Everyman 3,867

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[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here

The Observer crossword from Nov 22, 2020
Another Sunday, another Everyman.

And I am not complaining.
But once again I’ll ask the question “Is it just me who thinks that our Sunday setter got harder?”.
Of course, the puzzles are still very accessible but I just need more time to finish them than, say, a few months ago.
Enjoyable crossword with the two long ones not just being a rhyming couple but kind of antonyms too.

ACROSS
1 BURGUNDY Knocked back food – a French dory, filleted – and wine (8)
Reversal, indicated by knocked back, of GRUB (food), followed by A + DY (which is DORY with the middle letters removed, ‘filleted’)
5 V-SIGNS Primarily vulgar, scornful, insulting gestures (not suave)? (1-5)
A cad indicated as usual by Primarily, all the starting letters of: Vulgar Scornful Insulting Gestures Not Suave
10 ROBOTIC Heartless to steal books; sick to destroy covers (7)
ROB (to steal) + OT (books, Old Testament) + IC (which is SICK with the outer letters, its ‘covers’, removed)
11 ERITREA Baedeker: it really captures Red Sea land (7)
Hidden solution, indicated by captures:  BAEDEKER IT REALLY
12 EPSOM Seconds before games return to racecourse (5)
MO (second) + S (second, another one) + PE (games, physical education), then the whole lot reversed which is indicated by return
13 FANCY THAT I’m surprised and tense, wearing expensive headgear (5,4)
T (tense) going inside, indicated by wearing, FANCY (expensive) HAT (headgear)
14 TREPIDATION Partitioned while trembling, trembling (11)
Anagram, indicated by while trembling, of: PARTITIONED
18 IGNOMINIOUS ‘Shameful‘ gin cocktail: not promising to get one in (11)
Anagram, indicated by cocktail, of GIN, followed by OMINOUS (not promising) which goes around I (one)
21 BUBBLE TEA Drink most of champagne, having briefly eaten out (6,3)
BUBBL[y] (champagne, most of it), followed by an anagram, indicated by out, of EATE (which is EATEN minus the N at the end, ‘briefly’)
I’d never heard of bubble tea but it does exist.
This is what Collins tells us: A cold drink, originally from Taiwan, of tea infused with fruit flavouring, shaken to produce bubbles, and served over tapioca pearls in a clear cup. It is usually drunk through a very wide straw.
23 DHAKA Finally performed ceremonial dance somewhere in Asia (5)
[performe]D + HAKA (ceremonial dance)
Rugby lovers are surely familiar with this Maori dance (think: All Blacks).
Dhaka is the capital of Bangla Desh, also known as Dacca.
24 LIE-DOWN Told a story? Have a little rest (3-4)
LIED (told a story) + OWN (have)
A cute little clue, isn’t it?
25 IRONING Mostly insincere, no good and a bit of a chore (7)
IRONI[c] (insincere, mostly) + NG (no good, abbreviation)
I think it is indeed (but some might like it, who knows).
26 CAYMAN Deadly reptile on island: my God! (6)
CAY (island) + MAN (my God!, as an expletive)
While I had no problem to find the solution (which for many solvers is enough), I am probably not the only one who had trouble to parse this clue.
Thought of the Cayman Islands (and a double or perhaps triple definition) but that was not it.
‘Cay’ is the same as ‘key’, a small island or reef.
27 EGG SALAD Encourages a boy to find something to eat (3,5)
EGGS (encourages) + A + LAD (boy)
Neat clue.
DOWN
1 BARBED Unpleasant to live with poet around (6)
BE (live) with BARD (poet) going around it
2 ROBUST Direct section of Cairo bus trip (6)
Hidden solution, indicated by section of:  CAIRO BUS TRIP
3 ULTIMATUM Everyman’s in a tumult, wildly offering threat (9)
I’M (Everyman’s) inside an anagram, indicated by wildly, of A TUMULT
4 DECAFFEINATING Losing potency, facing defeat in struggle (14)
Anagram, indicated by struggle, of: FACING DEFEAT IN
Splendid anagram, not totally convinced by the definition though.
6 SPICY Scandalous, hearing about the Third Man? (5)
Homophone, indicated by hearing about, of: SPY C
This was my (and my solving partner’s) last one in.
I assume this is about Kim Philby, who was seen as ‘the third man’ of The Cambridge Five spy collective.
And there’s, of course, Graham Greene’s novella The Third Man which he turned into the screenplay for the famous 1949 film noir of the same name.
In 2015, only a couple of months before his untimely death, film critic Philip French wrote in The Guardian:
“The title rapidly entered the language and took on new meanings as the careers of Greene as wartime intelligence agent and Kim Philby as cold war traitor became linked.”
7 GERSHWIN Most of singers getting hot drink, shortly, for composer (8)
[sin]GERS + H (hot) + WIN[e] (drink, shortened)
Indeed, GERS is more than half of SINGERS but so is SINGE – see what I mean?
8 SPARTANS Those whereby duty is getting into going without? (8)
PART (duty) inside SANS (going without)
Nothing underlined here because this is obviously meant to be a cad (or a semi-&lit).
For me, ‘sans’ is simply ‘without’ but I added ‘going’ because I didn’t know what else to do with it.
9 REINVIGORATING Increasing power, Virgin Queen to gain sway (14)
Anagram, indicated by sway, of: VIRGIN + ER (Queen) + TO GAIN
Some solvers may see this as an indirect anagram but I think ER = ‘Queen’ is so well-known that it shouldn’t be a problem.
15 ASSIDUOUS Diligent lasses find autocue’s failing regularly (9)
Regular choice of letters, indicated by failing regularly (here meaning don’t take the odd ones), from:  LASSES FIND AUTOCUES
16 DIABOLIC Very bad to see yours truly excluded from biomedical engineering (8)
Take ME away from BIOMEDICAL, then take an anagram, indicated by engineering, of what’s left
17 SNOBBERY Uppishness seen as Southern aristocrat topless, Derby scandalised (8)
S (Southern) + NOB (aristocrat), followed by an anagram, indicated by scandalised, of ERBY (which is DERBY minus its top i.e. the letter D)
19 DANIEL Judge‘s drawn Nigella oddly (6)
The odd letters from: DRAWN NIGELLA
SOED:  An upright judge; a person of infallible wisdom. First recorded in Shakespeare.
It goes back to the Old Testament which has the Book of the Prophet Daniel.
Well, I thought it was the Old Testament but allan_c @24 tells me it’s the Apocrypha.
He’s surely right because what I know about the Bible is rather minimalistic.
20 JAGGED Uneven judge made criticisms, ignoring knight (6)
J (judge) + AGGED (which is NAGGED (made criticisms) minus N (knight))
22 LOOFA What’s found in bathroom of India, ultimately? (5)
LOO (bathroom / what’s found in bathroom) + F,A (being the last letters, indicated by ultimately, of: OF INDIA)
Many solvers, including me, will be more familiar with ‘loofah’.
A clue in which ‘bathroom’ is clearly doing double duty, like it or not.
See Gonzo @1 and Aphid @4 for a different take which others seem to support.
In which case the clue as a whole probably should be seen as the definition.

