Thank you to Anto. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1. Gather heat is on the rise (5,2)
ROUND UP : ROUND(a heat/one of the elimination stages in a competition leading up to the final) + UP(is on the rise/getting higher).
5. Concierge takes time removing new floor cover (7)
DOORMAT : “doorman”(one with more basic duties than a concierge, the latter assists guests/residents in a hotel or apartment block) plus(takes) T(abbrev. for “time”) minus(removing) “n”(abbrev. for “news”).
9. Notes from Greek character – as written (5)
MUSIC : MU(a character in the Greek alphabet) + SIC(as written/without any corrections or amendments).
10. Where glances may be traded quickly! (4,5)
LOOKS MART : LOOKS(examples of which, quickly taken, are glances/glimpses) + MART(a marketplace where things may be traded).
Defn: …/hurry up!
11. It illuminates talk depicting prominent facial feature (7,3)
LANTERN JAW : LANTERN(a source of illumination) + JAW(informal term for lengthy talk).
12. Naughty introductions for burlesque leave us excited (4)
BLUE : 1st letters, respectively, of(introductions for) “burlesque leave us excited”.
14. To get away from people, doctor flies to Sale (4,7)
SELF ISOLATE : Anagram of(doctor) FLIES TO SALE. A hyphen, not a comma, in the numeration?
18. Murderous Scottish couple attach odd batches to them (3,8)
THE MACBETHS : Anagram of(odd) BATCHES placed after(attach … to) THEM.
Answer: …, King and Lady in Shakespeare’s tragedy.
21. Recognise oddly missing periods of time (4)
EONS : “Recognise” minus its 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th letters(oddly missing).
Defn: Long ….
22. One walking round bar to find bouncer (10)
TRAMPOLINE : TRAMP(one walking/travelling on foot) + O(letter describing something round-shaped) + LINE(bar/a long narrow mark or band).
25. Yankees in turmoil due to such economic policies? (9)
KEYNESIAN : Anagram of(… turmoil) YANKEES IN.
Defn: … based on the theories of economist John Maynard Keynes.
26. Able to follow exercise nut? (5)
PECAN : CAN(be able to) placed after(follow) PE(abbrev. for “physical education”, a school period of physical exercises).
27. Dull path around home (7)
ROUTINE : ROUTE(a path/a course from origin to destination) containing(around) IN(not out/home, as in “I’m home tonight”).
28. Surrenders and retires (5,2)
TURNS IN : Double defn: 1st: …/submits to, say, authority; and 2nd: … to bed in the evening.
Down
1. Discover doctor breaking law (6)
RUMBLE : MB(abbrev. for “Bachelor of Medicine”/a doctor derived from “Medicinae Baccalaureus”) contained in(breaking) RULE(a law).
Defn: To …, say, an illegal activity.
2. Neglected old Germans suspended heartlessly (6)
UNSUNG : [ “Huns”(a derogatory term for Germans – the original Huns were a Central Asian people who invaded Eastern and Central Europe) + “hung”(suspended/dangled) ] minus(…-lessly) the 2 “h”(abbrev. for “heart” as in “hr”/heart rate).
3. Squalid mix of skin and ice (10)
DICKENSIAN : Anagram of(mix of) SKIN AND ICE.
Defn: …/describing poor social conditions, as portrayed in the novels of Charles Dickens.
4. Said to invest heavily in support for electricity grid (5)
PYLON : Homophone of(Said) “pile on”(to invest heavily/to add to something, in this case investments, in large amounts).
5. Damage trip had on intimate (4,1,4)
DROP A HINT : Anagram of(Damage) TRIP HAD ON.
Defn: …/to give a slight indication of.
6. Get rid of French author that’s rejected publicity (4)
OUST : “Proust”(Marcel, French author) minus(that’s rejected) “pr”(abbrev. for “public relations”/publicity).
7. Dish causing tension during dinner with fool (4,4)
MEAT LOAF : T(symbol for “tension”/a pulling or stretching force, in physics) contained in(during) [ MEAL(an example of which is dinner) plus(with) OAF(a fool/lout) ].
8. Little Edward accepts present is tied up (8)
TETHERED : TED(shortened form/little of the name, Edward) containing(accepts) HERE(present/at this place).
