Guardian Quiptic 796/Orlando

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I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Orlando’s got the hang of this Quiptic stuff.  A delightful little puzzle to start the cruciverbal week.

 

 

 

Abbreviations

cd  cryptic definition
dd  double definition
(xxxx)*  anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x]  letter(s) removed

definitions are underlined

Across

1 Joint in bricks flamboyant? Not half!
LEG OF LAMB
Well, you might as well get the make-you-smile clue out of the way first off.  A charade of LEGO and FLAMB[OYANT].  Don’t forget the mint sauce.  And prick the surface of the joint with a sharp knife and slip in some generous sprigs of rosemary before you put it in the oven.

6 Call New Age leader Orlando
NAME
A charade of N, A and ME (the setter, Orlando).  Perhaps Orlando was from the Age of Aquarius – who knows?

8 Singer caught by a wave
CAROLLER
A charade of C, A and ROLLER.

9 Sumptuous little room is first in house
LAVISH
A setter is permitted to make you smile more than once in a puzzle, you know.  LAV, IS plus H.  Cue complaints from folk who don’t like bog-standard humour.

10 Dancing bear is somewhere in the Balkans
SERBIA
(BEAR IS)* with ‘dancing’ as the anagrind.  Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear, from Alan Price, for those of us who are old enough to remember it.

11 Kid almost gets yob to relax
CHILL OUT
CHIL[D] LOUT.

12 Warning about Black Prince
ALBERT
An insertion of B in ALERT.  PRINCE ALBERT fathered lots of children with Queen Victoria and is largely responsible for us putting a decorated Christmas tree up each year.  But he wasn’t the Black Prince: that was some five hundred years earlier.

15 Aquatic creature a printer trained
TERRAPIN
(A PRINTER)*

16 Leave out workers’ trousers
SKI PANTS
What was I saying about a setter putting a smile on your face?  SKIP ANTS.

19 Family member in Barts is terrific
SISTER
Hidden in BartS IS TERrific.

21 Emperor turning pale? No, no!
NAPOLEON
(PALE NO NO)*

22 Animals left with monks
LLAMAS
A charade of L and LAMAS.  As in Dalai LAMA.

24 Sunglasses in lavender, lilac, magnolia etc
SHADES
Lavender, lilac and magnolia are SHADES, innit?  Although I should tell you that magnolia these days is called bamboo white, just to stop you embarrassing yourself in the local paint shop.  I won’t mention ‘Grey’, since the mummy-porn flick has been absolutely slagged off by the critics in this weekend’s papers.

25 Naughty Nineties physicist
EINSTEIN
(NINETIES)*  If you really are a beginner using the Quiptic to learn about the dark arts, then put this one in long-term memory, because you’ll see it again, I can assure you.

26 Move jug
STIR
A dd.  STIR and ‘jug’ are both slang words for ‘prison’.

27 They never forget footballer returning to county
ELEPHANTS
A reversal of PELE and HANTS for the abbreviation for Hampshire.  Pelé is better known as Edson Arantes do Nascimento, and the pachyderms have a reputation for having a good memory.  Which is more than an urban myth, in fact.

Down

1 Don’t take time off
LEAVE
A dd.

2 Bargain reported for so long
GOODBYE
A homophone of ‘good buy’.  So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye … I can feel a Sound of Music moment coming on.

3 Knock down a casual boyfriend
FELLA
A charade of FELL and A for an informal word for ‘boyfriend’.

4 Fruit found in bed after almost thirty days
APRICOT
APRI[L] plus COT.

5 Game bird is all gone to pot
BILLIARDS
(BIRD IS ALL)*

6 Short book‘s length restricted by star
NOVELLA
An insertion of ELL in NOVA.  And as we all know, ELL is a measure of length.  Around 45 inches.  Or that’d be 1.143 metres in today’s money.

7 Gender of Uncle Sam, I recollected
MASCULINE
(UNCLE SAM I)* with ‘recollected’ as the anagrind.

13 Fancy a drink of whisky straight away?
LIKE A SHOT
A dd.

14 Cast seen twice after theatre’s opening in state
TENNESSEE
(SEEN SEEN)* after T.

17 Slow and laborious worker — PC before red revolution
PLODDER
A charade of PLOD and (DER)*  PC PLOD is an Enid Blyton character.  I shan’t comment on his PC, or indeed that of her other characters.

18 Unaffected as religious education
SINCERE
A charade of SINCE and RE.

20 Greek box, light brown
SPARTAN
A charade of SPAR and TAN.

22 Start missing a meal
LUNCH
L[A]UNCH

23 2 from radio star
ADIÓS

The solution to 2dn is GOODBYE.  So if you and I were Spanish speakers, we’d be saying ADIÓS.  Which is hidden in rADIO Star.

Muchas gracias a Orlando.  Fue un placer.

8 comments on “Guardian Quiptic 796/Orlando”

  1. Thanks Orlando and Pierre
    Much more entertaining (and harder!) than Rufus in the paper. I spent longer than I would like to admit getting my last two – LLAMAS and ADIOS; the first because “lamas” didn’t spring to mind, and a second L wasn’t one of the candidate letters when I ran through L?A???, and I thought the “radio” in the other indicated a “sounds like” rather than the clever “hidden”.

  2. Thanks Orlando and Pierre.

    As you say Pierre, this was perfect for a Quiptic (by the way, you have forgotten to place the LEG OF LAMB in a chicken brick before putting it in the oven).

    Many of the clues were fun, CAROLLER, LAVISH, CHILL OUT, SKI PANTS, APRICOT, PLODDER …

  5. Thanks Orlando, good Quiptic.

    Thanks Pierre, it obviously put you in a good mood! Unaccountably, I took a long time to see LEG OF LAMB, despite having the ?A?B. I thought it must have been an expression for ‘Not half!’ as intended to mislead.

    I particularly liked the SKIP ANTS and the LEG OF LAMB.

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