The Observer crossword from Oct 25, 2020
Enjoyable stuff again, although not squeaky-clean.
Even a bit dotty because Everyman gives us no less than four clues-with-dots. Unfortunately, I don’t really see the need for it.
There were four other clues, all based on anagrams actually, that I very much liked (10ac, 2dn, 3dn, 6dn).
Over to you!
(Oh, and the two long Down clues, they rhyme)
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BRONTE | Novelist in Breton resort (6) |
| Anagram, indicated by resort, of: BRETON Anne, Charlotte, Emily? ACE! |
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| 4 | NO THANKS | At end of Inferno, T. Hanks reveals I’d rather not (2,6) |
| The last part [end, two letters actually] of INFERNO, followed by T HANKS Quite a giveaway, don’t you think so? |
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| 9 | ATTAIN | Get a coach with time for run (6) |
| A, followed by TRAIN (coach) in which R (run) should be replaced by T (time) | ||
| 10 | TRINIDAD | Did I rant about W Indies? Partly (8) |
| Anagram, indicated by about, of: DID I RANT | ||
| 12 | SPOTLESS | Notice bar is very clean (8) |
| SPOT (notice) + LESS (bar) | ||
| 13 | CRISES | Disasters when cakes without filling rise internally (6) |
| RISE going inside CS, the latter being C[ake]S with the inner letters removed [without filling] | ||
| 15 | CARAWAY SEED | Banger that’s gone off to get masked, ultimately, with flavouring (7,4) |
| CAR (banger) + AWAY (gone off) + SEE (get) + [maske]D Well, a banger is a car but not every car is a banger. |
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| 18 | RAINY SEASON | Clever, removing top to add interest when showering often (5,6) |
| BRAINY minus the B at the beginning, followed by SEASON (to add interest) | ||
| 21 | MORASS | Soft ground buried in tremor assault (6) |
| Hidden solution, indicated by buried in: treMOR ASSault | ||
| 22 | EN CROUTE | Being waited on, eating starter of chicken with pastry casing (2,6) |
| EN ROUTE (being waited on) going around C[hicken] In the surface ‘being waited on’ is ‘being served by’. Apparently, ‘to wait on’ is also an alternative for ‘to wait for’. But I don’t think being en route necessarily means that there is someone waiting for you somewhere. |
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| 24 | UGG BOOTS | Got bogus knocked off womenswear (3,5) |
| Anagram, indicated by knocked off, of: GOT BOGUS Some solvers don’t like brand names in the solutions of clues. |
||
| 25 | TWEEDS | Duke’s seen for a time in online messages with posh clothing (6) |
| TWEETS (online messages) in which one of the letters T (time) should be replaced by D (duke) | ||
| 26 | ESCHEWED | Gave up half of one’s ground (8) |
| ES, being half of one’s, followed by CHEWED (ground, past tense of the verb ‘to grind’) | ||
| 27 | FROYOS | Fermented refreshments obviating yolks; ordinarily subzero … primarily? (6) |
| Indicated by primarily, all the first letters of: Fermented Refreshments Obviating Yolks Ordinarily Subzero Never heard of FROYOS before nor has Chambers, Collins or the SOED. It’s an informal US term for a frozen yoghurt dessert. But, yes, what can a setter do when he has ?R?Y?S ? Use one of his favourite devices! |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BRASSICA | Slangily, ‘money’, to begin with, is called by American ‘cabbage’ (8) |
| BRASS (money, slang), followed by the first letters of: Is Called, and then A (American) Strange word, slangily. And is BRASS slang? Or just informal or dialect? Because that’s what the dictionaries say. |
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| 2 | OUTBOARD | Doubt oar will be seen moving, having this kind of motor? (8) |
| Anagram, indicated by will be seen moving, of: DOUBT OAR One of my favourite clues, very neat. |
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| 3 | TRIPLE-WORD SCORE | Resort with low-priced rent and sought-after square (6-4,5) |
| Anagram, indicated by rent, of: RESORT + LOW-PRICED Another good one. The definition refers to a square on a Scrabble board. |
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| 5 | OGRE | Monster’s rising, so … (4) |
| Reversal, indicated by rising, of: ERGO (so) In my opinion, this clue suggests ERGO as the solution rather than OGRE. Ah well, I don’t like these clues with the indicator in the middle anyway. |
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| 6 | HUNDRED YEARS WAR | Struggling to make headway, surrender having lost energy in drawn-out conflict (7,5,3) |
