Everyman 3,873

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The Everyman used to be excellent. Then its setter retired and it went through a short period of being rather unsatisfactory. Now it seems to be returning to its previous standard — harder, but good so far as I can see. One or two blemishes, as mentioned below, but nothing too bad in my opinion.

Definitions in maroon, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.

 

ACROSS
1 MURDER MYSTERY Crows behind the writer’s disturbed rest, taking year to produce book (6,7)
murder my *(rest) y — a murder of crows, my is the writer’s
8 GLEN A Campbell … and where he might live (4)
I agonised over this for a while and thought it might be ALAN (I see there is a Labour MP called Alan Campbell), but the rest of it didn’t work, as it didn’t with CLAN (the Campbell clan) but after an alphabet trawl, which mercifully stopped quite early, I think this refers to the singer Glen Campbell, and there are glens in Scotland, where a Campbell (archetypal Scots name) might live. The chap whose first name I couldn’t bring to mind but which I now know is Alastair Campbell also crossed my mind and seemed possibly relevant, but it isn’t so far as I can see
9 TAILOR-MADE Evenly fold material … becoming this? (6-4)
({f}o{l}d material)*
10 JOSHUA Rib leading to human, oddly; ousted in Bible book (6)
josh {h}u{m}a{n} — you have to read it as ‘oddly ousted’; I can’t quite see what has been gained by the semicolon except to make the clue a bit more difficult to solve
11 SPLENDID Harshly disciplined, ignoring corrupt ICI? Excellent! (8)
*(d{i}s{ci}plined) — why ‘corrupt ICI’? Surely such a thing is only necessary when the letters that are to be ignored are in the wrong order, and here they’re in the right order?
12 PALMISTRY Friend, not at home among clerical profession, finding form of divination (9)
pal m{in}istry
14 SHAH Head of state (& historically, Arabic honcho)? (4)
s{tate} h{istorically} A{rabic} h{oncho}, &lit. — nice idea that almost works but doesn’t quite, I think: we are asked to disregard the ‘&’, but it’s still there and whether it’s ‘and’ or ‘ampersand’ then how can we ignore it?; and surely it should be ‘heads’ for the wordplay to be right — if ‘Head’ just refers to ‘state’ then we’d need h, a, h to be abbreviations for historically, Arabic and honcho, which so far as I know they’re not
15 OURS For you and me, time’s called (4)
“hours”
16 BARCELONA Lost, alone, after pub crawl’s initiation in the City (9)
bar c{rawl} (alone)*
20 PLATFORM Another way to see romp around sordid flat? Windows, perhaps (8)
*(romp) round *(flat) — Windows the computer platform
21 IODINE I regularly told fiancée to obtain antiseptic (6)
I {t}o{l}d {f}i{a}n{c}é{e}
23 HANDMAIDEN Clothes shop helper not, on the face of it, a kind of servant (10)
H and M, then aide n{ot} — the clothes shop H&M
24 MIKE Speaker’s helper to be found before November (4)
A microphone, and Mike (M) comes before November (N) in the NATO Alphabet
25 MARSH MARIGOLD ‘Milord? Graham’s performing something in the bog‘ (5,8)
(Milord Graham’s)* — I can’t see what the single quotes around the clue mean
DOWN
1 MOLDOVA Starter of mayonnaise and stale eggs in European country (7)
m{ayonnaise} old ova
2 RANCH There’s a place for cattle in Lutheran Church (5)
Hidden in LutheRAN CHurch
3 ENTRAPS Catches half-decent hip-hop performances (7)
{dec}ent raps — I really don’t know much about this, but I shouldn’t have thought a rap was quite the same thing as a hip-hop performance. However, Wikipedia says ‘The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip hop culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks’, so that’s good enough I think, although a question mark at the end would maybe have been sounder
4 MAINSTREAM MEDIA Maid Marian meets unfortunate town crier’s descendents (10,5)
(Maid Marian meets)* — but it’s ‘descendants’
5 SPOILT Pistol fired, expecting your attention (6)
(Pistol)* — a spoilt child wants attention; ‘spoilt’ is probably a word not very often used nowadays in this sense
6 EMMENTHAL Most of lamb the men cooked with cheese (9)
(lam{b} the men)* — the setter probably won’t know me because this is my first blog of the Everyman: a pet hate of mine is ‘with’ as a link word; I have a belief (which may be quite unfounded, as it’s only an impression of what the ‘best’ setters seem to do) that it’s to be avoided — what does it mean? (I don’t think the definition is ‘with cheese’)
7 YIDDISH Work in the home, coming up with meal: some tongue (7)
(DIY)rev. dish — tongue in the sense language
13 MARY TUDOR When embracing a king, Everyman’s reportedly gnawed on a royal personage (4,5)
m(a R)y “chewed a” — ‘Everyman’s’ is ‘my’
15 OIL PALM Drunken Milo embraces mate (it’s a tree) (3,4)
pal in *(Milo)
17 CHIANTI Red couch I ‘antiqued’ to some extent (7)
Hidden in couCH I ‘ANTIqued’ — Italian red wine
18 NON-SKID Kind of sole you shouldn’t find on a slipper? (3-4)
CD — if it’s non-skid you won’t slip on it
19 POTASH Half of spuds hidden by second-hand agricultural compound (6)
pota{toes} SH
22 DUMBO Old boy with gossip about ‘remarkable elephant‘ (5)
(OB mud)rev.

