I found this puzzle unsatisfactory on the whole, mainly because of some dubious definitions and unclear wordplay. Your experience may have differed.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Director of a circus that’s starring … me, surprisingly
RINGMASTER
(STARRING ME)*
6 Rowers were triumphant
CREW
A dd, with the second element being the past tense of ‘crow’. What we’ll all be doing in eleven days’ time when we’ve Taken Back Control.
9 Brief attempt reversing boat in turbulent water
WHIRLPOOLS
A charade of WHIRL for a ‘brief attempt’ and SLOOP reversed.
10 Mineral derived from sago palm
OPAL
Hidden in sagO PALm.
12 Shiner? Beef’s applied … with seasoning
FINES HERBES
(SHINER BEEFS)* with ‘applied’ as the anagrind.
15 Most of country gets measure that helps display identity
LANYARD
A charade of LAN[D] and YARD.
16 ‘Brisbane not capital?’: confused European
SERBIAN
([B]RISBANE)* The removal indicator is ‘not capital’ and the anagrind is ‘confused’.
17 Dog takes the German stew
CHOWDER
A charade of CHOW and DER for one of the words for ‘the’ in German. Often of fish or seafood, but indubitably a ‘stew’.
19 Skipping starter of seafood, getting in a little red aperitif
CAMPARI
An insertion of A and R for the first letter of ‘red’ in [S]CAMPI. For those of a certain age, CAMPARI will evoke memories of this.
20 13 drunken bankers taking a nap
BAKERS DOZEN
An insertion of DOZE in (BANKERS)* The insertion indicator is ‘taking’ and the anagrind is ‘drunken’.
23 An air base regularly getting bills
NIBS
The even letters of aN aIr BaSe.
24 Sandy, a dog, beheaded a bird
TAWNY EAGLE
Everyman doesn’t often give me a bird, but a charade of TAWNY and [B]EAGLE offers the opportunity for the obligatory Pierre bird link. A species that you won’t see in the UK: its range is wide, but encompasses mainly Africa and India.
25 ‘Staunch, good man’? Flipping Everyman!?
STEM
A charade of ST for saint and ME reversed.
26 Updates incorporating new flags
RED ENSIGNS
An insertion (‘incorporating’) of N in REDESIGNS.
Down
1 Loudly stir up arguments
ROWS
A homophone (‘loudly’) of ROUSE.
2 Every now and then en famille, that’s secure
NAIL
The even letters of eN fAmIlLe.
3 Fern, small and old, represented in novel
MOLL FLANDERS
(FERN SMALL OLD)* gives you the novel by Daniel Defoe and the first part of the rhyming couplet with GERRYMANDERS.
4 Got cosy and had some soup?
SPOONED
A dd.
5 Silent, antagonistic son joins army
ENLISTS
A charade of (SILENT)* and S.
7 Queen depicted upside down? Landlord’s no monarchist
REPUBLICAN
A reversal (‘depicted upside down’ since it’s a down clue) of ER for Elizabeth Regina and PUBLICAN.
8 Son-in-law rising, holding a wine cocktail, feels exhilarated
WALKS ON AIR
An insertion of SON in LAW reversed and A inserted into KIR. The reversal indicator is ‘rising’; the two insertion indicators are ‘in’ and ‘holding’. KIR is a mixture of dry white wine (typically Burgundy) and crème de cassis; the clue is a rather tortuous set of instructions to give you the solution, which I am not fully convinced I have understood properly.
11 Rearranges land in gardens with merry abandon
GERRYMANDERS
(GARDENS MERRY)* with ‘abandon’ as the anagrind. GERRYMANDERING is the process of rearranging the boundaries of an electoral district so as to benefit a particular party in a first-past-the-post contest. It is – I discovered today – named after an American vice-president called Elbridge Gerry. Rather appositely described in the article I read on it as ‘politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians’.
13 What’s found in hair? A group of nits with second group on top
ALICE BANDS
I can’t parse this satisfactorily, I’m afraid. If the last three words were absent, it would work as A LICE BAND plus S for ‘second’. But I can’t explain the ‘on top’ instruction. I’m sure someone will come to my rescue.
Edit: several posters have suggested that it is a charade of A, LICE for ‘a group of nits’, BAND for ‘group’ and S for ‘second’, with ‘on top’ as simply an instruction to put the BAND before the S. Thank you to them.
14 ‘New New Labour’; Keir’s leader; visionary?
