Everyman 3,883

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The Observer crossword from Mar 14, 2021
Another pleasant Everyman puzzle written in his by now well-known distinctive style.

We have once more a rhyming couple (11ac, 20ac) but also a couple of W/Ws (8dn, 13dn) – highlighted below.
Perhaps, it was just me (surely not my solving partner) but I was this time a bit put off by the length of many of the clues.
Not that I am really against it – in that sense, my credo is:  each word should be there for a reason.
In the past few weeks Everyman wrote quite a few clues containing “….” or “( )”.
Today there was also an overdose of all kinds of (other) punctuation that gave me a feeling that there were a lot of multi-part clues.
As if Everyman would rather like to tell me a story to get to the answer instead of just giving me a clue.
I was probably sort of spoilt by the The Sunday Times cryptic that day in which Dean Mayer (aka Anax) was at the opposite end of the spectrum, as concise as one could be.
But don’t get me wrong, this was, all in all, an enjoyable crossword for which thanks to our Everyman.

 

ACROSS
1 ALLEGORIES
Zodiac sign contains 50 building blocks: they’re to be read symbolically (10)
ARIES (Zodiac sign) around {L (50) + LEGO (building blocks)}
6 STEW
Lying back, soaks in hot and steamy state (4)
Reversal, indicated by lying back, of: WETS (soaks)
9 MOTIVATION
Drive time breaking Everyman in France; holiday about to be cancelled (10)
T (time) inside [breaking] MOI (Everyman in France, ‘me’), after which ca (about) should be removed from VAcaTION (holiday)
10 AXES
No intro for jazz instruments (electric guitars) (4)
SAXES (jazz instruments) minus the S at the beginning
11 JUNIPER BERRY
Cartoon rodent drinking up brine mixed with a component of gin (7,5)
JERRY (cartoon rodent, of Tom & Jerry fame) going around an anagram, indicated by mixed, of UP BRINE
For some reason, ‘juniper berry’ is not a separate entry in any of the UK dictionaries. Just ‘juniper’ is, of course.
15 OKINAWA
Bangkok: in a way, largely Asian city (7)
Hidden solution, indicated by largely: BangkOK IN A WAy
16 ST LUCIA
Country‘s spies turned, lust comes first (2,5)
CIA (spies) preceded by an anagram, indicated by turned, of LUST
A bit unusual to see a comma between the anagram indicator and its fodder, in this particular order.
17 DUELLER
On the phone, one who sells rings; for engagement, he needs a second (7)
Homophone, indicated by on the phone, of: JEWELLER (one who sells rings)
Indeed, it takes two to tango. 
19 BESEECH
Pray to tree, having taken hallucinogens (7)
BEECH (tree) going around ES (hallucinogens, Es, plural of E (ecstasy))
20 WINTER CHERRY
Italian football team stuck in lavatory with German man. Unknown? This is perennial! (6,6)
INTER (Italian football team) inside WC (lavatory), followed by HERR (German man) + Y (unknown)
It seems like ‘Inter’ is becoming the new ‘Ur’ or ‘Emma’.
Winter cherry is also known as ‘Chinese lantern plant’.
And for those who like exotic names: Physalis Alkekengi.
23 ROOT
In Oz, to get intimate with cricket captain (4)
Double definition
I knew that Australian slang word, and I also knew the cricketer (even if I have nothing whatsoever with cricket – but I do read newspapers!).
Joe Root (b. 1990), current captain of England in Test matches.
24 TIN WEDDING
Did gin and went berserk for tenth anniversary (3,7)
Anagram, indicated by berserk, of: DID GIN + WENT
New to me as I was only familiar with silver, golden, ruby and diamond weddings.
25 HIDE
Conceal whip (4)
Double definition
26 REPRESENTS
Stands for peers, stern, jumped-up (10)
Anagram, indicated by jumper-up, of: PEERS STERN
DOWN
1 ARMS
Cockney causes injury with weapons (4)
As a Cockney would pronounce HARMS (causes injury)
2 LET’S
I’d like to take part in ballet sometime (4)
Hidden solution, indicated by take part in: balLET Sometime
Not sure whether the definition here fully covers LET’S (as that suggests something mutual, in my opinion) but it’s close enough, I assume.
3 GIVE US A CLUE
Suspect vague cliques with forgotten question: help me out here! (4,2,1,4)
Anagram, indicated by suspect, of: VAGUE CLIQUES minus the Q (question)
4 RETSINA
Some regrets in absorbing strong booze (7)
Hidden solution, indicated by some: regRETS IN Absorbing
Retsina is a Greek resin-flavoured white wine that you either like or not.
Wouldn’t call it a strong booze, though.
Its alcohol content is, like for many other wines, just 12-12.5%.
5 ELOPERS
Australia missing ‘reformed’ parolees (they’ve run away) (7)
Anagram, indicated by reformed, of: PAROLEES minus A (Australia)
7 TAX BRACKET
HMRC device seeing dodge after unknown amount slipped into bill (3,7)
RACKET (dodge) coming after {X (unknown) inside TAB (bill)}
For those avoiding HMRC, a tax bracket is a range of incomes taxed at a given rate.
8 WISHY-WASHY
Feeble hope, year after year: getting clean (5-5)
WISH (hope), then Y (year) coming after {Y (year) + WASH (clean)}
This clue felt a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, I had to sort out which year is which?
12 BALUSTRADES
50% of global occupations involving American household fittings (11)
[glo]BAL + TRADES (occupations), together going around US (American)
13 WORDSWORTH
Wistful odist, romanticizing daffodils, seen wandering o’er rises toward host, primarily! (10)
The weekly Primarily device: all the starting letters of Wistful Odist Romanticizing etc.
I am too lazy to write it all out here but believe me, you’ll get indeed WORDSWORTH
I’ll leave it to those who love poetry to decide whether Everyman’s description is apt.
14 PIGEON-TOED
With inward feet, slob takes long time to execute dance at first (6-4)
PIG (slob) + EON (long time) + TO + ED (the first letters of both Execute and Dance)
18 RECEIVE
Search for intelligence … focus lacking, Everyman has to admit (7)
RECCE (search for intelligence) with its ‘focus’, the C in the middle, missing, followed by I’VE (Everyman has)
‘Recce’ is a chiefly military (slang) term for ‘reconnaissance’, which can mean “A survey of a geographical area before advancing, in order to ascertain its strategic features and available resources or the position and strength of an enemy” (SOED).
19 BOER WAR
Conflict when Duke rejected redesigned wardrobe (4,3)
Anagram, indicated by redesigned, of: WARDROBE minus D (Duke)
21 SIGN
Poster in which function’s announced (4)
Homophone, indicated by announced, of: SINE (function, in Mathematics)
22 AGES
Hi-tech Tokyo corporation on the rise for very long time (4)
Reversal, indicated (in a Down clue) by on the rise, of: SEGA (hi-tech Tokyo corporation)
Those interested in ‘hi-tech’ can find more about SEGA here.

