Anto’s turn in the Quiptic slot this week.
An engaging puzzle but I have to confess I struggled in places, and finally had to cheat on two. I’d be interested to hear how ‘beginners and those in a hurry’ got on.
A real laugh-out-loud moment when I finally managed to parse 12d.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SLUSHY | Too sentimental to be bashful about timeless passion (6) |
| SHY (bashful) containing (about) LUS (timeless passion = LUST with the letter T = time deleted) | ||
| 4 | USED CARS | Crusades destroyed dodgy salesman’s stock (4,4) |
| An anagram (destroyed) of CRUSADES. Neither Collins nor Oxford online has an entry for ‘used car’ | ||
| 9 | MUSCLE | Heart, for example, can be heavy (6) |
| The hear is an example of a muscle. The heavy of the definition is someone who threaten violence | ||
| 10 | BUTTERED | Likely downside, if toast falls flat (8) |
| Unless I’m missing something, this just seems to be a reference to a piece of toast always falling with the buttered side down | ||
| 11 | HOLD YOUR HORSES | Hang on — shouldn’t the groom do that? (4,4,6) |
| Took me an age to see this. The groom here is the person who looks after horses | ||
| 13 | FANNY ADAMS | She will make nothing by being sweet (5,5) |
| A reference to the expression ‘sweet Fanny Adams’, which means ‘nothing at all’ | ||
| 14 | EL AL | Travel group expel antisocial extremists (2,2) |
| The first and last letters (extremists) of E[xpe]L and A[ntisocia]L | ||
| 16 | NATO | Initiate nuclear attack, taking out alliance (4) |
| The first letters (initiate) of N[uclear] A[ttack] T[aking] O[ut] | ||
| 18 | SCRATCH PAD |
Mark stuff to make space for notes (7,3) |
| I had to cheat on this. It’s SCRATCH (mark) PAD (stuff) | ||
| 21 | A PIECE OF STRING | Its length is a potentially knotty question (1,5,2,6) |
| A reference to the question ‘How long is a piece of string?’ | ||
| 23 | EPIDURAL | A riled up drunk gets painkiller (8) |
| An anagram (drunk) of A RILED UP | ||
| 24 | CANCER | Sign perhaps of tropical disease? (6) |
| References here to the tropic of cancer and to cancer the disease | ||
| 25 | THE BENDS | Overly fast surface makes these corners dangerous (3,5) |
| The reference here is to a diver surfacing too fast, leading to decompression sickness | ||
| 26 | LEGACY | What’s left say in delicate environment (6) |
| EG (say) contained by (in … environment) LACY (delicate) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SUMO | Wrestling with problem over nothing (4) |
| SUM (problem) above (over) O (nothing) | ||
| 2 | UNSWORN | Form of evidence world body’s used … (7) |
| UNS (world body’s) WORN (used) | ||
| 3 | HOLIDAYS | … breaks shady oil arrangement (8) |
| An anagram (arrangement) of SHADY OIL | ||
| 5 | SQUARE MEALS | Trio providing dull sounding fare daily (6,5) |
| No doubt I’m being dim but I’m not sure I understand this. Where does the trio come into it? Is it just a reference to the expression ‘three square meals a day’? | ||
| 6 | DOTCOM | High tech company lifts atmosphere around court (6) |
| A reversal (lifts) of MOOD (atmosphere) containing CT (court) | ||
| 7 | AEROSOL | Spray a romantic statue with oil I left (7) |
| A (a) EROS (romantic statue) plus (with) OL (oil I left = oil with the letter I removed) | ||
| 8 | SIDE SALAD | Sad ladies go off healthy food (4,5) |
| An anagram (go off) of SAD LADIES | ||
| 12 | OLD MCDONALD | Deliver iron regularly — for this farmer, obviously? (3,8) |
| I had to cheat on this. It’s the even letters (regularly) of ‘deliver iron’. These are E I E I O. Read them aloud and you’re taken to the nursery rhyme about the farmer. Very clever | ||
| 13 | FUNDAMENT | Basis for National Trust supporting party girl, perhaps (9) |
| NT (National Trust) below (supporting) FUN DAME (party girl perhaps) | ||
| 15 | SCARFACE | Criminal fracas breaks out beside church (8) |
| An anagram (breaks out) of FRACAS next to (beside) CE (church). The reference here is to Al Capone | ||
| 17 | THIN ICE | It’s unwise to cross island beset by ethnic trouble (4,3) |
| I (island) contained in (beset by) an anagram (trouble) of ETHNIC | ||
| 19 | PANACEA | Criticise expert with a solution for everything (7) |
| PAN (criticise) ACE (expert) plus (with) A (a) | ||
| 20 | ACCUSE | Charge for a small volume application (6) |
| A (a) CC (small volume) USE (application) | ||
| 22 | ORGY | Wild celebration as section of lefty group is returned (4) |
| An answer hidden in (section of) a reversal (is returned) of leftY GROup | ||
As I posted elsewhere-shouldve been the cryptic. Liked it.