UNWORKABLE
(NEW LABOUR K)* with the first ‘new’ as the anagrind. I am bigly unconvinced that ‘visionary’ is the same, or even near to, ‘unworkable’ in its meaning.
18 Raw seal? You’ll need to fill in a form
RED TAPE
A charade of RED and TAPE. Similarly, RED TAPE is not a good definition of ‘you’ll need to fill in a form’.
19 French artist‘s in the auditorium, according to Stuart monarch
CÉZANNE
A homophone (‘in the auditorium’) of SAYS ANNE, referencing Queen ANNE, the last of the Stuart monarchs.
21 Anxious to be part of Gog and Magog, however things go
AGOG
‘Anxious’ for AGOG? ‘Excited’, ‘eager’, ‘curious’, for sure. But ‘anxious’? Probably not. And the subsidiary indicator is not great, if I understand it well – simply that GOG is included in both ‘Gog’ and ‘Magog’. And the surface is pretty pants too. So if you’re getting a hint that I wasn’t that impressed with 21dn, you’re in the right area.
Edit: the clue relies on the fact that AGOG is hidden forwards and reversed in GOG And MAGOG.
22 Primarily, what are called (exotically) ‘porcini’ sometimes?
CEPS
The first letters of the last four words of the clue, and a cad.
Many thanks to Everyman for this Sunday’s puzzle.
Pierre, I agree with you on the unsatisfactory looseness of some of the down clues. On the plus side I thought 20a and 11d were rather good.
I think 13d is A LICE (lice = group of nits?), then S (second) with BAND (group, in the musical sense) on top of it.
In 21d I took “however things go” to indicate that AGOG is part of the phrase reading in either direction (GOG And mAGOG), but that still doesn’t really work for me.
Thanks Pierre.
In 13 I think ‘group of nits’ is just LICE, with BAND being the second group ‘on top’ of S.
In 21, AGOG can be found forwards and reversed in the fodder.
Thanks Everyman.
I’m with you. Some of this is iffy. Crew as a past participle of crow? Really? Usually crowed, surely.
I got unworkable but I couldn’t see how it was synonymous with visionary, in any shape or form.
I didn’t get walks on air – seems very convoluted.
Although the anagram was relatively simple, I thought the surface of 1a (my FoI) was delightful. ALICE BANDS was also clever, and there were quite a few other pleasant clues. Like others, I wasn’t sure how UNWORKABLE equates to ‘visionary’, though – is this just cynicism at work? I also thought AGOG weak. However, I don’t mind CREW as a past participle of ‘crow’ – old fashoined, perhaps, but legitimate. [The Gerry after whom gerrymander was named was a Democrat, I believe – it isn’t just the Republicans who try to subvert American democracy. Oh, a check on this reveals him as a Democratic-Republican (as opposed to Federalist). Tammany Hall was definitely Democrat.] Thank you, Everyman and Pierre.
Didn’t get ALICE BANDS and still don’t really see how it parses. And though I got it am not sure of parsing of WALKS ON AIR
Also found several definitions questionable.
But liked several including TAWNY EAGLE, CHOWDER, CEZANNE (which I really liked – I often don’t manage to solve homophones but I got this one)
Thanks to Everyman and Pierre
Isn’t the point with 21d that you have AGOG in both directions in “goga nd m agog”? Sorry – can’t bold any text to illustrate the point better!
And Chambers has several defs for UNWORKABLE including “impractical”, “out of touch with reality, unpractical” so I’m inclined to give Everyman a pass there.
The first two posters have already suggested that, bodycheetah.
Oops – I meant defs for VISIONARY!
DNF (-2.5 XOO) as DNK ALICE BANDS, nor that particular EAGLE. Nonetheless, quite enjoyed this, and thought it one of the better, more creative Everymans of late.
Agree w/Quirister & Gonzo re parsing of ALICE BANDS & AGOG. Thought defn for the latter fine; while anxious often means uneasy, there’s also a meaning (at least here in the US) of eagerness. Collins online includes “If you are anxious to do something or anxious that something should happen, you very much want to do it or very much want it to happen”; and listed synonyms include: eager, keen, yearning.
WALKS ON AIR: Yes, convoluted. I took it as a charade of WAL (i.e. LAW reversed) + K(A)IR (i.e. “holding A, wine cocktail”); then SON is inserted in the result of all that.
UNWORKABLE: For visionary, Chambers online includes “possible only in the imagination; impracticable; fanciful”; and lexico includes a similar (tho shorter) defn, marked as archaic. Here in Silicon Valley we’d often discuss ideas of tech “visionaries” as either genius (if they could actually be implemented) or pie-in-the-sky flights of fancy (if, as so often the case, they could not).
