I looked at the blog of the previous Everyman and someone was saying what fun this was. Whether it was great fun I’m not sure, partly because I found it very hard, with two problems caused by my entering the wrong letters and trying to think of a cocktail whose first word was D_S, and later failing utterly on 13 down and being totally unable to make head or tail of it until I realised that the sausage was a chorizo not a choriza. There are some quite nice clues here, but the old days of a simple but sound crossword that was a gateway for beginners seem to be in the past. I wonder if we will ever return to them.
And I also looked at the blog of the one before that, which was criticised by several people. Two regular setters from several other papers dropped in to the comments and one of them said ‘Sorry to have to say, but this really is just bottom-of-the-heap Guardian stuff, and a far cry from the craftsmanship we once knew.’ I don’t think this one was so dreadful — there are probably a few setters of The Everyman — but the elegant surfaces and penny-drop moments that one gets from various other crosswords were still largely absent.
Definitions in crimson. Indicators (hidden, anagram, reversal etc) in italics. Anagrams are indicated (like this)*, or possibly *(like this), depending on whether the indicator comes before or after the letters to be jumbled.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BAG OF CRISPS |
Pig scabs for fashionable bar snack (3,2,6)
|
| (pig scabs for)* — ‘fashionable’ a rather strange anagram indicator | ||
| 9 | ORLANDO |
Disney World’s setting for V. Woolf novel (7)
|
| 2 defs — Orlando, Florida, is the setting for Disney World, and one of Virginia Woolf’s novels was Orlando — but why ‘V. Woolf’ rather than either ‘Woolf’ or ‘Virginia Woolf’? Normally if we see such an unusual appellation it means something special; for example if there was a writer Virginia Owel a clue referring to C. Dickens might lead to V. Owel or vowel | ||
| 10 | ART DECO |
’20s style red coat altered (3,4)
|
| (red coat)* | ||
| 11 | FARGO |
Very much game for movie set in N. Dakota (5)
|
| far go — far = very much (?), go is a game widely played in the Far East, and the movie set in N. Dakota is this one, of which I’d never heard | ||
| 12 | EMBRACED |
The writer pulled back, tensed up, given a cuddle (8)
|
| (me)rev. braced — normally the setter would have said ‘Everyman’ rather than ‘The writer’, but he appears elsewhere; no doubt the clue for 26ac was written before this one | ||
| 14 | DESHABILLE |
In the altogether bald lie, he’s preposterous (10)
|
| (bald lie he’s)* — the French for ‘to undress’ is déshabiller, and this is the past participle déshabillé, undressed | ||
| 15 | HYDE |
Discussed obscure monster of literature (4)
|
| “hide” — to hide is to obscure — this refers to Mr Hyde, in R.L. Stevenson’s 1886 novella ‘Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde‘ | ||
| 17 | ERSE |
Language in Poetry: volume missing (4)
|
| [v]erse — Erse is the Scottish or Irish Gaelic language | ||
| 19 | CREPE PAPER |
French dish: mash pear evenly, for thin crinkled sheets (5,5)
|
| crêpe pap {p}e{a]r — the French dish is a crêpe, pap = mash — it looks as if ‘mash’ is an anagram indicator, but it isn’t — for = per (I think, although I don’t like it: ‘per’ = ‘for every’ or some such) | ||
| 21 | ANAGRAMS |
Like Eric Clapton, narcoleptic? (8)
|
| ‘Eric Clapton’ is an anagram of ‘narcoleptic’ — quite fun and some people love this type of clue, but I don’t because there is no definition, except perhaps the whole clue | ||
| 23 | NURSE |
Angel or shark? (5)
|
| 2 defs, the terms for a medical nurse and for a type of shark | ||
