Everyman 3,887

by

The Observer crossword from Apr 11, 2021
Good fun from Everyman.

Somehow I found his last four or five crosswords, including this one, (even) more enjoyable than the ones before.
A lot of …s again and the occasional italics and brackets (like in 15ac – where, for me, he doesn’t need to use them).
Two clues with a similar structure (3dn and 11dn) form today’s rhyming pair.
Over to you!

ACROSS
1 DEBIT CARDS
Credit’s bad? Switch to these! (5,5)
Anagram, indicated by switch, of: CREDIT’S BAD
I could or perhaps should have underlined a lot more in this clue but I didn’t.
6 SMUG
Conceited runner? Not half! (4)
SMUGGLER (runner) but only (the first) half of it
9 DIFFERENCE
After Disruption, find Free Church deviation (10)
Anagram, indicated by after disruption, of FIND FREE, followed by CE (Church)
10 STYE
A little misty-eyed … because of this? (4)
Hidden solution, indicated by a little: miSTY-Eyed
Another one where the clue as a whole more or less serves as the definition but in which I chose only to underline one word.
12 AFGHAN HOUND
Dog‘s fine, in Ghana mobile hospital, dressing removed from wounds (6,5)
F (fine) inside an anagram, indicated by mobile, of GHANA, which is then followed by H (hospital) and all the middle letters of WOUNDS
15 REACTED
Offered response when director quit (having undergone censorship) (7)
REDACTED (having undergone censorship) minus the first D (director)
16 PROTEIN
Hold about: dull way of learning subject in food science (7)
PIN (hold) around ROTE (dull way of learning)
17 VANUATU
Five gold cases aunt misappropriated somewhere in South Pacific (7)
V (five, Roman numeral), followed by AU (gold) around an anagram, indicated by misappropriated, of AUNT
I found this article on the BBC website an interesting read.
19 REHEATS
Qualifying match entered, reserve gets roasted again? (7)
RES (reserve, abbreviation) with inside of it HEAT (qualifying match)
I had to think about the definition and whether it’s the right part of speech, in particular.
20 SPRIGHTLIER
After training, Perth girl is more nimble (11)
Anagram, indicated by after training, of: PERTH GIRL IS
23 ICES
Treats … treats injury (4)
Double definition
A nice one, I thought.
24 INTIMATELY
In Tianjin, Tim ate lychees with a certain warmth (10)
Hidden solution, indicated by just in: TianjIN TIM ATE LYchees
25 STYX
Rod’s called out in hellish water (4)
Homophone, indicated by called out, of: STICK’S (rod’s)
26 SWISS FRANC
Cash in kind of roll from S African politicians (5,5)
SWISS (kind of roll, Swiss roll, of course) + FR (from, abbreviation) + ANC (S African politicians)
DOWN
1 DADA
Commercial retrospective repeatedly displaying nihilistic art (4)
Reversal, indicated by retrospective, of AD (commercial), done twice (repeatedly)
2 BUFF
Polish expert (4)
Double definition
3 THE LAST LAUGH
Ultimate success, stealth deployed by the French: I don’t like it (3,4,5)
Anagram, indicated by deployed, of STEALTH, followed by LA (the, French) and UGH (I don’t like it)
4 AVENGED
Got back engraved bust right away (7)
Anagram, indicated by bust, of: ENGRAVED minus the R (right)
5 DUCHAMP
Displaying un chose, his art mimicked plumbing, primarily! (7)
Our customary primarily clue – take the starting letters of all the words that precede primarily: Displaying Un Chose etc.
Here is more about Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).
7 METHUSELAH
Everyman ‘so robust’: on the contrary, he reached age of 969! (10)
ME (Everyman) + THUS (so) + a reversal, indicated by on the contrary, of HALE (robust)
Noah’s grandfather who seems to have lived almost a thousand years. Really?
8 GREEDINESS
German quality of woodwinds: always wanting more (10)
G (German, abbreviation) + REEDINESS (‘quality of woodwinds’)
11 THE OTHER HALF
Loft and hearth he renovated for spouse (3,5,4)
Anagram, indicated by renovated, of: LOFT + HEARTH HE
13 TRAVESTIES
Apologies and attempts to hide a piece of underwear (10)
TRIES (attempts) around A VEST (a piece of underwear)
14 DAY NURSERY
At last, Danny Dyer runs a reform school, of sorts (3,7)
Anagram, indicated by reform, of: Y (the last letter of DANNY) + DYER RUNS A
Not the first time Everyman used Danny Dyer in one of his crosswords.
18 UP TO NOW
Before today, author Sinclair seen with pained expression (2,2,3)
UPTON (author Sinclair) + OW (pained expression)
The author is Upton Sinclair who, like Marcel Duchamp, left us in the autumn of 1968.
19 RAISINS
Ingredient of madeira is … insidiously … some old grapes (7)
Hidden solution, indicated by ingredient of: madeiRA IS INSidiously
21 MEGA
Fantastic, seeing a jewel mounted (4)
Reversal, indicated by mounted (in a down clue), of: A GEM (a jewel)
22 SYNC
We’re told to set kind of update (4)
Homophone, indicated by we’re told, of: SINK (set, like e.g. the sun)

34 comments on “Everyman 3,887”

  3. I thought of it as in “that’s a poor excuse/an apology for a ….” but then you wouldn’t say travesty for, so I’m not sure.