 

34 comments on “Everyman 3,867”

  1. Thanks Sil.
    ‘Man’ as expletive is certainly ‘decaffeinated’ – thanks for the explanation.
    In LOOFA I think “what’s found in bathroom” is defining LOO, making the clue &lit.
    Thanks Everyman – definitely getting harder.

  2. Cay/key for island, despite being a cw standard, didn’t click so the parse remained a que? And I was too lazy to work backwards from reinvigorating to the fodder. Spy C was another missed parse, d’oh. Sil might be right, recent Everymans have been quite chewy, which is fine by me. Eg, part for duty in Spartan is nicely indirect. Enjoyable, thanks both.

  7. I just started learning how to do cryptic crosswords in May (been meaning to learn for years and lockdown gave me the impetus) and discovered Everyman in June. By end August was managing pretty well with these puzzles but lately they seem to have become harder. I managed to get half of this one last Sunday then ground to a halt. Returned to it yesterday and nearly finished it.Did not get SPICY, SNOBBERY, JAGGED

    Some lovely clues though.

    Thanks to Everyman and Sil van der Hoek

  9. Yes have noticed the challenging parts of each week getting more so of late; defeated this time around (by DHAKA, SPICY)… which would’ve been very rare a few months back.

    Saw LOOFA as Gonzo & Aphid did. But taking Sil’s parsing, I’ve never understood why that form gets criticised. When “double duty” means contributing twice to wplay that’s clearly problematic. But here it’s just overlap of wplay/defn. There are 4 forms of that (wplay same as defn, w=d; wplay contained in defn, wd; partial overlap, w~d); we readily accept the first two (as &lit and semi-&lit), but frown on the last for some reason? Don’t see why.

    Agree DECAFFEINATING was a stretch. Didn’t care for direct=ROBUST either. Still, some other nice clues here and enjoyed it over all.