Wouldn’t agree CHOWDER is “indubitably” stew… those based on more delicate seafood are often cooked quite quickly rather than long/slow. Still, some are indeed stewed (and some refs support it too), so the clue still works for me.
Really liked CREW, ROWS; COTD: BAKERS DOZEN, for a creative clue with a whimsically fun surface.
Hats off to setter, blogger, and commenters!
Visionary= UNWORKABLE made me think of the civil servant in Yes Minister who would use visionary as a synonym for unworkable
“Crew” as past tense of “Crow”? C’mon …
My wee contribution to the ‘visionary’ debate: it was one of those where, with hindsight, having solved the clue, I was able to envision what the setter had in mind but would I have come up with impractical and/or fanciful per bodycheetah and OddOtter from first principles? I doubt it but I’m also inclined to give Everyman a pass. I’m happy enough with CREW as the (rarely used) past tense – (oddly, “the cock crew” seems less bizarre than “the victor crew”) but it’s such an old chestnut when clued in that way. And ‘lice’ throws me whenever it appears (funnily enough, so does the comparable ‘mice’), probably because I run through single insects/animals in my mind which, of course, does not lead me to the solution.
I’m overall rather less critical of this than is Pierre. I may be guilty of a few bung and shrugs – I have the luxury of not having to explain parsing to an audience – and suspect I would have been frustrated by dissecting WALKS ON AIR. But I found plenty to enjoy including CEZANNE which is outrageous, GERRYMANDERS which is a lovely anagram as is MOLL FLANDERS, the clever REDESIGNS and, for their surfaces, BAKERS DOZEN, FINES HERBES and RINGMASTER. And I share Everyman’s evident liking for CHOWDER 😀
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
As a tyro starting to graduate, Everymans are usually an enjoyable but completely solvable fare. I found this one particularly trying, so I’m a little relieved that others found it unconventional. I’m a sucker for brief or slightly cheeky definitions in clues, so COD was BAKERS DOZEN.
I thought your intro was rather unnecessarily negative, Pierre. As other posters have pointed out, ALICE BANDS, UNWORKABLE and AGOG all work fine. In fact I ticked UNWORKABLE which I thought was a great clue.
For those objecting to CREW as the past tense of “crow”, it’s not only in the dictionaries but, as PostMark suggests, it’s also a bit of a crossword staple.
But thanks for the blog Pierre, especially the beautiful bird link. And many thanks to Everyman for the puzzle.
As this is the last Everyman blog before Christmas, season’s greetings and goodwill to ye all!
I’m another who has no problem with CREW as the past-tense of crow – though I agree I’ve encountered it more often with cockerels at some ungodly hour than with triumphant sports teams.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the surface of 8d was a bit iffy – and I alsoagree that insisting visionary=unworkable is dead odd.
Then again, the idea of corrupt and seedy gerrymandering being performed with ‘merry abandon’ is delicious!
Thanks to Everyman for the sunday breakfast fun – and to Pierre for the reliably-authoritative blog.
I solved my final clue whilst dozing off last night. It was WALKS ON AIR and I assumed that kir was the cocktail although I’d never heard of it. The recent Everymans have been hard work and frankly not as much fun as they should be. I totally agree with Pierre in his preamble. I don’t mind obscure words as answers but they should never be used in the wordplay.
Despite many protestations, I still cannot see how unknowable = visionary.
On the positive side, I was amused by the 13 drunken bankers who were probably to blame for the 2008 crash although never punished for their crimes. Wrong, Fred Goodwin has his knighthood taken away so that certainly made up for 10 years of austerity.
Thanks to Pierre and E.
@17 replace ‘has his’ with ‘had his’. It would be nice to be able to edit comments.
One of the things I love about crosswords is how you sometimes make unexpected discoveries. Like some previous commenters, I’d always thought “crow” was a regular verb, but now I know a “crow–crew–crown” form exists, albeit considered archaic.
I agree that there are some quite eccentric clues here. Even after reading OddOtter @10, I still can’t get my head round 8d: on paper, it looks like the wine cocktail is holding SON + A, but that’s not what the clue says.
On the other hand, 7d made me smile, and I also liked 19d.
Thanks to both setter and blogger.
6a blogger comment – “all”? Please don’t speak thus on my behalf.
My LOI was 11d. Had I been more focused on which particular crossword I was doing, and its rhyming couplet trick, it would have gone in much sooner. It was only after getting the answer that that particular penny dropped.
