I don’t think I’ve met Beale before – he/she seems to have returned to the Quiptic slot recently after a break. Nice to meet you! This was perhaps not the easiest of Quiptics but I enjoyed it, and there are some useful examples here for beginners to note.
There are some vivid surfaces here: I particularly liked 1a, 27a, 4d and 7d. The definitions in 23a and 24a took a bit of lateral thinking. My favourite clue was 3d – I think I may have seen something similar before but it still made me smile.
Beginners may like to note the meanings of FED, RA, IN, MET, RR and TAR: all of these appear quite frequently in wordplay. Also the device in 8d of splitting a compound word to use the two halves separately, which is a favourite trick.
Thanks Beale for the challenge.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | IRKSOME | I find smoker unusually annoying (7) |
| I with an anagram (unusually) of SMOKER. | ||
| 5 | BIOMASS | Iodine or mercury initially found in fish used as organic fuel (7) |
| Initial letters of Iodine Or Mercury, inserted into BASS (various species of fish). | ||
| 10 | ONLY | Within reason, lying can be just (4) |
| Hidden answer (within) in [reas]ON LY[ing]. | ||
| 11 | NONSTARTER | Having no direction for course makes one bound to fail (10) |
| NO + N (north = direction) + STARTER (course, as in a meal). I’d write this word with a hyphen, as in “non-starter”, but Collins Dictionary accepts the unyphenated form. US usage tends to avoid hyphens in compound words, and the habit seems to be spreading to the UK. |
||
| 12 | ONE-OFF | Unique, if intermittent, about English (3-3) |
| ON-OFF (intermittent), containing (about) E (English). | ||
| 13 | AIRFIELD | Skipping page two, pick up from where things take off (8) |
| [p]AIR (two), skipping the initial letter P (page), then FIELD (pick up: in the sporting sense of retrieving the ball, or the metaphorical usage such as “fielding a question”). | ||
| 14 | NORMALITY | Routine to Marilyn, perhaps (9) |
| Anagram (perhaps) of TO MARILYN. | ||
| 16 | WEARY | Careful to keep in the final beat (5) |
| WARY (careful), containing (to keep in) the last letter of [th]E (“the” final). Weary = beat = very tired. “Beat” is normally a noun or verb, but it can be used in this slang sense as an adjective; more usually “dead-beat”. |
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| 17 | OPINE | Express a view nothing is next to wood (5) |
| O (zero = nothing) next to PINE (a type of wood). Opine = to express an opinion. |
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| 19 | BRIMSTONE | Disturbing sermon with bit concerning one of hell’s torments (9) |
| Anagram (disturbing) of SERMON + BIT. As in “fire and brimstone” = burning sulphur. |
||
| 23 | FORCE-FED | Made to take in army agent? (5-3) |
| FORCE (army, as in “special forces”) + FED (US usage, short for “federal agent” = law enforcement officer). | ||
| 24 | REJECT | Second jeer erupting on court (6) |
| Anagram (erupting) of JEER, then CT (abbreviation for court). The definition takes a bit of lateral thinking: reject (as a noun) = second = a manufactured item that doesn’t pass quality control checks, but might be sold cheaply. |
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| 26 | JUMP THE GUN | Attack the piece and get an unfair advantage (4,3,3) |
| JUMP (attack without warning) + THE + GUN (piece = firearm, in specialist jargon such as “artillery piece” or criminal slang). Jump the gun = to start racing before the starting gun has been fired. |
||
| 27 | ITEM | Couple featured in Time Out (4) |
| Anagram (out) of TIME. Item = slang for a couple (in a relationship), as in “I didn’t know those two were an item”. |
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| 28 | BEELINE | Quickest route to get worker in front of queue (7) |
| BEE (worker) + LINE (queue, especially in US usage). As in “make a beeline” for something = to get to it by the most direct route possible. |
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| 29 | ARREARS | Amount owed by retired artist rises (7) |
