The problem with the current Everyman crosswords is that their difficulty varies so. There are some easy enough clues, of which many are quite good I think, but one or two really difficult ones. The aim, surely, is to have some sort of a gateway crossword which encourages new setters (yes I mean solvers, silly mistake, thanks Michelle@3) , and in its present form the Everyman crossword fails to do so, I should have thought. I’m not a fast solver at all, but the old Everyman used to take me about 20 minutes. This one so far (and I seem to have solved it and spent much time on the blog, but there is still quite a bit of tidying up remaining) has taken me about 2½ hours. If I weren’t doing the blog I’d probably have taken approaching an hour if I wanted, as I do (unlike most speed solvers), to be sure of the parsing at all stages.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (anagrams, hidden, reversal etc.) in italics.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | SUNTRAPS |
Unstraps a little sarong shifting in warm spots (8)
|
| 5 | FLORAE |
Primarily, full lists of regions’ Amaryllidacaea, etc! (6)
|
| The obligatory/usual first letters clue, indicated by Primarily: f[ull] l[ists] etc. | ||
| 10 | FRETFUL |
Tense, like a guitar neck? (7)
|
| 2 defs, one of them fanciful (hence the question mark) in that the neck of a guitar is the fret, so it could be called fret-ful — when I first saw this I thought the answer might be PERFECT and the setter a connoisseur of guitars who thought the shape of a guitar’s neck was just perfect, but no, rather a silly idea | ||
| 11 | EGGCUPS |
They’re seen with soldiers, say, getting George Cross: happy times (7)
|
| eg GC ups — eg = say, GC = George Cross, ups = happy times — soldiers are those slivers of toast that one puts into the boiled egg: frequent visitors to crosswordland | ||
| 12 | LILLE |
Sides of langoustine consumed … off-colour in French city (5)
|
| ‘ill’ is consumed by ‘l[angoustin]e’ — we have to ignore the punctuation and read it rather tortuously so far as I can see. If this is indeed the correct parsing of the clue then it doesn’t read very smoothly | ||
| 13 | OCTOPUSSY |
US cop story, not right to reboot film (9)
|
| (US cop sto[r]y)* | ||
| 14 | CHEESE STRAWS |
Sees chest heaving, having eaten undercooked snack (6,6)
|
| (Sees chest)* round (raw) | ||
| 18 | HARD ROW TO HOE |
How rotor-head’s spinning is a problem (4,3,2,3)
|
| (How rotor-head)* | ||
| 21 | SNOW-WHITE |
In home counties these days, smallest part unsullied (4-5)
|
| S(now whit)E — SE is the home counties (arguably not, but conventionally in crosswords); now = these days; whit = smallest part | ||
| 23 | NEARS |
Some nonlinear systems offering approaches (5)
|
| Hidden in nonliNEAR Systems | ||
| 24 | LARGISH |
‘Podgy’ (mostly fat) servicemen getting starter of hamburgers (7)
|
| lar[d] GIs h[amburgers] — lard = fat, the servicemen are GIs | ||
| 25 | AVERAGE |
‘A very European’ fury? That’s mean (7)
|
| a v E rage — v = very, E = European, rage = fury — the arithmetic mean is a type of average (and it’s usually what people think of as the average) | ||
| 26 | RESIGN |
Go back into – or out of – employment (6)
|
| I’m not quite sure how to characterise this clue, but it plays on the meanings of ‘re-sign’ and ‘resign’: if you re-sign you sort of rejoin employment; if you resign you leave employment | ||
| 27 | MEATBALL |
Face cry that’s voiced for pasta topping (8)
|
| “meet bawl” — meet = face, bawl = cry | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SOFTLY |
Sneaky, frequently hiding piano (6)
|
| s(oft)ly — it’s ‘sly’ (= sneaky) and ‘oft’ (= ‘frequently’) is hiding in the word | ||
| 2 | NEEDLE |
Tease a little weak-kneed learner (6)
|
| Hidden in weak-kNEED LEcturer | ||
| 3 | REFRESHER |
First-year divinity student’s a sweetie! (9)
|
| A first year divinity student could be called an ‘R.E. fresher’; a refresher is a type of sweet that I much enjoyed as a child. Nice to see from Google that they are going strong | ||
| 4 | PULL ONES WEIGHT |
Upon swell, exercising rowers – what each must do? (4,4,6)
|
| (Upon swell)* eight — the rowers are an eight | ||
| 6 | LEG-UP |
Help large English dog that’s upset (3-2)
|
| l E (pug)rev. — l = large, E = English, the dog is a pug | ||