45 comments on “Everyman 3,883”

  1. This was fun and quick to solve.

    Favourites: LET’S, MOTIVATION, RECEIVE, WINTER CHERRY, PIGEON-TOED (loi).
    New for me: SEGA Corporation for 22d.

    Thanks, Everyman and Sil.

  2. This week sees the reintroduction of both alliteration (WISHY-WASHY WORDSWORTH) and rhyming answers (JUNIPER BERRY WINTER CHERRY), after last week when we had neither. I found it a reasonably straightforward solve, though I did think RECEIVE a bit of a stretch – assuming that I have the answer and parsing right: RE[C]CE (= search for intelligence minus its middle) + I’VE (Everyman has) [Thanks, Sil, for confirming that]. I prefer it when my attempt at parsing results in “has to be that” rather than “I suppose that might work”. Thanks, Everyman and Sil.

  3. Did not get ROOT – never heard of either definition.

    Lovely puzzle – WINTER CHERRY first one in – remembered INTER from a previous quite recent puzzle.

    Like michelle @1 liked MOTIVATION, PIGEON-TOED. Other favourites were ALLEGORIES, DUELLER

    Did not know that OKINAWA was a city – thought it was just the Island.

    Thanks to Everyman and Sil.

  4. Didn’t know that root in that sense was an Oz original (yes in the US it’s used totally differently, as in root for your team, but then what is Little Richard saying in Tutti Frutti?).

