Everyman 3,877

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Quite a challenge in places, with some nice clues. I found fault with a bit, as explained in the blog, but these were small criticisms and overall it was enjoyable.

All indicators (anagram, hidden, homophone, deletion, reversal etc) in italics. Definitions inderlined.

 

ACROSS
1 COCOON
Protect two companies? Almost; one (6)
co. co. on{e}
4 CAST IRON
M. le Président, missing mother, drinks fizz to become resolute (4-4)
{Ma}c(asti)ron
9 LOUVRE
Museum for the blind? (6)
2 defs
10 SHERIDAN
Playwright, Shaw, not half confusing reading, mostly (8)
Sh{aw} *(readin{g})
12 SANGUINE
In a little Nissan, Guinevere is cheerful (8)
Hidden in NisSAN GUINEvere — but if the words are very odd then that rather gives away the fact that it’s a hidden (or an anagram); it doesn’t conceal things very effectively, which a good hidden does
13 JETSET
Spout about aliens: ‘They’re often seen in the sky‘ (3,3)
j(ETs)et, with a rather fanciful definition
15 GO YOUR OWN WAY
Young and wary, woo nervously in song (2,4,3,3)
(Young wary woo)* — a 1977 Fleetwood Mac song
18 CLERK OF WORKS
Superintendent Kerr: ‘Folks, cow has run amok‘ (5,2,5)
(Kerr folks cow)* — same remark as for 12ac: it’s signposted
21 LIVERY
Everyman’s wearing, on and off, clergy’s distinctive garb (6)
(I’ve) in {c}l{e}r{g}y — before I started to solve and blog the Everyman someone mentioned how often there is ‘me’ or ‘I’ or ‘I’ve’ etc clued by ‘Everyman’; they were right
22 TYNESIDE
Some forks I’d picked up in the northeast (8)
“tines I’d” — I’m not quite sure what the definition is meant to be; ‘in the northeast’ is to my mind an inadequate definition of ‘Tyneside (‘an area in the northeast’), and ‘the northeast’ suggests that Tyneside is the whole of the northeast, which it isn’t
24 VALLETTA
Butler’s conveying luggage at first: I’m grateful, that’s capital (8)
val(l{uggage})et ta — the capital of Malta
25 BEDEWS
Moistens black turnip after flipping (6)
b (swede)rev.
26 RESIDENT
With Pence gone, White House inhabitant’s now a kind of doctor (8)
{P}resident — crossword setters continue to extract the last drops from Trump and Pence
27 EDISON
Exceedingly determined inventor; salesman of note, primarily? (6)
First letters, the whole clue being a possible definition of Thomas Edison
DOWN
1 CALL SIGN
It’s heard on radio: ‘In California, 50 N American soldiers rising‘ (4,4)
Cal L (N GIs)rev.
2 CHUTNEYS
Relishes chance to slyly hit you up, nervous, excited, initially aroused (8)
(c{hance} t{o} s{lyly} h{it} y{ou} u{p} n{ervous} e{xcited})* — this took a while to work out; there seemed to be lots of possible anagram indicators, beginnings and also ends of words were often possible, and it didn’t read very smoothly
3 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
Victorian novel in which Spooner solicits orange healer? (3,6,6)
As Spooner would say, “our fruit you’ll mend”
5 ACHE
Desire fish in East End (4)
“hake”
6 THREE-DAY WEEKEND
Rudely, they wakened deer needing longer rest (5-3,7)
*(they wakened deer) — ‘needing’ a link word whose use here I’m not sure of: OK ‘longer rest’ needs ‘Rudely, … deer’, but the other way round?
7 RADISH
Spoke up, at first ignored, wanting hot veg (6)
radi{u}s h — spoke = radius, and it isn’t at first ignored, giving ‘adius’; it’s ‘up, at first’ which is ignored. giving ‘u’, which is dropped from ‘radius’
8 NINETY
Degree of precision: ‘Number … not 100 … bit less than 100‘ (6)
nicety with its c replaced by n (100 replaced by number) — I once set a clue for NICETY for an Azed clue-setting competition that used the same idea, thinking it was the best clue in the history of crosswords. Azed was underwhelmed and gave it an HC.
11 ANDORRA
Fuss about nothing, principally, arriving from South in principality (7)
a(n{othing})do (arr.)rev.
14 ANTONYM
Opposite motorway, under a Gormley (7)
Antony M — ref Antony Gormley the sculptor — ‘opposite’ a noun
16 TRAINERS
Personal ones may wear these! (8)
A personal trainer may be wearing trainers on the feet
17 USHERS IN
Announces only a little blusher’s intended to be seen (6,2)
Hidden in blUSHER’S INtended — a good hidden, because the words are natural and don’t signpost anything; I had to do an alphabet trawl here
19 OLIVER
Musical old organ (6)
o liver — the 1960 musical Oliver!, with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart
20 UVULAS
Tuvalu’s topless resort with fleshy bodies (6)
({T}uvalu’s)* — the uvula is that little flap above the throat, so is a fleshy body — ‘with’ another link-word whose place here I question
23 ETON
School kept going with odd absences (4)
{k}e{p}t {g}o{i}n{g}