| 25 | CHORIZO |
Children regularly rejected your pizza (old sausage) (7)
|
| ch, then ([y]o[u]r [p]i[z]z[a]), then o — a chorizo is a type of sausage | ||
| 26 | ILL WILL |
Around wife, Everyman shall repeatedly feud (3,4)
|
| (I’ll) w (I’ll) — the usual Everyman = I (or me) — I’m not sure that ill will = feud, but close enough perhaps | ||
| 27 | DRY MARTINIS |
With alcohol banned by trains, I’m mixing cocktails (3,8)
|
| dry (trains I’m)* — dry = with alcohol banned | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BELARUS |
Beckoned eastwards, Lukashenko approved Russia’s ‘Union State’ primarily, here? (7)
|
| The ‘obligatory’ first letters &lit. (or as we seem to be encouraged to say nowadays, CAD (clue as definition)) — read about Lukashenko here | ||
| 2 | GONDOLAS |
Norse god’s surrounded – Odin’s head – finally, finally wanting boats (8)
|
| go(N)d, then O[din] las[t] — n (or N or N.) is given in Collins under American English, and in Chambers, as an abbreviation for Norse; who would ever use it except a crossword setter? | ||
| 3 | FLOW |
Ravenously eat up course (4)
|
| (wolf)rev. | ||
| 4 | READ MY LIPS |
Pay attention: ready money’s invested. Upset? Mostly upset (4,2,4)
|
| read(m)y (spil[l])rev. — does m = money? Collins doesn’t seem to give it, and Chambers only gives it in the form followed by a number, designating categories of money supply | ||
| 5 | SITAR |
Musical instrument, one that squeals, is taken up (5)
|
| (rat is)rev. | ||
| 6 | SKETCHY |
Not half easy navigating two-master that’s slight (7)
|
| [ea]sy round ketch — ‘navigating’ means ‘surrounding’, something that seems a bit of a stretch | ||
| 7 | HOT FUDGE SAUCE |
Fresh evasion, audacity: that’s rich at the table! (3-5,5)
|
| hot = fresh, fudge = evasion, sauce = audacity — don’t know it but it sounds delicious | ||
| 8 | COLD-HEARTEDLY |
They’d collared criminal without pity (4-9)
|
| (They’d collared)* | ||
| 13 | BIKRAM YOGA |
What may get you arms half akimbo, sweaty and gasping at the end? (6,4)
|
| *(ar[ms] akimbo [sweat]y [gaspin]g) — CAD (see 1dn) — another name for hot yoga | ||
| 16 | OPEN-PLAN |
Without walls round US prison, spy finally escaping (4-4)
|
| o pen plan[t] — o = round in that it is the shape of something round (not always popular this, but common in crosswords), the pen is the US word for a prison (short for penitentiary), ‘finally escaping’ means ‘remove the last letter’ | ||
| 18 | SEAFOOD |
Do foes struggle to secure end of Nicola Sturgeon, perhaps? (7)
|
| (Do foes)* round [Nicol]a — Sturgeon is really sturgeon: in crosswords capitalization is regarded as acceptable (although if a word needs a capital it is unacceptable to downcase it — thus the politician couldn’t be called nicola sturgeon) | ||
| 20 | PARTIES |
Run for seconds of baked goods in celebrations (7)
|
| The baked goods are pasties, and the s (seconds) is replaced by r (run) | ||
| 22 | RAINY |
Heading off, intellectual given to falls? (5)
|
| [b]rainy — if the weather is given to falls, it’s likely to rain, so is rainy (I gave myself major trouble because I had RAINS, which works so long as you accept ‘given to’ as a rather long link — Brains was the intellectual in Thunderbirds I think) | ||
| 24 | PICT |
A little unpicturesque person of old (4)
|
| Hidden in unPICTuresque — The Picts and the Martyrs, the children’s book by my namesake Arthur Ransome, first alerted me to this word; these were the Picts |
Enjoyed this and stuck to my aim of solving Everyman puzzles not using any aids but did not get BIKRAM YOGA – decided the second word might be coda which didn’t help. Also didn’t get ANAGRAMS which was annoying because I have seen this mechanism before once.
