Quiptic 1,316 by Chandler

by

This week’s Quiptic is from Chandler and can be found here

It really is my turn to blog the Quiptic this week – I’m on a four-weekly rota with Pierre and scchua, so I’m hoping for no duplicates, as I haven’t heard that anyone else wants to take it on. Apologies for a fortnight ago – dealing with family funerals scrambled my brain.

I found this reasonably straightforward for a Quiptic, although I did have to check one abbreviation.  As I’m no longer a beginner, it’s difficult to judge.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 CHARITY
Fund-raising body wary about appeal (7)
insertion of IT (appeal) into CHARY (wary) to give CHAR IT Y – although as someone much involved in Girlguiding, which is a charity, we’re not there to fundraise.   IT as in the It girl and the lyric “She’s got IT” often gets criticised but is still in use.
5 STYLIST
One offering shock treatment? (7)
cryptic clue – the clue is referring to a hair STYLIST treating a shock of hair – see also Shock-headed Peter (Struwwelpeter in the original)
10 LAMB
Minute in scientific site for young farm animal (4)
insertion of M (minute) into LAB (scientific site) for LA M B
11 PRECAUTION
A routine PC changed as safety measure (10)
anagram of (A ROUTINE PC)* with anagrind of “changed”
12 PELLET
Some propel lethal ball of little size (6)
hidden clue (some) in proPEL LEThal
13 MARQUESS
Brand of car and ship for titled figure (8)
charade of MARQUE (brand of car) and SS (ship) – using the abbreviation for Steam Ship which many ships still hold.
14 PONDEROUS
Lumbering prince rode on awkwardly with American (9)
charade of P (prince) + (RODE ON)* + US (American) where (RODE ON)* is an anagram of rode on, indicated by “awkwardly”.
16 SNARE
Criminal nears trap (5)
anagram of (NEARS)* with anagram indicator of “criminal”
17 STOCK
Conventional items kept in a retail outlet? (5)
double definiton – as in a stock (conventional) phrase and the STOCK to be sold in a retail outlet
19 ESTIMATES
Judges the value of site developed by friends (9)
charade of (SITE)* (developed) to give ESTI + MATES (friends)
23 OPTIMISM
Tiny chap featured in work is source of memorably cheery outlook (8)
charade of TIM (tiny chap) inserted into (featured in) OP IS (work is) + M (source of Memorably) so OP TIM IS M.

Tiny Tim refers to Tim Cratchett in A Christmas Carol by Dickens, but is a known character outside that work.
24 POWDER
Daughter is captivated by strength in fine particles (6)
insertion (captivated by) of D (daughter) in POWER (strength) – D for daughter comes from genealogy
26 CONFIDENCE
Faith in secret communication (10)
double definition – with something said in confidence being the secret communication
27 DRAB
Dull medic is given a book (4)
charade of DR (doctor) + A (from the clue) + B (book)
28 ANTLERS
Learnt about second feature of some deer (7)
anagram of (LEARNT) with anagrind of “about” + S (second – from SI units) – SI units are standard metric units, of which a second is the basic unit of time.
29 ASPHALT
A special stop to find road surfacing material (7)
charade of A (from the clue) + SP (abbreviation of special) + HALT (stop).

 