13. Spits on formal hat – sweet! (10)
GOBSTOPPER : GOBS(informal term for “spits”/expels liquid from the mouth) + TOPPER(informal term for “top hat”, a hat that is part of gentlemen’s formal dress).
Defn: A large, hard and spherical ….
15. Policy to have Tiber redirected – that’s depraved (9)
LIBERTINE : LINE(policy/a principle adopted by an organisation or individual) plus(to have) “Tiber” with its 1st letter moved to the end(redirected).
16. One is an exhibitionist out of habit (8)
STREAKER : Cryptic defn: Reference to one in public without any clothes/habit on.
17. Setter and solver make alternative version of us (2,3,3)
ME AND YOU : ME(setter of this puzzle, using the self-referential pronoun) AND YOU(second person pronoun for the solver, as used by the setter).
Defn: Synonym/alternative version of “us”.
19. Sign church is involved in waste (6)
PISCES : CE(abbrev. for the Church of England) contained in(is involved in) PISS(liquid waste material passed from the body/urine).
Defn: 12th … of the zodiac.
20. Imagine writer producing uplifting piece of meditation on Nelson (6)
LENNON : Hidden in(piece of) reversal of(uplifting) “meditation on Nelson”.
Answer: …, Lennon, composer of the song, “Imagine”.
A cover:
23. Artist has working method that’s clear (5)
MONET : MO(a.”modus operandi”/one’s method of working) + NET(clear/earn a net profit, ie. after all deductions have been made).
Answer: Claude …, French impressionist.
24. In the middle of desert, family creates a suburban home (4)
SEMI : Middle 2 letters, respectively, of(In the middle of) “desert, family”.
Answer: Short for “semi-detached house.
Thanks Anto and scchua
Hardest Quiptic for a while in my view. Loved it. Lennon was one of best hidden clues I have seen for a long time. Not completely sure about The Macbeths as a phrase but gettable.
Favourite: MUSIC.
New for me: LANTERN JAW.
A note for the Crosswords Editor: Not a Quiptic. Not for beginners.
Liked LOOKS MART, STREAKER and SEMI.
ROUND UP
on the rise=UP. The ‘is hangs loose?
TETHERED
present=THERE
Thanks Anto and scchua.
I wondered whether this was intended to be the prize puzzle but was mislabeled.
I liked LENNON. Several NHOs and iffy definitions
Thanks Anto and scchua
Finally time for me to join the legions of the wise & productive and give up this ultimate time-wasting enterprise called cryptic crosswords.Enough is enough👋👋
I liked LENNON and LOOK SMART, but, as has been said countless times with this setter, not a Quiptic.
LOOK SMART
I think…
‘Where glances may be traded’=LOOKS MART reads better than dividing the WP into two parts.
There was some good stuff here, particularly LENNON and LOOK SMART. However, it’s clearly too hard for a quiptic. Sometimes we say that just based on feel, but here we’ve got a concrete example: UNSUNG. I challenge anyone to defend that as a “beginners” clue. Other hard ones were heat=round, THE MACBETHS (since it’s not a phrase as such), bouncer=trampoline, and intimate=hint at. A fun puzzle – but one which would happily sit the full cryptic slot, albeit perhaps on a Monday.
Las week’s Everyman (which I tend to do a week late so that I can enjoy the blog immediately afterwards) was far easier than this Quiptic.
Small quibbles about the unhyphenated SELF ISOLATE and the phrase ME AND YOU which to me should be YOU AND ME.
Thanks both.
Another Anto Quiptic and more (justified) complaints about it being too hard for the slot. I remind myself that this puzzle is free, and no-one forces me to do it.
I do like Anto as a cryptic setter, but I do wish he wasn’t put in the Quiptic slot because I don’t think he’s a good fit here.
I didn’t parse UNSUNG.
Really glad you got to blog this one scchua.
This took me a bit longer than recent quiptics(but still at quiptic level) and there were a few that I did not understand the parsing from the clues. This has cleared things up.
Thanks sschua and Anto.
TETHERED – if present=HERE in TED where does the second T come from?
I could only conclude as @3 KVa suggests present=there. It’s not a usage I’ve seen in cryptics before.
He’s present = he’s there (at the meeting, say). More commonly, “here” is used for that, but “there” works too.
