Thank you for the blog Shanne. I thought some of the cryptics would have been too much for absolute beginners, RADII among others. On the other hand there were enough easy hiddens and easyish anagrams to get cross letters to get some help with the cryptics.

  19. Managed to complete although some were because of the definition – or because of letters already in the grid. I needed to come here to understand some of the parsing ( thank you as always Shanne !). I didn’t study Latin or Greek so at a disadvantage. Didn’t know tau was a letter so that held me up – very annoying as only 3 letters and I suspected it was a hidden word !
    I enjoyed the cryptic clues and got avalanche straight away. But if you’re not on the setters wavelength they can be tricky as there is no logical way to work it out.
    But I’m enjoying my Saturday quick cryptic and hope I’m improving.
    Thank you Maskarade. That was douable.

  21. I got there in the end, though needed to step away and come back to some of the cryptic definitions (which I enjoyed). I also hadn’t heard of vale before, or associated pig with iron, but valet and pigeon were obvious from the crossers. Two more words to store away. Corkscrew was another obvious one, though I forgot that crew = eight, which has confounded me at least twice before – maybe I’ll remember next time!

    Thank you Shanne and Maskarade.

  22. Managed without cheating, but had to think a bit about the cryptic definitions. I particularly liked ice cube and radii (my last one in). I didn’t know vale, but it was entirely gettable from the definition. Thanks, Maskarade and Shanne.

  23. Enjoyed doing this puzzle but struggled a bit with some of the cryptic definitions. No quibbles just that you either spot them, or don’t until you have more crossers which I feel is less interesting than teasing out cryptic wordplay. I did Latin at school for a few years so VALE was ok for me. My favourite was CORKSCREW but also liked NOUNS, and no quibble from me about the apostrophe S or lack of plural of ‘part’ as for me it was about the surface not strictness. Thanks Maskarade and Shanne.

  24. The clue for 14D PIGEON seems very unfair to me, as PIG and IRON are not synonymous. PIG IRON (NB not just PIG) is crude iron that has been cast in the form of an oblong block, but “pig” can mean a block of crude metal such as iron, copper or lead. How can a solver, whether novice or highly experienced, be expected to work out that “Iron” in the clue is intended to define “pig”?

  25. Since no one has mentioned this yet, in the study of English grammar (at least as I learnt it), the “parts of speech” are things like nouns, verbs, adjectives, determiners*, prepositions, conjunctions and so on. Consequently, saying that nouns are a part of speech is fine, like saying that apples are a type of fruit.

    I’ve done a little bit of looking up before posting this and although both singular and plural nouns are used to describe the various parts of speech, most writers appear to prefer to use singular nouns. Although this is fine, it then seems to tie some writers up in knots, and I think it adds confusion to what is already something of a confusing subject. Since these are class names, they need to be uncountable, whereas words like “noun” and “verb” are usually countable.

    “Noun is a part of speech” is correct English but looks odd. “A noun is a part of speech” completely misses the point, since all words are a part of speech – the usual question is which part of speech each one is. “Nouns are parts of speech” is wrong, since nouns are just one part of speech

    I see that OED hedge their bets, by using uncountable singular nouns in one part of the definition (“In English there are traditionally considered to be eight parts of speech, i.e. noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection”) and then using plural nouns in a later part (“Modern grammars often distinguish lexical and grammatical classes, the lexical including in particular nouns, adjectives, full verbs, and adverbs; the grammatical variously subdivided, often distinguishing classes such as auxiliary verbs, coordinators and subordinators, determiners, numerals, etc”)

    *Not everyone agrees that determiners are a part of speech in English.

  26. Rudolf @24
    I completely agree. Setters often get into difficulty when they include technical terms that they have perhaps seen in a dictionary without really understanding their usage.

    Few people will complain about clues like 14, though. Most solvers will probably be like the setter and not be familiar with what is meant by pig iron or how the term is used. Then there is the excellent surface reading of the clue, which makes it seem rather churlish to complain. Finally, it is a very easy clue to solve, once you have a couple of crossers at any rate.

  27. @22

    What constitutes cheating? We’re talking about a beginners’ crossword here and, as far as I’m concerned, you are entitled to use any resource you like.

    And, anyway, even if is “cheating”, who’s cheating whom?

  28. Got to this a day late due to other commitments but all done. Found it tricky in places but enjoyable all the same.
    Re: pigs and iron – I seem to remember being taught in school far too many years ago that the origin of pigs comes from the moulds that the molten iron was poured into. The moulds would be in a line and these resembled piglets suckling.

    Wikipedia agrees with my memory:

    “The traditional shape of the molds used for pig iron ingots is a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles[3] to a central channel or “runner”, resembling a litter of piglets being nursed by a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the “pigs”) were simply broken from the runner (the “sow”), hence the name “pig iron”.[4] As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and the inclusion of small amounts of sand are insignificant issues when compared to the ease of casting and handling.”

    Pig Iron

  29. Remus@26 The explanation I gave of the meaning of “pig” was taken from the standard dictionaries – Collins, Chambers, and the Oxford Dictionary of English, so the setter cannot pray ignorance in aid. I accept that the clue is easy to solve (particularly as EON is standard fare for “age”) and “homing bird” is pretty much a give-away, but, with respect, that’s not the point, which is that the wordplay is unfair, and that fact is not mitigated by the quality of surface reading. I doubt that many people solving this clue would have made the connection between “pig” and “iron” without working back from the answer. This clue could easily have been made much fairer, without producing a weak surface, by changing it to “Sort of Iron Age homing bird”.

  33. I am definitely not on Muskrade’s wavelength with the cryptic clues. A couple I do not think are even vaguely cryptic (RADII and AVALANCHE) and I still have no idea how to get BUS out of bill of fare – aside from the crossword which means it really isn’t part of the clue. I also thought PICNIC rather remote.

    So saying, I admit that I did like ICE CUBE. No other clue stood out

    Thanks Muskrade and thanks Shanne

  34. I got PIGEON from “Iron Age” just fine, and if that makes me ignorant about the processing of iron then so be it… Perhaps you could have pig copper or pig lead, but “pig iron” is a phrase I’ve certainly heard of, and its presence when searching on the web (in the face of the absence of the others mentioned) suggests I’m not the only one.

    A fine puzzle I thought, pitched at the level we have come to expect over the last year(!!!) with a couple of trickier bits to get you thinking.

  35. Picnic as to outdo.

    Oh yes. And if you don’t think so then you’ve never been to Glyndebourne or Ascot or Henley. The whole point is to outdo your neighbour, subtly but conspicuously. Nobody would admit they were trying to, of course…

    Nouns are a part of speech. Difficult to disagree I suppose. Still didn’t like it!

  37. Not one of my favourites but fun enough. I got PIGEON through letters already filled in and guesswork and then searched the net to find that one of the pieces of art dug up from the iron age is a pigeon. Just a funny coincidence ? Could the BUS TICKET be referring to the Bus Services Bill created in the UK to ensure every town with over 10k ppl has busses? ICE CUBE was definitely a clever one and the only cryptic clue I felt really satisfied with. Out do is sort of clever but I wouldn’t consider a picnic a do really.

    Thank you Maskerade and Shanne

  38. Just to add, the iron age art is called Vulkovar’s Pigeon. Definitely too obscure to be a cryptic clue but interesting find nevertheless. I guess you could say I homed in on that on… 😏

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