44 comments on “Everyman 3,877”

  1. NE corner held me up a bit.
    Favourites: OLIVER, COCOON, JET SET, NINETY, CAST-IRON, ANTONYM (loi) – I am a fan of this artist.

    I was unable to parse : RADISH.

    Thanks, Everyman and John.

  2. thanks for the writeup – parse of RADISH eluded me!

    the clue for TRAINERS didn’t quite work for me, seeing as “personal trainers” and “trainers” both come quite directly from the same sense of the verb “train”. but enjoyable overall; i thought OLIVER was neat

  4. My LOI was the cleverly hidden USHERS IN. It was (still is!) earworm time with GO YOUR OWN WAY. I could only parse CHUTNEYS way after entering it, and needed this blog to fully parse RADISH (actually, I was on the wrong track – ‘said’ backwards without ‘a’, plus the H – but couldn’t figure the ‘ra’). The Spoonerism is a shocker, even by Spooner standards. LOUVRE and NINETY are nice, as are the longer anagrams. And the Angel of the North is, indeed, opposite the motorway. Thanks Everyman and John.

  5. John: re 22a, Tyneside is often given as a clue for NE, so I think the other way round is perfectly OK.

    I thought this was one of Everyman’s better ones. 15a GO YOUR OWN WAY was an excellent anagram, the Spoonerism at 3d was a hoot, the misdirection in 7d RADISH was brilliant, and 8d NINETY was beautifully constructed.

    I may have said this before, but I think the remit for Everyman (suitable for beginners, but pleasing to others, too) justifies the regular appearance of the “primarily” clue, which gives everyone an automatic write-in to get started. This one was up to his usual elegant standard.

    Thanks, Everyman, for the fun and John for the comprehensive blog.

  6. Spoke for radius turns up occasionally so no prob there. Otoh dnk Gormley the sculptor, tho he has won his share of gongs and I’ve seen pics of his blokes with the big wing things; anyway it was clear from crossers that he was an Antony. Nice gentle solve as I remember, no real beefs, (tho a turnip is not a swede), thanks Everyman and John.

  7. Frances Keeley@3 , yes, ‘butler’ and ‘valet’ were quite distinct professions although in smaller households there may have been overlap. I’m not an expert on Wooster but I think I may be right that Jeeves would not have been too keen on being labelled ‘Valet’ either, and would have preferred the term ‘Gentleman’s Gentleman’.

  8. FK@3 and jackkt @7, I think “Gentleman’s Gentleman” probably applies to the manservant who attends to a bachelor gentleman, and that role combines the functions of butler (looking after the household) and valet (looking after his employer’s personal needs). Jeeves certainly performed both roles, as did Mervyn Bunter for Lord Peter Wimsey. After Wimsey married, Bunter continued in both roles, but as he was looking after Lady Harriet’s household, he would have considered himself to be the butler, rather than the G’s G.