| RA (Royal Academician = artist, a very common crossword abbreviation) reversed (retired), then REARS (rises, as in an animal standing on its hind legs). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | RUN INTO | Stumble upon hit (3,4) |
| Double definition: to encounter by chance (“I ran into an old friend in the park”), or as in a vehicle collision (“the speeding car ran into a barrier”). | ||
| 3 | SAY-SO | Authority stays tight-lipped? (3-2) |
| Stays tight-lipped = says nothing = SAYS O (zero). Say-so = authority = approval, as in “we can’t go ahead without the manager’s say-so”. |
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| 4 | MINDFUL | Aware of company boss trapped at home with dreadful flu (7) |
| MD (managing director = company boss), trapping (containing) IN (at home), then an anagram (dreadful) of FLU. | ||
| 6 | INTERN | One after another reported trainee (6) |
| Homophone (reported) of IN TURN = one after another. | ||
| 7 | MERRIMENT | High spirits as police impound posh car — mine’s broken down! (9) |
| RR (Rolls-Royce = posh car) + an anagram (broken down) of MINE, all contained (impounded) in MET (short for Metropolitan Police Service = the police force in London boroughs). | ||
| 8 | STELLAR | Woman in front of redhead is heavenly! (7) |
| STELLA (a woman’s name) in front of R (the “head” = first letter of Red, hence “redhead”). | ||
| 9 | INFANT PRODIGY | Praying to find unusually gifted child (6,7) |
| Anagram (unusually) of PRAYING TO FIND. | ||
| 15 | MUNICIPAL | Doctored alumni pic belonging to the council (9) |
| Anagram (doctored) of ALUMNI PIC. | ||
| 18 | PRODUCE | Make a show, when freshening up decor (7) |
| Anagram (freshening) of UP DECOR. As in producer = the person who oversees a theatre production or similar. Or just “produce” = introduce something with a flourish. |
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| 20 | MARINER | Tar of wreck penetrated by saltwater, not initially (7) |
| MAR (wreck = damage), containing (penetrated by) [b]RINE (saltwater, but not its initial letter). Tar = slang for sailor = mariner. |
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| 21 | NUCLEAR | Kind of family with funny uncle caught abandoning car (7) |
| Anagram (funny) of UNCLE, then [c]AR with the C (caught) abandoning (leaving) it. As opposed to extended family. |
||
| 22 | AFGHAN | Hang out under crafts’ centre making woollen blanket (6) |
| The centre (middle letters) of [cr]AF[ts], with an anagram (out) of HANG after it (below it, reading downwards). | ||
| 25 | JUICE | Drink nearly the entire carafe with a sorbet (5) |
| JU[g] (carafe; “nearly the entire” = all but the last letter of) + ICE (sorbet). | ||
Fits the bill pretty much perfectly I’d say – clear cluing with some neat misdirection that required a re-read or two of the clues and a good variety of methods. Bravo. And as Quirister says, smooth surfaces – certainly a very good beginner’s puzzle which has enough to get you started and also that feeling that you are missing something.
“normality” has the added twist that Marilyn Monroe’s real name was Norma Jean. So “norma-lity” was kind of a pun too.
Many thanks Beale, and Quirister.
TheZed@1- didnt even notice the anagram in NORMALITY we all know she was Norma Jean and it fitted
So thanks Quirister.
It was the wrong way round-this should have been the cryptic
This was just my second encounter with Beale, although I understand that he was a regular Guardian setter before my time, as it were. I agree with Quirister and TheZed that this was a perfect Quiptic either for a beginner or to serve as a warm-up for the Monday cryptic. Thanks to Beale, whom I hope to see more frequently here, and to Quirister for the blog with its helpful beginners’ tips.
My best attempt at quiptic to date…thanks. Where did the s come from in 3d say so? Link with praying and infant prodigy 9d? I was thrown by 16a of course. Thanks. Feeling proud this morning 🙂
Quite tough for a “quiptic” but I often disagree with the way that the Editor categorises the puzzles. I do not blame the setter. For instance, today’s Cryptic was more like a Quiptic than this one.