| 7 | ROUSSEAU |
Primitive painter showing topless bride’s outfit (8)
|
| [t]rousseau — the bride’s outfit is a trousseau and the primitive painter is the painter Henri Rousseau | ||
| 8 | ESSAYIST |
One writes 19th letter a year before first (8)
|
| ess a y 1st — the 19th letter of the alphabet is S, or ess; y = year; 1st = first | ||
| 9 | BEST-BEFORE-DATE |
Does roast with beef, batter and timing advice for chef? (4-6,4)
|
| (Does beef batter)* — it took me ages to see exactly how this worked, but the anagram indicator is ‘roast’ and the ‘with’ sort of brings them all together — not the smoothest wordplay, nor the smoothest surface, but Everyman obviously liked the fact that ‘does’, ‘beef’ and ‘batter’ made up a nice anagram | ||
| 15 | THORNIEST |
Model superlatively lusty: most problematic (9)
|
| T horniest — T is model, as in the Ford Model T, horniest = superlatively lusty | ||
| 16 | WHISTLER |
He painted his mum, a referee at times (8)
|
| The artist James McNeill Whistler is famous for the painting of his mother, although he called it more prosaically Arrangement in Grey and Black, and a referee in football blows the whistle at times, so is a whistler | ||
| 17 | ARMOIRES |
A Queen’s wavy patterns in wardrobes (8)
|
| A R moirés — R = queen, moiré patterns are wavy patterns caused by one pattern on top of another— not sure you can pluralise it: Lexico says that it’s a mass noun, which Countdown watchers will know stops it from being pluralised, but Collins gives an American English sense as ‘any moiré fabric’, so perhaps it’s just OK [As Blah@14 and bodycheetah@15 point out, perhaps the s comes from R’s] | ||
| 19 | CANADA |
Country‘s athletic club taking in judo practitioner, amateur ascendant (6)
|
| (A(Dan a)C)rev. — AC = athletic club, Dan = judo practicioner, a = amateur | ||
| 20 | AS WELL |
A second spring besides (2,4)
|
| a s well — s = second, well = spring | ||
| 22 | WRING |
Loudly call for squeeze (5)
|
| “ring” — ring = call, ‘loudly’ doesn’t so much mean ‘at a great volume’ as ‘aloud’ and is a homophone indicator |
If you shift the first S in unstraps to the beginning of the word you get SUNTRAPS. A write-in for me. I agree that 9dn did not have the smoothest wordplay, but I found it a quick solve with the help of the rhyme from 4dn.
Agree with John E @1 – you were overthinking this one, John-the-blogger. The rhyme helped my with 9d too. I quite liked LILLE, which I parsed as J-t-b did. Never heard of a REFRESHER as a sweet, but the clue was straightforward (and quite clever). THORNIEST caused a snort. All in all, I thought this one OK. Thanks, Everyman and John.
Quite hard. It took me about 40 minutes to solve this puzzle. I had trouble solving and parsing 9d which held me up as it was hard for me to work out what the anagram fodder was.
I liked SOFTLY, LARGISH, LILLE and EGGCUPS (the toast soldiers reminded me of what my mother used to say when I was little (and I have just found out that it refers to the soldiers who went to rescue Humpty Dumpty when he had his “great fall.”)
New: HARD ROW TO HOE, REFRESHER = a sweetie. After a quick google search, it seems to be a lolly brand?
Thanks, both.
I think that 1ac works fine. With the word UNSTRAPS, the first S (a little Sarong ) shifts to the front -> SUNTRAPS.
John, in your preamble did you mean setters or solvers in this bit:
“The aim, surely, is to have some sort of a gateway crossword which encourages new setters, and in its present form the Everyman crossword fails to do so, I should have thought.”
If you meant solvers, I agree with you.
Michelle, Refreshers were (are?) variously coloured suckable sweets packaged in paper tubes.
Yes refresher was a dnk, but you must be a youngster, michelle, not to have heard hard row to hoe, which to me (70-something) it feels like a commonplace. Quite a meaty puzzle, thanks EnJ.
MEatBALLS and EGGCups needed all the crossers before I figured them out but both were satisfying answers. I think 1a was deliberately tempting us into thinking it was something complicated when it was very , very simple. The crossers there resulted in more of a ‘duh’ moment than an ‘aha’ moment. But overall many thanks to Everyman for last Sunday’s entertainment and to John for his blog.
Nice to be reminded of Refreshers.