“To find” here is to make the surface smoother, so that it reads as a sentence that could maybe make sense. It could also be indicating that this is how you get the definition
DOWN
2 HEAVE TO
Stop moving in the main? (5,2)
cryptic definition – stopping at sea (in the main) is heaving to – a term that comes from sailing and persists to other ships now
3 REBEL
Bachelor interrupting lively dance is one against authority (5)
insertion of B (bachelor) into REEL (lively dance) to give RE B EL
4 TIPSTER
Expert on course revised set trip (7)
anagram of (SET TRIP)* with anagram indicator of “revised” – the course here is the racetrack.
6 TEA URN
Spin to grip each hot drink container (3,3)
insertion (to grip) of EA (each – standard abbreviation) in TURN (spin) to give T EA URN
7 LITHUANIA
Italian is excited to tour restricted centre in northeastern European state (9)
anagram of (ITALIAN)* around sHUt (restricted centre – so the central two letters of SHUT) HUb (HUb – centre – without the b, so restricted – see the first few comments) to give one of the Baltic States
8 SPONSOR
Odds on first piece of silver and gold in fund (7)
charade of SP (Starting Price – the odds in betting) + ON (from the clue) S (first piece of Silver) + OR (gold in heraldic colours) – and that one I had to look up as I didn’t remember SP / starting price for odds, although I have come across it before
9 REIMBURSEMENT
Doctor remembers unit for paying back of expenses (13)
anagram of (REMEMBERS UNIT)* with anagram indicator of “doctor” as in to doctor the results of an experiment to make them look better.
15 DECEITFUL
European infiltrating field cut out as dishonest (9)
anagram of (FIELD CUT)* around (infiltrating) E (European – as in EU/EEC). The anagram indicator is “out”
18 TYPHOON
Sort has no end of scare by house regarding violent storm (7)
charade of TYP (sort = TYPE – has no end of scarE) + HO (house) + ON (regarding)
20 IMPRESS
This person’s urge to create a favourable impact (7)
charade of I’M (this person’s) + PRESS (urge).

 

This person’s = this person is – and changing person the equivalent is “I am” abbreviated to I’M. Urge/press as – “I was trying to go, but the host would urge/press me to stay and have another drink.”
21 EYEBALL
Stare at Emily’s jacket with fancy label (7)
charade of EY (EmilY’s jacket – so the outside letters of EmilY) + (with) (LABEL)* an anagram of (LABEL)* indicated by “fancy”
22 HINDER
Obstruct part of path in Derbyshire (6)
hidden clue (part of) patH IN DERbyshire
25 WIDTH
Leaders in western industry dismiss this half-baked range (5)
acrostic (leaders) in Western Industry Dismiss This Half-baked

 

32 comments on “Quiptic 1,316 by Chandler”

  2. How is M “source of memorably”?
    Couldn’t see how HU came from “restricted centre” at all, still not very convinced by it. Erik’s suggestion above makes more sense to me.
    Would never have figured out “odds” could give “SP” (was assuming “odds” referred to odd-numbered letters, but couldn’t see how that would work – figured out the solution without needing to understand the clue thankfully.)
    In what context does “HO” mean “HOUSE”?

  3. Perhaps I am not in the right mood or maybe Chandler and I were not on the same wavelength, but can only name one clue that I liked – IMPRESS.

    I could not parse CHARITY and feel STYLIST does not work. Shock of hair is the antithesis of styled hair. HEAVE TO does not mean stop in my mind and I could not find justification in dictionaries (incl Chambers). Tiny person = Tim is a bit much.

    Wonderful blog Shanne.

    Thanks Chandler and Shanne

  5. Dylan N@2
    M=source/the first letter of (the word) ‘memorably’. A standard crossword device.

    HO (dictionary.cambridge.org)
    written abbreviation for House: (used in the UK when writing addresses):
    Nexus Ho, 2 Malvern Road

  6. Erik @1 and KVa @4 – yes, I think your explanation is better for LITHUANIA, so I’ve corrected the blog.

    Martyn @3 – the STYLIST works on a shock of hair to make it coiffed, so it’s no longer a shock.

    For HEAVE TO, it’s specifically a sailing term, so you have to check both bits, but Collins (I’m away from home, so no dictionaries with me) gives:

    heave to
    verb
    (adverb)
    to stop (a vessel) or (of a vessel) to stop, as by trimming the sails, etc

    That one I didn’t have to look up as I grew up in boats.

  7. I liked SPONSOR and the puzzle as well.

    Dylan N@2 SP refers to starting price odds from the bookie. Along with ‘source of’ and many other first letter indicators and the HO abbreviation for house, it is a standard device.

