This is the third Guardian Quick Cryptic, this one published on Saturday 20 April, a 11 x 11 crossword designed to support beginners learning cryptic crosswords.
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
- capitals to show the letters used in the solution.
- 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 here https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick-cryptic/3
Clues begin or end with a definition of the answer. The rest is one of these:
- Acrostic The first letters of the answer
‘Initially get a good joke (3)’ gives GAG - Insertion One word inside another makes the answer
‘In favour of republican entering Post Office (3)’ gives PRO - Charade A combination of synonyms
‘Qualify to get drink for ID (8)’ gives PASSPORT (pass + port) - Deletion Remove letters from another word for the answer
‘Car trip with no parking is bad thing (3)’ gives SIN
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SUPERVISORS | Delightful sunshades for overseers (11)
charade SUPER (delightful) + VISORS (sunshades) = SUPERVISORS a synonym for delightful (SUPER) followed by a synonym for sunshades (VISORS) added together to give a word meaning overseers (SUPERVISORS), for is a joining word so the surface makes sense and also helpfully splits the word play from the definition. |
| 7 | AHEAD | Forward first pieces of airmail Herman erroneously addressed directly (5)
acrostic (first pieces of) Airmail Herman Erroneously Addressed Directly – these first letters give A H E A D |
| 8 | CREPE | Thin pancake served by representative in church (5)
insertion (served by … in) – a representative is often abbreviated to REP, and church is often abbreviated to CE – so C(REP)E gives CREPE – a thin pancake |
| 9 | SKINNY | Very thin bar crossed by broadcaster (6)
insertion (crossed by) – an insertion of INN (bar) into SKY (broadcaster) |
| 11 | PART | Component of endless celebration (4)
deletion (endless) – if you take the last letter from PARTy (celebration) it becomes PART – a component. Endless can mean either end or both ends, here it just means the last letter. |
| 12 | TOM | Cat traps old mouse originally (3)
acrostic (originally) – TOM for cat is a regular in crosswords, as is originally as a first letter indicator for an acrostic, here from the words: Traps Old Mouse |
| 14 | SCAN | Examine second tin (4)
charade adding S (second) and CAN (tin) to give SCAN |
| 15 | BAKING | Bachelor of Arts and Head of State getting very hot (3)
charade adding BA (Bachelor of Arts) and KING (Head of State) to get BAKING |
| 18 | OVERT | Surplus time in public (5)
charade – adding OVER (surplus) and T (time – scientific abbreviation) to get OVERT. Overt is often clued as (in) public because that cluster of letters comes up in other words. |
| 19 | ANNUL | Cancel yearbook missing second “a” (5)
deletion (missing) – very helpfully the letter to be deleted has been clearly spelt out – deleting the second “a” in ANNUaL gives ANNUL. In other cryptic crosswords the deletion indicator and what is to be deleted can be a lot trickier to spot. |
| 20 | POTENTIALLY | Possibly powerful and initially independent supporter (11)
charade – POTENT (powerful) + I (initially independent) + ALLY (supporter) = POTENTIALLY (possibly) |
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SEALS | Aquatic mammals taking last of meat from creeps (5)
deletion – taking last of meat = T (the last letter of meat) from StEALS meaning creeps gives SEALS (aquatic mammals) |
| 2 | PREDICAMENT | Forecast including last word in prayer for crisis (11)
insertion (including) – PREDICT (forecast) containing AMEN (last word in prayer) PREDIC (AMEN) T |
| 3 | RODENT | Rat perhaps with lair in rubbish (6)
insertion (with … in) – DEN (lair) inside ROT (rubbish) gives RO(DEN)T – here a rat perhaps, as it’s a definition by example, lots of other rodents exist. |
| 4 | ITCH | Irritation of sorceress losing head (4)
deletion (losing head) – the sorceress is a WITCH as she so often is, losing her head means deleting the first letter to give ITCH. |
| 5 | OPERATIONAL | Working is voluntary over of a period of time (11)
insertion (over) – OPTIONAL (voluntary) with ERA (a period of time) inserted to give OP(ERA)TIONAL |
| 6 | SPENT | Used up writing implement found in street (5)
insertion (found in) – the writing implement is a PEN and ST is the abbreviation for street to give S(PEN)T |
| 10 | YOB | Lout starts to yell obscenities belligerently (3)
acrostic (starts to) Yell Obscenities Belligerently – and can’t you just picture it from the image conjured up from the surface. |
| 13 | MALAWI | Mother to rule one country (7)
charade – MA (mother) + LAW (rule) + I (one) = MALAWI (a country) |
| 14 | STOOP | Pause around entrance for old porch (5)
insertion (around) – STOP (pause) around O (entrance for old) – STO(O)P |
| 16 | GOLLY | Gracious leaders of grand old library love yes-men (5)
acrostic (leaders of) Grand Old Library Love Yes-men – |
| 17 | STUN | Render unconscious with small barrel (4)
charade S (small) + TUN (barrel) = STUN |
Great stuff Carpathian and Shanne. Many thanks
Shanne! Yet another blog with very clear and neat explanations. Thanks for the continued great service.