Thanks for parsing the farmer.the original may have been
Old McDougal had a farm in Ohi-Ohio
Thanks for the blog.
I think trio is the three in square meals.
I got Old McDonald, but only from the ref to a farmer with first word old.
14 and 26 across I had to cheat.
Otherwise it took a long time but got most of the clues through persevering!
Rather tough for a Quiptic, but an interesting challenge. I particularly enjoyed all the references to common phrases in clues and answers.
Collins online has an entry for the whole phrase “used car salesman”. The “trio” in 5d did puzzle me, but I too came to the conclusion it must be a reference to “three square meals a day”. For 12d, I guessed it as soon as I had O-D from the crossers but couldn’t parse it, so didn’t enter it until more crossers were in place. Even then, it took a long time for that penny to drop.
Thanks, Anto and nms.
Thanks both. Again Anto can be accused of pitching for a cryptic rather than a Quiptic slot. I got OLD MCDONALD but thought it a bit to clever-clever for a Quiptic. UNSWORN was my stumbling block.
Wonderful puzzle – far too tough for me but thoroughly enjoyed it. Im not sure the difficulty was entirely the right level for a quiptic but i enjoyed it so much (despite my frustrations) that I’m willing to forgive. Thanks to Anto and to NMS for helping with the parsing.
*RANT ALERT*
I’m sorry to be a grumpy guts, but I think we (and I arrogantly count myself as such) ‘experienced’ solvers need to give less praise to crosswords like this in the Quiptic slot. It’s perfectly natural for the setter to want to know that we’ve had a good time, and I *did* enjoy this crossword, but as a Quiptic it is AWFUL and unless we express that on behalf of the beginners who are apparently meant to be learning the ropes on this, they’re going to come along, see stuff like this and leave, totally mystified.
I try to encourage friends and family to get into crosswords, and often send them towards the Quiptic, but I’m going to stop doing so on the basis that this is just too hard. There should not be a single clue in a Quiptic where I (again, as an experienced solver) have to think about the parsing. I’m not saying they should all be write-ins, but if I get the word and can’t instantly understand the reasoning, then it’s just too hard. OK, maybe I can be slow on 1 or 2, but there were several in this (including the 12d that everyone is so fond of) that were obviously too hard for a beginner.
It’s not that I don’t like the crossword, Anto, if you’re reading – in fact I thought it was rather good. It’s just much too complex. Surely a Quiptic should teach the basics: anagrams, double defs, cryptics, concealments, and of course ‘regularlies;’ but leading to actual words rather than a secondary cryptic definition by example (plus added difficulty of general knowledge AND its being a name thus with the extremely unusual string of MCD in it!)
And if the justification is that mostly this is a second, bonus Monday morning crossword for older solvers, then just rebrand it. My fear is beginners will come, have a look, and assume that they’re stupid or “not cut out for crosswords” when they only get one or two of them. So at least if this is just sold as another crossword, they won’t be under the impression they *should* be able to solve it.
If we don’t encourage younger people (or just inexperienced people) to take up crosswords they will stop appearing in the papers, to be replaced by sudoku or quicks or just more sport. And the setters obviously read these blogs and respond to our comments – they are, after all, providing a service to us. Beginners aren’t on these blogs – they don’t know they exist! So we have the responsibility to represent them.
Anyway, I hope I haven’t offended Anto, since as I said, I enjoyed it a lot (other than my mounting frustration which I think I have vented quite extensively here…) but I really feel this needs to be expressed more strongly. Thanks for reading this far, if you did!
Will.
Wukka @6
While I agree with your overall point that Quiptic puzzles are often far too difficult, I am puzzled by the “unless we express that on behalf of the beginners” part of your comment. Posters here frequently complain about the difficulty of Quiptics, and in this case all 5 posters before you had made some reference to the level, with 3 out of 5 of us explicitly stating it was too difficult for the slot.
Also, although some Guardian setters do read this site, it is not associated with the Guardian and I’ve not seen any reason to believe that the Guardian crossword editor reads it. Indeed, given the amount of persistent abuse hurled at him by some regular posters, even if he once did it’s unlikely that he still does. Complaints about the level might be more useful if made on the Guardian Quiptic site whenever the puzzle doesn’t fit the brief.
