Another puzzle from a fairly new Quiptic setter; I think this is Bartland’s third.
As a puzzle to introduce new solvers to the joy of cryptic crosswords, this fits the brief pretty well, with straightforward constructions and nothing too obscure. (Any beginners who haven’t come across Io before would do well to remember her – she’ll probably be back in another puzzle soon. The same applies to the trick used in 10a and 3d.) However, I wasn’t quite convinced by the grammar of 13a, nor by the rather heavy-handed “hidden answer” indicators of 20d and 23d, though it’s obvious enough what the setter intended. 16a, 25a and 5d are lovely anagrams with good surfaces. Thanks Bartland for the fun.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | AUROSCOPE |
It’s used to study the ear and scoop urea out (9)
|
| Anagram (out) of SCOOP UREA. | ||
| 10 | CAMEL |
Beast of burden arrived at Leatherhead (5)
|
| CAME (arrived) + first letter (head) of L[eather] – we have to split the Surrey place-name into “leather” and “head” to make sense of this one. | ||
| 11 | DIPLOMA |
Drop Laurence Olivier’s initials onto graduate certificate (7)
|
| DIP (drop, as in a sudden dip in temperature) + initial letters of L[aurence] O[livier] + MA (a graduate from a master’s degree course). | ||
| 12 | ELITIST |
Snob put it into menu alongside exquisite starter (7)
|
| IT inserted into LIST (menu), all after (alongside) the starting letter of E[xquisite]. | ||
| 13 | ISSUE |
Effect of insidious banks taking legal action (5)
|
| Outside letters (banks) of I[nsidiou]S, then SUE (take legal action). The grammar seems a little suspect here (take / taking), unless I’m missing something. | ||
| 14 | STRETCHED |
Holy man gagged and put on the rack (9)
|
| ST (abbreviation for saint = holy man) + RETCHED (gagged). | ||
| 16 | HALF-HEARTEDNESS |
She’s a left-hander in disguise, showing no real enthusiasm (4-11)
|
| Anagram (in disguise) of SHE’S A LEFT-HANDER. | ||
| 19 | STEPCHILD |
Wife’s son, perhaps, lets hip CD play (9)
|
| Anagram (play) of LETS HIP CD. | ||
| 21 | OTHER |
Separate article is covered in gold (5)
|
| THE (grammatical article) covered in OR (heraldic term for gold, from French). | ||
| 22 | BRITAIN |
It punctures intellect in this sceptred isle (7)
|
| IT inserted into (puncturing) BRAIN (intellect).
The phrase is originally from Shakespeare, and was later used as the title of a radio series about Britain. |
||
| 23 | ENDURED |
Put up with conclusion to rude shenanigans (7)
|
| END (conclusion) + anagram (shenanigans) of RUDE. | ||
| 24 | ALIVE |
A bad back but not dying (5)
|
| A, then EVIL (bad) reversed (back). | ||
| 25 | RESISTANT |
Unwilling to move train sets (9)
|
| Anagram (to move) of TRAIN SETS. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SANDWICHES |
Squeezes tightly in swish dance manoeuvres (10)
|
| Anagram (manoueuvres) of SWISH DANCE. | ||
| 2 | PROPOSAL |
Support nothing prior to Sarah’s offer (8)
|
| PROP (support) + O (zero = nothing) + SAL (a shortened form of the name Sarah). | ||
| 3 | ASHORE |
Cinders or sweetheart washed up (6)
|
| ASH (cinders) + OR + middle letter (heart) of [sw]E[et] – splitting the word sweetheart into two. | ||
| 4 | IOTA |
Lover of Zeus thanks another Greek character (4)
|
| IO (in Greek mythology, one of the many women seduced by Zeus) + TA (thanks = “thank you”).
The Greek name for the letter I. |
||
| 5 | CELEBRATED |
Bet declared invalid but is honoured (10)
|
| Anagram (invalid) of BET DECLARED. UPDATE: As muffin@1 points out, this doesn’t actually work because there’s a surplus D. | ||
| 6 | SCRIPTED |
Unexpectedly predicts what’s written down (8)
|
| Anagram (unexpectedly) of PREDICTS. | ||
| 7 | IMPISH |
Mischievous chimp is hassling constituents (6)
|
| Hidden answer (constituents = parts) in [ch]IMP IS H[assling]. | ||
| 8 | BLOT |
Smear black mass (4)
|
| B (abbreviation for black) + LOT (mass = a large amount). | ||
| 14 | STATIONARY |
Fixed terminus on a railway (10)
|
| STATION (terminus) + A + RY (abbreviation for railway). | ||
| 15 | DISCREDITS |
Brushes aside colour with it in circles (10)
|
| RED (colour) + IT, in DISCS (circles). | ||
| 17 | HECTARES |
Teachers reinterpreted units of measurement (8)
|
| Anagram (reinterpreted) of TEACHERS.
Units of measurement for land area. |
||
| 18 | ETHEREAL |
Finally settle the legitimate fine (8)
|
| Last letter (finally) of [settl]E + THE + REAL (legitimate).