  9. Enjoyed this and finally got my LOI a few days ago – ACHE though could’t parse it. Also couldn’t parse RADISH or NINETY

    Favourites include COCOON, SHERIDAN, USHERS IN, CALL SIGN, LIVERY

    Thanks to Everyman and John

  10. Tt @4 & cello @5 have pretty much summed up my thoughts about this one. They seem to disagree on the Spoonerism about which I am in two minds anyway! On the one hand, Spoonerisms have always been some of the lightest fodder within crosswords and, as a lover of dodgy puns, I shouldn’t really complain, however outrageous they might be. On the other, I do prefer it when they at least refer to a phrase that’ll make sense.

    I was delighted to parse RADISH correctly, though only after solving. It didn’t help me get there. CAST IRON, USHERS IN and ANTONYM were my favourites. I’d agree with John’s mild criticisms of SANGUINE and CLERK OF WORKS. CHUTNEYS was clever and, for a short while, I wondered if it was the ‘primarily’ clue in disguise.

    Thanks Everyman and John

  11. Like others, I found the NE corner the most challenging; couldn’t parse RADISH or NINETY (I thought the precision came from 90 degrees being a right angle).
    Didn’t have a problem with the root veg though. What the English call a swede is a neep (turnip) in Scotland.
    Couldn’t see the Spoonerism but liked the long anagrams anyway.

  13. GrahamP @12: it’s a homophone (picked up) of ‘some forks’ = tines = TYNES and (still affected by the homophone indicator) ‘I’d’ = IDE

  15. Maybe just me, but I’m no longer enjoying these as I used to. For the second week running I’ve been unable to finish. Both NE and SW corners eluded me – too many dubious clues. I’ve been doing the Everyman for over 40 years and this has hardly ever happened before. I admit I struggled to get used to this new setter but thought things were settling down.

  17. There is something very comforting about the Sunday Everyman, with the trademark clues and rhyming pairs. Like the Sunday dinner it may not be groundbreaking cuisine but it does the job. Left me feeling quite SANGUINE [when I was winning thanks Penfold]

  18. At the start of Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, Jeeves returns from Brinkley Court after Bertie has lent him to Aunt Dahlia as a temporary butler. As Bertie says, “Jeeves, of course, is a gentleman’s gentleman, not a butler, but if the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them.”

  19. Its not just you AJB58@15. I too have done Everyman for decades and am increasingly having to “cheat” or await this blog for parsing (thanks to the anon. parser). That said there were some nice clues though I find the Spoonerism somewhat strained – I cant imagine a circumstance where anyone would need to say “our fruit you’ll mend”. Spoonersims (IMO) are well known phrases or sayings scrambled.

  20. cosmic @19: I can’t imagine a circumstance where someone would need to say that the Lord is a shoving leopard, but that’s perhaps the most famous Spoonerism of all. I thought “Our fruit you’ll mend” was very funny and exactly the sort of daft thing the Reverend would have said.

    ANTONYM was also great with the clever reference to the Angel of the North, as TassieTim says @4.

    Many thanks Everyman and John.

  21. I found this difficult to get started, but then it fell into place.

    I particularly liked RADISH (although I would have preferred ‘needing’ to ‘wanting’, which can have the opposite meaning to that intended) and USHERS IN. I quite like good Spoonerisms but I thought this one was rather poor.

    Thanks Everyman and John.

  22. Like PostMark @10, I liked CHUTNEYS made from getting the initial letters in a pickle, but I also enjoyed OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. I don’t think that Spoonerisms need to be well known phrases or even phrases that make sense. “Kinkering Kongs their titles take” may well be the only actual Spoonerism that Dr Spooner ever made.

  23. LordJim@20 Youre right. Like Spooner I scrambled the clue thinking the answer to be the spoonerism of the clue rather than the reverse. K R Mulpa

  24. KR @23 🙂 .

    Penfold @22: very interesting link, thanks. The Wikipedia article on Spooner says that The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists only one substantiated spoonerism: “The weight of rages will press hard upon the employer.” But the most well-known examples from his lifetime, (kinkering kongs, shoving leopard, town drain and so on), whether or not he genuinely said them, show the sort of thing that his contemporaries meant by a Spoonerism.

    (Of course we can all do this sort of thing occasionally. I have a history audio-book written and narrated by David Starkey in which he solemnly informs us that, during the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, the “land was wade laced”.)

