Everyman 3,915

by

The Observer crossword from Oct 24, 2021
A generally smooth offering from Everyman, with not much to frighten the horses.

First thing I noticed was the low number of ‘composite solutions’, substantially lower than average for an Everyman crossword.
No rhyming couples today but we’ll have our setter in his (or her, who knows, not me) alliteration mode.
1ac, 25ac and 4dn all have F-words!

ACROSS
1 FELLOW FEELING
Academic point of view produces sympathy (6,7)
FELLOW (academic) + FEELING (point of view)
8 PSIS
Post-It’s regularly showing trident shapes (4)
Regular choice of letters, the odd ones, from: POST-IT’S
Think of this Greek character:  
9 TANGENTIAL
Bungling tail captures spy concealing note that’s irrelevant (10)
Anagram [bungling] of TAIL around AGENT (spy) with N (note) going inside
10 DUSTER
One might add fine powder; more often, one removes it (6)
Double definition
One of these words that can have opposite meanings – nice clue (even if I think ‘more often’ is a bit of padding).
11 ASTEROID
A performance-enhancing drug for a flier (8)
A + STEROID (performance-enhancing drug)
12 LEASTWAYS
However casually learner is given direction, styles ensue (9)
L (learner) + EAST (direction), followed by WAYS (styles)
14 ILLS
Misfortune: Everyman is going to speechify at the opening (4)
I’LL (Everyman is going to, I will) + S[peechify]
15 NAVY
Seamen like part of a church, we’re told? (4)
Double definition
The words “we’re told” suggest a homophone but that’s not really the case here. Well, sort of.
The second definition is a bit whimsical – the clue could have ended after ‘church’ with just a question mark.
Others, like paddymelon @1, may think the homophone is needed.
However, I was more thinking along the lines as explained by essexboy @12.
16 BON VOYAGE
Genova resort with boy making safe journey (3,6)
Anagram [resort] of: GENOVA + BOY
Have a good look at previous Everyman crosswords and you will see that ‘resort’ is one of his favourite anagram indicators.
20 STEEPEST
Most expensive horse doesn’t finish – bother! (8)
STEE (which is STEED (horse) minus the D at the end) + PEST (bother)
21 RHODES
Greek island reportedly closes? (6)
Homophone [reportedly] of: ROADS (closes)
In the last ten years or so, I lived in a street in Cambridge (three, actually) ending in “…. Close” – small, quiet, esp. dead-end roads (according to Chambers).
23 LAKE MALAWI
Walk Amelia round body of water (4,6)
Anagram [round] of: WALK AMELIA
Also known as Lake Nyasa (in Tanzania) or Lago Niassa (in Mozambique – sounds Italian to me).
24 AMID
Enclosed by what pyramids must enclose (4)
Hidden solution [what …. must enclose]: PYRAMIDS
25 FLASH FLOODING
Battered half of old sign seen in cataclysmic weather (5,8)
Anagram [battered] of: HALF OF OLD SIGN
And it happens again (and again and again). 
DOWN
1 FISSURE
Fussier tailoring producing slit (7)
Anagram [tailoring] of: FUSSIER
2 LISZT
Catalogue includes unknown composer (5)
LIST (catalogue) around Z (unknown, in Maths, for example)
3 OUTGREW
Wore pants with gut that’s got too big for? (7)
Anagram [pants] of: WORE + GUT
Who will be today the first to ‘complain’ about Everyman’s love for ‘pants’?  🙂
4 FANTASY FOOTBALL
Loyal staff running with baton in team-building exercise (7,8)
Anagram [running] of: LOYAL STAFF + BATON
5 EVENTS
Fixtures in north taken on by northbound Redgrave? (6)
N (north) inside a reversal of STEVE (Redgrave, Steve Redgrave, Olympian)
No, not Vanessa or the like.
But this Steve.
6 INTERPLAY
Dramatist not beginning his work, ‘Give And Take‘ (9)
INTER (which is PINTER minus the P at the start) + PLAY (his i.e. a dramatist’s work)
In clues such as this I always hope that the ‘work’, as in this case, ‘Give And Take’ is really a ‘work’.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a theatre play with that title.
7 GRATINS
Some detecting rat in some French dishes (7)
Hidden solution [some]: DETECTING RAT IN SOME
13 SOVIET ERA
Revolutionary operatives losing power: it ended with glasnost (6,3)
Anagram [revolutionary] of: OPERATIVES minus P (power)
Who can still remember Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), winner of the 1990 Nobel peace prize, really making an effort to make the world a better place?
15 NOT HALF
Tense following refusal. Little drink? Absolutely (3,4)
T (tense) following NO (refusal), then: + HALF (little drink, half a pint, for example)
17 VERTIGO
From advert, I got a queasy feeling (7)
Hidden solution [from]: ADVERT I GOT
18 GREYING
What gingery may become? (7)
Anagram […. may become] of: GINGERY
Nothing underlined here as it is what we here call a CAD (Clue-As-Definition) – or an &lit, in other places).
I immediately had to think of the lovely Bonnie Raitt (but she sort of managed to hide it!).
19 SERAPH
Supremely ethereal, revered angel playing horn, primarily? (6)
The first letters [primarily] of the first six words in the clue: Supremely Ethereal etc
22 OMANI
Yemeni’s neighbour soon to be rising (5)
Reversal [to be rising] of: IN A MO (soon)