Just one observation:
OVERT
I think the def is ‘public’. The ‘in’ is a link.
In public=OVERTly. Isn’t it?
Something meant for those who are new to crossword puzzles:
The solution/answer to a clue and the definition should match in part of speech, tense, gender and number.
Shanne! If you have already explained this in any of your blogs, sorry for repeating it.
Fun puzzle.
I agree with KVa re OVERT = public.
Thanks, both.
This is really useful because the way new tricks build on those introduced in the previous two QCs consolidates and develops solving techniques. Many thanks Carpathian and Shanne. 😎👏
Sorry everyone trying to learn, this is going to get technical, so scroll past if you’re not interested.
[KVa @2 – I have not been discussing parts of speech because it’s complicated and is often the area of contention in the posts on a blog. In your post you’re effectively saying PUBLIC can only be used as an adjective, whereas the dictionaries define it as both an adjective and a noun. I deliberately used IN PUBLIC as the definition, an adjectival phrase, using public as a noun, This is because:
1. it does work in a sentence in English English, e.g.: the act of aggression was overt/in public
2. if I don’t use IN PUBLIC as the definition, there is an IN in the clue to explain, which when this crossword is introducing insertion clues could be unhelpfully ambiguous.]
Shanne – thanks for explaining about ‘in public’ = overt. I get it now.
I found that tougher than the last two – took twice as long as last week’s. The top left was hard to start off with. When I was a beginner, the problem for me was never the cryptic – it was knowing synonyms for words like stoop, overseers and tun.
I still find “Drop a letter” clues to be one of the hardest types because they tend to involve two completely unrelated words and not a lot else to help you get there.
Even so I like The Guardian’s approach of limiting it to four types of clues so that the solver can focus on those. I just hope (for the beginners) they don’t drift away from this approach but keep the QC like that.
Another fine blog from Shanne. Assuming STOOP is highlighted because it’s a screenshot of where you finished.
Couldn’t parse 1D but had the answer. Struggled parsing ‘Car trip with no parking is bad thing’ even with the answer.
This is quite difficult for beginners.
HG@7 – yes, this week and week 1 from the Guardian newspaper app on my phone. I can’t work out how to remove the highlight without photo processing. Last week from the website, which wasn’t as clear.
I’d agree this was tougher than the previous weeks, but I also find deletion clues harder.
I welcome this initiative by the Guardian to try to get people into cryptics. I think the 3 blogs so far have all explained the answers well.
I think a direction to this website in the paper would also help those who have tried it and struggled.
I think this one was much trickier than the first two and I caution the setter not to go too hard too fast.
A failure to solve would very easily put new solvers off.
EG today equating rule to law is debatable and the 4 eleven letter clues were all quite tricky. (I did solve it completely even though I’d never heard of STOOP as a porch.)
PS I do attempt the Guardian cryptic each day usually getting between half and three-quarters.
Thank you so much for your really clear explanations. I got a couple of answers which I couldn’t link to the clues but once you’d explained them – wow! So clever! My absolute favourite this week was 20A.
Thanks, I appreciate your detailed explanation. I finished the whole thing as a relative beginner, but I didn’t get how 9A worked, just that “very thin” was obviously skinny from the available letters. It’s kind of weird that A “crossed by” B can mean that B is on the outside. I thought it would be the opposite. When a road is crossed by a pedestrian, the pedestrian is in the middle of the road.