    Tip o’the hat to setter, blogger, and commenters…

  10. Sorry… clumsy thumbs… the 4 forms should be: wplay same as defn, w=d; wplay contained in defn, wd; partial overlap, w~d

  11. [Ok… NOT clumsy thumbs… For some reason text btw less-than and greater-than gets removed (twice now)? Trying again in different order, multi-line:

    wplay same as defn, w=d (aka &lit)
    wplay contains defn, w>d
    wplay contained in defn, w<d (aka semi-&lit)
    partial overlap, w~d

    1st & 3rd ok, but not 4th… why?]

  12. Can’t really say I’ve been doing Everyman long enough to notice a particular shift in difficulty level and didn’t find this one particularly challenging but, as has been said before, I may well have had a different perspective if I’d been defeated.  I didn’t parse LOOFAH to my satisfaction but that had to be the answer and I’d never heard of BUBBLE TEA (which appears to be a fad and looks and sounds absolutely disgusting.  I’d have thought finding tapioca balls in my tea would be a good reason to send it back!)

    I often fail to spot clues where a letter stands in for a number as in SPY C but got it this time and I did solve – if with a raised eyebrow – DECAFFEINATING and CAYMAN correctly.  My other slight quibble was with the equivalence of ROBOTIC with heartless; true, they both share that sense of being devoid of emotion but I doubt I would ever choose one as synonym for the other.  COTD probably a toss up between the aforementioned SPICY and EPSOM which was an a-ha moment.  BURGUNDY made me smile with the definition.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil

  13. I was another putting ‘S LIMY for 6, with reference to Harry Lime in The Third Man.

    Entertaining Sunday solve; I particularly liked ROBOTIC. I thought the ‘somewhere in Asia’ was pretty vague, and the clue for SPARTANS was somewhat awkward.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil.

  14. I’m very much with Sil on this week’s offering. I had the solutions but couldn’t parse several, so counted it as unsolved. The explanations are so helpful, though do leave me wondering about Everyman’s mindset at times! Bubble tea?? It had to be that, but I didn’t find the definition and I agree with Postmark, it sounds appalling. Glad I’m not the only one who found it a bit of a struggle; that’s more reassuring than to think my brain is atrophying.

  15. I’m on the point of giving up Everyman. Too often, the clues leave me bereft of any idea on how to proceed.
    Come on, give us all a bit more fun as it was once.

  16. Surely The Third Man is not a spy story, so the 6d clue can only refer to the Philby epithet, making it pretty obscure GK.

  17. I’m another who dithered between SLIMY and SPICY – neither felt completely satisfactory, and I settled on the latter in end by tossing a coin. Wotevs.
    I have actually drunk BUBBLE TEA. There is (or at least, was – heaven knows how it’s fared during lockdowns and Tiers) a small cafe in London’s Soho that specialised in it. Customers had a wide range of unusual flavours to choose from, many fruit-based as I recall, and the taste was actually very pleasant; capturing the translucent “bubbles” with the wide straw turned out to be rather entertaining. Doubt it’ll ever be more than a fad, though.
    GERSHWIN was fun, DHAKA and EGG SALAD were delights, ERITREA was surprisingly well-hidden.
    The “pairing” thing seems to be getting looser and looser each week – and, yes, I agree with all those who think the puzzles in general are growing harder.
    But they’re still enjoyable! So thanks to Everyman for the pleasure, and to Sil for the blog.

  18. First time commenter. I really enjoyed last week’s offering, and I appreciate the notes on how to parse SPICY.

    A few commenters are perhaps displaying some SNOBBERY regarding BUBBLE TEA? I have seen it offered in various cafés and Asian restaurants for more than 15 years in the UK. It is perhaps better known by a rather younger crowd than the typical Everyman solver.

  22. Shaun @18: indeed, welcome.  It’s fun to see someone new coming in punching!  Not SNOBBERY in my case; I’ve had a lifelong loathing of tapioca which I associate with SLIMY rather than SPICY puddings of my youth.  I’m willing to stand corrected on ‘fad’ – your note prompted me to research properly and I see it’s 40 years old as a concept, the global market is worth $2.5bn and the Taiwanese proposed placing an image of it on their passports, so iconic is it there.  Still looks and sounds absolutely disgusting 😀

  23. OddOtter@9-11:
    I think the objection to ‘double duty’ is that it breaks the ‘you must say what you mean’ rule.
    Definition [link word] Wordplay or vice versa, and even &lit, follow it.
    [Your troubles putting greater-than or less-than signs are due to them having special meaning in web pages, and thus being stripped out of posts for security. Try &gt; and &lt; ]

  24. We went for ‘slimy’ in 6dn, too – obviously we didn’t read the clue carefully enough.  And we couldn’t quite make out what was going on in 9dn so resorted to a wordfinder although the parsing was obvious once we got it.  Otherwise it was all fine; SPARTANS was our LOI, which occurred to us just in time to save further recourse to the wordfinder.