Thanks for the blog John.
I took 26a to be a double definition, but it is a bit stretched.
Everyman is variable in more than difficulty as there is usually the rhyming pair, but not always. However, the “initial” type clue is always there. Then there are days that use alliteration rather than rhyme. I am never quite sure what combination it will be.
Yes, this one did take longer to solve than most.
Thanks for a very thoughtful blog, I really liked REFRESHER and THORNIEST.
I have never heard HARD ROW TO HOE and I do like all these old sayings, Grant @5 confims it is (was) common.
I think ARMOIRES is a bit of a stretch , quite obscure really, maybe only one word would fit in the grid at that point. I know the MOIRE effect from X-ray astronomy or I would have struggled with this.
The fret isn’t the guitar neck. They are all the little metal strips across it so the clue makes sense. Mind you, it’s a bit obscure if you’re not a guitar player.
Everyman is no longer a Sunday stroll.
I agree with John’s comments that Everyman used to be an opportunity for people like me.
No longer, shame.
Gliddofglood @10, yes, but I suppose a guitar neck is full of frets.
Found this one harder than usual and in the end sadly had to use an aid to get my last two – EGGCUPS, MEATBALLS – very annoying.
Like Michelle @ 3 took a while to work out the anagram fodder for 9d.
Favourites were FRETWORK, SOFTLY, REFRESHER, ESSAYIST
Thanks Everyman and John
Quite a difficult one but all fair I think, even if a few surfaces were clunky.
I parsed 1A the same way as JohnE@1 and 17D as MOIRE in A R’S using the possessive, I think that works OK and also solves the plural problem.
Thanks John and Everyman.
If you parse “A Queen’s” as AR’S then you don’t have the problem with plural ARMOIRE?
We already have the Monday Cryptic and the Quiptic which are both usually at the lower end of the difficulty scale do we need a third?
Thanks Everyman and John.
I can understand the overthinking of 1a – took me a long time to see that one, even though it’s blindingly obvious. What I think is often the case with Everyman is not that the clues are difficult as such but that they can be quite convoluted, with wordy clues and lots of itty-bitty wordplay (9d and 19d being prime examples), and I suspect this is what makes them not so “beginner friendly”. Personally, I find them about the right level of challenge for a Sunday morning, but YMMV.
I agree with Mystogre @8 that 26 is simply a double definition. It’s just that the two definitions are opposites. Not the first time I’ve seen this word clued in this way.
HARD ROW TO HOE was new for me too, but very gettable, and the meaning of the phrase is self evident.
As an aside, there are two types of sweetie called REFRESHERS – the hard round tablets mentioned by John E @4 being probably the more famous ones, but I always preferred the other type, which were yellow chews with a sherbet filling. Used to spend quite a lot of my pocket money on those. No idea which came first – both are quite venerable.
Thanks John. Enjoyed your blog on this one. Worst performance at Everyman I’ve had in a couple of years I think.
For 19d is Dan not the ranking system for Practitioners and a judoka is the term for the practitioner themselves? Might be splitting hairs but I was frustrated by this puzzle!
I enjoyed this one a lot, pitched just right for this (relative) newbie. Several write-ins, some that took a bit of thought, and a couple of stretchers.
Incidentally, my daily walk takes me right past the sweet factory where Swizzles make Refreshers. An olfactory delight.
TP@17 I had the same thought as you that judoka was perhaps more accurate, but Chambers lists DAN as both a level of proficiency in Japanese combative sports, or a person who has gained such a level. So I think it’s acceptable.
I found this on the hard side for an Everyman, too, though there were some nice clues like THORNIEST and ROUSSEAU. I don’t object to Everyman becoming a little more challenging, but I suppose I would prefer to know roughly what to expect.
Thanks, John. You have described my thoughts almost exactly. One week I almost dash it off, another I’m still scratching my head on and off through the day. 1a says a lot: is it clever to put in such an easy clue? Bodycheetah wonders if it is too much to have 3 “entry level” crosswords but if one reads particularly the Quiptic comments, many of these are nowhere near this. I will stand up for Everyman being “entry level” , if this is what it is, as there are so many others (not always in the Guardian/Observer press) that tax the brains of the more experienced solver. A little satisfaction with completing Everyman on a Sunday is still a small pleasure. As Petert says, knowing what to expect would be pretty good. In the days when prizes were offered, I did actually win it 3 times; that did give an extra frisson. I spent my book tokens with great care and I have also two sets of reference books as part of the prize. Monetary value? Negligible. Pleasure value? Huge.