@20 one has to hope that the dear blogger is being ironic.
Pretty sure OddOtter has the parsing of 8d, WALKS ON AIR, correct. As an ex-programmer it’s similar to statements where using brackets is unnecessary but enhances clarity for the reader saving them the trouble of remembering operator precedence.
I took the question mark in 14d as inviting an answer. As in “is this visionary? No, it’s unworkable”. Felt quite satisfying actually.
Didn’t manage ALICE BANDS. Thanks for putting me out of my misery.
I second OddOtter’s observation that “anxious” is often used to mean “eager”. It’s one of those usages that infuriate some traditionalists, but it’s quite common. (Cue the usual prescriptivist-descriptivist debate here!)
The only definition I find significantly objectionable is 14dn (visionary for unworkable). Everyman is more laissez-faire than I would like regarding anagrinds, but that’s not a surprise at this point.
I found this to be quite an enjoyable puzzle.
Ted @25 and OddOtter @10, my daughter points out that Merriam Webster states: “If you use ‘anxious’ to mean “eager,” most usage guides will disagree with your choice. On the other hand, people—including Jane Austen, Kingsley Amis, Lord Byron, Flannery O’Connor, and several thousand others—have been using ‘anxious’ this way for hundreds of years.”
She also wishes me to clarify that she only looked this up out of curiosity to see if it was an example of a usage being far older than is commonly thought.
Incidentally, all the chowders I have eaten have been, indubitably, soups!
I find it surprising, after bodycheetah@7&9 and OddOtter @10 provided definitive dictionary justification for visionary = UNWORKABLE, that several commentators still found 14d unsatisfactory. I thought it a clever clue and nice surface.
I also was surprised with the objections to CREW as past tense for crow. It must be that hardly anybody is familiar with the King James or Authorised Revised Versions of the bible, describing Peter’s denial of Jesus. (I’m not religious, but I think of them as an integral part of English literature.)
I liked this crossword, especially the rhyming couplets and the aforementioned UNWORKABLE. Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
I confess that I missed bodycheetah’s comments on VISIONARY. The dictionary support they provide for the definition is strong, so I guess I have to withdraw my objection.
I wonder whether we should always have the so-called dictionary support for a word or synonym of a word.
If a scheme is visionary, it is most likely to be grandiose, too ambitiously thought of, very difficult to carry out and so unworkable.
BTW, there is a message floating around in social media about a van carrying copies of a thesaurus getting involved in a road accident. It has a long list of synonyms for ‘amazed’. When I received it, my response to it was simple: gobsmacked.
For that was missing there.
[ Rishi: I haven’t seen that message, but I presume the angry van driver was at a loss for words. My favourite synonym for amazed is from a commenter here a few weeks ago who said “my gast is truly flabbered”.]
Monkey: Please give your daughter our thanks for finding/sharing that fun little tidbit… I hope she’ll keep on being curious!
Liked ALICE BANDS, RED ENSIGNS (loi)
Did not parse WALKS ON AIR – although I had spotted LAW and SON
Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Crew is fine. Chowder is soup, not stew. Liked Bakers Dozen. Agog was rubbish.
Thanks for extending the closing time for comments.
Some questionable clues here as already mentioned by others above, especially unworkable for visionary. However there were some I liked e.g. Bakers Dozen.
Missed a few here, but no complaints. I think for once the question mark was significant in 14d making what I thought was clever definition of Unworkable. Similarly enjoyed the definition of Red Tape in 18d. Thanks Pierre, Everyman & fellow contributors. Interesting read.
Agree with Pierre that many clues were unsatisfactory. Could not (and never could) parse 8 down. Needed a web search to be sure about “tawny eagle” — never heard of the bird. And need a wild card disctionary to get “alice bands” — never heard of them either.
Overall a rather frustrating puzzle; some bits very easy,
others impossibly hard.
I am very much of the opinion that “visionary” is *NOT* a synonym of “unworkable”.
But I saw nothing wrong with “crew” for the (archaic) past tense of “crow”.
Perhaps Everyman intends that the question mark should denote cynicism?
That would explain unworkable?
Thanks for leaving comments open.
Liked agog – it goes both ways.
Alice Bands was too tough, but enjoyed it all.
Hi
We are behind so got this puzzle in MZ this weekend.
We arrived at 8 down slightly differently we thought RAKI ( you could say a type of wine) with cocktail being the indicator to re-arrange avoids the clumsy “a” ….