 

38 comments on “Everyman 3,873”

  1. Favourites: MOLDOVA, MIKE, TAILOR-MADE.
    Did not parse HANDMAIDEN.
    Failed GLEN – I had entered CLAN.
    Thank you, Everyman and John.

  3. Thought this was a good puzzle and went through it quite quickly, but did not get MIKE which now looks so obvious – I even thought that the November referred to the NATO alphabet but still did’t get it. Also didn’t get NON-SLIP which I still don’t really get. Couldn’t parse HANDMAIDEN or MURDER MYSTERY. First time I’ve seen the collective for crows.

    I also thought 8a might be CLAN but then GLEN sprang into my mind. And I wondered about raps being hip-hop.

    Liked MOLDOVA, YIDDISH, PALMISTRY, POTASH

    Thanks to Everyman and John

  4. Thanks John for your analysis and for introducing yourself at 8d.

    I enjoyed the three related double word answers all beginning M- M-

    Got MARY TUDOR early on, then PALMISTRY was an easy guess though I couldn’t parse it and didn’t write it in till I had all the crossers. Once I saw it on the page the parsing M(IN)ISTRY was immediately obvious.

    About 8D SHAH, I think Everyman has used the & instead of ‘and’ device in a ‘primarily’ clue quite recently.

    Thanks to E & J.

  6. Enjoyed the crows in MURDER MYSTERY and the ‘chewed a’ in MARY TUDOR.

    [Presumably SHAH is where Essexboy washes himself in his tine hice]

    Thanks Everyman and John

  7. Everyman’s now usual pairs (this time not rhyming) – the two MMs top and bottom.

    Some good clues (I particularly liked PALMISTRY) but somewhat SPOILT by inaccuracies. As noted above, the clue for SHAH is clumsy; it should be ‘Heads’ and the ampersand is not used in that way [and see John @2]. I don’t understand the ‘behind’ in 1A – the crows are in front of the writer’s … I agree with John above about ‘with’ in 6D. The ‘on a’ in 13D was somewhat misleading. I can’t find S/H meaning second-hand in most dictionaries – in Chambers it is an abbreviation for shorthand.

    As I’ve said before, it must be difficult to produce a high-quality crossword each week, and notwithstanding the quibbles above it was still entertaining.

    Thanks Everyman and John.

  8. In 6d, I suppose you could argue that the anagrind is actually “cooked with” so that “with” is not merely a link word. That for me would be no worse an angrind than “harshly” or “fired”

    I don’t see the necessity of using & instead of “and” in a word list. “Heads of state (and historically, Arabic honcho)” seems to me a perfectly legitimate wordplay for SHAH, with “and” simply indicating a continuation of the list – though of course “heads” needs to be plural as noted by John, and then the &lit doesn’t work as the answer would also have to be plural.