| Anagram, indicated by struggling (to make), of: HEADWAY SURR[E]NDER with one of the letters E (energy) removed | ||
| 7 | NUDIST | One who’s disinvested in stud rearing (6) |
| Anagram, indicated by rearing, of: IN STUD I wouldn’t have taken ‘rearing’ as an anagram indicator but probably someone will come up with something from the dictionaries to justify it. I saw something too but am reluctant to justify Everyman’s choice. |
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| 8 | SADIST | Seen in Jaws, a distressing monster (6) |
| Hidden solution, indicated by seen in: JawS A DISTressing | ||
| 11 | ASSYRIA | A small modern-day country; a vast ancient kingdom (7) |
| A + S (small) + SYRIA (modern-day country) | ||
| 14 | RELYING | Depending on duplicity (7) |
| RE (on) + LYING (duplicity) | ||
| 16 | ASTUTELY | With shrewdness, Anglo-Saxon king oversees bishopric (8) |
| AS (Anglo-Saxon) + TUT (King, aka Tutankhamun), placed on top of ELY (bishopric) | ||
| 17 | INCENSES | Circulates stripped resin scent? (8) |
| Anagram, indicated by circulates, of: ESIN SCEN, this being RESIN SCENT (seen as a whole) with the outer letters removed [stripped] No definition underlined as the clue as a whole serves as it, a cad so to speak. While that may be a nice idea, I think the clue is not very good for two reasons, Firstly, ‘circulates’ placed in front of the fodder is sloppy, in my opinion. ‘Circulated’ or ‘circulating’ would have been fine, although not fitting the surface. And secondly, ‘stripped resin scent’ is for me ‘esi scent’, but I won’t start an argument because I can, of course, see what Everyman did and why he did it. |
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| 19 | IMPURE | Everyman’s quietly guarded, oddly absent … and lewd (6) |
| I’M (Everyman’s) + P (quietly), followed by URE being the even letters of: gUaRdEd | ||
| 20 | TRAGIC | Pathetic jerk undertakes banter (6) |
| TIC (jerk) going around RAG (banter) One more unusual indicator in a sense that I cannot remember having seen ‘undertake’ as containment indicator before. I guess it can be seen as ‘accept (a job)’ or ‘assume’ (which is Shakespearean) or ‘receive’ (which is obsolete according to Chambers). Take your pick! |
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| 23 | STYE | Eyesore … by the sound of it! (4) |
| Homophone, indicated by by the sound of it, of: STY (which may be something of an eyesore, indeed) Quite a nice clue to finish the lot. And dotty too! |
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Sil, thank you. 5D was my second in after FROYOS. It was so obviously ERGO that I wrote it in before checking the crossers, then had to cross it out after getting 4ac.
UGG boots defeated me for a long time – I too am unhappy about the use of brand names. Or has UGG passed into the language just as hoover did?
“UGGs” — as they’re known here in Australia — have been around for ages under that name.
Apparently, some bunch of Septics tried to ™ the name without a great deal of effect on the Oz market.
There are two pairs under my desk as I write and, last time I checked, I was definitely not a woman.
If you fancy buying the real thing for the N. Hemisphere winter, go here. Plenty of choices for blokes there!
I thought CRISES was very clever. Agreed, Trovatore @2: Where did the idea that UGG BOOTS are womenswear come from? Ugg boots are everyoneswear, I say, as someone from the land where they were invented, and as a proud owner of a pair.
Adrianw @1 – I agree with Trovatore that Ugg is not a brand name – it was a generic name for those boots until those Septics trademarked it in the US – and somehow got away with it (even though their case to stop other, properly Aussie, manufacturers of them calling them ugg boots failed).
I too used to complain about solutions like OGRE/ERGO until I thought about why these puzzles are called crosswords. You solve the clue both ways and wait for a crosser before writing it in. Seems perfectly fair to me.
I had more ticks than usual for an Everyman 18a RAINY SEASON, 7d NUDIST and 16d ASTUTELY for their smooth surfaces, with the excellent 2d OUTBOARD as my COD.
Thanks Everyman and Sil for the fun and meticulous blog.
[ Trovatore@2 and TassieTim@3, I had to google “septic” to see what you meant, and now I love the word. If things go south on Tuesday I may find myself using it a lot. ]
3d was put off by hyphen. Surely it’s the score that’s tripled not the word!