Hi, Shanne : “https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick-cryptic/3#14-down” – highlights STOOP in yellow.
Just rub out the “#14-down” -> “https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick-cryptic/3” and the yellow disappears.
Nice work.
@10 WynnD … you said ” I caution the setter not to go too hard too fast.”
I hope the setters will always keep it at this level. Otherwise in 2-3yrs time, there is no crossword to encourage the next generation of solvers. Beginners are always going to need to start somewhere basic.
@12 George Nixon
Think of a bridge crossing something. It starts on one side and ends on the other.
@8 Peter – not sure if you ever parsed the SIN but a “Car trip” is to go out for a SPIN. Parking=P as you will often see on British roadsigns. It’s a deletion so take the P out of SPIN to get SIN.
That is the tough part of getting into cryptics. There are lots of abbreviations like P=parking which are second nature to seasoned solvers and setters. The abbreviations have to exist in real life, they won’t just be shortened for the sake of it. But you’ll see things like D=died because it’s on gravestones or family trees. All you can do is keep reading the blog and learn them. It does get easier with practice and repetition.
FrankieG @13 that works fine if I’m using the online version to produce the image – which I did last week, week 2, but it wasn’t as clear as the screenshot from my phone using the Guardian app, which I used this week and week 1, as I explained above. There’s no way of removing the highlight there without taking it through a photo-processing programme, converting to black and white and upping the contrast. Which if I had a less limited time frame to produce this, I’d do.
I found this far more difficult than the last 2 weeks.
19a
1d
13d all failures.
In 13d, I was put off by “to” in the clue. I don’t understand how “to rule” = “to law”.
Steffen @18 – 1D SEALS from steals was quite challenging – steals as a synonym for creeps isn’t the word that leaps to mind, I back parsed it: from the crossers it had to be seals, and I knew I was adding in a T, which gave me StEALS.
19A ANNUL / annual I’ve seen enough to remember it.
If it’s any consolation 13D, MALAWI was my last in. In fact I didn’t solve it until I was writing up the blog, I often write out down clues horizontally if I can’t see them as I find words harder to resolve vertically. I think you’re right about the “to rule” – it would probably work better as:
13D Mother rules one / a country
because rules is a better equivalence to LAW, and one / a could both be I in Roman numerals.
HG, I got there in the end, thanks but I completed the puzzle first and went back to it.
Excellent blog Shanne.
I’m another who didn’t think of SPIN for the car trip in the examples from TODAY’S TRICKS provided by Carpathian, and or the Editor. That’s one of those words that I might only get with the help of crossing letters when it appears in a grid.
I also paused a little at ‘to’ in the clue for MALAWI. In this case I read ‘to’ as a position indicator, ie MA (positioned adjacent) to LAW.
Steffen @18, if you’re still around: the “to” in the clue for MALAWI is indeed a bit clunky. It’s there to make the surface read more smoothly, but makes the wordplay less smooth. But it works (just about) if you treat it as short for “adding to”, “leading to,” “attached to,” or some such. I solved that one by the following process:
1. The definition is going to be either “mother” or “country.” Gotta be country, since there aren’t any six-letter words for “mother” other than “mother.”
2. It’s clearly a charade-type clue, since none of the signposts for the other types of clues are here–I see no words that could be construed as telling me to delete letters, take first letters, etc.
3. “Mother” is almost invariably MA. “One” is usually I [but can be A, but hold that thought]. A country that begins with MA and ends in I? Not too many of those…
4. So that makes “rule” mean LAW, which is fine. And the “to” is just a silly little linking word. Done and dusted.
Admittedly, I’ve been doing this for like 30 years now, so that process was much quicker than I’m making it out to be, but that is indeed how I thought it through.
As a general rule, you can always consider ignoring prepositions (such as “to” here) as just being linking words. Some in the community disparage their use in that way, and some setters get sloppy with them, and I’m sorry to say that that’s what I think happened here. (They may be short words, but they do have meaning!) But it’s always something you have to at least consider.
Also, you are absolutely right that this puzzle was harder than the previous two. That’s because three of the devices Carpathian chose (charades, deletions, and insertions) are among the trickier ones in general. He balanced it out with acrostics, which are among the easiest, but even so.
