Guardian Quiptic 808/Anto

41 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 808/Anto”

1. Thanks Pierre – I pretty much share your opinions on this one. Not a promising debut, I’m afraid.

   6d – EVOLVE is “nearly” a palindrome, so it “almost” “go either way”

   9d – The online solution gives KNUCKLEHEADED, which at least is a word, but apart from that..

   19a – if you played blackjack with three decks then I suppose it makes card-counting harder, and so the odds are worse

   26a – agree with you re the typo . If you’re in your right mind then you wouldn’t be “committed” to a mental hospital, and bachelors avoid romantic commitment..

   Etc. I give up.

2. Thanks, Pierre, for a valiant effort. Now go and have a lie-down.

   I share all your reservations – plus: Tonga is an archipelago of 177 islands, Canterbury and York are both archdioceses, neither Collins nor Chambers has that spelling of panatella …

   I just hope there were not too many would-be cryptic solvers testing the water with this one.

3. I think it has to be knuckleheaded, otherwise 23 would end in an ‘n’.

4. For what it’s worth, I think 4dn is a double definition.

5. FOOLS GOLD is a charade of “ASSES(S)OR” where FOOLS=ASSES, the “rejecting second” in the clue tells you to delete an S, and OR=GOLD. Way too tricky a clue for a Quiptic IMHO. I had KNUCKLEHEADED for 9dn and I think the clue works, but I share some of the other reservations mentioned above, especially the clue for SEDATE. I think this setter has talent but the puzzle needed some editing, and it wasn’t a suitable Quiptic, again IMHO.

6. Thanks Pierre. I, too, thought that this was pretty awful.

   In 14ac assessor less s is “asses or” which is fools gold.

   As you say, not a helpful puzzle for beginners.

7. Thanks Pierre; agreed not the most auspicious debut for Anto.

   I think that 4D would be better described as a dd cum cd, with ‘coming down’ as the second definition for LANDING.

   14A is decidedly adventurous cluing: ‘asses[s]or’ minus one (particular) S (‘rejecting second’) is FOOLS (‘asses’) plus GOLD (‘or’).

   9D KNUCKLEHEADED refers to Maradona’s description of the goal as “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”, rather than the other way round.

8. Pretty dreadful. Far too tough for the slot and too dull for the main Guardian series. Most detail seems to have been already covered. If ever a pudding was over-egged this one was. A few good clues taken in isolation but the whole thing reeked of – look-at-me aren’t I clever. Well actually – No.

   3d Tonga (the one you are probably thinking of) is not an island – it’s a nation which consists of numerous islands – none of which are called Tonga. there is however a Tonga Island just off the north coast of New Zealand – which I suppose gets the setter off that hook from a literal point of view but relies on an obscurity to do so.

9. In fairness – I thought 9d was rather good – probably pre-baked – and it took me a while to get, even with all the crossers in.

10. Sorry Eileen – I see you already covered Tonga.

11. I don’t often comment on here (usually by the time I’ve done the crossword anything I could say has been expressed better by other people) but just two quick additions to what has already been said (apologies if I’ve overlooked or misunderstood other explanations!).

    With regards to 16A, I agree that the answer is hidden in shaKE LADder as Pierre says. The rest refers to the fact (as I recall) that Daleks can’t climb ladders (or even stairs for that matter).

    With 7D I took “Short and” to be the definition and “curly” to be a (rather vague) cryptic clue.

12. I really made a quick start and thought ‘well, this is OK’.
    However, after about half an hour I gave up – with half of the grid empty.
    I just didn’t want to spend more time on it.
    Sorry, Anto.

    As one may know, I am not a great fan of ‘makes start’ for M, and seeing the cigar in 23ac spelt with only one L (where other words were possible!) annoyed me.
    I found 8d, 18d and 21d pretty weak but also very gettable, and hey it’s a Quiptic.
    I was flummoxed by what happened in 24ac (SEDATE), nobody tells us to take the final halves of each word.

    The solution of 14ac was not a problem for me, the parsing was.
    Now some may see this as ‘adventurous’ clueing, and it probably is, but Anto could have been a bit more precise. For example, by telling us which of the four seconds should be rejected. Also, the clue is a bit impure as the solution is FOOL’S GOLD (singular ‘fool’ + aprostrophe s). So, by using ‘asses’ Anto is ignoring the apostrophe which setters do, I know, and to which I normally do not have any objections. Here though, it feels a bit uncomfortable.