Had a bit of a grizzle with caraway seed as a flavour. Caraway is the flavour, with the seed it becomes something else, but I wouldn’t say that if I got it. Feels like there was a change of Everyman in the last few weeks; the way thr clues are constructed seemed to shift a bit and its taken me a while to get used to it.
17D. I got the answer but couldn’t parse it because I took ‘stripped’ to mean that one has to delete letters at both ends.
Thanks for an insight into why Everyman has become rather unsatisfactory of late, Sil.
Although I have to agree that TRIPLE WORD SCORE is one of the best Sunday clues we’ve had for a long time.
Re27across.. anyone using Pinterest will find froyo recipes by the dozen! Got this ! Ha!
Thank you, Everyman, for the puzzle and, Sil, for a thorough blog in which you’ve discussed the minor queries I had last Sunday. I completed the solve so, in the end, Everyman did manage to communicate to me the intention of every clue but there was a degree of Setter’s Licence employed. My ticks included some already mentioned in the blog and comments to date: CRISES, OUTBOARD, TRIPLE-WORD SCORE, NUDIST and RAINY SEASON. I’d add ESCHEWED and RELYING, both of which are very compact, STYE which is a neat clue for a short ‘un and ASSYRIA for the two contrasting elements in the wordplay. I didn’t have a problem with ERGO/OGRE though I seem to have encountered a lot of the latter in both genders of late.
[I don’t have an issue with brand names which are as much a part of the world in which we live as the names of actors and politicians. I might balk at the inclusion of too many but few puzzles end up with more than a couple. Part of the problem with trying to exclude is where to draw the line. ‘Ford’ comes up regularly, as do various forms of Rolls Royce and Merc and they are as much brands as Ugg but generate little complaint. In yesterday’s Guardian blog there was discussion but no criticism of the security brand Loomis and, not so long ago, we had Pepsi Cola (cunningly appearing also as episcopal which everyone loved). We’ve also seen Aldi and Lidl turn up. Yet someone did object to the inclusion of ‘Bic’ as brand placement and another recent Ugg appearance was criticised as was Teachers. So far my experience across a range of publications suggests setters/editors have got the balance about right.]
Agree with Sil’s well chosen comments, quite a bit to like, (18a, 6d) but needed Sil’s explanations to know why 16d was correct. Finished it, but could not work all of it out. Got 24a but continue to ponder the brand names issues.
Thanks again, Sil, lovely clear descriptions.
Thanks Sil. 4D and 6D both nice clues and rhyming couplet. But 4A was very weak clue, a “give away” indeed.
I am finding the “primarily” clues tiresome – given the crosser the setter could have chosen CRY YES with some suitable surface asking if we dislike primarily clues. Though I have to admit this week’s primarily is a nice construct and informative.
Thanks to Everyman for the mental workout and to Sil for the careful explanations and comments.
For me, 17d was a guess-first, parse later – but as I’m another who understood “stripped” to mean both ends being removed, it was only semi-parsed.
I have no problem with trade-names, though I appreciate that relatively niche ones (which Uggs aren’t) could be tricky to discern. Then again, as PostMark says, actors and politicians all figure from time to time – as do sports teams and a host of other proper names in GK – and surely one person’s ‘blindingly obvious’ is another’s ‘completely obscure’. I’d say that’s all part of the warp and weft of the cruciverse…
Favourite clue was 2d OUTBOARD, very neat indeed.
Re 1d BRASSICA, Sil: “Is BRASS slang? Or just informal or dialect?” – that’s a very fine distinction! Anyway the Wikipedia page on “Slang terms for money” says “‘Brass’ is northern English slang for any amount of money”.
Interesting info about UGG BOOTS from the Aussie contributors. But I think Everyman can be forgiven for referring to them as womenswear as that’s how they’re seen in the UK. And I agree with PostMark in having no problems with brand names in crosswords, as long as they’re not actively plugging the product. Where would setters have been without the Model T Ford?
Many thanks Everyman and Sil.
I found this quite challenging for an Everyman.
Like Sil, I enjoyed the clue for OUTBOARD. I also liked TRIPLE WORD SCORE.
Some quibbles: I didn’t much like the use of ‘RISE’ in both clue and answer for CRISES; is season ‘to add interest’ – it would have been easy to substitute with spice; I don’t think ‘being waited on’ means EN ROUTE; I didn’t like ‘undertakes’ in 20 – it would have been easy to use entertain or some such.
