Anto is to be seen regularly in both the Quiptic and Cryptic slots for the Guardian.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
9 Plenty supporting merger
PROFUSION
A charade of PRO and FUSION.
10 Extremely advanced operating system is so long
ADIOS
A charade of AD for the outside letters of ‘advanced’ and IOS for the Apple mobile ‘operating system’.
11 Succeed in shaking off British hang up
RING OFF
[B]RING OFF
12 Settle at home with familiar routine
INHABIT
A charade of IN and HABIT.
13 Essentially, somewhat hypersensitive
PER SE
Hidden in hyPERSEnsitive.
14 Orchestrated bloody outcome of game
SCORE DRAW
A charade of SCORED and RAW.
16 End misadventure at sea? It’s being considered
UNDER ADVISEMENT
(END MISADVENTURE)* with ‘at sea’ as the anagrind. I have been on the planet a long time and can honestly say I have never heard this phrase.
19 Stalk groups that could become anything
STEM CELLS
A charade of STEM and CELLS. I haven’t underlined ‘that’ because then the grammar doesn’t work, because STEM CELLS is plural.
21 Beadle urged to hold back such poor food
GRUEL
Hidden reversed in BeadLE URGed.
22 Fool lost third of goods in robberies
MUGGINS
Anto is asking you to take the third letter G out of MUGGINGS.
23 Training group operating with bunch of cyclists
PELOTON
A charade of PE, LOT and ON.
24 Reveal eldest born is oddly lacking
LET ON
The even letters of eLdEsT bOrN.
25 Complicated procedure creating large Miro reproduction
RIGMAROLE
(LARGE MIRO)* with ‘reproduction’ as the anagrind.
Down
1 Inspire publicity for car parts
SPARK PLUGS
A charade of SPARK and PLUGS.
2 Went round the bend when trapped
CORNERED
A dd.
3 Queues throng superb centres that can be found across the channel
EUROPE
The middle letters of quEUes thROng suPErb. Some would say that the UK is part of Europe, but let’s not go there.
4 Punch dearest companion concealing information
BIFF
An insertion of I in BFF, which stands for Best Friend Forever. The insertion indicator is ‘concealing’.
5 Worker leading international organisations; they protect against disease
ANTIBODIES
A charade of ANT, I and BODIES.
6 Money only provides material stuff
CASHMERE
A charade of CASHMERE.
7 Warning shouted when elder knocked over?
TIMBER
A cd. You need to think of ‘elder’ as the tree and not the senior person.
8 Call for attention when sounding drunk?
PSST
A soundalike clue (‘when sounding’) for PISSED. I think many people would only pronounce it something like this when they were pissed. Which is perhaps what Anto’s getting at.
14 Angry after second mix-up? It’s how jockeys may feel
SADDLE SORE
A charade of S, ADDLE and SORE.
15 Killjoy knew tablet is doctored
WET BLANKET
(KNEW TABLET)* with ‘is doctored’ as the anagrind.
17 Court’s in disarray because of such disputes?
RUCTIONS
(COURTS IN)* with ‘disarray’ as the anagrind and an extended definition.
18 Outburst sees heartless Timon supporting virtuous uprising
ERUPTION
A charade of PURE reversed (‘uprising’, since it’s a down clue) and TI[M]ON.
20 Elevation – moving top to bottom – is 12.5%
EIGHTH
Anto is asking you to moved the H in HEIGHT to the bottom of the word. Again, this works because it’s a down clue.
21 Female friend shows audacity when recruiting assistant
GAL PAL
An insertion of PA in GALL. The insertion indicator is ‘when recruiting’. Can’t say this is a phrase that I have come across either.
22 Exploit married type
MILK
A charade of M and ILK.
Many thanks to Anto for this week’s puzzle.
Thanks Anto and Pierre
11a is lazy, with OFF in clue and answer. I too had never heard of GAL PAL, but UNDER ADVISEMENT is a lawyery phrase.
I liked GRUEL as it reminded me of the beadle in Oliver Twist.
Thanks Pierre and Anto. All seem fairly straightforward to parse, but I for one struggled with this more than the usual quiptic, and had to reveal MILK, MUGGINS and ANTIBODIES. Perhaps I’m just not on the right wavelength today.
Never come across GAL PAL before, but I’ve heard UNDER ADVISEMENT in US legal dramas
Thanks Pierre and Anto. I’ve mainly heard UNDER ADVISEMENT in the phrase “I’ll take it under advisement” – usually from middle managers when they have no intention of considering a suggestion.
New for me: SCORE DRAW, UNDER ADVISEMENT.
11ac – I agree with muffin @1 about the disappointing repeat of OFF in both clue and answer.
Anto brings us another Quiptic that I felt to be at the harder end of the scale, although more through clever misdirection than through advanced techniques.
My last ones in were SCORE DRAW, TIMBER (both excellent), SPARK PLUGS (I got hung up on “spare” something) and STEM CELLS (in line with what Pierre says I think it could do with a question mark at the end – though that wasn’t what held me up).
There were a lot of well-crafted surfaces here, and I enjoyed MUGGINS and RIGMAROLE a lot. For me the latter is more a complicated hassle than merely a procedure, but that’s subjective. We see the trick for EIGHTH a lot I think, but this one was very well done.
I have no quibble with UNDER ADVISEMENT, nor RING OFF for that matter; the “off” in the surface serves a different purpose. However, I’m another who learnt GAL PAL today.
I also didn’t object to EUROPE. In the UK it has (and has had for a long time) an additional sense in the language that differs from that of geographical continent, whether or not one approves politically. And that’s what crosswords are all about.