Favourites were HYDE, ILL WILL, DRY MARTINIS, READ MY LIPS
Thanks Everyman and John
Despite the location of the city in its title, the movie Fargo is set almost entirely in Minnesota. Only a couple of scenes take place in North Dakota.
Thanks for the blog and I do agree with your sentiments. I learnt to do crosswords using the Everyman from 1995 when Custos was the setter and he seemed to master the art of an accessible crossword that was relatively simple but displayed all the different types of clues .
Difficult for me to judge now, more important is how relatively new solvers find it.
Like Fiona, I didn’t get ANAGRAMS, annoyingly. The rest went in OK but, without being quite as critical as you, John, I do miss the old-style Everyman crosswords.
Thanks to Everyman and to John for the detailed explanations..
Roz@3: I don’t know how new solvers find the present day Everyman, but I find him (or, almost certainly, them) very variable both between and within puzzles: obvious anagrams and easy hiddens and “primarily” clues share the space with contrived and clumsy parsing and some fairly uncommon terms (BIKRAM YOGA?). If it’s supposed to be a beginner’s puzzle, it’s one with a lot of tough crunchy bits unpredictably hidden in it, and I regularly find it one of the least enjoyable of the week.
(That said, the Sunday 29th puzzle is one of the rare better ones).
I was convinced that 14 across had a mistake in the anagram. I have only ever seen it spelt DISHABILLE. Indeed if you search for DESHABILLE in the OED online, it reroutes to the entry spelt DIS… However my Collins gives DIS as the variant of DES. Don’t have a Chambers (should probably get one).
Very accurate gladys@5 and I do totally agree. When I started I think it was very fair , hard ( for me then ) but also very educational for new solvers. I do try not to criticise now because I only do it out of nostalgia.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to distinguish between old and new Everyman, having not been doing it that long. Suffice to say, I do it because it is there on a Sunday, rather than as something I would seek out. I know there’s a school of thought that says bloggers are meant to be neutral in tone and leave all the criticisms to the rest of us – but why should we have all the fun? I understand and sympathise with pretty much all of John’s observations today. “V. Woolf” is particularly ugly – was she ever acknowledged thus? I spent long enough wondering if it was anagram fodder, indicated by ‘novel’, to count that there were only 6 letters before the dd popped to mind. Fiona Anne @1: admirable challenge to avoid reference help – I wonder how many of us had heard or BIKRAM YOGA? I had to look that one up – but I’m afraid I’m not going to take that as evidence of it being a good or challenging clue! Sorry: I’m in a similar mood to John, it appears. Nonetheless, thanks to Everyman and the aforementioned blogger.
I suspect that where Fiona Anne @1 had seem the ANAGRAMS device before was in Everyman 3875 on 17th January: ‘Like Enid Blyton vis-a-vis tiny blonde’ >> ANAGRAMMATIC. I, like she, felt I should therefore have been better able to spot this one, but ended up ‘getting’ it while off doing something else entirely but still obsessing. (Not having the crosser from BIKRAM YOGA, which I would never have got in a lifetime of doing other things entirely, did not help.) If Everyman has a small cache of these, to be deployed every 4 months, I will be on the lookout in mid-September.
Quite right MrPostMark @9, I think the bloggers should share their opinions. I am grateful to anyone who takes the trouble to write a blog and if I totally disagree with them it does not decrease my gratitude.
I agree with many comments above. I miss the old Everyman.
Did not parse the PLAN bit of 16d.
New: BIKRAM YOGA – did not parse (anagram?) – and still do not understand it.
Agree with many of John’s points, though I’m happy with other things like V Woolf. It’s a personal thing isn’t it? John, I don’t think you need to worry about “for” at 19ac as I see PAP as “mash” and ER as “pear evenly”.