A possible alternative to FROYOS (which I didn’t know) would have been Troyes.
Thanks Everyman and Sil.
Lexico (Oxford Dictionary on-line) has FROYO as a US brand name. Collins has it as a ‘new word suggestion – status pending investigation’. Either way, I never heard of it.
I agree that 5dn as punctuated suggests OGRE is reversed to give ERGO as the answer, but one of the rules of cryptic solving is to ignore punctuation in clues.
I don’t think that UGG BOOTS should be categorised as ‘womenswear’.
TRIPLE WORD SCORE was lovely, but would have been even better if found along an edge, or at the exact centre, so as to land on some.
From The Observer itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/nov/30/its-an-uggs-game-the-return-of-uggs-boots-this-time-they-are-for-men
Everyman has got into the habit of using his inevitable “primarily” clue to give an unusual word, but FROYOS are a new one on me. I don’t object to brand names as long as they are well known ones (is FROYO a brand?) I don’t think anyone minded UGG BOOTS but to clue them as “womenswear” is seriously misleading.
@Cellomaniac: I disagree: clues where you have to find crossers before you can be sure which of several possibilities to enter are Quick crossword territory. A cryptic clue should in theory have only one valid answer.
gladys @ 21
I disagree. A set of clues that only have one ambiguous answer would be a cryptic quiz..
Found this relatively standard Everyman fare… perhaps a tad to the more challenging end of the setter’s spectrum. As usual, some things to like, an eyebrow raiser here and there, but nothing terribly egregious. For my part, thought most of the quibbles above overstated… things that might, with other more esteemed setter’s, be tolerated as allowable misdirection, or “obscure but fair”, or simply setter’s prerogative; should we not afford Everyman the same considerations? E.g.:
– I’ve no issue with “slangily”… it’s in Chambers 20th and Lexico… and Lord Jim nicely covered brass as slang.
– Might agree “caraway” (sans “seed”) is a flavour, however the clue says “flavouring”, implying something added to provide flavour… and the thing you add is “caraway seed”.
– Saw no problem with “stripped” usage. With inclusion indicators there’s uncertainty re including one/multiple words; we take that as misdirection and/or setter’s prerogative. This seems no different… whether to strip one word, each of multiple words, or several words as a group, is just another form of misdirection.
– Re ergo/ogre, well, sometimes you have to get the crossers… that’s the point. No different to me than if a clue explicitly refs another by number; you need to solve the latter to help solve the former.
– Re en route, if you call for a taxi you could describe the taxi as “being waited on” or as “en route”… seems fine to me.
Have likely already overstayed my welcome here, so nuff said. And as always, despite any disagreements, thanks to our setter, blogger, and commenters!
Probably the best blog I’ve ever encountered on 225. All my own misgivings have been thoroughly addressed.
[ I tend to do Everymans (men?) a couple of weeks behind but hope you get this ‘thank you’ Sil ]
Found this difficut to get into, so it was not very enjoyable for me.
Did not parse STYE
New: BRASSICA
Hard for an Everyman. Didn’t like 17d for reasons already given, but also the cad requires a verb, surely, or a singular noun. Incenses meaning scents is neither.
4a was the worst clue I’ve seen in ages and the indicator in 20d is just plain wrong.
15a surface is entirely meaningless, and what’s with all the pointless dots?
On the plus side 2 and 6d were good, but I agree with one of the earlier comments that this Everyman has changed tack recently, not necessarily for the better.
Agree with Barrie on 4ac also have never heard incense as plural. Odd . Feel greatly ill equipped to comment once I’ve read all the contributors comments
Found this hard but liked 3d tho I failed to get it
Liked 25 22 1d and 9ac best
Agree with Barrie. Too many nonsense clues.
I really enjoyed this one and thought there were some excellent clues. Fav was Triple Word Score. Surprised be how long I spent on 1d, but I always thought cabbage was just a type of brassica rather than a family name.
Don’t agree with Barrie. Had no problem with 4ac. And while 17d was hard to find, I think incenses are scent, so it’s ok by me.
Triple Word Score was a great clue.
But it was a tough one and it was fun.
Found this one to be basically impossible. Only got about half of the answers. First tiime in a long while that I have been been stopped in my tracks by an Everyman. 🙁