Guardian Cryptic 29,670 by Maskarade

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29670.

I thought this a fairly straightforward solve, but with more quibbles than I would like to see.

ACROSS
9 INDIAN INK
Calligraphy item in kind, in a novel (6,3)
An anagram (‘novel’) of ‘in kind in a’.
10 RONDO
Leading recitalist performing party piece (5)
A charade of R (‘leading Recitalist’) plus ON (‘performing’) plus DO (‘party’), the ‘piece’ being musical.
11 EPICENE
In English wood, church camp (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of CE (‘Church’ of England) in E (‘English’) plus PINE (‘wood’).
12 TEAPOTS
Leaves in hot water here? (7)
Cryptic definition.
13 TRIM
Neat cut (4)
Double definition.
14 LIGHTERMAN
Docker who has dieted? (10)
Punning definition.
15 RAGTIME
Dressage music (7)
A charade of RAG (‘dress’-) plus TIME (-‘age’).
17 ARSENIC
As nice as Ritz’s top cocktail (7)
An anagram (‘cocktail’) of ‘nica nice as’ plus R (‘Ritz’s top’).As is the chemical symbol for arsenic.
19 ARTICHOKES
Large lorry blocks topped vegetables (10)
A charade of ARTIC (an articulated vehicle, ‘large lorry’) plus [c]HOKES (‘blocks’) minus its first letter (‘topped’).
22 OSLO
Some school’s outing returning to capital (4)
A hidden (‘some’) reversed (‘returning’) answer in ‘schoOLS Outing’.
23 MANHOLE
Carriageway cover on isle’s complete, we’re told (7)
A charade of MAN (‘isle’) plus HOLE, sounding like (‘we’re told’) WHOLE (‘complete’).
24 REBECCA
Novel medieval instrument starts to come apart (7)
A charade of REBEC (‘medieval instrument’) plus C A (‘starts to Come Apart’), for the novel by Daphne du Maurier.
26 NACRE
Gem with inlay carved evenly (5)
Even letters (‘evenly’) of ‘iNlAy CaRvEd’. I would not describe NACRE, mother of pearl, as a ‘gem’.
27 EBULLIENT
Agitated farm animal that is caught in snarled net (9)
An envelope (‘is caught in’) of BULL (‘farm animal’) plus IE (‘that is’) in ENT, an anagram (‘snarled’) of ‘net’. I would think of ‘agitated’ as more disturbed than EBULLIENT.
DOWN
1 SILENT TREATMENT
Listen cryptically getting the cold shoulder (6,9)
Wordplay in the answer (‘cryptically’): ‘listen’ is an anagram (TREATMENT) of SILENT.
2 ADMIRING
Looking up to notice on motorway telephone (8)
A charade of AD (‘notice’) plus MI (M1, ‘motorway’) plus RING (‘telephone’).
3 PACE
Step outside parts of Paris, France (4)
As it says, the ‘outside parts’ of ‘PAris FranCE‘.
4 PIPELINE
Row of churchwardens bearing oil here? (8)
A charade of PIPE (the question mark for the example; a ‘churchwarden’ is a long-stemmed pipe) plus LINE (‘row’)
5 SKETCH
Quick drawing of small sailing boat (6)
A charade of S (‘small’) plus KETCH (‘sailing boat’).
6 BREAKERS
King in glasses waves (8)
An envelope (‘in’) of R (rex, ‘king’) in BEAKERS (‘glasses’).
7 INFORM
Fit brief (6)
IN FORM (‘fit’).
8 ROSS AND CROMARTY
Actors marry dons around Highland county (4,3,8)
An anagram (‘around’) of ‘actors marry dons’.
16 IN CLOVER
Incorporated paramour on easy street (2,6)
A charade of INC. (‘incorporated’) plus LOVER (‘paramour’).
17 AGE GROUP
Cohort having trouble around middle of field on horseback (3,5)
A charade of AGEGRO, an envelope (‘having … around’) of E (‘middle of fiEld’) in AGGRO (‘trouble’); plus UP (‘on horseback’).
18 NO SECRET
Everyone knows feature is on island, out East (2,6)
A charade of NOSE (‘feature’) plus CRET[e] (‘island’) minus the E (‘out East’).
20 TUNICS
Dress code first introduced in capital (6)
An envelope (‘introduced in’) of C (‘Code first’) in TUNIS (‘capital’ of Tunisia’). I am not happy with a plural answer here.
21 OPENED
Writer invested in dictionary as on first night? (6)
An envelope (‘invested in’) of PEN (‘writer’) in OED (Oford English ‘Dictionary’). I am not sure what to include in the definition – nothing seems quite right.
25 BELL
Call corporation endlessly (4)
A subtraction: BELL[y] (‘corporation’) minus its last letter (‘endlessly’).