[Roz @10: … if I totally disagree with them… I can’t see that happening 😀 ]
Thanks John for decoding this. I am pleased to discover its not just my problem: “the old days of a simple but sound crossword that was a gateway for beginners seem to be in the past” In the 00s I used to solve each week and have maybe one to be decoded. In the 10s likewise. Now I am only solving after cheating on one or two by using the web and having to look for decoding of more than a couple. Maybe its just age but I dont think so.
I liked ANAGRAMS (having seen this trick before) but V.Woolf seemed bizarre.
SC @9 You are right – that is exactly where I saw it before.
Roz @ 3 and Gladys @ 5
I am a relatively new solver. I went on a “how to solve cryptic” day course at the Guardian given by Paul a few years ago having never tried but always wanted to do cryptics. My brain was full by mid-day. I never got round to trying them.
But I thought now would be a good time to try again. So last May I dug out my notes and got the two “how to” books he had mentioned and then the crossword dictionaries and Chambers and got started. I would just do what I could using the dictionaries, check button, oneword finder then head off to 225.
I recently found that I could do quite a bit of Everyman without any aids and of course there is no check button to tempt me to laziness. So a few weeks ago I decided to try and complete Everyman without aids (except an anagram finder – once I am sure of the anagrind and fodder I just go there as I don’t really enjoy anagrams) and I am enjoying the challenge. I find the mix of clues helpful and take my time over it – and I agree with Gladys that there is a lot of variability within each puzzle. I don’t know what Everyman was like before but I do look forward to it. On today’s, so far I have got 16 out of 27. Hopefully when I return to it I will be able to complete most of the rest.
I try most of the Mon-Fri Guardian puzzles and my use of the aids is decreasing but I have a long way to go – and with some setters (Vlad for example) I have no chance. I am heartened by having read somewhere that it took a person who eventually became a crossword editor 5-6 years before he could confidently complete the more difficult cryptics.
Yesterday with lots of help from the aids I completed the Prize though still can’t parse two of them. I know it was one of Paul’s easier ones – but still – I didn’t even attempt the previous one.
I am enjoying the journey.
A “relative beginner “ checking in! I complete about half of Everyman fairly quickly and then seem to hit a brick wall and while I usually complete it I need cross letters etc. Then I try to sort out the parsing. I would never have arrived at “anagram” in a month of Sundays. I love the challenge though!
The difficulty dial has definitely been turned up in the past few weeks. I’d take the current Everyman over the old one every time. I found old Everyman painfully dull and predictable. Compared to some of the obscurities we see served up by other setters BIKRAM YOGA seems positively mainstream although maybe a bit of a stretch for some people
I had the same problem as John in that I put RAINS for 22 and couldn’t think of a cocktail that was D?S to start with. However, once I sorted that out I did like the clue for DRY MARTINIS. There were, IMHO, a couple of clunky clues for GONDOLAS and BIKRAM YOGA – michelle @11, as John indicates in the blog, this is an anagram [indicated by ‘what may get you’ (?) of half of AR(ms)/AKIMBO/Y/G].
I wasn’t that bothered by the ‘V.Woolf’ although that clue needed two independent pieces of GK, which is always tricky. I, too, wondered about ‘navigating’ as an anagrind, but one of the synonyms is ‘crossing’, so I guess it is just about OK.
Thanks Everyman and John.
Fiona Anne @ 15 I hope you keep trying and continue to enjoy it. It took me about two years to master the Everyman and perhaps five years to master the hardest Guardian setters. I freely admit to spending whole weekends on Bunthorne crosswords without a single answer. I really believe that practice is by far the most important thing. Please try the harder setters even if you only get a few clues, you will learn more from them.
[ MrPostMark @13, methinks you are mocking me again. To avoid boring the Everyman blog , I will respond in General Discussion after my swim.]
I think it’s all in the expectation. If Everyman is a bit tricky we feel out of our Sunday morning comfort zone. Maybe Everyman avoided Virginia to stop us looking for an anagram of vawoolf?