    Favourites include MOLDOVA, MARSH MARIGOLD and MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

    Thanks John and Everyman

  9. I agree with the view that this was a bit of a curate’s egg. Despite what i assume is a typo. MAINSTREAM MEDIA was a lovely anagram with a nice surface and, like Fiona Anne, I gave ticks for PALMISTRY, YIDDISH and POTASH and, yes, MOLDOVA was a lol. My only explanation for ‘corrupt’ in SPLENDID was to assume the two I’s in ICI were swapped!

    Penfold 26: Imam azed to see references to Iran in two successive puzzles. It doesn’t seem to be just a week since our Persian punfest. Personally, I suspect you and I reached either our zenith (or our apogee) on last week’s blog!

    Robi @7: I recall S/H for second hand from the days of small ads (remember those???) in our local free newspaper back in the 70’s.

    Thanks Everyman and nice to see John making an appearance here.

  10. [PostMark @9 I think we’d better pull the rug from under it. We don’t want to create a gulf between ourselves (including Petert) and the rest.]

  11. Penfold @10: Gulf with a capital G, I presume? O Man, your attempts are becoming more dubaious by the day and I’m racking my bahrain to come up with something equally cringeworthy. And, if that doesn’t deserve a good carpeting, I don’t know what does. A good shout out to Petert, btw, whose time spent perusing a map of Iran was clearly well spent! ]

  12. The four pillars of hip hop are normally DJing – i.e. playing records, MCing – i.e. rapping, Writing – i.e. graffiti and B-boying, i.e. break dancing.

  13. Fiona Anne @3
    Do you mean 18 down NON-SKID? (not NON-SLIP). It makes sense to me if I think of slipper as ‘a person who slips’ rather than slipper = footwear.

    Robi @ 7
    I was thinking it was S = second + H = hand (as in LH, RH = left hand, right hand) rather than second-hand as in used / not new.

  14. Thanks John. I agree – the current Everyman setter has settled into a fairly consistent style. A bit rough around the edges and not to everyone’s taste, but I enjoy it.

  15. michelle @13; nice idea, but I don’t think that H is used by itself to mean hand. I think PM @9 is probably correct, although that doesn’t seem to have lived on in dictionaries.

  16. I agree that Everyman has struggled a bit of late, though I would never have described it as excellent. This was one of the better ones
    That said, although I’m not a allergic to homophones as some people here, my note against MARY CHEWEDOR was “OUCH!”
    Mildly amused, in a Pauline sort of way, by 25ac.

  17. Robi @ 7

    If you read 1A as “Crows [MURDER]” “behind the writer[MY]’(i)s” “disturbed rest [STER]” + Y[ear] the clue stands up.

  18. “Tudor” and “chewed a” are not even close to homophones for me, but I’m in favor of giving setters fairly wide latitude in homophones — if it works in any reasonably common way of speaking, it’s OK with me.

    I’m OK with the ampersand in the clue for SHAH, but John is quite right that “head” is wrong in the clue. I didn’t notice the problem that John E @2 points out, but he’s quite right, and it’s a serious problem: Shahs are Iranian / Persian, and are definitely not Arabic.

    I have the same question as Robi @7 regarding 1a: “behind” seems wrong to me, and I don’t understand Simon S @17’s statement to the contrary. MURDER is surely the front, not the back, of MURDER MYSTERY, so the crows aren’t behind anything.

    Despite focusing on these concerns, I agree with John’s overall assessment that Everyman is doing quite well, and I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle.

  19. Penfold and Postmark Thanks for the shout out. My geographical knowledge of Iran comes from four years’ teaching there, rather than perusing maps. It was always nice to put “Reason for Leaving: Made redundant by revolution.” on my CV.
    Thanks to all those who forbore to post a Glen Campbell clip.

  20. Petert: given the vast range of experiences accumulated by those who regularly post here and on the other pages we inhabit, I rather expected you’d share that you’d lived there! I thought, however, that as an eminently sensible chap, you’d have consulted a map at some point in your time there (no satnavs or Google Earth in the 70’s!) so I felt the comment would still be broadly accurate! You were lucky to be made redundant; firing could have meant something very different at the time.