Could not parse: 3d SAY-SO.
New: BIOMASS
Like: NONSTARTER
Thanks B+S
Carol @4: if you’re new to Quiptics, well done with this one.
In 3d, it’s he/she “stays tight-lipped”, therefore “says 0″. In 9d, “praying” is nothing to do with the meaning of “infant prodigy” but is part of the anagram fodder PRAYING TO FIND. And I agree that 16a is a bit tricky.
Very nice – almost like an instructional guide to cryptics. Nice to see TAR used as a definition rather than as a substitution for “sailor” in an answer. Thanks for the blog – it’s a very rare day when not one of the mentioned “classic” substitutions appears – as well as the old chestnuts you point out I’d add BEE (or ANT) for worker, N (or S) for direction and O for nothing/zero although this was indirectly clued.
Thanks Quirister & Beale
A very good Quiptic, with a few chewier clues. Like copmus @2, (once I had got an unparsable FORMULAIC out of my head) I thought ‘Norma Jean’ and wacked NORMALITY in without thinking of where the ‘lity’ came from – it was my LOI. FORCE-FED and BEELINE were lovely. Thanks, Beale and Quirister (especially for explaining ‘second’ = ‘reject’).
I enjoyed this. I particularly liked the surface of IRKSOME and the ethical conundrum of ONLY. Fav clue was SAY-SO, even though it did feel familiar.
The Zed@1- I didn’t even think of NormaJean- how clever.
And yes, I thought this was more fun than today’s cryptic.
Thanks to Beale for the fun and Quirister for the informative blog
A thoroughly enjoyable crossword – with FORCE FED, WEARY, SAY SO and NORMALITY particularly pleasing.
Thank you Beale – and thanks also to Quirister for the blog, especially the help in finishing the parsing of AIRFIELD (the sports-sense of field didn’t occur to me!)
Thanks, Quirister and Beale – a couple that I hadn’t parsed fully in here so this was appreciated. A few weeks ago the Quiptic was going through a run of really tough weeks for what’s supposed to be the “easy” crossword but it feels like it’s been recalibrated again – or perhaps I’ve started getting smarter?
Felt like a good crossword for showing someone else how to solve them to me – lots of standard elements as Quirister noted, and a couple that relied on the solver realising that you needed to change the part of speech (noun/verb etc) that you were looking for. WEARY seems to have caused problems, looking below the line at the Guardian. Did anyone else though feel that the using “out” as an anagram indicator twice was a bit inelegant, or am I being picky?
Fave clue for me was ONLY, purely for the surface.
Thanks Quirister and Beale. 3d is a fine clue but it risks being a little dated, all the MDs seem to be CEOs now.
Like others I think that, on the whole, this was a good crossword.
It was also one that once more made clear that you don’t need to have much command of cryptic grammar to get published in The Guardian.
Most solvers do not seem to care (cryptic grammar? what’s that?), so I’m well aware that I am in the minority.
The clue at 1ac has a really nice surface but it needs a singular form of the verb ‘find’.
Same in 7d for ‘impound’.
Add to that one of my pet hates (the use of ‘for’ in 11ac) and one might think that I loathed this puzzle.
I didn’t.
No, I didn’t.
Many thanks to Quirister & Beale.
Quirister @6 thank you for taking the time to explain. Didn’t spot the anagram in 9d…clever one!
As an amateur striving to be a pro, this is one of my best performance on a quiptic. Thanks Beale. Just the top right corner was the hardest for me as I had never heard of 5 across. My favourites were 1 and 26 across. I got 20 down only from getting the other clues around it but couldn’t parse it at all so thanks fifteen squared!
@Sil @ 13. Please can you explain what you mean by “cryptic grammar” ? I don’t get your point.
I do see that the “for” in 11a seems surplus to requirements. But 1a uses the first person singular of find, “I find”, and it is customary to use the third person plural of a verb after a singular noun referring to a group of people, such as “police” in 7d.