Um mrpenney @23, and others who may be interested in our setter. Carpathian is a she.
mrpenney@23 thank you
Took me considerably longer than I would have liked. Thanks Carpathian and Shanne.
Good quick cryptic but I didn’t know STOOP and all the main dictionaries give US/N American usage, so possibly an indicator required?
Thanks @Carpathian and @Shanne
I grew up on the Telegraph cryptics and one of the things I noticed recently when introducing someone to the Quiptic was that the Gaurdian’s surfaces are somehow less obvious, i.e. the surfaces are generally better, which perversely makes things a bit harder for beginners in trying to disengage the brain from reading it as a sentence and re-engage in reading it as a clue/set of instructions.
So … Guardian:
Aquatic mammals taking last of meat from creeps
which has options of solving ( Part A, plus T as a charade… or Part A = Part B – T as a deletion).
I know there’s a “from” hint, but Shanne’s last blog highlighted that “from” often indicates the wordplay side.
Whereas Telegraph would more likely clue as:
Creeps lose no end of meat for aquatic mammals
which is a tad more obvious
I get that working out the type of clue, and the misdirection, are all part of the fun, but given the comments on #3 about the step up in difficulty from #1 and #2, I do wonder if making the cluing more obvious for new types might help a little in these early stages.
Just my 2p
Otherwise, thanks to both
I am new to cryptics and really struggled with this one, a little disheartened after ‘getting’ the first two. My difficulties started with parsing the SIN example clue like some others have mentioned. Perhaps a bit more explanation as to how the solution was reached in the examples might be nice for dullards like me. I failed to parse this and many of the other clues. I am sure it is just a case of learning a lot of the tricks of the trade but some clues are baffling for total beginners, particularly when the synonym is not an obvious one.
The link to this site to explain what was happening was very useful so thank you for taking the time to explain each clue, it is very helpful. Also I appreciate for a setter it is very difficult to strike the balance between a fun challenge and accessibility when you already know all the tricks by heart! An interesting series though so far. I will try again with the next one.
Agree with your opening paragraph David Keene@28. I started off with ‘straight’ cryptics too, which I felt was a solid base to leap off from into the Guardian surfaces and quirky depths.
Richard M@29. Hang in there. As others above have said, this one was a little more difficult, probably because of the clue types chosen. See you again next week!
@17 – Shanne – Apparently I can’t resist puzzles of any type. 😀 In future if you want a screenshot without the highlight, it’s the URL of the page activating the clue. If you edit it to remove the #link in it and refresh the page it should go away.
i.e. the difference between:
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick-cryptic/2#5-down
And:
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick-cryptic/2
Thanks for the blog (and Carpathian for the puzzle!), I’m a long time dabbler, been enjoying picking these up, nice to see efforts to get people into Cryptics, I have been sharing widely. 🙂
GOLLY – got this on wordplay alone, wouldn’t have got Golly = Gracious.
STUN – New to me: Tun
Overall – definitely trickier than first two, I don’t know why, maybe was a sterner test of my vocab.
Favourite: ITCH, because it made me think of Winnie the Witch for some reason. I imagine losing one’s head would be more of an irritation!
HG @ 14
I agree – keep them at the level of the first 2 to enable beginners to gain success. There is a tendency for teachers (I know as I was one) to move on from easy examples to more challenging ones as soon as the basic idea is grasped. (Think about when you were taught, say, trigonometry or quadratic equations.) In this crossword context Carpathian is the teacher and my cautionary suggestion was for her to be careful not to move to harder examples too quickly. From your reply she should not move to harder ones at all.
@Shanne , thank you very much for putting up these solution explainers . I’m new to cryptic crosswords and have always wanted to learn. The Guardian’s quick cryptic is great, but having the answers explained is helping a lot ! Thanks again !
Your explanations are a great public service. Thank you so much -this is my third cryptic crossword and I’m now less disheartened!
Rescued it from the recycling after success with 4. Also found it harder: just finished this evening as a joint effort!
Thanks Shanne and Carpathian
Thank-you @Carpathian – loving these Quick cryptic crosswords so much and thanks so much to @Shanne for the explanations of the clues we didn’t get – so helpful!