    Thanks Shanne and Chandler

  8. I’m very happy about today’s quiptic, I am now starting to feel able to solve 90-100% of the grid unaided so that’s always delightful. I struggled a little in the NE corner between Stylist and not knowing the SP abbreviation for sponsor, but otherwise I thought everything was fair and well clued!

    Thanks to both Chandler and Shanne!

  9. Enjoyable Quiptic.

    I also parsed 7d as anagram of ITALIAN round HU = hu[b]. I think this was the only clue that might have been a bit too difficult for beginners.

  10. Thanks Chandler and Shanne
    Was the abbreviation you needed to check P for Prince? I wasn’t convinced by that one. btw your entry for this clue is a little garbled.

  11. As a beginner, I found this impenetrable. I’ve done better with many regular cryptics. Guessed a few answers from definitions then gave up.

  12. Found this okay but a few things I’ve NHO (which is always good) SP as odds and Marque as brand in car world. I don’t mind Appeal as ‘it’ .. as this is common (if dated) use .. but my one bugbear is using ‘It’ to infer SA as I’ve never seen this anywhere outside a crossword. Maybe before my time. Thanks Chandler and Shanne

  13. I also didn’t parse TYPHOON as I’ve not seen HO for house before (but it makes sense) .. I just assumed Hoon was a Scottish word for house

  14. Thanks Chandler and Shanne

    The parsing of Stylist eluded me but other than that, I found this a reasonable Quiptic.

  15. I’d parsed 25 as W, I and D from the initial letters then take the first half (‘half-baked’) of the word THIS to get the TH. But don’t disagree with Shanne’s explanation if you count half-baked as one word.

  16. I enjoyed this one a lot, was looking forward to the explanation for HEAVE TO as I only got it from the crossers. Have neither come across the term itself, nor “in the main” = sea, so was really stumped. Thank you Shanne.

  17. Enjoyable overall, but I had several which I couldn’t parse due to a larger number of abbreviations which were unfamiliar to me.

    Similarly, CHARITY was unparsed as I wouldn’t have (well – didn’t) equated ‘appeal’ with ‘it’, though it’s fair enough. ‘Chary’ I’ve heard of but infrequently/long enough ago that it’s unfamiliar.

  18. Ok apart from STYLIST and SPONSOR which I guessed but couldn’t parse. I did think of OR for gold because the Irish (Gaelic) word for gold is Ór – but couldn’t believe the setter would use a foreign word without a hint! But never knew OR was gold in heraldic terms. Is there a connection? Anyway – getting better at this…

  19. Mostly fine but couldn’t parse stylist. I was familiar with ‘main’ and ‘heave to’ thanks to my devouring of Hornblower as a child, not to mention various pirate themed stories. I’m getting old though, so I guess the stock of what seems gk to me is changing. As it should. Thanks Chandler and Shanne.

    Ps I forgot Swallows and Amazons. I’m sure they we always heaving to.

  20. A HEAVE HO rather than a HEAVE TO was my only blemish on this. Should have taken the advice and stopped and thought about it. Couldn’t parse CHARITY or STYLIST but nothing else was coming to mind that fitted. Glad to find the checker agreed. Thanks for the explanation Shanne

    I am not sure anymore where the Quiptic is meant to fit in the difficulty hierarchy but I thought this had some quite difficult wordplay and less familiar synonyms.

    Thanks Chandler and Shanne

  21. Thanks for the blog, Shanne. I thought this crossword contained a number of crossword clichés, which is not a criticism – it’s useful for beginners to note them. So we have MAIN = SEA (it nearly always does in crosswordland). SHOCK meaning HAIR (as can LOCKS), IT meaning sex appeal, as can SA (not used in the real world since the 1950s, I’d guess), OR for GOLD (it’s from the French, like most/all heraldic terms) and GOLD can of course also be AU (its chemical symbol). All we’re really missing is FLOWER and BANKER for RIVER.

