Seeing Anto’s name on a Quiptic never gives me a ‘Be still, my beating heart!’ moment. Your reaction may differ, and you can tell me so below.
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 Crowd comes back having swallowed defeat — that’s mature
BLOSSOM
An insertion of LOSS in MOB reversed. The insertion indicator is ‘having swallowed’; the reversal indicator is ‘comes back’.
5 What a nepotist might do for poet
PUSHKIN
Well, a nepotist might indeed PUSH KIN. The poet considered by many to be the founder of modern Russian literature.
9 Assistant rejects official scoring error
GOFER
A reversal of REF (the ‘official’) and OG (the ‘scoring error’ or own goal).
10 Showing great energy, take sides in another upheaval
ON THE TEAR
An insertion of TE for the outer letters of ‘take’ in (ANOTHER)* The insertion indicator is ‘in’; the anagrind is ‘upheaval’. I have never personally seen this phrase, and dictionaries suggest it is more American English than British English.
11 Funny short scene can be downloaded from computer
SCREEN SHOT
(SHORT SCENE)* with ‘funny’ as the anagrind.
12 Affected when chip lacks length
FAKE
F[L]AKE
14 African haven for sailor — one rejecting all limits
LIBERTARIAN
Anto is asking you to insert TAR into LIBERIAN, with ‘haven for’ as the indicator to do so.
18 Fluid in fat person due to too much lying?
PANTS ON FIRE
(IN FAT PERSON)* with ‘fluid’ as the anagrind. ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ is the phrase in question.
21 Old city moving right right right
TORY
If you move the R for ‘right’ in TROY to the ‘right’ you get TORY, which means ‘right’.
22 Big shot the Spanish value gets award from Sweden
NOBEL PRIZE
A charade of NOB, EL for one of the Spanish words for ‘the’ and PRIZE.
25 You are what you eat? They would certainly agree
CANNIBALS
A cd.
26 Frank makes some spare time
OVERT
A charade of OVER and T.
27 Singular small accessory for one’s darling
SWEETIE
A charade of S, WEE and TIE.
28 A father goes on ground to find refreshment
SODA POP
A charade of SOD, A and POP. Again, a slightly strange term, although Google does return a few examples. They call it SODA in America and we call it POP here, I always thought.
Down
1 Lie about soldier being promoted for a major job
BIG ASK
An insertion of GI reversed in BASK. The insertion indicator is ‘about’ and the reversal indicator is ‘being promoted’.
2 Working class in good heart
ON FORM
A charade of ON and FORM.
3 Celebrities go after county that’s abandoning young artist
SURREALIST
A charade of SURRE[Y] and A LIST.
4 Report back over small man’s chest
MOOBS
A charade of BOOM reversed (‘back’) and S. ‘Over’ works here because it’s a down clue. MOOBS is short for man boobs, a description of the breast tissue of men who are carrying a little too much weight. I’ll spare you a picture.
5 Poet penniless on drug reportedly; this might mask the smell
POTPOURRI
A homophone of [Edgar Allan] POE, POOR and E for the ‘drug’.
6 Wise man cut the middle out
SEER
SE[V]ER
7 Persevere to maintain a bird as pet
KEEP AT IT
The setter is whimsically suggesting that to do what it says in the surface you would need to KEEP A TIT. There are plenty of species to choose from, but I can’t show you any, because to qualify the answer has to be the bird, the whole bird and nothing but the bird.
8 One can feel pain in guts before death
NERVE END
A charade of NERVE and END. If I were being picky, I would say that a NERVE END transmits pain signals; it can’t feel pain.
13 Delighted with news for coinage
MADE UP WORD
A charade of MADE UP and WORD. The first particle is mainly northern English dialect: ‘he was made up when he got promoted’. The solution is once more slightly bizarre: you won’t find MADE UP WORD (which I’d always write as MADE-UP WORD) in any dictionary, will you? NEOLOGISM you might.