picture of the completed grid

80 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,670 by Maskarade”

  2. I had TEACUPS instead of TEAPOTS for a long time until i realised something was wrong.
    Pretty easy for a Wednesday.
    Thanks both.

  3. Frankie@2: Opening would better describe it, but that wouldn’t fit. I think we should give the setter the benefit of the doubt.

  4. Agree with PeterO’s quibbles, but still quite liked the puzzle, in particular REBECCA and AGEGROUP.

    Thought TEAPOTS likelier than TEACUPS, TEABAGS or TEACOSY, but needed the crossers to be sure.

  5. Yes ebulluent went in with a shrug and bit of eyebrow — if I have ever known its archaic meaning, agitated or boiling, it didn’t bubble up. Lighterman feels a bit that way too, but that might be regional. Is epicene camp, actually? Loi was pipeline, dnk the long-stemmed pipe, but the oiil bit clinched the guess. Enjoyed it overall, cheers PnE.

  7. OPENED
    Saw the def as FrankieG@1.
    (First night is opening. ‘As on first night’=OPENED)

    Liked LIGHTERMAN, AGEGROUP and

    Thanks Maskarade and PeterO.

  8. PIPELINE (a minor observation)
    If ‘row of churchwardens’ is taken as a unit to mean PIPE LINE,
    that parses better, I think.

    NACRE
    A glittering surface and yet it’s not a gem.

  9. I thought this was great. I hesitated briefly over teapots as it barely seemed cryptic. There was much satisfaction elsewhere. I liked artichokes, ragtime, silent treatment and ebullient. Less satisfying on the sleep front. I’d better get back to that. Thanks Maskarade and Peter.

  10. As some have remarked, there was no way of knowing whether 12a was pots or cups — fortunately I opted for the correct one. I wouldn’t normally associate EBULLIENT with “agitated”. The clue for OPENED is not one of Maskarade’s finest. I vaguely recall encountering ROSS AND CROMARTY once before in these crosswords — not terribly well-known this side of the Channel. I doubt whether most Antipodeans would know what an artic is, apart from a polar region reduced in size by global warming, perhaps? Churchwardens/pipes was new to me.

  11. grantinfreo @5: The setter may be thinking of this quote from Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp”, which some consider the definitive treatment of the subject: “Camp is the triumph of the epicene style”.

  12. Thank you to Maskerade and PeterO. I like RONDO, RAGTIME, and ROSS AND CROMARTY.

    grantinfreo@5: the 11th edition of Chambers Dictionary does provide effeminate as one of the definitions for epicene, so I’d say the setter is justified. Before today’s puzzle, however, I had thought of epicene to be encompassing both sexes, such as “they” being an epicene pronoun.

  13. I thought 12 might be ‘samovar’ on first pass, particularly as the plural wasn’t indicated, but the crossers were easy enough to correct me. Took me some time to remember that churchwardens were pipes, but then the clue raised a smile. Pleased to recognise the chemical element definition for ARSENIC. Liked SILENT TREATMENT and LIGHTERMAN. Thanks to Maskarade and PeterO

  15. Yep, pertaining to either or both was about where I was at with it too, worldlyfeline @12, but hey ho, staying open … 😉

  16. If you use leaf tea, there should be no leaves in the cup so I think TEAPOTS is the better answer
    If you use bags, however …

  17. I am usually much too late to the party to comment so it was a pleasure to complete this at first sitting and register thanks to Maskarade for an approachable puzzle. NHO church warden being a pipe so new learning for me. Also wasn’t sure why the plural for tunic as others have commented. Thanks for the blog PeterO.