  5. I looked up the Aussie definition of root that Everyman appears to have in mind, and it is listed as “offensive”.

  6. [gladys @5 – certainly not a word you would use in polite company. But then it isn’t as offensive as the F word, and either I am getting old or it is one of those Aussie terms that is gradually disappearing, as bonzer and cobber already have – a great pity for the latter two, though not for ‘root’.]

  7. Thanks for the blog, I am also glad to see the …… being used fewer times. On the subject of concise clues I remember Fidelio who was very concise and precise but extremely difficult.

  8. He has made the bush fruitful by His word.
    They have brought forth juniper berries!

    Nice to see Lionel Blair and Una Stubbs popping in for game of charades and for Widow Twankey’s other son to get a mention.

    gif @4 Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom!

    Thanks Everyman and Sil

  10. I found this relatively straightforward, despite the length of the clues. I agree that WISHY-WASHY took a bit of sorting. I think the reference in DUELLER is to the ‘second’ or supporter that a dueller has. It’s interesting to see some of the blogger’s thought processes elucidated. Thanks to Everyman and Sil.

  11. gif@4 -there must be a whole generation of Aussies who snickered at Little Richard getting away with singing a four-letter word. “Root” seems to have become quaint and will probably disappear due to irrelevance as TassieTim suggests. But in 1969, a play titled “Rooted” was banned in parts of Australia for that reason.

    As FionaAnne@3 suggests, I found it very strange to see OKINAWA clued as a city. It is one of the Japanese prefectures (provinces) and also the main island in the archipelago. The small city sharing the name is very much an afterthought. The capital is Naha. I am not sure if Everyman was trying to make the clue more difficult or just geographically challenged.

  12. There is an old an Australian joke: Q. Why is a boyfriend like a wombat? A. He eats roots and leaves. Used to title a book on the importance of punctuation.

  13. Like a few others, I thought 23a had to be root because of Joe Root – and that is the full extent of my cricketing knowledge, I hate it when cricket clues are present. I was unaware of the other meaning. What innocence! Again, many thanks to Sil for the explanations. I tend to get the answers but with several, no real idea why. As ever, loose-ish definitions, but I’m resigned to those now. Quite enjoyed 1a, would never have picked out the “q” in cliques (3D) as indicator of an anagram, even though I got the answer quite quickly.

  15. Thanks Everyman and Sil

    Re “I’d like to” / “Let’s”, I think it works if you see it as an answer to a question such as “Shall we go to the cinema?”. They then become interchangeable.

  17. Sara @13: it’s not the ‘q’ in 3d that indicates and anagram. It’s the word ‘Suspect’. The ‘q’ is the letter that needs to be removed from the fodder (‘forgotten’).

    Sil, you say you are only familiar with the three main wedding anniversaries. You might find this interesting. When I was a child we had a porcelain bowl that had all the anniversaries inscribed in the centre. I see from the Web it was Royal Staffordshire and here’s one for sale on Ebay. I always thought ‘wood’ to be a strange anniversary.

    Thanks for the analysis. Fairly typical Everyman although … more electric guitars??? Ticks for BOER WAR, GIVE US A CLUE, TAX BRACKET and PIGEON TOED.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil.

  18. A shame that GIVE US A CLUE was an anagram and not a charade.
    I too would like to see more of Lazio and maybe setters should bury Inter for a bit.

  21. The joke we knew was “Eats, roots, shoots and leaves”, but hey ho. Saw LR here (18 Jan ’74, WACA Sports Grounds, I looked it up… the CA bit is Cricket Association.. you have to love it..). So, to what did “rooty” refer. My interest is purely etymological 😉 .

  22. PS re the joke, Aussie chavs are prone to grossifying, eg “Up the creek witout a paddle” becomes “Up s..t creek in a barb-wire canoe without etc..” Hey ho, again.

  24. I’m surprised that no one has complained about the homophone dueller/jeweller in 17A. Even a poorly spoken yobbo in Australia would pronounce these two words differently.
    Thanks to E and S

  28. kevin @24: interesting point re dueller/jeweller.

    Phoneticians call it ‘yod coalescence’ – the process whereby tyoo and dyoo are converted into tshoo and dzhoo respectively – and it has a long history in English. No one today, for example, would pronounce nature as nay-tyoo-er.