Fine in the sense of very thin and insubstantial = ethereal. |
||
| 20 | ELICIT |
Bring out some of Israeli citizen’s contents (6)
|
| Hidden answer (some of . . . contents) in [isra]ELI CIT[izen]. | ||
| 21 | ODDISH |
Rather weird headless fish on plate (6)
|
| [c]OD (fish) without the first letter (headless), before (above, in a down clue = on) DISH (plate). | ||
| 22 | BEAR |
Put up with Rupert, perhaps? (4)
|
| Double definition. To endure; or the cartoon character Rupert Bear. | ||
| 23 | ELSE |
Inmates of Belsen freed otherwise (4)
|
| Inner letters (inmates . . . freed?) from [b]ELSE[n]. |
Thanks Bartland and Quirister
Very easy. Heavy on anagrams – of which 5d doesn’t work; there’s an extra D.
AUROSCOPE was a bit odd. The usual term is “otoscope”. I Googled “auroscope” and found it, but the commoner spelling seems to be “auriscope”.
Shame about 5d. Would have worked with “Declare bet…”
… or bet declared almost invalid…
Agree about ISSUE and the almost-anagram at 5d.
Also, surely DISCREDITS doesn’t mean ‘brushes aside’? The former is to harm someone’s reputation, or to show that an idea is false; the latter to disregard, to ignore. There are contexts in which “dismiss” could be substituted for either one, but that doesn’t make one equivalent to the other.
I think really all three of those should have been picked up by the editor.
Otherwise – a very nice Quiptic! Thanks Bartland and Quirister.
I did not parse 2d apart from PROP + O + ??? (never heard the name Sarah shortened to Sal which I think of as shortened from Sally).
5d – I thought it was an anagram but there is an extra D in the fodder betdeclared
New: AURISCOPE.
Thanks, both.
A good example of a Quiptic but I am astonished that 23D made the editors cut – very poor taste.
Thanks to Bartland and Quirister.
DuncM – I do agree, and I see there are a lot of complaints on the Guardian site as well. Another case where the editor should have stepped in.
Never heard of an auroscope, and have never known Sarah to be Sal. I didn’t notice the flaw in the anagram for 5d.
Pretty easy. I completed this, Vulcan’s and Flimsy’s in the FT today in not much more than an hour — either they’re getting easier or I’m improving with experience.
Sarah becomes Sal by way of Sally.
….a little more obvious, though less common, than Margaret>Peggy>Peg.
Muffin @ 9, OK, but how does Sarah become Sally?
Geoff @ 11: presumably the same way Harry becomes Hal
23 dn : yes there’s an International Remembrance Day coming up shortly. The editor could have jumped in with
Kelsey is stateless otherwise.
Or some OTHER avoidance manoeuvre.
Thank you Bartland and Quirister.
A tell-tale mixture of clues that we often see, more’s the pity, in The Guardian, with some working nicely, and others that have somehow missed the cryptic boat. Therefore the tale told is one of inconsistency. One cannot ever really tell, but is the ignorance of helpful convention wilful, or simply ignorant? The grammar errors are obviously just errors, showing that the compiler should get out more, as the saying goes. Certainly, if Quiptics are meant to offer assistance to learners as well as ‘those in a hurry’, then too frequently our tyros are being educated by Bad Teacher.
#11 the name Sally is a corruption of Sarah, hence Sarah = Sal.
As for 23D, I agree with comments. I do hope when the next editor comes along we won’t see things like this.
Thanks, Bartland & Quirister. A very gentle start to the week indeed. IOTA was the standout for me – lovely fun bit of wordplay. I didn’t even notice the error at 5d because I spotted the solution straight off and wrote it in without checking off the letters. Would definitely have preferred to see a different clue for ELSE – whether or not the editor should have let it through, the setter should have thought twice about submitting it in the first place.
GDU @11 – the same way Margaret becomes Peggy, of course.
Thanks muffin for pointing out the error in 5d – it seems I read the setter’s intention but didn’t check he’d actually achieved it. DuncM, I had the same thought about 23d but wondered whether I was overreacting; it seems not.
Using Sally/Sal as a pet name for Sarah is not common nowadays, where Sally has become a separate name, but it was a common diminutive in the past. The anagram that wasn’t held me up and was my LOI, because I dismissed my thought that it was an anagram when I got the wrong letter count. Otherwise, this was good. Thanks, Bartland and Quirister.
I think 13 works. What do banks do if they take legal action? They sue. This of course has “banks” doing double duty, but is that necessarily so terrible?
TassieTim@18. Yes, just to reinforce your point about Sal’s older pedigree, via what may be regarded as a rather obscure literary reference, in Chapter 21 of Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, a character (Craigengelt) refers to Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, irreverently as ‘Sall Jennings’.
Nicely targeted to the beginners, although there were quite a number of anagrams (possibly OK in a Quiptic).
Shame about the mistake in 5, easily done and I didn’t notice while solving. AUROSCOPE is in the ODE, so fair enough, although it’s best not to put in something slightly obscure in the first Across answer. I thought HALF-HEARTEDNESS was a good anagram and liked ALIVE for the wry humour in the surface.
Thanks Bartland and Quirister.