  18. PeterO’s quibbles are well-founded, but that didn’t detract from the enjoyment. In particular, the thought of ARSENIC as the Ritz’s top cocktail will keep me amused for some time.
    Thanks, both.

  19. Only if you also use a tea-strainer, Crispy @16 – like the teabag, a vulgar device and deadly foe to all those who practise the noble art of tasseography.

  20. Was instantly agitated on seeing this setter’s name, so proceeded carefully as one entering a minefield but, suddenly, the grid was full.

    Shrugged with EBULLIENT and TUNICS. Perhaps our setter will drop in to explain.

    Many thanks, both.

  21. EPICENE. Apart from the linguistic and biological definitions which I found and don’t want to repeat here as they’re so, well, linguistic and biological, the only thing I found that was close to ”camp”, was usually derogatory, an effeminate man. . I don’t like that either.

  22. And speaking of indeterminate sex, it’s interesting that MANHOLE endures. I wonder what it’s called on the job now? I imagine that these days women go down those holes now.

    AI told me: utility hole, maintenance hole, or sewer hole

  23. Thanks Maskarade and PeterO
    I enjoyed most of this, but I think 12a clues TEAPOT, as “here” implies a singular location. I did in fact write it in, then crossed it out when there weren’t enough letters!
    Lots of nice touches, but in most cases there were slight flaws in the clues to prevent them being favourites. RAGTIME escapes this criticism.

  24. New for me: ROSS AND CROMARTY, EPICENE.

    I could not parse 4d.

    There is a typo in 17ac explanation above – it is an anagram of ‘nice as + r’

    27ac: EBULLIENT in the sense of:
    archaic (of liquid or matter) boiling or agitated as if boiling: misted and ebullient seas.

    I agree with PeterO’s comment on plural TUNICS.

  25. Also wondered about plural TUNICS but a minor quibble. This was straightforward especially as the two long down clues went in earlyish. PIPELINE was a bung and shrug and yet again was almost fooled by ARSENIC. I thought that EPICENE would be controversial but if camp is synonymous with effeminate, then it seems fair, as distasteful as it may be to some.

    Ta Maskarade & PeterO.

  26. I took 20d to mean ‘a form of dress’, as in ‘Roman dress included tunics.’ In all honesty, I forgot that some dresses are called tunics.

  27. A game of two distinct halves for me today, as I thought at first this was going to be plain sailing, as the right hand side of the grid filled in quite rapidly. But the left hand side took a weary while with much to admire in ARSENIC, AGE GROUP and ARTICHOKES. Wasn’t totally convinced by PIPELINE, or the last two in MANHOLE and TUNICS, but all in all an enjoyable and satisfying solve today. SILENT TREATMENT perhaps the pick…

  28. Not too chewy this morning. Overthought a few, couple new to me. No clue about smoking equipment (4d) ,11 a new one too, which slowed the proceedings a little. Thanks all!

  29. Mostly very smooth and straightforward, as we expect from Maskarade when his job is not to give us something to do over bank holidays. I’m not a fan of clues like “teapots” where it’s clear what the cryptic nature is and I could write in “tea….” but then had to wait as there were so many possibilities without even the plural nature being well-signed. Another “divide by zero” clue (i.e. undefined). But, a couple of grouches apart, very neat and with just the right amount of obscurity to feel I learned something and had to earn my coffee.

    Thanks PeterO and Maskarade.

  30. I loved the puzzle. A few clues took me longer than they should have, but flying through a puzzle to me is not very satisfying. I had no problem with Tunics as I took it as a form of dress. Thank you to Maskarade for a wonderful job!

  31. I too really enjoyed this, and have quibbles with most of the quibbles exercising our esteemed blogger and commenters.

  32. After struggling and getting cross with Monday’s and Tuesday’s cryptics, I enjoyed this a lot. I didn’t quite complete it but almost there. I puzzled for a while about arsenic as some kind of cocktail; it didn’t occur to me that the sneaky ‘As’ was the definition. I liked LIGHTERMAN and SILENT TREATMENT particularly.