First pass, I wanted to put SLOWHAND for 21a, but crossers did for that thought. Never did get it, not the yoga.
Looks like people blew HOT and COLD with this CRISP ‘n DRY crossword.
Thanks all
The first answer I got was ANAGRAMS because it’s been used many times before like carthorse/orchestra or maybe not so often Groucho’s Bar/Scarborough. I won’t mention Spiro Agnew, ho ho.
I don’t find the “new” Everyman that easy and always struggle with the final few – maybe six but always get there in the end by foul means or fair. I did like COLD-HEARTEDLY and SEAFOOD. I’d never heard of bikram yoga (LOI) and could not solve it from the clue so did a word search on _O_A and spotted yoga which seemed to fit the sense of the clue so looked for types of yoga and there it was, bingo. That’s not the way to solve a clue though.
To Roz@19, thank you for making me feel better about my poor record with Bunthorne (RIP Bob Smithies). He was always my nemesis although I loved Araucaria who was more on my wavelength. I don’t know whether you will read this or not but one of Bunthorne’s well-known clues is Amundsen’s forwarding address (4). I’ll leave you to think about that one. It’s a perfect clue similar to Rufus’s famous Bar of soap (6,6).
Many thanks to John and E.
V Woolf for sure, but let’s not forget N Dakota. Or I P Knightley.
Interesting idea that Everyman might currently be a panel. However I like gladys’s point about the inherent variance: could this mean that E is in fact a database?
[ Davy@23 I remember it well , Mush, it was in the top right corner going down and I did the crossword on the day and got that clue but did not finish. His most notorious grid was for the Cote du Rhone Villages theme, I was a beginner then and had no chance but I remember about six experienced solvers at work taking all week to do it. Those were the days when certain setters were truly terrifying. ]
I think of sturgeon as river fish, not seafood, but google tells me that a few of them venture offshore. (Would anyone call trout seafood?)
I think I remember seeing somewhere on a Guardian site recently that E. Clapton and narcoleptic were anagrams.
I vaguely remembered having heard of Bikram something-or-other, took forever (CODA? SODA? COLA?) to think of yoga. Then I looked it up. It sounds as horrible as hot fudge sauce does delicious — and, John, it is. It goes, for instance, on vanilla ice cream to make a hot fudge sundae.
Thanks, John and Everyman whoever you are.
I came here to make the same quibble as Doug @2 about FARGO. The movie isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s great. But to the point, it does memorably, albeit quite gently, send-up many things about Minnesota culture, from accents to attitudes. So saying the movie is set in ND might betray that Everyman has never seen it?
To address a question in the blog, N for Norse is seen (at least over here) in the etymological notes in dictionaries. (So for a word like “window,” after the definitions you’d get something like “ME windowe < ON vindauga".) But apparently, per the blog, that's an American thing? Huh.
First post here and a newbie to boot – started doing Everyman during first lockdown, and share with partner on a Saturday if I can’t finish, he has been through the Everyman apprenticeship too.
This time I managed all but four clues so improving. And am immeasurably more confident to work on a clue on any Guardian cryptic.
So thanks to Everyman and the fifteensquared blog for building that confidence.
New setter please.
I started attempting Everyman over forty years ago, so I’m hardly a beginner, just not very good. The ‘old’ Everyman was always well clued, or perhaps it seemed so with familiarity and there were some very uneven puzzles after the regular setter (Colin Gumbrell?) retired. It seems to have settled down now but is now, perhaps, a notch harder than it once was. Nevertheless, it remains one of the few puzzles I embark on with a reasonable hope of finishing unaided. I didn’t quite succeed last week, had to look up types of yoga and came scurrying back to 15a when a comment on another forum made me realise that I had the wrong answer. I agree, however, that 13d was both obscure and contrived, so perhaps not ideal Everyman material.
Despite that, I enjoyed the puzzle, so thanks Everyman, whoever you are, your’s is still my must do puzzle and thanks too to the blogger.