Jennyk @ 7
I acknowledge that there are other allusions to its being a little over-difficult, but they’re all very polite and contained within positive comments about how much it was enjoyed. My concern is that there is a strong encouragement to the setter to continue in the vein of ‘cutting their teeth’ before being given a ‘full cryptic’ spot because we just aren’t vocal enough about how it isn’t suitable for beginners. Or failing that, as I said, just re-branding it! It’s not like this isn’t an old discussion, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any change, so perhaps we’re being too softly-softly in our criticism?
Indeed, my passion was only ignited on seeing the positive comments on here from other solvers – I came expecting others to have similar feelings, and thus I vented here; but I fully accept your point that this is the wrong forum for airing my view, and will transplant my opprobrium accordingly! However, while I don’t know whether Anto reads this blog, I do know for a fact that many of the Guardian setters do so it may not be entirely futile…
Thank you for suggesting a more productive course!
Will.
Wukka @8
We could start a write-in campaign to the Crossword Editor, or a petition, although we get so few comments on the Quiptic blog here that it might not be very impressive. I wonder whether any lurkers might join us …
It’s difficult when most of the posters do seem to enjoy the puzzles and just feel they are in the wrong slot. That’s a particular problem as the Quiptic seems to be the testing ground for new setters so we don’t want to discourage them completely.
jennyk @ 9
I fear we risk derailing this comment thread, but I think you are right on both counts.
I think my frustration is in fact based on the very dilemma you mention between encouraging new setters and having an ‘easy’ crossword. However, it seems to me that writing an easy crossword (which isn’t patronising or just boring) may not necessarily be a skill that is intimately linked to being a ‘new’ setter. Perhaps we could encourage the editor to have a new section – ‘experimental?’ This would be in addition to the quiptic (which would have tighter editorial guidelines) and provide a space for new setters to cut their teeth, as well as more libertarian style crosswords. Despite seeming like an old stick in the mud, I actually enjoy non-Ximenean creativity; as solvers, we rightly complain if clues are a bit ‘unfair’ in the main crossword, but I think it’s true to say that if Araucaria were to have been born into our generation of solvers, he would never have been given the time of day. Might a more lax playground (where, dare I say it, you don’t necessarily expect to finish every crossword!) be a useful environment?
And a petition is a nicely Guardian way of addressing the situation! Perhaps a few months of being the top comment on all quiptic threads (both here and on the G site) would be all that is required to encourage lurkers, old and new, to add their name to a linked petition…?
Futhermore if it’s only a question of time, I for one would gladly volunteer to ‘test out’ new crosswords to filter for the editor, who could then have final decisions, and I’m sure there are many who frequent these blogs who would also gladly give their time to the cause; I suspect there are several budding setters out there, too.
But perhaps this isn’t the place of the Guardian, but a site that specialises in crosswords and the education thereof. I suddenly fear that such a thing already exists and I’m just unaware! Please feel free to enlighten me if this is the case… 😉
Will.
A belated welcome to flashman and Fynator. Nice to see your thoughts on the puzzle. Nice also to see that you’re not put off by its being on the difficult side.
@Wukka
Thanks also for your thoughts. I think it’s perfectly fair for you to make a point about the suitability of the puzzle for the Quiptic slot here.
In fact, the question of level is one that’s almost always brought up by people who comment on the Quiptics. If you look back through the blogs on Anto’s puzzles, most people seem to agree that they’re too difficult for ‘beginners or those in a hurry’.
Whether that influences the Guardian’s crossword editor in any way I rather doubt. But from the evidence of the puzzles he publishes he clearly works on the basis that it’s OK for the Quiptics to vary quite considerably in the level of difficulty they present.
What is ‘non-Ximenean creativity’?
I read earlier the blog but didn’t comment. I too thought that this would have been quite a good puzzle for the main cryptic slot, but too difficult for the Quiptic – once again the refrain “harder than today’s Rufus” springs to mind. (For instance, I completely missed the parsings of OLD MCDONALD and UNSWORN.)
The Times not long ago started an “easy cryptic”. Does anyone have experience of that one’s level of difficulty?
(Apologies for the Yoda-esque grammar of the first sentence above – incompetent editing!)
Muffin @13
The Times produces a ‘quick cryptic’ – it is different from the Guardian quiptic in several respects – it is in the printed version of the paper not just on the website, it is a 13 by 13 grid rather than 15 squared, it appears every weekday and, most days, it is decidedly easier than many of the quiptics. It also has to be said that it it less entertaining than quptices set by some of the Guradian regulars – Provis, for example and particularly Orlando.
Even so, there are occasionally complaints on Times for the Times that a particular day’s puzzle was too difficult. if there is an occasional difficult quick cryptic it is less likely to put beginners off because they know there will be another one the next day. i would also say that the clues nearly always satisfy Wukka @6’s criteria ie where an experienced solver doesn’t have to think about the parsing. I also think the Times crossword editor takes a more active role that his counterpart at the Guardian
Thank you Anto and newmarketsausage.