  4. Ta for the Duchamp link, Sil, quite an influential bloke. The only thing I knew about was his cryptic comment about the nether regions of the Mona Lisa.

  5. There’s neat anagram for you: credit’s bad -> DEBIT CARDS. A few nice constructions, too: VANUATU, SWISS FRANC, TRAVESTIES. The rhyming pair is back, and helped me, knowing I was looking for a rhyme for HALF. Overall, pleasant and reasonably straightforward. Thanks, Everyman and Sil.

  6. Very enjoyable puzzle.

    I had many favourites: THE LAST LAUGH, DUCHAMP, AFGHAN HOUND, STYX, METHUSELAH, PROTEIN.

    Thanks, Everyman and Sil.

  7. Chambers 93 gives for apology – a poor specimen hardly worthy of its name – which is close enough.
    Many things to enjoy here but as mentioned there was far too much punctuation and the dots …… have returned. The last few weeks had been much better in this regard.

  8. Another lovely puzzle. I agree with you, SvdH, recently each week seems to get better.

    Like Michelle @ 6 THE LAST LAUGH, STYX (both made me smile) and METHUSALAH were favourites as were SWISS FRANC, SMUG.

    I too wondered about travevesty at first but think it’s ok

    Thanks to Everyman and Sil van den Hoek

  9. A very enjoyable puzzle. The primarily clue was nicely done, 20a SPRIGHTLIER was an excellent anagram in a good surface, and as Sil says, 23a ICES is a very nice double definition. I liked the construction of 7d METHUSELAH, but unfortunately the definition was too obvious.
    Thanks Everyman for the fun and Sil for the excellent blog.
    [ Marcel Duchamp was an excellent chess player, and he once played a match in public against John Cage in Toronto. The chessboard was hooked up with electronic sensors so each move produced a sound, thus creating a piece of music that Cage entitled “Reunion”.
    I always thought that Duchamp was thumbing his nose at the art establishment with his urinal sculpture, so when it ended up in the Tate Modern, he certainly had 3d. ]

  10. [Cellomaniac @9: interesting snippet re Duchamp and Cage. It would appear he had form when it came to inspiring others through a game of chess. There is a disputed suggestion that he played chess with Samuel Beckett and that Beckett’s Endgame incorporates a position described in Duchamp’s Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled.]

    michelle and Fiona Anne have highlighted my favourites between them: THE LAST LAUGH, METHUSELAH, STYX, SWISS FRANC and I agree with TassieTim that it’s an uncanny anagram that leads to DEBIT CARDS. Whilst not the most subtle lurker in the world, I was impressed at the insertion of INTIMATELY into a clue.

    I barely recall encountering the travesty/apology dilemma a week ago. I think I just saw what Everyman was doing, noted (as GIF @3) the of/for distinction but felt they were close enough to shrug and enter. Thanks to Sil for identifying Upton Sinclair – I’m afraid the solution went in from the definition, enumeration and crossers. I see he was famous in the US but have never encountered him

    Thanks Everyman and Sil

  11. Thanks Everyman and Sil
    Despite some dictionary support, I don’t think “travesty” can be a direct replacement for “apology”; the “apology” would need a modifier – “poor apology” has been suggested, and does have the same meaning as “travesty” (sort of).

  12. I was totally in SYNC with this until 22 down, which took me ages and made a pair of 4-letter words with Y as the “vowel”. DUCHAMP and DADA made another pair, so I was half expecting Jereboam to make an appearance,

  13. “This [travesty of | apology for] a government …”

    That’s OK by me: I don’t think a word has to be directly substitutable for another in a sentence to have the same meaning. I know not everyone agrees.

    But how did Duchamp’s Fountain “mimic” plumbing? It was a urinal, not a representation of one.

  14. +1 for THE LAST LAUGH, STYX and METHUSALAH.

    [The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were originally The Bonzo Dog Dada Band, but you probably knew that.]