I enjoyed this but I wouldn’t categorise it as quiptic, it felt more difficult than that.
8d. I suppose if something is THERE, then it’s present.
First one of these I’ve done, so I can’t judge its suitability for a Quiptic. It was quite tough. I haven’t seen LANTERN JAW for ages. 6d. I spent a while trying to think of French writers with AD in there names. Didn’t think of PR. The answer became obvious though. Same for ROUND meaning heat.
Squinting whilst looking at the comments to see how hard it is had saved me from wasting my time with another demotivating quiptic. I wish there was an easier way to tell the difficulty, but to be fair this method does work as long as I don’t accidentally see too many answers!
Their names!
Nice puzzle with a few chewy clues. I couldn’t get started in the NW so started at the SE and worked back up.
I was unable to parse UNSUNG. Thanks scchua for the explanation.
I liked the anagrams THE MACBETHS and DICKENSIAN, the nicely hidden LENNON and the neat surface for MUSIC 🎶. (Quite tricky, considering all possible options)
Thanks to Anto and scchua.
I mostly got onto Anto’s wavelength this time around for a Quiptic so some of it fell out nicely. But agree some was a bit tricky and glad to be able to check in here for some explanations, as UNSUNG, for instance, was a guess based on crossers and I convinced myself that Prussians for old Germans was somehow involved. Loved murderous Scottish couple, gobstopper and eons.
Was this a Quiptic or not? As someone who’s come up from the Saturday Quick Cryptics I thought this one was still largely doable for a beginner.
Thanks Anto for the puzzling and Scchua for the explanations.
Pretty tough all right, for a Quiptic. Nho: LANTERN JAW. I liked PISCES – I doubt that you’d find that in the Times or the Telegraph! Moving along now to the Everyman 😄
Thanks scchua for your very detailed and well-illustrated blog, as always.
Fortunately, I got UNSUNG, and liked it a lot. Depraved for LIBERTINE I thought was a bit strong.
I do remember the GOBSTOPPER (while I still had dental health insurance. Lucky Brits, it’s on the NHS.) It’s known as a jawbreaker in American English, which is a nice segue to LANTERN JAW. Learned a new word today, prognathism.
BRAUN@5. Understand your frustration and not getting much joy, especially this weekend. The difficulty levels of the Quiptics and Everyman vary greatly. Hang in there. There might be a fun one next week.
Yesterday’s Quick Cryptic was very good – increased difficulty with the swapping first letters thing but doable. I love palindromes. But I didn’t know where to start with this ‘Quiptic’. I did 21a and 28a then gave up. Even revealing a couple of answers didn’t help. The Quiptics are very inconsistent; I coped well with last Sunday’s.
What nearly everyone else said: good fun but not a Quiptic.
I enjoyed this week’s quiptic, so thanks to Anto for setter, I would have been inclined to say it was a quiptic, though a tougher quiptic than recently. Thanks also to Scchua for parsing. I was able to parse most myself but for 23 down I was assuming working to mean “on” and trying to figure out how clearing method left me with met. Glad to understand what was really going on.
Favourite for me has to be Trampoline, I knew it was going to be a play on bouncer, but needed the crossers to work it out and found it funny when I managed to!
Thank you to scchua for the blog. I couldn’t crack the top half, so this was of great help.
My thought is that Anto thinks he sets easier puzzles than he does, and Alan Connor hasn’t cottoned on to that either. Part of the problem is looseness: as the blog points out, a Hun is not a German, and a concierge is not a doorman. Also, “squalid” is an odd definition for DICKENSIAN. (While the squalor is memorable, the large majority of Dickens’s characters and scenes are firmly middle-class, and he wrote from a middle-class sensibility.)
Separately, I spell meatloaf as one word unless I’m talking about the late singer. Is that American?
[Me @28: the New York Times had a policy that the first time they mention a person in an article, they use their full name, and each subsequent mention was the last name preceeded by the appropriate title (Mr., Ms., Dr., etc.) After they got some ridicule over an article in which MEAT LOAF was repeatedly called Mr. Loaf, they did carve out some exceptions.]
As experienced solvers we found this challenging in places – certainly not a quiptic.
So thanks to scchua for the blog, and qualified thanks to Anto.