I will not be opening Everyman crossword ever again.
Thanks for all the fun, but that’s enough for me.
Things have just gone in a downward slope for the past few weeks, so now is a good time to save my sanity….
Bye
Mike@31 don’t go!! I’ve really struggled the past couple of weeks too…and John’s intro today certainly reassured me. Imagine how rewarding when it starts to fall into place…hoping that day will come : )
Although I have been solving these for many years I think of myself as a gentlemen solver in that I enjoy the journey, warts and all, but feel good when I am finished. It is a pastime and not a competition.
Having typed that I do find the new Everyman variable and, at times, perplexing.
I wondered if 20d was an indication of a mini-theme.
Thanks for the blog John. Are you a new blogger?
And thanks for the lunch time coffee accompaniment Everyman.
Arib@30 – same here, I have been doing the Everyman since the 1970s and have never had as much difficulty as in the last few weeks. Like Mike@31, I’m just not enjoying it any more, and am seriously considering giving up on it.
I’ve been blogging for ages, Mystogre@33, for many years weekly doing an Independent; have swapped with Quirister.
I definitely found this one harder than normal but I thought it was fair. It so happens I’m familiar with bikram yoga, but there are plenty of other gk clues I don’t get. That’s not a good reason to dislike a crossword in my view. Back in the Alan Scott days there was usually a clue or two in each puzzle which would elude me. The more recent Colin Gumbrell puzzles were always precisely clued, but rather formulaic and for me a little boring. After enduring the chaos immediately following Colin’s retirement I feel Everyman has settled into an enjoyable, albeit quirky solve.
Got it all today, everyman. Although a couple of ‘I’m sure that’s right’ guesses, for which we had to look up the parsing (e.g., spy for plant).
I can’t sympathise with the level of grumpiness in some comments above – the obscurity and prolonged challenge are the joy of crypticity, if there be such a word.
Keep up the good work
Looking at posting dates, I thought I was first off the blocks in New Zealand. But Paul from Tutukaka has obviously done an online version a few weeks ago.
Always enjoy Saturday morning breakfast in bed, with the NZ Herald everyman – online would feel like cheating!
Got “dry martinis” early on, so “rainy” rather than “rains” was not a problem.
“Bikram yoga” is just ridiculously — and completely unfairly — obscure.
Needed wildcard dictionary and web search to get it.
*Loved* “anagrams” once I saw it. (Bit of a head-slapper.)
Did *not* like “ch” as meaning “children”.
Overall, a lot to like and quite a bit to dislike.
I agree Peter@38 , I tried the online version on my phone a couple of weeks ago while on holiday, and missed being able to scribble in the margins to solve the anagrams. On that note, Everyman has plagiarised Sil van den Hoek’s blog from puzzle 3,891. Sil noted that Eric Clapton is an anagram of narcoleptic as an aside regarding a clue whose answer was narcolepsy.
Interesting, I have been absent from crosswords for the last few weeks so missed the excitement. I thought this pretty ordinary tbh. Failed with the stupid Clapton clue and the tortured Yoga one, got the rest but meh. I can’t but feel that Everyman is syndicated now, they are so variable.
Peter@38 I just got fed up with The Herald slipping further behind the times so switched to online a few weeks ago & have now caught up. This has opened a pandora’s box for me, finding many other Guardian puzzles more accessible than Everyman (depending on the setter which seems to change daily).
Duane@40 I had the same frustration until I discovered the Anagram Helper on the Guardian site. It more or less does what I would otherwise do with pen & paper.
I have been doing these crosswords for years too. I much preferred Alan Scott’s and Colin Gumbrel’s versions of Everyman. The current setter has too many clues which I find completely obscure. I don’t find them enjoyable at all and sometimes wonder why I bother at all. Just habit I think.
Tough one again. I do Bikrum but couldn’t see it until I got yoga with a little help.
It would be good if the Herald caught up.