45 comments on “Everyman 3,915”

  1. Thank you Sil and Everyman. I particularly enjoyed the picture book surfaces.

    I thought ‘we’re told’ in NAVY was needed because I didn’t think there was such a word as nave-y.
    Liked GREYING, for the images and the succinctness of the clue.
    SERAPH was an excellent example of the primarly clue IMHO.
    I don’t mind misdirection with capital letters and punctuation, eg ‘Give and Take’ in INTERPLAY. Adds to the fun.

  2. I must be learning. As soon as I saw the grid, I thought ‘alliteration’. As I then got FELLOW FEELING straightaway, I filled in the other ‘F’s then and there. Very helpful. I’m not sure about 21a – RHODES – as I write on the day of publication – is there another Greek island I haven’t thought of that fits the crossers and sounds like a word meaning ‘closes’? because I can’t see that Rhodes/roads does. I guess I’ll find out next week when the blog is published [Thanks, Sil – but a close is rather too small to be called a road IMHO]. For 5d, I was going through Michael, Vanessa, Lyn, Corin – did they have a brother Steve? but it turns out there is an entirely (presumably) unrelated rower of that ilk. GREYING is a neat anagram. Thanks, Everyman and Sil.

  3. It took me longest to solve 10ac DUSTER.

    Favourites: PSIS, INTERPLAY, STEEPEST, ASTEROID.

    New: FANTASY FOOTBALL, rower Steve Redgrave for 5d.

    Thanks, both.

    I agree with paddymelon@1 that 15ac works if we think of it as nave-y (a word that does not exist)

  4. DUStER was my LOI which I’d not realised was a DD. I thought it was Dust ( fine powder) and ER (one might add) but I was puzzled at no indicator for the reversal. I also stared at RHodes after the crossers required it before I remembered ‘Something Close’ as a street name. (TassieTim @2) I don’t think there is any lower limit to allow something to count as a road. If the council maintains it and allows the public to drive on it then I think it’s a road. I didn’t know Lake Malawi but i was happy to assume it’s existence once I had some crossers. Similarly the mysterious Steve Redgrave.

    Fun but did not take up too much of Sunday!
    Thanks to setter and Sil.

  5. My favourite was 11a – sometimes its the simplest thing, or maybe it was the time I spent trying to find a bird laced with EPO. I also like the fate of gingery. Thanks Sil & Everyman.

  6. TassieTim@2 and CanberraGirl@4. I also had a sense that Close wasn’t a subset of Roads, and was going to comment, but Sil said it was in Chambers, so withdrew. Maybe it’s because we have some pretty major Roads, and very few Closes, and the contrast between the two is usually quite significant.
    Don’t know what I’d lump them both in with. Thoroughfare? Who says ‘thoroughfare’ these days? , but then a Close is not a ‘thoroughfare’ . It’s a road to nowhere.

    Trying to come up with a semantic hierarchy, I might call them both streets, as in what street do you live in, like an address, a road being a big one, and a close being a dead-end one. Funnily enough I live in a dead-end street, which has only about 8 houses on either side. It was named a Road in the 1950s, when the 2 or 3 original residents lived in tents and built their homes. Since the 1980s it has been called an Avenue. Rough surface, no footpath, no gutters, no planted trees, only the odd gum that’s survived of its own accord. Not what I imagine the British would call an Avenue, not what I would call a Close.

  7. Thanks for the blog, agree this was a pretty sound effort with a lot of neat clues.
    DUSTER , I suspect they are used more often for cleaning than say for dusting the top of a cake.
    CLOSE=ROAD ? never sure about street names really and a lot of good ideas above.
    ASTEROID as a flier ? not totally convinced, they simply move in straight lines through curved space-time with no element of propulsion at all. Perhaps flier can refer to something moving quickly which would do.
    Who is keeping track of the alliteration letters ? Jay I think.