I don’t fully get Lennon. I mean, I know he wrote Imagine, but I don’t get the meditation thing or how you would know that you should replace the S in Nelson with an L. Apologies if I am being thick.
@RabTheCat 31 – it’s not an anagram. The answer is hidden backwards (“uplifting piece of”) in “meditatioN ON NELson”.
Away from home and unwilling to pay for a paper that will be on the mat when I get home tomorrow I tried the Quiptic for a change. Getting 2d was easy enough from the crossers but parsing was beyond Prize level. (sschua I think heart/s = H may come from card games, esp bridge, rather than heart rate)
Thanks to Anto and sschua
I thought that this qualified as a Quiptic, albeit on the harder end. I was under the impression that Huns settled in what is now part of Germany, so my ignorance helped me there
The main difficulty, I saw, were some obtuse, but fair, definitions.
Thanks both
I thought that this was mostly in the Quiptic zone, as I was, mostly, able to do it. But I also thought, that neither 2 nor 8 down were Quiptic clues. 2d because firstly, the Huns were not German, secondly, although I remembered it as a derogatory term, from WWI stories, and I don’t expect derogatory terms for nationalities in the Guardian, and thirdly because ‘disheartening’ is a specialist crossword term, suitable for the improving beginner, and to throw the solver off the scent by using it to mean something completely different, seems unfair in a Quiptic. As for 8d, I’m happy with ‘here’ for ‘present’ but nothing will persuade me that ‘there’ can mean ‘here’!
Anto is trying – in both senses! To be fair, this was not as tough as his last Quiptic so, to my surprise, I got through this with much guesswork and just a couple of reveals. But, as already noted, some of these clues really don’t belong at this level.
I’ve reached the stage where, thanks to Shanne’s tuition, I’m now enjoying the Quick Cryptic which I’ve followed from the start. But to get through this puzzle required excessive use of ‘brute-force’ methods, using the crossers in OneLook.com.
Come on Anto – you can do it – just try a bit harder!
Well, I thought this was just about a quiptic, although I daresay when I tackle Vulcan’s Monday later they won’t be far apart. There were some clever bits to it. PISCES raised an eyebrow, but more in amusement than any pious distaste!
THE MACBETHS – I figured it’d be them from the definition before going any further. My Shakespeare knowledge is dreadful, but I played Macduff in a Shakespeare Schools festival at the Brum Rep too long ago. We had a steel drum band on the stage and comically fake wooden swords, which I very obviously drove under the armpit of Macbeth in the finale (which, of course, doesn’t happen in the actual play either!) – ah youth; thanks for the memory trigger!
Thanks Anto and scchua!
I’m actually quite stoked by how much I managed from an Anto puzzle, even if for a quiptic it was still a bit hard.
Positives: Loved THEMACBETHS and LENNON for the cryptic definitions, both of which brought a smile. I’d argue that the former was actually a gold standard quiptic clue (and the latter only let down by the looseness of ‘producing’)
Also just a general appreciation for a puzzle that felt fair GK-wise. Nice not to be stumped by obscure plants, 18th century composers, or the seemingly infinite different parts of a church for once. Am aware how hard it is for setters to choose a ‘fair’ set of references, especially when reading broadly is part of the job, so will always call it out when I see it.
Negatives: Playing guess the name for clues like MONET and prOUST will never be fun for me. There have been far too many French authors, some of which I’ve heard of. The word ‘causing’ in 7d seems weird to me – surely if anything, the word play ’causes’ the clue, not the other way round? ‘Present’ = ‘there’ also seems unfairly loose, agree with Arib @35.
Some rambling thoughts on quipticness: I think comparing 18a (THE MACBETHS) with 2d UNSUNG is illuminating. The former is, to my mind, the perfect quiptic clue: The word play is what I think of as ‘first-order’ – the text literally tells you what to do to the letters within it. The definition meanwhile, is cryptic but unambiguous – once you get the answer, you know it’s right. This combination means that, once you parse the clue correctly, you know it’s correct. If, instead, the clue were just “scottish couple” then or the wordplay “attach odd lots to others” then we’d no longer be in quiptic realm.