Thanks both
I felt that this hit the Quiptic bill nicely until I hit a wall mainly consisting of clues in the NW, and then I struggled. Not helped by (as others have mentioned) the repeat of OFF in 11a. Felt like a game of two halves, but would agree that this is another Quiptic at the more difficult end.
I really enjoyed this. Per the label, it was quite easy but there were a lot of lovely surfaces. Along those lines, I ticked many clues, namely MILK, PER SE, UNDER ADVISEMENT (a great anagram and reasonable surface), CORNERED, SADDLE SORE, ERUPTION, GRUEL, RUCTIONS (great word!), and TIMBER (had me thinking).
I spent a long time wondering why operating system has an I, and I thought MUGGINS poorly worded. And does anyone actually says SCORE DRAW or GAL PAL?
Thanks Anto and Pierre
People definitely say SCORE DRAW when discussing the Football Pools, which still exist despite the National Lottery limiting their appeal.
I’ve never heard or said GAL PAL but I solved it unaided and knew I was right, which is all we can really ask.
Score draw would have been a phrase when people still did the football pools – you got more points for picking a score draw as opposed to a 0-0 draw. When matches were postponed in deepest winter due to the weather (before pitch under-heating), or were cancelled, the pools panel would sit and decide what the postponed matches’ scores would have been, with the results then being announced just as draw or score draw. Football scores were Saturday teatime listening as a child, not least because my parents would occasionally play the pools.
I stared at this for a while, not being able to get even a first foot through the door, before getting UNDER ADVISEMENT. Having lived in the US and now back here with my American wife might have helped, but then again so too might the plethora of transatlantic rubbish which fills our tellies.
As soon as I got that, everything else fell steadily and at a rate much faster than I’d initially thought would be the case. So its billing as a Quiptic is probably justified…or justifiable…just about.
Smiles for RING OFF, GAL PAL, PSST, BIFF, and best of all, SCORE DRAW.
Well compiled puzzle with neat constructions and plausible surfaces. Definitely not a total write-in, it might have been better in a weekday slot?
GAL PAL is new to me also, but a good clue led incontrovertibly there. Is it a euphemism for ‘fag hag’?
Thanks to Anto and Pierre
STEM CELLS
“Stalk groups, which could become anything” : would this have worked better?
Liked SCORE DRAW, SPARK PLUGS, RUCTIONS and EIGHTH.
Thanks Anto and Pierre
Thanks Anto and Pierre.
Taken to printing these out to stop me hitting check (or even reveal 🙈) as I go. Definitely prefer the analogue experience without those digital crutches.
…However, it did mean that I failed on 9A (was stuck with UNION for the clue’s “merger”) and 22A (had “magpies” and I hoped this blog would help me with the parsing!).
Anyway, still an enjoyable Sunday morning diversion.
GAL PAL was certainly new to me, though I have met UNDER ADVISEMENT (which I don’t think is particularly American). I suspected the UNDER bit (a likely result of a mishap at sea) before I realised it was an anagram and AT SEA was an anagrind, and solved the rest.
Trivial quibble: elder trees are quite small: you probably wouldn’t need to shout TIM-BERR! when you cut one down.
showing my age but gal pal came straight to my mind because (and only because) of this sketch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5Rwz0dQz4&ra=m
Protase @12: not that I’m aware of. GAL PAL, which I’m fairly sure originated on my side of the Atlantic, has a distinctly old-fashioned feel to it, dating from an era when [straight] men weren’t expected to have female friends with no romance involved. “Fag hag,” of course, necessarily states that the male friend involved is gay. And I think GAL PAL was already dated by the time there were enough openly gay men for “fag hag” to be a thing. Both phrases are pretty sexist, and the latter is also vaguely homophobic, so I’ll stop talking about them now…
Seemed pretty fair to me and fit the brief of being completable during a leisurely coffee in bed.
[Further to my comment at 17: my reaction when I saw GAL PAL here wasn’t “huh?”, but “what is this–1956?”]
As a fellow USA resident, I agree with mrpenney’s characterization of the phrases “gal pal” and “f*g hag”. The first word of the latter has quite a hateful feel, which is why I preferred not to write it, although that phrase was (and perhaps is) used affectionately by gay men. I have heard the phrase “gal pal” in the wild, but I agree that it feels a bit old-fashioned.
As someone who’s complained about Anto in the past, let me give him credit today: I enjoyed this puzzle a great deal. I particularly liked the way the surface of 21ac (GRUEL) evoked Oliver Twist, and the clean, simple-once-you-see-it construction of 6dn (CASHMERE).
The phrase “score draw” was new to me but gettable nonetheless.
mrpenney and Ted; My comment @12 was not serious. But both expressions are oddly similar, and similarly tacky
Nice and straightforward, nothing to frighten the horses here. Thanks both.
Thanks for the blog Pierre.
As an Anto Quiptic goes, that was quite doable and as a scientist/engineer, I enjoyed the fact that at least some of the general knowledge required was in the scientific realm. I initially was getting along quite quickly, but the last few had me stuck for ages – for me the sticking points were SPARK PLUGS, MILK and MUGGINS.
Ok don’t think it is quiptic level.
Looked at this yesterday and could only get 2 or 3 in the bottom half so gave up in a huff 😂. Was thinking we’d regressed to the days of impenetrable Anto Quiptics. Picked it up again Monday morning, chipped away from SE corner and across and then up the eastern side and into the NW and concluded this was an enjoyable grid. TIMBER made me smile as the penny dropped. I think it was quite a work out, so thanks Anto, and thanks Pierre for your blog.