  8. Here we go with yet another “pants” anagrind. In my opinion it’s one that lends itself to good surfaces – as with this one (3d OUTGREW) – more than the usual “confused”, “mangled”, etc., so I have no complaint with its frequent use. Sorry, Sil, you’ll have to wait. 🙂

    Thanks Everyman for the smooth fun, and Sil for the entertaining blog.

  11. Like Michelle @3 and CanberraGirl @4 my LOI was DUSTER. I got all the others last Sunday but the penny didn’t drop on this one till yesterday.

    Also spent ages trying to find a member of the acting family for 5d.

    Liked ASTEROID, VERTIGO, OMANI, INTERPLAY.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil

  12. ‘Lago Niassa’ is indeed Italian, but it’s also Portuguese – Mozambique was a Portuguese colony, and it’s still the official and most widely spoken language. In the Chichewa/Chiyao languages, ‘niassa’ means ‘lake’, so Lago Niassa means Lake Lake. [We’ve had discussions on tautological place names previously – they include not only the well-known River Avon, but also apparently the River Ouse and even Canvey Island!]. The name MALAWI (previously Nyasaland) is said to come from the Chichewa word for ‘flames’, after the appearance of the sunrise over Lake Malawi (from the Malawian side).

    I was going to complain about ASTEROIDS not having wings, but thanks Roz @7 for providing a justification. However I will have a mini-moan about TANGENTIAL, which means barely relevant rather than irrelevant.

    pdm/michelle – I think Sil’s point about 15ac is that if we allow the ‘whimsical’ definition of ‘like a nave’ (a device which Paul often indicates with just a question mark), then a natural spelling for that would indeed be ‘navy’, on the pattern of ‘wavy’ being ‘like a wave’ – hence no need for a homophone indicator to change it from ‘navey’.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil.

  13. MrEssexboy@12, fascinating on the place names. I can add a bit of local knowledge , Pendle Hill apparently means ” hill hill hill ” but I do not know the actual derivation. It is famous for witch trials and popular at Halloween, although not tonight I suspect.

  14. [Roz @13: thanks for ‘hill hill hill’! I had to look it up, but yes, the ‘Pendle’ seems to be derived from Cumbric pen + Old English hyll. The ‘d’ got inserted by a process known as epenthesis (same principle as the ‘p’ in ‘Thompson’ and ‘t’ in ‘prince’!). “The modern English ‘hill’ was appended later, after the original meaning of Pendle had become opaque” (wiki).

    Cumbric was a Celtic language spoken in your part of the world up to the early Middle Ages, closely related to Welsh, Cornish and Breton. There are quite a few place names beginning ‘Pen/Pem’ in Wales and Cornwall, eg Pembroke where it means ‘head’ rather than ‘hill’. The ‘pen’ in the French name ‘Le Pen’ (sorry for bringing it up!) is actually Breton, so it could be translated ‘the boss’.]

  16. I thought FANTASY FOOTBALL was great with the definition itself being semi cryptic. I initially had doubts about SOVIET ERA, thinking, well that didn’t end when glasnost started. But on reflection, the glasnost period was the final period of the Soviet Union, so decided it was ok.

    Many thanks Everyman and Sil.

  18. Roz@7, yes it was me! Here’s the list of previous 1a (6,7) solutions I know of: rabble rousing, bunsen burners, cruise control, murder mystery, secret service, get the giggles, county council, pyjama parties, liquid lunches, and now fellow feeling.

    It’s surprising how many expressions there are which fit this format, I thought of temper tantrum, femmes fatales, patent pending, Herbie Hancock, Corpus Christi …

  19. essexboy@14

    an epenthetic ‘t’ in prince 🙂

    A pointer to ‘prints’, which may or may not sound princely. Seen setters hounded in this context. Seen some doggedly defend the ‘t’ in ‘prince’.

  20. Jay@18 impressive! I can only add Chubby Checker. Interested to see if one of them turns up next time.

  21. Petert @17: my thoughts exactly 🙂 (and I’m afraid in my case the proportion of tangentiality may be considerably more than 50%!)

    [Kurukveera @19 – there’s quite a bit of hounding/dogged defending in the comments on this blog]

  22. I thought that this was more straightforward than some previous Everyman crosswords.

    I carelessly put in ‘alas’ for 14 without parsing properly and thinking: “That was a good use of ‘alias’ for Everyman; it makes a change!” I agree with Sil and CanberraGirl @4 that a close is a road, no need for any further justification. I particularly liked OUTGREW with its pants.