  34. I thought this was fun, though I was beaten by EPICENE¦ just didn’t know the meaning of the word, though I have seen it before somewhere.
    I parsed TUNICS like Dave F@26 and Jay@30 – ‘Roman dress commonly included tunics, togas, etc.’
    Thanks Maskarade and PeterO.

  35. I agree with all PeterO’s quibbles about slightly-off definitions. Also, I knew the clothing business is the rag trade, but not rag=dress specifically. However, I enjoyed this and liked a lot of the clues: LIGHTERMAN, MANHOLE, ROSS AND CROMARTY, PIPELINE, ADMIRING. Still kicking myself for missing As=ARSENIC, and curious as to why a tea-strainer is considered beyond the pale for the correct performance of the Tea Ceremony (according to Balfour@19)?

  36. Forgot to mention (reminded by Jackkt@33) – a manhole is not a cover, it has a cover (a manhole cover) and is often set into a carriageway.

  37. paddymelon@22 They are ‘access shafts’, and the lids over them are ‘access shaft covers’. During a lifetime of working in construction, I don’t think I ever heard the term ‘manhole’. It is so old-fashioned.

  38. [btw did you know that deep manholes always have circular covers as they are the shape with the smallest area that can’t be dropped down the hole. Square and rectangular covers cover shallow holes.]

  40. [muffin@38. I have a “manhole”in my house.A very coomon and old name for a square cut into the ceiling that you raise to climb up into the roof cavity and fix a leak or chase possums out.]

  41. Agree with DaveF@26 about TUNICS being fine – I thought the less common use of dress made this one of the better clues

    Would it be over-optimistic to hope that M’s appearance today means we’ll be spared a bank holiday “special” 🙂

    Cheers P&M

  42. Amma @32 I wondered whether there might be a cocktail called Arsenic, though it seemed unlikely. I discovered there is one called Arsenic and Lace, which was close enough for me, so I never spotted As=arsenic.

  43. The definition in 23d looks wrong to me. Surely the MANHOLE is the circular hole, not the plate that covers it.

  44. Thanks for the blog , nice to actually have a proper crossword today . Good use of fission for RAGTIME , a very neat clue . ARSENIC is clever but any clue starting with As gives the game away .
    Bodycheetah@41 , be careful what you wish for , I have a bad feeling about future Specials .

  45. I wanted ‘Neat cut’ to be BULLOCK but there wasn’t room. Maybe Paul will use it one day. Thanks both.

  46. Very straightforward today, and I was helped with one of the slightly harder clues, LIGHTERMAN, by having seen a near-identical clue just yesterday in the book of (very easy) Telegraph crosswords I am working my way through. That book btw makes you realise how good the Guardian crosswords are in comparison!

  47. I started well but got a bit bogged down in the SW corner. I liked the reverse clue SILENT TREATMENT, the good anagram for ROSS AND CROMARTY, and the neat RAGTIME.

    Thanks Maskarade and PeterO.

  48. gladys @35 Tasseography is the art of divination by reading patterns of tea leaves left at the bottom of the drinker’s cup. That is why tea-strainers and teabags are anathema to anyone who embraces the practice. It has nothing to do with the tea ceremony.

  49. HoagyM @46. I’m also working through a book of Telegraph cryptiics, and agree with you about the standard. Apart from the odd clue, they’re about on a par with Everyman, IMHO.

  50. I don’t mind TEAPOTS personally as an answer, if it was TEACUPS then it would be a nasty cuppa if it still had the leaves in.

  51. Dan h @50 When I was young, my mother never would use a tea-strainer – not in order to facilitate tasseography (see my comment @48), but because she regarded them as distinctly ‘Non-U’, probably having been taught to do so by her mother, who was a late Victorian with unwarranted pretensions to grandeur. And as for tea bags – the Lord spare us! I don’t think she embraced the teabag even when in old age and widowed, although she did capitulate to the tea-strainer some time in her late 40s. I therefore have extensive experience of leaves in a teacup. It’s not that bad.

  52. An enjoyable puzzle, with the nice “reverse” clue for SILENT TREATMENT providing a good way in.

    Fifty comments in and nobody’s complained about “Leading recitalist” for R in 10a! (HoagyM @46 and Crispy @49, I’ve done books of Telegraph crosswords too, and they are full of “first x” and “leading x” to indicate the first letter of x.)

