Everyman 3,735

21 comments on “Everyman 3,735”

1. Very enjoyable Sunday puzzle as always!

   New word for me was CROMLECH but it was solvable due to the very clear clueing.

   Thanks Everyman and Sil

2. Enjoyable as always. Thanks Everyman and Sil.
   Surely “penchant” doesn’t have a negative connotation (“weakness” in 4 across).

3. I derived CROMLECH from the wordplay, but couldn’t believe it was a word. First incomplete solve of Everyman for about 10weeks

4. @2 crosser – I don’t think “weakness” and “penchant” are exact synonyms, since to have a weakness for doughnuts (for example) describes a more-or-less permanent condition, whereas to have a penchant for them is transitory. But given the leeway that setters often award themselves in these matters, it just about works.

5. Morning all.

   High quality, as always, but definitely more of a brisk walk than the usual gentle stroll. Particularly liked the constructions in 5 and 10.

   Crosser@2, Trismegistus @4. My thoughts exactly. Just checked in the online ‘freethesaurus.com’, which cites three sources (Collins, Roget’s and Wordnet) and “weakness” is only given as a “related word”. But for those who enjoy alliteration, there are seven synonyms of “penchant” beginning with the letter “p”. Isn’t our language wonderful?

   Thanks to Everyman and Sil.

6. Thank you Everyman for an enjoyable puzzle and Sil for a helpful blog.

   THRASH for a party was new to me, I only remember ‘bash’, but not having lived in an English speaking country for over 50 years means that my colloquial English is dated – it is not given in my 1963 COED, but is in the 1995 edition.

7. Thanks Sil, and especially Everyman.  It takes real mastery to get a pitch perfect puzzle (as this one is) coming every week.  (Elsewhere, under different names, he can be terrifying.)

   I knew Cromlech because Siegfried Sassoon’s first world war memoir uses disguised names and for Robert Graves, he chose David Cromlech.

8. Thanks Sil. I rattled through this without any hold-ups, but I did find that I was filling in almost every solution from the definition alone and then working out the wordplay, which isn’t really the most satisfactory way to go.

9. Now I found this to be fairly straightforward, which isn’t always the case for the new(ish) Everyman. 18ac was my last one in, and one I was pleased to get from the wordplay. Apparently it’s a Welsh thing, but well, I’ve never heard of one! 🙂

10. Thanks to both for the usual entertainment but this one took longer than usual, so I agree with your initial comment Sil.

    For much of this one, I got the word but sorting out the parsing took ages. And, for quite a few, coming here was essential.

    I also question PENCHANT in this usage as my sources do make it seem a stretch to call it a weakness. And we have a DIAPHRAGM separating our “lung compartment” from the lower body.

11. As everyone will know by now, I am not British and, therefore, have to rely on what the dictionaries say rather than what people say in everyday life.

    Chambers has for ‘weakness’ as def.#3: “A liking or fondness (with for)”, endorsed by Collins and the SOED.  It has for ‘penchant’ something similar.  Am I missing something?

12. Sil @11,  PENCHANT is given as a synonym for ‘weakness’ on Google,  the Oxford site and in the Collins’ thesaurus  and probably other thesauri.

13. 3D.  I parsed it thus: GRAPH + DAM (partition) + I (for ‘a’).

14. I agree with all the above. Far too long indoors on such a lovely morning – could have done with this last Saturday. Sil, re your comment at 11 I agree that its more the case that weakness can mean fondness for rather than penchant having negative connotations.

15. What a wonderful crossword, best in ages. Getting the whole of the top half off the bat no doubt helped put me in the right frame of mind, slower going down south with Cromlech LOI (add me to the long list of those who had to check to make sure it was a word).

    Les Mis was the only one I didn’t parse, couldn’t be bothered to be honest, it had to be right.

    Penchant = fondness/weakness is fine imho.

    Pip! Pip!

    PS – no sum to solve this week?

16. Good crossword. Liked 12 ac and 3 down. Have never heard of cromlech either.
    Lovely day here.

17. Yes, this was a tuffy.  Couldn’t parse “airmail” (9 across) though I was sure that was the answer.  Needed to use a wildcard dictionary to get “cromlech” (18 across; LOI; toadally new word for me).  Nice to hear that others, including the blogger (!!!) found this puzzle  to be less than straightforward.  Using “diaphragm” to mean “partition” was new to me, although Uncle Google confirms that this usage is legit.

18. Enjoyed it all but gave up with two to go and there was a test against France to watch.. Never got Cromlech or Diaphragm. Foolishly I feel into the trap of  assuming the second letter could only be R or E.

    Don’t  understand the fuss about Penchant – isn’t it a genuinely accurate definition of weakness/fondness

    Loved 1d and 1a and many others

     

19. We’ll we got it all out but with some electronic help. We got 8 down (thrash) from the crossing letters and the parsing but have never heard of thrash being a party (and neither had Mr Oxford as far as we could see).
    Ah well the differences between proper and Antipodean English, though penchant and diaphragm as defined were well within our vocab.

20. Another great crossword (aren’t they all these days?). Particularly liked ‘alpha’ although couldn’t get ‘yanny’ out of my mind for a while. Even though Ralph Laurel wouldn’t quite do would it?
    Thanks to all

21. Strange, I found this quite easy. I only started this @ 5pm on Sunday. Had all bar two done in next to no time. Finished the last two at work. Enjoyed ALPHA, AFFRONTED, CRUMB and THRASH among others.

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