    The idea of 7d (AMPERSAND) is quite nice, the definition being ‘short and’. The addition of ‘curly’ spoils it for me. Yes, the thing is curly but as formulated here it feels as a second definition (which it is not).

    I made one mistake which messed up the SE.
    I took 29ac as RAIN (drops) into TEE (plate – well, more a peg, but who knows) giving me TRAINEE (apprentice).
    Mea culpa.

    So, there we are.
    Not reviews that Anto would have hoped for.
    Perhaps better next time.

13. I would love to start this with “thanks to setter and blogger” but I feel that both have let me down.

    I found this harder than today’s cryptic. OK. that could be that I’m not on the setter’s wavelength. But I gather from comments that not too many solvers are either.

    Pierre’s entry at 19 leaves a lot to be desired. If you don’t know, just say so and invite input from the community. Other bloggers do just that and no one criticises them. Just don’t say you can’t be bothered doing your job (even if it is voluntary).

    On a constructive note I think 7d is a dd.
    Short and / curly

    but Sil @12 has alluded to that.

14. @13 I meant dd/cd

15. Thanks Pierre and Anto

    More difficult that today’s cryptic? More difficult than last Saturday’s Prize! I gave up and cheated on THIRD DECK and DENTURE.

    Is STRUM a noun? I only know it as a verb, and the clue doesn’t seem to indicate one.

    I did rather like VERANDA, NINCOMPOOP, DALEK and KNUCKLEHEADED

16. Thanks Anto and Pierre.

    I found the blog rather biased and Eileen @2 and Sil @12 probably prejudiced. No need here to bring in old complaints about Northern Island/Ulster or missing apostrophes…

    I enjoyed this crossword, particularly NINCOMPOOP (probably because I am one, so my opinion will not be of much comfort to Anto). I also liked FOOLS GOLD, VERANDA, LUMBAGO and ROSETTE among others.

    COVERLET is a common word for a counterpane (along with bedspread considered non-U by Nancy Mitford).
    PANATELA is the Latin American Spanish spelling for the cigars and, since they originally came from there, can be regarded as correct (it is in the OCED).
    SALAMI is an Italian sausage, it may now be made elsewhere, so what…
    An Archbishop is still a bishop, an Archdiocese is still a DIOCESE.

    captcha ? – 3 = 0

17. Welcome to Anto.
    There were problems with this, as others have said, but there were good things too.
    5a and 27a – nice surfaces
    16a – amusing
    7d – If Paul had written this, I think it would have received more praise.
    9d – nicely describes the famous still of Maradona’s cheating leap (slightly less high than that of Peter Shilton in goals).
    18d – made me smile (I’m Scottish)
    Sorry writing the blog wasn’t much fun for you, Pierre, but thanks anyway.

18. I spent far too much time on this “Quiptic” and finally lost interest, failing to solve 16a, 17a, 29a, 22d, 25d.

    I solved but could not parse 19a, 26a, 24a, 11a, 14a, 9d

    I liked 5a.

    Thanks Anto and Pierre.

19. I suppose it kind of works, for beginners, as a cautionary tale.

20. Curious pseudonym too: I don’t suppose it could be … no, shurely not.

21. The main issue here is that The Guardian tend to try out new setters in the Quptic slot but Anto is a little above that level and his editor should have reined it in.

    However, taken as a cryptic there were some nice clues here. 7 down is fantastic.

22. Kevin @ 13. I’m sorry to have let you down, but I had slightly lost the will to live when I came to the blog. And I do work for a living, so was in a rush to get the blog out, which means I should have said ‘haven’t got the time’ rather than ‘can’t be arsed’.

    Let’s have another one from this setter to see if he or she can do better. I never like to be overly critical of compilers, but I blogged this one like I saw it, which is all we volunteers can do.

23. The Atlanta constitution for June 1888 gives “Fools’ Gold, the Search for Captain Kidd’s Buried Wealth” (note the plural). This ironic headline is probably the earliest citation of the term, but its use suggests it was already well known.

24. Cookie @ 23
    Martin Frobisher (d.1594) is notorious for twice bringing loads of it back from Canada, but I don’t know if it was known as “Fools’ gold” in that era.

25. Why is 7D fantastic?

26. muffin @24, I think it can be either, the article goes on “A party of men…”, in 14a ‘Asses’ is plural, so FOOLS can be plural.

27. We’re at cross-purposes, I think, Cookie. I was wondering whether Frobisher’s iron pyrites was know as “Fools’ gold” at that time.