    My personal bugbear is a clue like 4d PIPELINE. A question mark is fine to indicate “for example”, but in my view it needs to be next to the word that is the example. The clue is effectively saying “Row of churchwardens bearing oil here for example”, which does not to my mind convey “churchwardens for example”.

    But those are minor quibbles. Many thanks Maskarade and PeterO.

  53. Lord Jim @52 I took the ? to refer to “bearing oil here”. A pipeline can have oil or other things (water, gas, etc). The wordplay – “row of churchwardens”=”line of pipes”=”pipe line” – does not need a definition by example indicator.

  54. I found this chewier than most, apparently, being held up for a while in the SW corner. Still, an enjoyable solve.

    A couple of quibbles not previously raised:

    – I thought 8D was a weak clue. If one knows the county, it goes in immediately from the letter count and perhaps a couple of crossers, and the anagram is superfluous. If one does not, I do not expect that the anagram was much help?

    – Doesn’t a lighterman work on a boat (a lighter) rather than a dock?

    I have not seen INDIAN INK before, rather than INDIA INK, but wikip tells me it is British English, and nobody else has quibbled, so there you go.

    EPICENE was new to me, and I dredged up the meaning of churchwarden from a previous puzzle. I missed the clever As in 17A.

  55. Enjoyed it – thanks to blogger, setter and those who commented. 1d SILENT TREATMENT my stand-out favourite.

  56. Ace @54 Chambers says LIGHTERMAN is someone engaged in lighterage: “Loading, unloading and ferrying by lighters” so they could be on the dock?

  57. Bodycheetah@54
    Lighterman worked in the dock on the water taking cargo away from the dock on lighters to other quays on the Thames thus avoiding fees payable by ships to unload cargo onto the dock and into the dock warehouses. Dockers worked unloading cargo onto the dock and into the dock warehouses. They were in competition with each other, the lightermen having gained certain rights in the docks that reduced the docks income. lightermen were skilled in the knowledge of tides sand banks, unloading on open water and rivers, etc, To call a skilled lighterman a docker is an insult to the lighterman.

  58. [Balfour @51 – you’ve reminded me, we didn’t have tea strainers growing up either. Tea leaves disappeared when the pot held teabags. You can, and I do, have individual strainers for mugs to drink loose tea. Nor were tea cosies acceptable.]

    I’ve seen a very similar clue for EPICENE, possibly a Gozo in the FT, and looked up definitions then.

    Thank you to Maskarade and PeterO..

  59. Far too many quibbles for me to find this fully enjoyable.

    A manhole isn’t a cover: it’s a hole, over which we place a manhole cover.

    I disliked ‘epicen’ = ‘camp’.

    I initially had ‘infuser’ for 12ac (until the crossers proved me wrong). A singular is definitely indicated by the clue. I am not a fan of this type of clue. If there is no wordplay to help the solving, there should not be more than one viable answer. A cryptic crossword clue should be solvable without crossers.

    As others, I bristled at the plural answer for 20d.

    Perhaps I am just in a bad mood today.

  60. Like Ace@54 this was a slowish solve for me, not sure why, in retrospect all well, if only we could solve in retrospect. Thank you M & P

  61. I thought this was Maskerade at his easiest. No doubt he’s softening us up for the bank holiday weekend. We’ll shall see. Quite enjoyed it . Thanks to him and blogger

  62. I don’t do Maskarade’s Bank Holiday monsters, so he (I think?) is a fairly unfamiliar setter for me.

    I should have looked up tasseography before asking the question – but then we might not have found out about all those historic family snobberies concerning tea and how to serve it. Let’s not even start on the incendiary question of milk (first? last? plant-based? not at all?)

  64. Really enjoyed this one. Right balance for me, and really had no quibbles though I understand what others are saying. I’m a fan of RAGTIME (both the music and the clue) and liked also ARSENIC. SILENT TREATMENT was an early one in and so a big help. I grew up with tea leaves in my cups but I don’t miss them, although it means living each day without knowing what the future has in store…

  65. Lots of new vocabulary words for me today. I am glad to know EPICENE so I can start describing all my friends as such.