Even though I am a very slow solver I thoroughly enjoyed this crossword, especially OLD MCDONALD, however I think it should have been on the main cryptic site.
Wow! Many thanks to Anto and to you, nms.
I’m a slow-burning, still-learning solver and I loved this, struggling, laughing.
It is as far from a `Quiptic’ as I’ve ever met.
HUGH, give Anto a cryptic slot, FGS.
This setter deserves a wider audience.
(Parse 12d – me? That’ll be the Day…)
David’s comment on The Times Quick Cryptic would be an opinion, of course.
I agree that Anto should be given a cryptic slot, as he is not very good, and would fit in well.
I spent 19 mins on Rufus and 31m on Anto. I thought that the Rufus was a very good one for beginners today, more so than this one. I think that the Guardian should/could just change the description of the Quiptic. Instead of “A web-only, cryptic puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry” they could just call it the Monday Bonus puzzle or whatever.
My favourites were FUNDAMENT, AEROSOL HOLD YOUR HORSES, SQUARE MEALS
New for me was EL AL (and I am not so keen on product placement / advertising!)
I needed help to parse 10a, 25a, 12d
Thanks nms and Anto
Interesting solve but (as already stated by most above) completely unsuitable for the Quiptic slot. I sense a naturally tough setter struggling to fulfil the requirement – in fact I think I can recognise the style – not necessarily the individual – but maybe so.
Setting easy puzzles with enough meat to amuse seasoned solvers too is an art in itself. A few Quiptic regulars have it – the previous incumbent in the Everyman slot had it; the current one slightly tougher but still within range.
It’s probably less fun for the setter – having to pull punches – see possibilities for twisting the thumbscrews – and then holding back; must be frustrating – but it’s worth it for what it delivers to a large number of solvers.
Anyway – thanks all round.
@Wukka. I think the Araucaria phenomenon, when it started at least, was a perfect storm – a respected broad-minded paper (not the joke Rusbridger turned it into) – an intelligent readership – a light-touch puzzle editor (John Perkin) – even the paper’s editor (nowadays he’d be called the editor -in-chief) requiring not too much Classics etc; Araucaria might otherwise have shared rather too much of his enormous hinterland of Classic and literature with us. And maybe the possibility of Araucaria’s very honest motive for doing it at all – he needed the money.
And yes – back in the day you didn’t expect to finish every time – you had to wait for the printed answer in the next day’s paper – maybe a hook to get you to buy one.
Back then crosswords (ie the main cryptic ones in particular) counted in terms of papers shifting copy – now it’s much less the case. The DT has sacked most of its best columnists and replaced them with former nappy-sniffer Briony Gordon and Graham Norton (as an agony uncle) – it can’t be long before they replace the crossword with a horoscope.
Be careful what you agitate for: if the Quiptic gets dumbed down to match its billing there’ll be NO proper cryptic on Mondays. (I find the Rufus ‘Cryptics’ annoyingly feeble — but still can’t resist doing them as a warm-up for the Quiptic as the main event.)
As not so much a beginner now, but one who operates at the quiptic level, I have grumbled about Anto before. However, I was able to finish this puzzle with no cheats, one google (elal) for confirmation and one not comfortably parsed (square meals). It took me some time but I guess I have to say it’s close to a fair quiptic. Or maybe I’m just getting better. Sounds like I should try Rufus. Thanks NMS and Anto.
Despite all the cries of “too difficult!”, I had no real problem with this except for the parsing of 12D — many thanks, newmarketsausage, for the explanation, which had me giggling.
[nms – off topic, and certainly not topical, but I’m curious. Just solved latest Prize – rather straightforward for a Maskarade I thought but mustn’t discuss yet of course. However, this setter’s name came up – of whom I wasn’t aware. I’ve only once tried a ‘quiptic’ (a Pan I think – at muffin’s urging). In checking that ‘Anto’ exists, having only guessed what Schwyz was, I came to your blog to see his/her style. My question to you is – Could you also be the nms (nmsindy?) who blogs other puzzles? And, if so, why newmarket sausage? I hadn’t noticed the initials connection before, perhaps just a coincidence? Many thanks. William, 28 August ’18 ]
Apologies for the delayed response, William.
I’m not nmsindy. As well as being a contributor to 225, nmsindy is also the setter known in various parishes as Raich, Gurney and Hurley. See the Crosswords Who’s Who on the Best for Puzzles site for further details.
I chose the pseudonym ‘newmarketsausage’ when registering to comment on the cryptic crosswords on the Guardian site, having just eaten one of Musk’s productions of the same, and kept it for the blogs here.
I recommend Musk’s Newmarket Sausages. You should try some 🙂