15 Doctor gave boy no parting words when travelling
BON VOYAGE
(GAVE BOY NO)*
16 Change location — increases clicks
UP STICKS
A charade of UPS and TICKS.
17 Break extraordinarily fine case for jewellery
INFRINGE
An insertion of RING in (FINE)* The insertion indicator is ‘case for’ and the anagrind is ‘extraordinarily’.
19 Arrange list of performers
LINE UP
A dd.
20 Quiet safety instruction in car
BELT UP
Another dd.
23 Relaxes as toff takes the mickey
EASES
I’m afraid I can’t parse this one, and I have stuff to do this morning, so will use the ‘ask the audience’ option here.
Edit: this is TEASES for ‘takes the mickey’ with the T OFF. Thanks to Charles and Rullytully for explaining it and to Widdersbel for expressing exactly my feelings about the clue.
24 Wife abandons quick examination
SIFT
S[W]IFT
Many thanks to Anto for today’s Quiptic.
23D Teases with the t off.
23a is t taken off teases.
Thanks Pierre and Anto. Some very good clues here but such a contrast to last week’s Chandler, in both style and difficulty…
Charles / Rullytully – well done both for spotting that. A decidedly unfair trick for a puzzle supposedly aimed at novices.
Sorry for crossing, Charles and I meant 23d. Never heard of “on the tear”, although soda pop is familiar
Overall I found this much harder than today’s cryptic.
Thanks to s & b.
Thanks (?) Anto and Pierre
Anto back to his worst. This was ridiculously hard for a Quiptic – indeed, hard for a cryptic. A DNF for me – I’ve never heard ON THE TEAR.
I did like TORY.
Thanks for the explanations; blog amended.
A really mixed bag, and I fully agree with Widdersbel @3. All in all another failure of setter & editor for the Quiptic.
CANNIBAL was perhaps my favourite, although I needed a bit of help – got stuck thinking of sycophants etc.
Thanks both.
This would have made a good Friday spot and was maybe intended as such
I liked it but it should not have appeared as a Quiptic
I loved Pushkin
Thanks Pierre and Anto
14a – I think this is TAR in LIBERIA and then the final N comes from “one” rejecting all limits, giving you the central letter.
Cryptic easier than Quiptic again
[Pierre – if you’ve seen flashling’s outrageous slur on you in the Everyman blog I assume you will be scrapping in the car park – I’ll hold your coat]
That was incredibly tough for a quiptic imho. I got 5d from the crossers, but it is one of several clues that I couldn’t parse.
Thanks for the excellent blog Pierre
Shirl@11 – brilliant! Anto’s 14a is actually a splendid &lit, with Liberia being historically a haven, and the definition “one rejecting all limits” an ornate alternative to “one undressed” etc. as a bit of wordplay.
Thanks to Shirl, and to Anto. And to Pierre, as always.
Whoops – Shirl@11 of course
I mean Shirl@9, obviously….
Quiptic = ‘a cryptic puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry’. Perhaps the Guardian puzzles editor needs a reminder of this? Or find a new name and description for the second Monday puzzle? I think this is the responsibility of the editor not the setter.
Liked: PUSHKIN, CANNIBALS, INFRINGE (loi).
New: MOOBS.
Did not parse 9ac apart from rev of REF; 23d [t]EASES – almost parsed it but not quite.
Thanks, both.
[Shirl @11: being called grumpy, a slur? That’s what I call a compliment.]
PIerre @17-Indeed!
muffin @5 says it all, really, although the reasons I was a DNF differed from his. I just gave up in the end and revealed the last few.
I have heard ON A TEAR, but I had a boyfriend from Belfast some years ago. Through this crossword I kept thinking Anto is Irish, what is the Irish phrase here?