    Ancient memories of the shipping forecast gave me ROSS AND CROMARTY. If only I could remember actually useful things…

  66. [I should confess that my first thought was that EPICENE was a geological era with which I was unfamiliar! Apparently the term derives from a hermaphroditic Greek statue.]

  67. [Gosh, nobody seems to know about Ben Jonson’s brilliant 1609 comedy, Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, in which Dauphine tricks his misanthropic and misogynist rich uncle, Morose, who is averse to loud noise, into ‘marrying’ a woman who, against type, will be meek and silent. At the end of the play it is revealed that the silent woman a) is not silent and b) is one of Dauphine’s make friends dressed up as a woman. I have seen it on stage only once, at the Swan in Stratford, when the not-yet well-known actor, John Hannah, playing the epicene, was billed in the programme as ‘Hannah John’.]

  69. [Don’t bate your breath for too long, muffin. You might die. But all through the day, while I was engaged in tealeaf matters, I thought that, among the generally well-read and knowledgeable commentariat here, someone else might have come across it.]

  70. [Balfour @69
    Our son-in-law always leaves a bit in the bottom of his mug, whatever was in it. I suspect he was brought up in a house without a tea strainer!]

  72. Embarrassingly, I solved 4 clues.

    Despite the explanations in the blog I am a bit lost with several things.

    15a – how do you know to separate DRESSAGE?

    1d – I don’t see the word “treatment” in the clue. Where does it come from?

    4d – is the ‘?’ Part of the clue? I thought we were advised to ignore punctuation?

    I’ll not bore you with any more questions.

    #whendoyouimproveatthese

  73. Steffen @72
    15a – experience, or trial and error – dress/age is the cleanest deconstruction of the clue.

    1d – ‘treatment’ is the anagram indicator for ‘silent’ > ‘listen’. The answer tells you how to get part of the clue, a ‘reverse cryptic’.

    4d – I didn’t solve but the ? indicates a loose or whimsical definition.

  74. Steffan @72, one thing that I have learnt recently from here is that setters are allowed to use a word like ‘dressage’ to be equivalent to ‘dress age’. They don’t need any ‘fission’ indicator. You just have to be alert to the possibility. It is considered fair though goodness knows why.

    ‘listen’ is an anagram of ‘silent’, ‘listen cryptically’ is SILENT. ‘Silent treatment’ would thus be a cryptic clue for LISTEN. A full clue might be ‘sense silent treatment (6)’. Here, although PeterO doesn’t describe like this, it is a sort of Double Literal. ‘Listen cryptically’ being ‘Silent treatment’ as is ‘getting the cold shoulder’. It is very hard to describe the parsing of these ‘reverse cryptic’ clues. Our esteemed blogger is probably more accurate.

    Question marks are the exception to the ignore punctuation rule. Today I learnt that they indicate the word or phrase is an exemplar of the desired letters. So ‘churchwarden?’ is PIPE. To be honest, I have always read them as the setter begging for a pinch of salt and I associate them with cryptic definitions, as in 21d today (OPENED).

    #DoNotTakeAdviceFromThisMuppetButIHopItHelps

  77. I didn’t find it easy, but that’s not the point.
    I quite enjoyed it in spite of the few words whose secondary meanings I did not know

  79. I can’t resist observing that some of us get far too close to the trees at the expense of seeing the wood, and with glee … this puzzle is profusely littered with glee, and isn’t some of the nit-picking frankly embarrassingly humourless …? No malice at all, but come on, it’s a game of wit … smile a bit more, and snipe a bit less can’t you !!!!

  80. Did reasonably well with this one. Just missed MANHOLE and TUNICS

    After taking a break, SILENT TREATMENT leapt out at me. Why didn’t I see it the first time?

    PACE was clever. Usually the wordplay involves the inside letters, not the outside ones!

    My new copy of Chambers came in handy for connecting “churchwardens” and PIPEs, and “camp” and EPICENE

    I was lucky to guess CROMARTY, and DuckDucked to get the rest

    Agree with Roz@44 that RAGTIME is a great clue

    Hugh@79, not to worry, nit-picking is all part of the fun (glee)!

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