  25. Surely, in 21A, “on and off clergy’” gives CEG, not LRY, which would require “off and on”. I also agree with John’s criticism of “in the northeast” as a definition of TYNESIDE in 22A. What’s more, “picked up” to indicate “sounds like” or equivalent strikes me as pretty dodgy. I was also unhappy at first with butler and valet being treated as equivalent, but Cellomaniac offers a pretty good defence.

  26. I’m not very good at crosswords and Everyman on Sunday used to be one of the highlights of the week. Just recently the hardometer has been turned up a notch or two. Good for the experts, but no good for me.
    Hopefully today’s is more accessible.

  27. I found this week’s offering much easier than last week’s. I can’t see anything wrong with ‘picked up’ as it just means the way it’s heard. Similar to ‘on the radio’ , broadcast and many others. The Spoonerism was indeed dodgy but funny nevertheless. I’m sure it’s an old chestnut but I did like LOUVRE, ACHE (‘ake used to be in all the fish and chip shops back in the day), ANTONYM and OLIVER (once again it’s almost certainly been used thousands of times).
    Many thanks to John and E.

  29. Like others, I have been an Everyman solver for decades – the second puzzle I ever completed was one, in the 1970s. Over the years though, I had come to take them for granted as a routine solve.

    I believe the current setter, while maintaining the level of difficulty at ‘fair to Telegraph’, has increased the enjoyment enormously. There is a distinct style with the rhyming pairs, the self references (no one seems to mind when Boatman does it), and the “primarily” clues.

    This puzzle was no exception. The Spooner in particular was a joy: Darles Chickens (author of the Pickwick Papers — oh wait, that doesn’t Spoonerise) would have been proud.

    Sorry but I thought the blog was a bit curmudgeonly about a fun and diverse puzzle.

  30. Apologies John, rereading your positive blog summary, your efforts do not deserve to be described as curmudgeonly as in my earlier comment. Thanks as always.

  32. HoofItYouDonkey@26 DNF with 8 left to do…but slightly reassured that I would NEVER have got there, as totally beyond me! Onwards and upwards to next week : )

  33. Keep at it Cara. Thanks for the entertainment Everyman – I felt this was slightly more accessible than last weeks. That is despite a long Spooner – I do not like them but that is not a criticism. Like others, I have grown more comfortable with the setting, although odd bits still raise an eyebrow.
    Thanks for all the unpacking John.

  35. 22a TYNESIDE isn’t a homonym for “tines I’d,” because the first S isn’t voiced and the second one is.

    26a hasn’t received enough credit. One new RESIDENT of the White House is Jill Biden, who has a PhD in English — “a kind of doctor.”

    It was a nice puzzle, and thank you John for parsing RADISH.

  36. Apropos the Spoonerism (late, I know): qiute apart from a general dislike of this sort of clue, I found this one strained. How do people pronounce ‘mutual’ to get it to sound anything like ‘fruit you’ll’? Surely it would need ignoring the ‘a’ in the former altogether?

  37. I think Rufus in his 13x syndicated , anonymous puzzle had the clue
    Spoke, spoke, spoke (5)
    for RADII.
    Anyone remember?

  39. It seems that the world consists of two types of people: those who feel that a Spoonerism clue should be precise and be understood by people who speak in any sort of regional accent; and those who don’t care and so long as it works in some accent then it’s fine and the important thing is that it’s fun. I’m in the second camp. 3dn was imaginative and highly amusing in my opinion.

    So far as I’m concerned, the more cringeworthy the Spoonerism the better.

  41. Did not think much of the spoonerism! Otherwise good fun.
    Never mind the time zone but we are weeks behind the rest of you.

  42. Good challenge but Tyneside wasn’t a good clue, especially for those of us who are down under.
    A shame as we had to then manufacture a few answers with the inevitable failure. Normally we can work round the edges but Antony Gormley is not a household name in these parts.
    But still fun.

  44. I needed a bit of help with this one & still had some question marks on the parsing. No complaints now it’s all been explained. I’m happy that this setter (in contrast to the formulaic precision of his/her predecessor) is prepared to sacrifice a few niceties to create a varied and humorous challenge. Thanks John & Everyman.

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