It was a satisfying crossword, but took me 50 minutes, which is longer than most Paul’s take me and put it up with Crucible and Picaroon grids, slower than the Vulcan standard cryptic that took me a more usual 30 minutes and more than double last week’s Chandler grid. Much though I enjoyed it I don’t think this fits the quiptic description.
“On the tear” is definitely not an American expression for showing great energy; I’ve never heard or read it used in my many years as an American in America.
Common however, is “on a tear.” (or “on a wild tear”)
A lot of difficult stretching in this Quiptic, this clue a stretch too far….
‘On the tear’ seems to be Irish:
On the tear: On a spree or a session of extended drinking
As others have said, I thought this was too difficult for a Quiptic.
Thanks Anto and Pierre.
Like Daniel @21, I’ve only ever seen or heard “on a tear” never with the definite article. That aside, I agree with all who questioned the “Quipticness” of this offering. Btw, I would consider the word in quotes a made-up word rather than a neologism as I don’t expect it will ever appear in a dictionary and surely a neologism should. Likewise, our family word “prenugrative” applied to someone who is being deliberately annoying has never been heard outside our clan despite it being in existence for over a century.
I can’t say I enjoyed this much. Certainly not appropriate as a Quiptic, and I couldn’t find Anto’s frequency. Looking back, some of the clues are good, but several if them didn’t help me a great deal!
Its possible there were some really brilliant cluing. A few might even enjoy this puzzle from Anto.
But to me, it is like Buzz Lightyear going, “… What are you doing in this planet for energy? Are you still burning fossil fuels…? or you have discovered crystallic fusion?” And I go like T Rex, “umm… err… We got double A’s!!”.
Life is too short. Anto’s puzzles are not worth bothering with. I am boycotting Anto.
Pierre, Robi, and others
I think the explanation for On the Tear, (rhymes with air) originates from Donegal and means ‘on a tearing’ that is the tearing up and down the street in a drunken spree, tearing over the border to take advantage on the different opening hours.
It is pronounced locally On Da Tear.
When this got to Dublin English ‘da’ became ‘the’ but in America ‘da’ became ‘a’ although the Irish usage means destruction but the American usage means success.
Good crossword abd I think that today’s Cryptic was harder.
Ravilyn @25: I feel your pain.
Clive @26: that’s interesting, but for me it still leaves the question of why Anto, who is from Dublin, defined ON THE TEAR as ‘showing great energy’, when as you and Robi @22 point out, the Dublin usage seems to be equivalent to ‘on a bender’.
[Btw a Google search led me to ‘On the Tear Tonight’, a song by US country singer Chancey Williams, who released it last month to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. It’s quite fun (if you like Irish-tinged country music, which I do).]
The other, perhaps more pertinent, question is – what on earth was the editor thinking? Allowing through a clue, with distinctly tricky parsing, to a phrase which very few people on this side of the Irish Sea will have heard of, and even the Irish seem to use predominantly in a different sense, in a Quiptic of all places???? If I were Irish I’d be strongly tempted to use the word ‘eejit’.
A bit puzzled by the anti-Anto reactions here, as surely it must be down to the editor alone to judge if a setter’s offering should be used as a quiptic, Monday cryptic, weekday cryptic, or prize. Yorkshire Lass and I had no issues with this puzzle: ON THE TEAR was a TILT for us both, but one such per Xword, with the bonus of elucidations here, is a pleasure rather than a pain. And the PUSHKIN clue was one of those after which you never read the word/name again without recalling the setter’s witty analysis.
So keep going Anto despite the barbs (and the same to Last Plantagenet, whose spirited exchanges with others here have given us a good few chuckles lately).
PS. re essexboy@27. My childhood recollections are that the eejit was a lad playing the fool; the really stupid one was stigmatised as an omadhaun.