I did know that for some inexplicable reason that Margaret could become Peggy and Henry Hal, but Sally from Sarah is a new one for me. Curioser and curiouser. Thank you for pointing this additional absurdity out.
Nothing additional to report, everyone above has made the same points about extra Ds and Sarah/Sally. Not 100% convinced, but everyone deserves a second chance.
Very enjoyable quiptic!
Re 24 across though, I must protest, if someone is dying they are by definition alive, not dead
Yes, but if they are not dying they’re also still alive.
I’ve never heard of an AUROSCOPE, but that’s what the letters make.
Pleasant diversion last night, thanks to Bartland and Quirister.
AUROSCOPE is simply wrong (not in Chambers nor OED), the word is AURISCOPE, and the better term is OTOSCOPE.
Scolopax @27
See mine @1.
Effect of insidious banks taking legal action
I think this is a classic ‘surface overrides all’ error. What we really need are ‘banks of insidious’, or ‘insidious’ banks’, but Surface denies either. Then we see ‘taking’ used as a link word. That would upset some people, I know for a fact. It’s used sometimes as an inclusion indicator as well, and those same people give that usage the thumbs down too. How to get round this I wouldn’t know — that’s for the compilers of this world to sort out.
So how does Margaret become Bunty, as in the old comic for girls? A Scottish thing, perhaps?
As soon as I spotted the answer to 23D I thought there would be comments. Fully agree that it was in poor taste.
Some Bunty info:
One example was the occasional column in the Aberdeen newspaper, The Press & Journal, retailing the exploits of “Dod & Bunty”. However, there is agreement that it was probably originally a nickname and only became popular from the early 20th century as a baptismal name. [Note: Dod or Doddie is a Scottish nick-name for George.]
Bunty is of uncertain derivation, possibly from a pet-name for a lamb, from the old English “to bunt” i.e. “to butt gently”. In Scotland it seems more likely to be from “buntin” or “buntie”, pet-names for a short, plump person. A personal correspondent [AW] suggest that this derivation is popular in the Scottish counties of Lanarkshire and Aberdeenshire and MS2 reports a tradition of Janet being nicknamed Bunty through successive generations of her own family and many other local famiies in Lanarkshire.
Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang suggests that Bunty was used around the early 20th century century in military slang as a nick-name for any short, stout serviceman. It was also used in the US with the same meaning. So far we have been unable to establish the source of the nick-name.
A correspondent from Australia [DT] has searched for Bunty in Western Australia and NSW. The only one found had Bunty as a middle name and was believed to be of Scottish origins.
I’m not understanding the question about the parsing of ISSUE. “Insidious banks” is IS, taking legal action is SUE (though sues would be better, as Quirister implies). However I’m not convinced by the definition of “effect”.
Robi @25, or, they might be dead
muffin @33 — The problem is that “taking legal action” doesn’t give SUE; it gives SUING. And making “taking” into a link word, as Ui Imair @29 suggests, doesn’t help: “legal action” gives SUIT but not SUE.
And I agree with Josh Rubin @24 that “not dying” is an unsatisfactory definition of ALIVE.
I’m another who didn’t notice the flawed anagram in 5dn.
But despite all that, I thought this was an enjoyable Quiptic.
Ted
Yes, you’re right, it does give “suing”.
I have never completed a cryptic/quiptic so quickly. LOI was 5dn, it looked lie an anagram but had too many letters, but realised yhat it was and when I put it horizontally , I could see the answer, I can forgive the occasional slips in grammar. How do you cope with life ifyou cannot?
24a ALIVE could have been fixed by changing not dying to not yet dead. The discussion reminds me of the cliché about the deadliest condition of man being birth.
Faulty anagram in 5dn, faulty grammar in 13ac and poor taste in 23dn – was the editoe asleep or something?
13ac I was fine with ‘taking’ as IS ‘taking on’ SUE, in the sense of having it added.
I’m very new to cryptics, so this was a great Quiptic for me. I didn’t finish but got well over half way. I’m studying the form and writing down what I find to help me remember. Thank you to Bartland and Quirister for a good puzzle and explanation.
I didn’t get to this week’s Quiptic until Wednesday night (US CST) so probably no one will read this. But the broken anagram for CELEBRATED took as long as the rest of the puzzle combined. When I do anagram clues, at least the longer ones, I always count letters in the fodder to be sure I’m on the right track. The count was off, so I was sure it wasn’t an anagram! But what else could it be? I was baffled. Finally resorting to a crossword completer, I saw that the setter had let us all down. Rant over.
I don’t see ethereal as a synonym for fine, but maybe that’s me. I keep finding that unusual definitions throw me in these crosswords and that is what makes them hard or not. @29 refers to ‘surface above all else’ which is what causes it. The best quiptic I’ve done haven’t been obsessive with surface, which makes them a bit easier than other, harder crosswords in my opinion. I don’t mind the Belsen clue but was a bit confused by the fuss when the clue has now been changed to Chelsea. Mistakes like the anagram threw me too. A bit of a shambles this week.
I just discovered that the clue to 23d has been changed to:
Otherwise found in Chelsea (4)