28. As I was the one bringing up Fool’s Gold (instead of Fools’ Gold) I would like to say this about it:
    this is a UK crossword and Chambers, Collins and Oxford all give the singular form.
    For appreciating the clue it doesn’t make that much difference (as I made clear – punctuation doesn’t really matter nowadays).
    Either you like Anto’s idea or you don’t.
    Perhaps, it would have been a novelty if he (or she, of course) would have asked us to replace the fourth S with a space.
    How to do that, I don’t know (yet).

    Meanwhile, there has been no justification for SEDATE (24ac).
    Or for that other mystery clue (EVOLVE, 6d).
    And if you cannot write a proper cryptic definition then don’t – I am referring to 17ac and 26ac.
    To defend myself before anyone starts criticising me: I can’t so I don’t.

    I admit that my verdict is very harsh.
    I feel sorry for Anto, the last thing you want is your debut being slammed.
    However, much of it could have been avoided with a little help from the editor.

    Finally, Cookie, my first comment was not based on prejudice.
    I only expressed what came over me when solving the puzzle.
    Pierre’s ‘negative’ blog didn’t have an influence whatsoever.
    This crossword was just not good enough.
    Let alone for a Quiptic.

29. Wow, yes a bit tough for a Quiptic.

    Re 19. Just to clarify, card counting doesn’t rely on counting every card but utilises a way of categorising the density of high cards left in the shoe. There are a number of ways of doing that, but they all work on simple mechanisms which don’t get harder with the number of decks.

    It is not obvious, but the maths shows that the number of decks by itself affects the expected house edge for any given set of rules variants. The easiest way of seeing this is to visit this link and play with the top line of radio buttons whilst watching the numbers below change. http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/calculator/

    What is probably the weakest part of the clue is that three decks are never used in casinos. Consequently there is no button in this calculator for 3 decks!

    If you want to know the authority of the Site Owner, he has been working as a statistical consultant to casinos for decades. This site is effectively “The Gospel” for games odds.

30. Pierre @22. Thanks for the explanation. All is forgiven.

31. @Sil re FOOL’S GOLD or FOOLS’ GOLD

    “asses” gives FOOLS (plural – no apostrophe at that stage)
    “or” gives GOLD

    Following the convention that apostrophes, whether of possession or of elision (as in DON’T etc), are ignored in the grid entry – and also in its letter count:

    FOOLS can represent any of:

    FOOLS
    FOOL’S
    FOOLS’

    The derivation may be via the non-possessive plural but the grid entry can represent the definition in either way you prefer to read it.

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with the clue – no impurity – no discomfort – no nuffink.

32. Sil @28, well, you bloggers swept in like vultures at the kill. I am not competent to criticise the suitability of the puzzle for the cryptic spot, but I do not like to see answers to clues slammed when they could be perfectly correct, for instance Wiki spells the cigar PANATELA with one L.

    It would have been a clearer discussion if the use of apostrophes etc had not been brought up to muddy the water.

33. muffin @27, I don’t know, but the official site of the Royal Museums Greenwich says that Martin Frobisher’s expeditions, 1576 – 1578, only brought back “fools’ gold”, again the plural is used.

    Just found that the Indiana Progress newspaper of 1872 has an article “Fool’s Gold and How we may Know it”, the term must have been known for a long time.

34. Cookie @32, I did not say that ‘panatela’ was wrong. Not at all. But if Chambers, Collins and Oxford all give ‘panatella’ I would have tried to avoid the one-L version.
    Anto could have used e.g. ‘habanera’ or ‘Pasadena’.

    As to Fool’s Gold, the only thing I wanted to say is that I think the solution is Fool’s Gold and not Fools’ Gold – supported by UK dictionaries.
    I agree with Jolly Swagman @31 that this doesn’t make any difference for the grid entry whatsoever.
    I also said earlier that punctuation, apostrophes etc don’t matter nowadays, so once more I agree with Jolly Swagman.
    Actually, I didn’t really criticise this clue from that point of view.
    I clearly said: either you like the asses[s]or trick or you don’t.

    Personally I felt uncomfortable with it for two reasons, both mentioned above.
    Anto asked us to reject ‘second’ while ‘assessor’ has four of them.
    Secondly, the clue tells me asses/or which means Fools Gold (i.e. the grid entry).
    For many, full stop here.
    But as I see the grid entry as Fool’s Gold, asses/or doesn’t match that.
    I know, for many punctuation doesn’t matter, but here at least for me it did for some reason.
    Blame it on me to find this slightly ‘impure’.