    The reference in ‘a DANIEL come to judgment’ is actually to the Apocrypha (rather than the Old Testament) where the story of Daniel and Susannah tells how Daniel saves a virtuous young woman from a miscarriage of justice.

    Thanks to our setter and to Sil.

  25. Gonzo: Thanks. [And thanks.] Kinda follow that reasoning… but only kinda. Doesn’t semi-&lit violate the same principle? W>d is much more rare, but have seen it, and don’t recall seeing objections?

  26. Many thanks, Sil, for the blog and Everyman for the puzzle.     LOOFA works for me 100% as a @lit.   SPICY OK too, and imaginative, but, tricky, yes.

  27. Yes, Everyman is getting more challenging, but well within the “for solvers of all levels” remit. This was another good one. I failed on two, not knowing either HAKA or DHAKA (in that spelling), and falling into the SLIMY trap as well.

    [ I’m sure I’m a minority of one, but I would go even further than OddOtter@9, in that I don’t see why “double duty” is a problem under any circumstances. Even doubling up on wordplay doesn’t necessarily make clues too difficult, and it can make for better surfaces and more concise clues. I know it’s a rule, but it seems to me an unnecessary one. ]

  28. Whether the clue at 22ac has an element of doubly duty or not, I don’t know.
    Depends on how you look at it.
    Personally, I don’t like double duty very much but I know it crops up every now and then.

    My view on crossword clues is that every word should be there for a reason.
    Which, for me, means: not for two reasons.
    But, yes, that’s only my view.
    If something’s there just to make a better surface, that’s fine by me as long as it doesn’t interfere with the cryptic part of the clue.

    By the way, I found today’s Everyman (blogged next week by Peter O, please no further comments here) quite easy.
    Therefore my remark “Is it just me who thinks that our Sunday setter got harder?” might indeed be ‘just me’.

  29. I enjoyed this very much, though could not parse everything, so thank you Sil for explaining, for instance, SPICY. I think I had mist of the rest. On FANCY HAT, is it not that a fancy hat is expensive headwear, rather that that fancy on its own means expensive? But perhaps that is in the dictionary; I did not check. I did not much like the equating of ironic and insincere either, but ditto… On Daniel, allan_c’s point is not that the book of Daniel is not in the OT (it is), but that the story of Daniel *as judge* – ie of Daniel and Susannah – is in the apocrypha and not in the OT part of the book of Daniel. Thanks to Everyman for the ongoing entertaining Sunday solve.

  30. To Sil @28: Its not  just you. I found today’s easier than last week. “Easier” meaning the clues led more directly to an answer.

    While “ease” is obviously a personal viewpoint, several colleagues have made similar remarks to me over recent months. There was a discontinuity  2 or 3 years ago when a long time setter retired. Now we seem to have settled down but there are clues that require solvers to identify a synonym which has to be manipulated to get an answer, whereas in the past the clues seemed to be more of what you see is directly what you have to solve. Everyman (used to be) the “starter cryptic” in the mainstream media. It seems to have drifted away from this – at leat, I am having to “cheat” more often.

     

  31. At least we have not got an old crossword this week, in the Herald., but we are now 6 weeks behind the UK.
    I agree with Cosmic @ 30 above. For me, these crosswords are now too hard to finish. Having done Everyman crosswords for at least 30 years, it is disappointing to see this change. I thought they were supposed to be at Beginner level, but that has long gone. Thank you to DanWord for your help.

  32. Hi and Happy New Year to all the Kiwi solvers.
    Yes it is good to be back in the loop again after two or three weeks with old Everymen.
    I was in Canada a couple of years ago and came across bubble tea at an outdoor market. I was intrigued by the name, had no idea what it was so had to try it.
    It was very Asian and tasted very terrible! Put me off tapioca for life!
    As to degrees of difficulty, I expect these crosswords to be challenging so I am overjoyed when I complete one but not down hearted when I don’t.
    Thanks to all concerned.

  33. Found this puzzele basically impossible. Had to make heavy use of wildcard dictionaries and still got 1 down and 20 down wrong and could not get 6 down or 8 down.

    Connections far too tenuous and obscure.

    A most unpleasant experience.

  34. I wouldn’t describe Whangarei as cosmopolitan exactly but just the other week I met some Chinese friends at a Vietnamese cafe & they ordered bubble tea. It’s obscurity as described in this blog may just reflect the current “Everyman” demographic. Well done Everyman for any attempts to broadeni our church.

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