The counterexample of UNSUNG meanwhile features ‘second-order’ clueing. You first have to find the correct (obscure) version of Old Germans. A list of other possibilities: O G or O GER (abbreviations of old+ german), O DE (international country code), ALT (German for old), JERRIES (WW2 slang), DDR or GDR (former east and west germany), HRE (Holy roman empire, a very old Germany) or any combination of these due to the plural. Once you’ve identified the correct version, you then have to modify correctly before you can even tell if they are correct This is made more difficult by the operator being an uncommon one – heartlessly almost always means to take out the centre letters. I’m not saying that either of these parts of the clue are unfair but in combination, they’re frustrating and lead to asituation where even if you guess the word from the crossers, you still need to come to this site to understand it.
Frustratingly, I think the clue could have been an all time great if it had just been “Forgotten Huns hung heartlessly”. Maybe that looks too simple for serious solvers but heartless = subtract h is a real stumbling block at quiptic level
Thanks Anto and scchua
I never did work out why ROUND = heat, but I was OK apart from that. LENNON was brilliant.
On THE MACBETHS, I can heartily recommend this Thurber short story.
Agreed that it’s not really quiptic material, though I managed to fill everything in, mostly because there were enough to crossers to help with guessing (KEYNESIAN, UNSUNG). I’d only heard of GOBSTOPPERs in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I think I agree that this was hard for a Quiptic, but I thought it was a very enjoyable puzzle. Since I’ve complained about Anto in the past, I like to give him credit where due.
I particularly liked 1ac (ROUND UP), because “heat” for ROUND managed to elude me for quite some time; 10ac (LOOK SMART); and 25ac (KEYNESIAN).
I see mrpenney @28’s point about the definition of DICKENSIAN, but the word is commonly used in this way. Although it’s true that a lot of his characters and story lines are about the middle class, he was surely exercised about the squalor of London (and other places) and the plight of the very poor in his time. Oliver Twist is the clearest example that comes to mind, but it’s there in most of the other novels of his I’ve read too.
I do have a quibble, which I suspect is something that bothers only me: in 24dn, for the cryptic reading to make sense, the word “middle” should be “middles” (although of course this would ruin the surface and hence the clue). The middle of “desert, family” would be RTFA.
[Oh, and in my capacity as pedant who rains on people’s picnics, it appears not to be true that the NY Times referred to Meat Loaf as Mr. Loaf, although it should be true. To make up for it, here’s a correction that actually did run in the paper that I find very funny.]
As a beginner I found this a tough one.
Couldn’t get started until I twigged to Dickensian and could make some headway.
Although enjoying the puzzle, it was no walk in the park, that’s what makes it so enjoyable when you Finnish it.
Struggled a lot with some clues, solving them with use of the letters already provided by other answers…
10a. Was a 4, 5 but the answers was looks mart (look smart) thus 5,4 ??
22a. Trampoline couldn’t get line from bar for the life of me but bouncer couldn’t mean anything else
25a. Keynesian. Filled in the missing letters but the term is completely unknown to me. Had to Google the word to ensure it was correct.
2d. Unsung…ok I got it and had Hun straight away, but don’t understand for the life of me how ‘Heartlessly’ indicates losing 2 X H ???
8d Tethered. Yes Ted in Here but where does the remaining T come from?
Thanks all for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon .
If you’re back later, Steve, regarding 8d, as KVa points out @3, scchua has mis-parsed it – ‘present’ should be THERE, not ‘here’. Regarding 22a, think of an isobar, for example, a line on a weather map joining points of equal barometric pressure. Regarding 2d, scchua clearly explains the loss of both Hs. Using the crossing letters to help arrive at solutions is in the very nature of a crossword – otherwise we would be presented with just a series of unnumbered cues with no accompanying grid, albeit some solvers hereabouts seem to find it more challenging to proceed as if that were the case.
Thanks Anto and scchua. Some brilliant/hilarious moments and overall pretty tricky … yet fun.
Got there in the end but I had to reveal LANTERN JAW – I’m neither familiar with the facial feature or the use of “to jaw”.
I don’t think this was wildly out of place for a Quiptic, but it is far from a shining example of the slot. It balances on the very edge of acceptable in my humble opinion.
PISCES got a laugh out of me. I liked LOOKS MART too, though it took me a while to get it.
To solve the weekly complaints about the level of difficulty, all the editor has to do is drop the words defining it as suitable for beginners and those in a hurry. It’s just another puzzle and usually a good one.