Yes, I wrote ‘difficult’ on top of this one. However, it was good to finish.
At the beginning, I thought 10 was fretted, which slowed me down a bit. I did enjoy EGG CUPS, but I hadn’t heard of HARD ROW TO HOE. I don’t think that the grammar really works for 1D; to me, that would give ‘ofslyt.’ ‘Hidden’ would, I think, give the right parsing but would have destroyed the surface.
WHISTLER needed some GK, but I think I’ve seen this before in crosswords.
Thanks Everyman and John.
Robi@22: I had the same quibble with 1d, but Everyman is fond of these unclear inclusions where you don’t know which goes inside what. The other irritating mannerism is defining the first letter of a word as “a bit of Word” or “a little Word”. There are examples of both in today’s puzzle.
I haven’t found Everyman to be an entry level puzzle for some time now.
gladys @23: “a bit of” (or similar) to mean the first letter of a word is certainly not peculiar to Everyman – it’s a long-standing crossword convention. Don Manley in the Chambers Crossword Manual (1986) gives this example:
A bit of trouble with relation’s reproach (5)
for TAUNT. He says “A bit should always mean the first letter – this is a convention which has become a useful rule”. Personally I think it’s a convention that doesn’t have much logic to it, but you can’t blame Everyman for it.
I enjoyed this as I usually do. Thanks as always Everyman.
Fell at the post, embarrassingly, with 19d CANADA. I didn’t know AC for athletic club, nor anything about judo practitioners, and I figured amateur could be any one of the crosser As, so I bunged in PANAMA unparsed. Doubly embarrassing, given that I live in the capital of 19d.
I always thought that the plural of flora was flora, but the solution to 5a FLORAE was obvious, so no problem there. Best clue for me was 1d SOFTLY, for the misdirected definition (piano being something other than P)
Thanks Everyman and John for te afternoon’s diversion.
SOFTLY seems to have been liked by a few people here, which just goes to show that a setter is never going to please everyone.
I’m still struggling to think how one could frequently hide a piano, but there we are.
Thanks John for the comforting knowledge that I was not the only one to make a meal of SUNTRAPS, Heath Robinson would have been proud of my various attempts to parse it, but LOI was MEATBALL as I just didn’t think of them as a topping for some reason. Thanks also Grantinfreo@5 for acknowledging “hard row to hoe” – I had never heard that before, as is sometimes the case with expressions in crosswords, and I am always interested in whether there is a clear age/geographical/whatever demarcation line. Anyway this challenge occupied the time nicely on a train journey so thanks Everyman.
Like robi, I had FRETTED for 10ac, which slowed me down for a while. FRETFUL is clearly the better answer. I’d never heard of SUNTRAPS or REFRESHERs, but I don’t blame Everyman for my ignorance.
Like cellomaniac, I guessed an unparsed PANAMA for 19dn, so in the end this puzzle defeated me. I couldn’t manage to parse 9dn — it never occurred to me that ROAST would be the anagrind, or that the fodder would be split. I’m not sure I see how ROAST works as an anagrind — even ROASTED seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but better than ROAST.
Hadn’t heard of an Armoire and assumed AR was the Anne version of ER. Maybe not.
Parsed 1a correctly to my surprise
1D was marginal both for its wordplay sequence and surface.
On the whole this was okay for an Everyman, but I agree with many of the sentiments expressed by John and others.
A little difficult but on the whole very enjoyable. I liked 10a, 11a, 4d, 7d and 17d, but failed to parse 21a. Everyman is up to his saucy tricks again with a topless bride and a lusty model.
The only person I could think of who painted his mum was Whistler so that was easy and brought a smile. Loved “fretful”, haha. Took forever to get 9d, probably due to being a laconic Kiwi – we tend to say “use-by date”. Thanks for the entertainment and explanations.
Robbie, Auckland.
13a new to me; 10a tricky.
Really liked eggcups.
But amoires – really?
Very tough. Certainly not “entry level” by any standard.
Needed lots of wildcard dictionary help. My wildcard dictionaries could not find “eggcups” as a single word.
Only “egg cups”. Nonetheless “eggcups” was “obviously” the answer.
Never heard of “refresher” as a sweet/lolly; only as a course by means of which one refreshes one’s knowledge of some subject.
I thought that “Whistler” was so trivial as to be non-cryptic.
Like Gazzh@27 I didn’t (and don’t!) think of meatballs as a *topping* for spaghetti. A component of a sauce, but not a topping.