  21. Postmark: yes indeed. I can remember the crowd trying to break into the British Council, where I taught the last ever lesson, before they went on to set light to the British Embassy. Recent events bring it all back.

  23. Ted @ 18

    Perhaps I should have expressed it

    If you read 1A as “Crows [MURDER]”, then “behind the writer[MY]’(i)s” “disturbed rest [STER]” + Y[ear] the clue stands up.

    Split the wordplay into two sections, not a flow

  24. Thanks for the explanations John. I suspect the single quotes in 25a are because that is something someone might have said, rather than written.
    It seems Everyman has become consistent and that is always like pulling on a favourite pair of slippers – you know what you are getting, even if they are a little moth eaten round the edges. We know what we are getting these days with the doubles, the initial and the rotten homophones (TUDOR – CHEWED ‘ER: Really!) Oh and the odd rough clue as well. What has been noticeable over the last couple of months is that the difficulty level has increased. It is no longer a 20 minute after lunch coffee accompaniment but has become a one snooze as well.
    I did look sideways at equating Arabs and Persians but the latter would not have fitted that clue. But, still enjoyable, so thanks Everyman.

  25. I agree with John’s assessment – but on the whole I rather enjoyed this.
    GLEN at 8A reminded me of Billy Connolly’s lovely one-liner, when doing a tour of America: “where I come from, Glen Campbell’s a place!”
    Thanks to Everyman and John

  26. New to posting, but have been “lurking” for a while. Thanks to Everyman for what I thought was a medium difficulty puzzle and to John for his decryptions. Given what seems to be an underlying theme here for strict accuracy in clue setting, I would pedantically quibble with the use of “NATO” as the descriptor for the international call sign alphabet. Strictly, it should be ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which assigned the code words that were then adopted by other organisations.

    PS, as an aside, if anyone was at U Nottingham in the early sixties, I, and a colleague, were the cryptic crossword setters for the student newspaper. We went under a name that was an anagram of Ximenes, who was a challenging crossword setter of that period. Given it was the “swinging sixties”, readers should have no problem in solving the anagram….

  27. Robi@7, actually, this time it’s a threesome of MMs, with the long down clue in the middle at 4d. I think he has done this before.

  28. (First visit to Everyman)
    Thanks John.
    In 13d, ‘a’ shouldn’t be underlined as it’s part of the clue, not the definition.
    (A very small quibble – I’m sure you underlined it to check we’re paying attention :))

  29. Thanks Katherine — yes you’re quite right and I’ve amended the blog, bit late now because it probably won’t be seen, but you were absolutely right to point out the error. At least it will now go down to posterity as correct.

  33. I don’t understand the issues people are having with the SHAH clue. To me, head singular is correct. It’s the head of State, AND also the head of Historically, Arabic and Honcho. And the answer is just a Head of State – NOT an Arabic Head of State?

  34. Finished once I got rid of Maltese in 1D. I had Clan for 8A too.

    Don’t like ‘behind’ in 1A despite various attempts to justify it

    Mike was nice

  35. I was surprised not many commented on 23ac Handmaiden I thought that clue was a shocker and no pointer to divide it up to two parts with H&M heading each part up -no idea how that was supposed to work
    Similarly I don’t get 10 ac at all either
    Liked 7d 18d 1d and liked shah
    Also

  37. I agree with John’s criticisms, but despite that found the puzzle to be enormously satistying. Had to work very hard on a lot of the clues, but when I got them it was always a eureka moment. Everything clicked.
    Could not parse 23 across (“handmaiden”) — thanks to John for the explanation. And thanks to Everyman for the puzzle.

  38. Vanessa I thought Handmaiden was an excellent clue. What’s not to like?

    Clothes shop = H and M
    Helper = Aide
    Not on the face of it = N is perhaps iffy but then the definition was pretty clear.

    Did I parse it at the time? No, but now explained I think it was rather clever.

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