Thanks Irishman @29, I was trying not to be too derogatory, but I’ll remember omadhaun now for when the need arises 😉 . On the Quiptic/cryptic point, my understanding is that Anto and other setters do know in advance which slot a puzzle is intended for – see his ‘Meet the setter’ interview. I’m not excusing the
eejitomaeditor – I think the responsibility is shared.On SODA POP (28ac): In the US, both SODA and POP are used to denote sweet fizzy drinks. The differences are regional: SODA is northeastern, and POP is western. In the South, it is (or at least was) common to refer to all such drinks as COKE, regardless of whether they were actually Coca-Cola products. Although both SODA and POP are still in wide use, the combined term SODA POP is not: to me that term sounds very old-fashioned.
And I agree with my compatriots who say that ON THE TEAR is not US English, although ON A TEAR is. It’s quite possible that ON THE TEAR was once an US English idiom but has since disappeared. That could explain what Pierre found in his dictionaries.
I’m not aware of any usages in which “on form” and “in good heart” are the same, and I can’t find such a thing in my dictionaries. What am I missing?
Oh, and Google’s Ngram viewer doesn’t seem to come up with any instances of “on the tear” in any of its corpora (e.g., here).
Pretty tough for a cryptic. The Graun editor really is clueless. Nowt wrong with the puzzle other than it ought not to be in this slot.
[Ted @32 – you need to remove the quotation marks for an Ngram search, otherwise (I think) it will only look for instances where “on the tear” appears in books within quotation marks. If you remove them you get some interesting results. I’m guessing they include Irish books in their ‘British English’ corpus, because the frequency is higher than for American English. For BE there’s a huge spike in the late 80s and 90s for some reason.
The trouble with Ngramming phrases is that you’re also likely to get a lot of false hits, as I did when I googled “on the tear”, eg a Nature article entitled ‘On the tear resistance of skin’, and a medical website explaining that ‘a blocked tear duct may be caused by a tumor pressing on the tear drainage system’.]
I agree with you about ON FORM – I remember waiting till I had all the crossers before I filled it in, because it seemed so odd.
Sorry I forgot my manners earlier – thanks Anto for the crossword, and Pierre for an excellent blog.
I had other problems in addition to those mentioned. Is FLAKE AFFECTED? A flake or flaky perhaps. Some indication that OG is an example of a scoring error would have helped. Is SIFT EXAMINATION? Isn’t a ring a piece of jewellery? Wouldn’t jewellery be rings? I didn’t get on Anto’s wavelength at all. I really think the editor has given up. Some great clues in there and perhaps if it has been a Friday Cryptic I might have come away feeling more charitable. Thanks Anto and Pierre.
FAKE is the definition for ‘affected’, Xjpotter. Which I think works as a synonym. I did have a moment’s pause about SIFT as a noun meaning ‘examination’, though.
This one got on my 4 down!
Thanks to essexboy @34 for pointing out my NGram mistake.
An excellent challenge…for the Prize…
The editor’s single-minded determination to drive potential new cryptic crossword solvers to take up suduko is definitely working.
Big, fat, DNF here. Glad to know I’m not the only one!
I did enjoy POTPOURRI (which I thought was hyphenated? It always makes me think of Catholicism …) and SURREALIST.
Thanks Anto and Pierre. I have to add my voice to those saying “too hard”. It was a relief rather than a pleasure to get to the end of this. I felt that some brilliant clues were in effect masked by some that were just too
obscure; the effect of this is to damage my trust in the setter and make it feel like I just can’t get onto their wavelength.
Anto having “SCREEN SHOT” as two words and “POTPOURRI” as one makes me feel he’s of an older generation. But then there were too many phrases I just didn’t recognise the usage like “made up” for “delighted”, “on the tear”, and “OG”. I did laugh when I worked out “toff”, but overall this was disappointing not for being hard but for being obscure (which Anto claimed in his interview he tries to avoid).
Soda pop is in fact a pretty common usage in America.
This one was brutal for me, and even now I have to ask: How do you get over in 26? Is it a cricket thing?
I enjoyed 16 and 21.