    Thanks Everyman and Sil

  15. Methuselah lived nine hundred years
    Methuselah lived nine hundred years
    But who calls that living when no gal will give in to no man
    What’s nine hundred years
    (It Ain’t Necessarily So from Porgy and Bess – Ira and George Gershwin)

  16. [Silly, to me, story about Methuselah: he was originally granted 1000 years of life but an angel came to him saying that a great king (David I think) would do great things except that he was only going to live one year. Would Methuselah give him 31 years so that he could do his great works? Methuselah thinks “what is 31 years out of 1000” why not. Then at the end of his life he tries to take them back. Draw your own moral.]

  17. Upton Sinclair a household name, in the sort of John Osborne and then Harold Pinter genre, definitely on the parental bookshelves but, oddly, none of his titles now ring a bell.

  18. [ PostMark@10, I wonder what the cultural by-products would have been if Duchamp had played chess with Spike Milligan? ]

  19. Regarding similes, I always think that if you can think of an example where the one word would work instead of the other that’s good enough for a crossword. But I’m not sure about out Got Back for Avenged. You avenge the person who’s had wrong done to them you don’t get that person back you get back at the wrongdoer, surely?

  21. I agree with Sil about Everyman’s most recent puzzles.

    More relevant to the clue for DUCHAMP is the fact that there’s a mistake in it. It should read une chose rather than un chose, because the thing is that, in French, it’s feminine.

    Good puzzle and blog. Merci.

  24. You didn’t, Sil, but it might not have been unreasonable to expect the setter or editor to see it.

  25. No doubt it’s a mistake here, but “chose” can, rarely, be masculine in French, as in “Le Petit Chose” by Alphonse
    Daudet (roughly translates as What’s-his-name). My Petit Robert dictionary gives “Ce qu’on ne peut ou ne veut pas nommer”.

  26. I think it’s not quite enough to describe Duchamp as an ‘excellent’ chess player. He was a top chess player, part of the US Olympiad team. To equate to football: an excellent footballer is someone who plays well at non-league level; a top player is someone who plays for a Premiership side.

  27. I’ve never come across the abbreviation “fr” for “from” before, nor have I ever been in such a hurry that I needed to abbreviate “from”! But I have no doubt that such an abbreviation exists.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, particularly the beautiful anagram for DEBIT CARDS. And, as I often do, I learned unexpected things from the comments here — particularly Duchamp’s chess prowess and the fact that the French word “chose” can be masculine. (Like brian-with-an-eye, I assume that Everyman made an error here rather than intending the rare masculine usage. But the error doesn’t affect the soundness of the clue’s cryptic reading in any case.)

  29. A lovely puzzle. Didn’t know Upton Sinclair, so glad to learn something new. I did know about the Dada/Doo-Dah band, and it amuses me that it may have been changed to make the name (even) more silly rather than less obscure.

  30. Very nice crossword, one of his best I think.

    Didn’t fully parse a couple but they had to be right.

    I wondered about Reheats and Travesty, but bunged them in with a shrug. Think we’ve all learned by now this Everyman can be a bit loose.

    I’m sure I have seen the 1A anagram before, too.

  31. Unbelievably I managed this one, after struggling lately. Not sure about sync for update though.

  32. Found the left side easy and struggled with the right.
    A really excellent puzzle except:
    – travesties was a travesty (and that is not an apology)
    – fr for from, seriously!

  33. In respect of Methuselah living to an age of 969 — I read somewhere, many years ago, that this figure (and similar instances) were the result of misunderstanding/mistranslation on the part of translators of the bible. According to the account that I read, the 969 actually represents 969 *months*, which works out to 80.75 years, a ripe old (especially for “biblical” times in which peope would not be expected to live very long), but not implausible age.

    As others have said, very nice and satisfying puzzle.

  34. Interesting suggestion cited by Rolf that that the word ‘year’ in the genealogies in the beginning of the Bible are mistranslations and should be ‘month’; that would bring ages into line with what we see today. However, we do find many genealogies and ages in the first book or two of the Bible with people at the time of Methuselah commonly dying at over 900; we would need to assume the mistranslations apply to all of them. But while we also find men fathering sons into the hundreds, we do find some doing it when they were as young as 65. So, if these numbers should be months not years, it means that these people were fathering children when they were 65 months old – conceived when they were 56 months old – that’s 4 months short of their 5th birthday. Later, we do find God (in Chapter 6 of Genesis) cutting the average life-span down to 120 years.
    In 1841 the average life expectancy (in UK) was 41. Today, even with all our pills and potions and surgical interventions, this has only been pushed back up to 81; indeed, reaching 100 earns a birthday greeting from the queen. We can probably attribute this drop in life expectancy to the devolution of the gene pool – reasonably visible even in my own lifetime.

Comments are closed.