    Thanks Everyman and Sil.

  26. Roz@7, an eyebrow was also lifted here over ASTEROID, but your suggestion just about flies.

    It strikes me that loose synonyms are barely an issue with such a straightforward clue, but the confusion they add can make a difficult clue even harder to solve. I’m thinking of those occasions when the solution would be in doubt even with a clear cut synonym.

  27. Thanks Jay@18 and great suggestions everyone but all consonants, I was hoping for some big anagram of the first letters.

    [ I did manage to keep out of the last prints/prince debate but I did see the use of sonograms suggested by PDM and decided the whole thing could be solved using physics. ]

  28. Roz @27; the alliteration game could go on all day. Some (6,7) vowel ones:

    ATOPIC ALLERGY
    EIGHTY EIGHTHS
    IONIAN ISLANDS
    OXFORD ORATORY
    URANYL URANATE

  29. Thanks Everyman and Sil. I thought with was a strong effort from Everyman with lots of good clues – FANTASY FOOTBALL being my favourite.

    Agree with PM @1 re ‘nave-y’ – that’s exactly how I understood it.

    TT @2 – you could argue that a ‘road’ goes from A to B (eg between towns), while a ‘close’ is a dead end, but I think road is used generically so I’m happy with that one. (pm @6 – I would say road is the generic term)

    Sil re 3d/cellomaniac @8 – I’ve said all I need to say on that subject already and won’t bore everyone by repeating myself. The clue is fine. 🙂

    eb @12/Roz @13 – it’s possibly already been mentioned, but in case not: see also TORPENHOW, which is a concatenation of three words for hill. There is a hill near Torpenhow but alas it is not called Torpenhow Hill (except by internet smartarses).

    Jay @18 – *makes mental note to look out for these in future Everyman crosswords *

  30. Sil — you’ve got “tense preceding refusal” where the clue has “tense following refusal,” which is what it does.

    I live in Connecticut, and I’ve never heard of Pendleton Hill. Google brought me to a Pendleton Hill Road that connects the towns of Voluntown and North Stonington, but no place with just that name. The closest seem to be the Pendleton Hill Cemetery and a Pendleton Hill Brook. I wonder what they’re named for? And Tassie Tim, how ever did you find it?

  32. Jay @ 18

    I hope Everyman is reading your post and thinking up future puzzles to use your suggestions – and those of later contributors although I think those of Robi @28 are a bit obscure

  33. Paul @25: that’s good, but Chubby didn’t play the guitar, did he? Or is there some other connotation of “axeman” I’m missing? (Nothing rude I hope.)

  34. [Valentine, your post @30 led me down a fascinating little rabbit hole. I found a website called mapcarta.com, which shows Pendleton Hill as “a summit in Connecticut with an elevation of 502 feet”. Unlike Google Maps there are contours, from which one may deduce that Pendleton Hill is a fairly flat-topped hill, with the highest points just behind the First Baptist Church of North Stonington (see picture on their website). Their ‘History’ page says that “according to early church records, there were three doors in to the original church – one for the deacon, one for the women and one for the men. The pews were further divided, with men sitting on one side of the church and women on the other. The men and women were further divided according to their marital status”. I’m sure that was the case for a lot of historic churches, but they don’t all put it on their website!

    Mapcarta.com also shows ‘Other Places named Pendleton Hill’ in Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Waldo County, Maine.]

  37. Lord Jim@33, no twist to my clue sorry. Put that fail down to my relative youth, thinking all rockers of old were axemen.

  42. Late to the party and new to the blog. This was the first time I’ve finished an Everyman completely so I’m a bit pleased with myself, although I couldn’t parse a couple of the clues without help from here.
    All the comments on 21a are great. I didn’t even think about whether a road was a close or not. I’m just aware of roads around here being closed all the time for roadworks so that clicked. Of course since it’s pluralised (Rhodes/roads) that doesn’t really work with the wording ofvthe clue, but it got me there.
    Thanks everybody for your interesting on-going discussions.

  43. In NZ a dead end street is often called pppp place if it was built in the last sixty years.
    Quite helpful really – you don’t turn into it unless it’s where you want to go!
    I had an aunt lived Ina Close in Finchley..

  44. Good crossword. Now we know that pants can be used as an anagrind, the crossword will be easier!

  45. Nice crossword. Liked duster and Omani. I got navy but didn’t “get it” but now understand the “like” bit thanks yo explanations above, wave/wavy, nave/navy. Thanks all.

Comments are closed.