    If Jolly Swagman tells me that I’m wrong because it IS not impure, then I see what he means.
    In that sense, the whole post @31 is in fact superfluous (if it is meant to instruct me).
    But even if a clue IS not impure, I still can have a personal (in this case, uncomfortable) feeling about it or can’t I?
    It only means that I wouldn’t have written the clue this way myself as I wouldn’t be completely happy with it.

    Cookie @32, by expressing my view on 14ac I apparently ‘muddied the water’?
    I didn’t ask for a big discussion on 14ac.
    Some other clues are a lot more worrying, no-one so far has given a valid explanation for 6d or 24ac.

    However, in the end it is only a crossword.
    And, just like Pierre, I hope that Anto’s next puzzle will be a more satisfying one.

35. Sil, thanks, you should not have gone to all that trouble to reply to my rantings; Panatela was criticised by Eileen @2 (it is used by many cigar merchants and, as far as I can see, exclusively by Wiki). Agreed, Pasadena or habanera could have been used, but they are not in my Oxford dictionary, Panatela is as the Latin American Spanish for the cigar.

36. I’m coming late to the party as I didn’t have time to do crosswords yesterday. I’ve a headache today so I hoped starting with the Quiptic would be a gentle warm-up to two Cryptics, but instead it was a struggle. It’s a slight relief to find I wasn’t the only one. I can understand Pierre’s somewhat grumpy tone, having thought he would be blogging a reasonably straightforward puzzle this time and finding this instead. I agree with the general feeling that it is unsuitable for the Quiptic slot.

    Having said that, I did think some of the clues were good. I liked VERANDA (when the penny finally dropped), NINCOMPOOP, SALAMI, DALEK, TYRANNY and TEA COSY.

    Some of the complaints seem like nit-picking to me. NI = Ulster didn’t bother me, even though I lived there for a while and am well aware of the difference, as it is so commonly used. SALAMI is an Italian word for a sausage originally made there. Aren’t we entitled to refer to Cheddar as a British cheese even though it is now often made elsewhere? I couldn’t fully parse FOOLS GOLD (place the apostrophe wherever you want) but I don’t think it is a bad clue. I parsed EVOLVE as being almost “revolve” (in which case it could go either way), but the suggestion of it being almost a palindrome works too IMO.

    The clue for SEDATE must be a mistake, surely. I wonder if it was edited and lost something in the process. The problem with 26a (“the” instead of “that”) looks like more like a Grauniad-ism than a mistake by the setter.

    It will be interesting to see what Anto’s next puzzle is like, where it appears (as a Quiptic or Cryptic) and what reception it gets.

37. If I can just add to this – I think Anto has copped more flak than he/she deserves for this. For me the whole was less than the sum of the parts – but many of the parts were themselves extremely good. Had they been distributed more sparingly through a more conventional puzzle they might have been cause for celebration.

    It was more the overabundance and the fact of it all appearing in the Quiptic slot that I think generated a lot of the disquiet.

38. The answer is FOOL’S GOLD, not FOOLS GOLD. And so, as ‘asses or’ does not convey the correct meaning, it’s wrong. That, obviously, has nothing to do with anyone’s ideas about ignoring punctuation in cryptic crossword clues.

39. It is a fundamental cryptic rule that punctuation in the answer can be ignored. For wordplay purposes FOOL’S and FOOLS can be treated as the setter sees fit.

40. “asses or” etc does not need to convey the meaning – it needs to build the entered answer – which it does.

    The answer needs to match the definition – which it also does – irrespective of the reader’s (readers’ ???) assumed punctuation.

    By convention the answer is a string of letters stripped of apostrophes. Hyphens and spaces between words are respected but they only impact on the enumeration.

    To say that there should be an intermediate answer complete with apostrophes which is written down somewhere (amongst one’s scribbles) and compared with the definition would be an interesting innovation – but that’s precisely what it would be – an innovation – a departure from accepted convention. Always possible – but this setter chooses (by Afrit) that we observe normal convention.

    Obviously respecting or ignoring surface punctuation in the cryptic reading of the clue is one of the key differences between conventional cluing (as documented by Barnard) and the ximenean approach, but that is not the issue here.

41. Well, if you say so.

    Another aspect is it’s lack of crypticity, shall we call it, when you strip away the nightmarish Guardianist apparel: FOOLS (and not FOOL’S) indicated by ASSES, and GOLD indicated by OR. If it were less so, I’d be more inclined to share your views above.

    For some other Guardianist, wouldn’t ASSES’S OR have been just as good?

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