Thank you to Everyman for stopping by.

Bamberger, it was a tricky one in my opinion too, but generally the Everyman is aimed at less experienced solvers, certainly (which is why I put my hand up to blog it).

Wolfie and Stella, that’s ingenious, but I’m still not convinced! Nice quote from Macbeth, though.

And couldn’t agree more – one person’s difficult is another person’s easy. Otherwise crosswords would be boring.

I know that Everyman has dropped in on the blog in the past, so if he does today, he can perhaps let us know how he intended BANKRUPT to be understood.

I understood a BANKRUPT as Wolfie did, with “smashed” as the definition, then it’s RUPT, an old word for broken or “bust”, “on”, ie. ‘after’, BANK – when you “bank” a craft, you are “on the rocks”.

I don’t think ALEPPO is particularly obscure as one of the important ancient cities, but no doubt it depends on the individual.

There’s an echo in today’s puzzle which suggests Everyman may have a particular field of interest which, at least for me, is “obscure”

For 6d (OUTSPOKEN), I interpreted rung=spoke as in spoke on the telephone. I think your reading is better.

For some reason, I didn’t think this was much harder than usual but there was an Everyman recently that I thought was considerably more difficult but no-one else commented to that effect. So, everyone is different.

I particularly liked ALEPPO (excellent surface), WEIRDO (amusing), SHERATON, LANDING STRIP (excellent surface) and FLAMENCO (excellent surface).

Thanks Everyman

Thanks for the blog. I read 26d the other way round. ‘Smashed’ I think is the definition – the OED gives one of the meanings of the word as ‘insolvent’. A bank could be a rocky shelf at sea upon which a ship could founder, or be ‘rupt’.

I remembered Aleppo from a speech by the first witch in ‘Macbeth’:
‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ tiger’.

An entertaining offering from Everyman, a little tougher than usual, I thought.

Agree that it’s a harder than usual Everyman.

26A BUNKRUPT. I had 2 alternatives: first: like yours with “smashed” unexplained, and second: as a triple defn – smashed (financially)=bust=on the rocks, but that leaves “old” unexplained.

I think in 15D TOP DRAWER, it’s prize=reward reversed and trophy=pot (informally or slang) reversed.

I thought this was too hard for an Everyman with 4a, 9a, 24a,26a, 6d & 16d being very hard in my book. If it is the Times, it probably can’t be “too hard” but like the Quiptic, isn’t this supposed to cater for lesser mortals?