  22. Very fair Quiptic I felt. Couldn’t see where the HU was coming from for LITHUANIA but I’d worked out the rest so it had to be that country. And TEA URN I filled in due to crossers but couldn’t work out why. Thanks Shanne for the clear explanations. I think your original idea of [S]HU[T] for ‘restricted centre’ works as well as HU[b] in my opinion. Thanks also to Chandler for the lovely puzzle.

  23. I thought this was a very nice Quiptic, although I couldn’t parse a couple of clues.

    Like thecronester, I couldn’t see where HU came from in 7dn (LITHUANIA), but now that I see it I have no doubt that HU[b] is correct.

    I also failed to parse 18dn (TYPHOON): I got as far as TYP being TYPE with no end, but it didn’t occur to me that the instruction was to remove the end of “scare” rather than merely the end [of the word TYPE], so I couldn’t figure out how to work “scare” in. Again, though, it makes perfect sense now that I see how it’s done.

    8dn held me up for a bit, but I eventually vaguely remembered that SP was an abbreviation for something to do with betting (although not exactly what).

    The anagram for REIMBURSEMENT in 9dn was a nice find.

  24. While I couldn’t parse it, I prefer Shanne’s original explanation for “HU” in 7.

    One axis of difficulty for this device is the straightforwardness of the operator. If “restricted” is the operator, then it’s quite ambiguous as a word could be restricted in many ways. If “centre” is the operator, then it’s much easier to know what to do with the intermediate word.

    The other axis of difficulty is the intermediate word you need to come up with. The stronger the identity of the word as a synonym, the easier it is. Here, I don’t see a great difference in semantic closeness between hub-centre and shut-restricted.

    So, given that this device is already at the upper end of difficulty for a quiptic, I like the (to my mind) simpler s[HU]t. Of course, they both “work”, and only Chandler can know what they had in mind when they created the clue.

    Thanks S&B

  25. Quite a few I had to get here from the crossers and definition and work back; didn’t always figure out 100% of the wordplay but enough to be happy writing things in.

    I think that if this seemed on the harder end, it’s because there were a lot of multi-part clues, and the two cryptic definitions (STYLIST AND HEAVE TO) were on the obscure end. But for the multipart charades (Eg TYPHOON, OPTIMISM) the clueing was clear enough, it just felt a little mechanical.

    NHO of SP for odds; HEAVE TO.

    Thanks, Shanne and Chandler!

  26. Greyhound @19, “heave to” gets a mention in Peter Duck I think, and in We didn’t mean to go to sea (when John didn’t know how to do it to take a pilot on board).

  27. I think it’s ok to use the fundraising definition of CHARITY, in the same way that it would be to choose one definition of a word for any other clue.

  28. Regarding Tiny and Tim there was a musician called Tiny Tim who sang accompanied by a ukulele in the 1960s and beyond. His signature song was “tiptoe through the tulips”.

  30. Mostly this was fine, but like others I couldn’t understand where the ‘hu’ in 7d came from. Thanks for the explanation- pretty sure I wouldn’t ever have worked that out although I guessed the answer from crossers. Likewise SP seems a stretch too far for a quiptic, but I’ll file it away. I googled ‘cars beginning with m’ and marque did not appear. But overall, I did better than last week so quite happy with that!

  31. Could anyone enlighten me as to the link between appeal and “IT”? All the other clues I can get behind but not this!

    Also I had “odds on first piece of silver” as an anagram of spoons (silver spoon being a first piece of silver and “odds on” as the anagram indicator), but I see that this doesn’t quite clue the plural S. The alternative never occurred to me!

  32. JellyBean @31 – “he’s got IT” and “the IT girl*” are the phrases that immediately come to mind when I hear it meaning attraction – which amuses me because the 8th definition online here gives:

    informal
    sex appeal.
    “he’s still got ‘it.’”
    sex.
    “the only thing I knew nothing about was ‘it’”

    * also the name of a book from 2022 (by Ruth Ware)

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