    John Wells (occasionally of this parish) wrote an interesting piece on changes to RP over the course of the twentieth century. See especially paragraphs 9 and 16. What has changed in the late 20th/early 21st century is the rise of ‘Estuary English’ – a kind of middle ground between RP and Cockney. EE speakers, and increasingly RP ones as well, now extend yod coalescence to stressed syllables, hence Tuesday becomes Choosday and dueller becomes yobbo. 😉

  29. I take the word “strong” in 4dn to refer to the taste of retsina, rather than to its alcohol content, thus providing a tiny bit of misdirection.

    I didn’t know the Australian slang term “root”, but I unaccountably had heard of the cricketer.

  30. Another good crossword from Everyman. I like the “gimme” primary clues when they are clever, and this one was.

    Most of what I would say about the puzzle has already been said, so I’ll comment on the blog instead. Sil has added comments in addition to the bald explanations, and those elaborations and questions help us to think more closely about the clues. There are good answers to some of his concerns (e.g., retsina having a strong taste, as Ted@29 says, and “Let’s” really meaning “I’d like to” in some contexts as SimonS@15 points out), but it is Sil’s observations that create the dialogue. So thanks, Sil, for taking the time to add those comments, enriching the blog and the comments section.

  31. Another pleasant little excursion from Everyman – thanks.
    I thought 17a was a double definition, the two parts separated by the semicolon. The first part was the homophone and the second the, well, second in a duel.
    Thanks for the elucidations Sil.

  32. [I had heard the wombat joke long before the Lynne Truss book was published in 2003. The version I heard involved an American (i.e. septic) sailor picking up a woman, going to her house for a meal and sex, then running off. She shouts after him “Yer nothin’ but a bloody wombat”. Puzzled, he consults a dictionary: “Wombat: eats, roots, shoots and leaves”. I always assumed Truss named the book after the joke.]

  33. [ Would be better if that version was true. The story I read was that Lynne Truss was reading about the panda and the description had poor punctuation – the giant panda eats , shoots and leaves – this gave her the idea for the book about punctuation and the image of a panda holding a gun. ]

  34. Late here, but just for the record in case Everyman ever comes back to this, the term ROOT is not ‘just’ slang but has connotations of impersonal sex, probably under the influence of alcohol, and without proper consent. But whatever the circumstances, it’s a word used by men, have never heard it used by women, and definitely not ‘intimate’.

  35. Two men in Aussie pub.
    “Hey. I won the lottery”
    “That’s great mate. What are you gunna do with the cash”
    “I thought I d jack in the farm and travel all round Australia “
    “Fantastic. Which route are you taking”
    “Well I thought I’d take the wife as she stuck by me in the drought”

  36. Every wedding anniversary has an association. Paper for first anniversary etc. Good to know them for quizzing.

  38. Had to find what hmrc was. Then tax was the first word and away we went. We still use IRD here.
    I recall Joan Baez introducing a song with wordplays like Infernal Revenue Service!

  39. Managed three quarters of this today. Liked the clues for Wordsworth, Wintercherry, pigeon- toed. Agree with JonC @37.

  40. Failed on Receive, all else okay but didn’t bother parsing all as they were so long and layered.

    Sign was nice.

  41. Seem to recall a sign in the crowd a while back when NZ were playing England at cricket, Root was captain and BJWatling was the NZ wicket keeper.

    Said sign read “Root or BJ?”

    Ahem.

  42. Nice crossword & fierly quick solve, except for 19ac & 18d. Did a double-take on 23ac for reasons well covered in the blog. I think paddymelon @34 best described the usage. Thanks again Sil & Everyman.

  43. Nice puzzle. Fairly easy for Everyman and ‘root’s raisedcthe eyebrows.

  45. Enjoyed this a-lot. Managed to get it all correct (with one or two guesses) even the contentious answer! Thanks Barrie for reminding me of the ‘Root or BJ’ poster which at the time brought a smile to my face. I felt at the time that it was a great piece of Kiwi humour and am now somewhat disappointed that we have to give at least some of the credit to our Aussie mates. I guess though, that bearing in mind the nationalities of the two guys concerned, most kiwis would select BJ as the preferred answer!
    Thanks to all.

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