Everyman 3,928

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3928.

No alliteration or rhyming pair, but in 4D a clue which I think deserves special mention.

ACROSS
1 PROSCENIUM
Music prone to blast in theatrical feature (10)
An anagram (‘to blast’) of ‘music prone’.
6 ACTS
Apostles’ contribution to Scripture, primarily? (4)
The ‘primarily’ clue.
9 GAS TURBINE
Performing, a singer – but one full of hot air? (3,7)
An anagram (‘performing’) of ‘a singer but’.
10 DRAB
Gloomy poet retires (4)
A reversal (‘retires’) of BARD (‘poet’).
12 TAKE THE HINT
Absorb costs: that includes unspecified amount, if you catch my drift (4,3,4)
An envelope (‘that includes’) of N (‘unspecified amount’) in TAKE THE HIT (‘absorb costs’).
15 NUREYEV
Thoroughbred who defected to the West? (7)
Double definition: the racehorse, and the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev after whom he was named.
16 DETROIT
Michigan city right to take in alien (7)
An envelope (‘to take in’) of ET (extraterrestrial, ‘alien’) in DROIT (‘right’)
17 ENABLED
Gave power to English knight, one that’s exhausted (7)
A charade of E (‘English’) plus N (‘knight’, chess notation) plus A (‘one’) plus BLED (‘exhausted’).
19 SARGENT
Bobby, we’re told, is a portraitist (7)
Sounds like (‘we’re told’) SERGEANT (‘bobby’, policeman), for John Singer Sargent.
20 PACE BOWLERS
They’re fast sportspeople, despite business attire (4,7)
A charade of PACE (generally pronounced pa-chay or thereabouts, ‘despite’) plus BOWLERS (‘business attire’)
23 ABUT
Lean on musical instrument, keeling over (4)
A reversal (‘keeling over’) of TUBA (‘musical instrument’).
24 ABSTEMIOUS
‘Restrained‘? Sadly, I mess about (10)
An anagram (‘sadly’) of ‘I mess about’.
25 SOBS
‘Help!’, bishop stifled howls (4)
An envelope (‘stifled’) of B (‘bishop’) in SOS (‘Help!’).
26 LYING AWAKE
Resting on a streak of foamy water is worrying (5,5)
A charade of LYING (‘resting’) plus ‘a’ plus WAKE (‘streak of foamy water’). “… with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety”.
DOWN
1 PAGE
Servant‘s sheet (4)
Double definition.
2 OAST
Brown bread, unopened oven (4)
A subtraction: [t]OAST (‘brown bread’, ‘brown’ as verb or adjective) minus the first letter (‘unopened’).
3 COUNTRY CLUBS
Perhaps Chad irons (perhaps) in leisure centres (7,5)
Two ‘perhaps’es, two indications by example: COUNTRY (‘perhaps Chad’) plus CLUBS (‘irons perhaps’).
4 NABOKOV
Naturalised American – Vladimir, initially – harbouring troublesome book? (7)
An envelope (‘harbouring’) of BOKO, an anagram (‘troublesome’) of ‘book’ in N A V (‘Naturalised American Vladimir initially’), with a splendid &lit definition, with the ‘book’ being Lolita.
5 UNNOTED
Disregarded some fun (not educational) (7)
A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘fUN NOT EDucational’.
7 CARNIVORES
Key groups including four subordinate to American Navy Seals? (10)
An envelope (‘including’) of A (‘American’) plus RN (Royal ‘Navy’ – not American) plus IV (Roman numeral (‘four’) in CORES (‘key groups’). ‘Subordinate’ gives the order of the particles in the down light, and the question mark gives the indication by example.
8 SUBSTITUTE
Proxy – but it set us up (10)
An anagram (‘up’) of ‘but it set us’.
11 WESTERN SAMOA
Awareness Tom displayed in former sovereign state (7,5)
An anagram (‘displayed’) of ‘awareness Tom’. Now, just Samoa, or, officially. the Independent State of Samoa.
13 INTERPLAYS
Examples of teamwork when party line’s neglected (10)
An anagram (‘neglected’ – one of Everyman’s adventurous anagrinds) of ‘party lines’.
14 BREADCRUMB
Bachelor explored book about odd British component of Scotch egg (10)
A charade of B (‘bachelor’) plus READ (‘explored book’) plus C (circa, ‘about’) plus RUM (‘odd’) plus B (‘British’). You would need more than one for a Scotch egg.
18 DOWN BOY
Covered in hair, suffused with bad smell: steady on! (4,3)
An envelope (‘suffused with’) of BO (‘bad smell’) in DOWNY (‘covered in hair’).
19 SLEPT IN
Wickedness overcoming the French pastor, model lingered in bed (5,2)
An envelope (‘overcoming’) of LE (‘the French’) plus P (‘pastor’ – yes, it’s in Chambers’) plus T (Ford ‘model’) in SIN (‘wickedness’).
21 SOFA
Comfy spot Francis of Assisi hides (4)
A hidden answer (‘hides’) in ‘FranciS OF Assisi’.
22 ISLE
Rum, perhaps? Reportedly, Everyman will (4)
Sounds like (‘reportedly’) I’LL (‘Everyman will’), with the Scottish island as example.

picture of the completed grid

40 comments on “Everyman 3,928”

  1. Had PACE SETTERS instead of PACE BOWLERS at first although couldn’t parse it. So that delayed me getting COUNTRY CLUBS and DOWN BOY (which is one of my favourites).

    Couldn’t see how to parse CARNIVORES.

    I also loved NABOKOV and BREADCRUMB, LYING AWAKE (took me ages to parse the second word) were among other favourites

    Thanks Everyman and PierreO

  2. Liked the NaBOKOV and NUREYEV combination. My LOI was SARGENT where I held myself up by ruling out sergeant as a synonym for bobby and also being ignorant of how the painter spelt his name! I still think the clue needed a ‘bobby, say’ rather than plain ‘bobby’. Good Sunday fun. Thanks Everyman and PeterO.

  3. Thanks Everyman, and thanks to PeterO for slipping in the quote from the Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare Song at 26D.

  4. Thanks for the blog, I thought the horse and dancer were called NIJINSKY ?? was there also a horse called NUREYEV ?

  5. I also had BROWN BREAD = ( dead ) = TOAST which I think also works.
    Many good clues here, totally agree about NABOKOV , FIONA ANNE has named my other favourites.
    CARNIVORES is very clever and quite tricky.
    ( I hope your mouth feels better, dental anaesthetic gives the strangest feeling in the lips )

  6. Tuba? Musical instrument? Really? Just kidding – in a brass quintet (quintette to muffin 🙂 ), it’s the glue that holds the music together.

    Lots of good stuff here, including 4d NABOKOV as others have noted, and the devious misdirection in 7d with the American Navy Seals.

    I was slowed a bit looking for the absent connected pairs or the alliterations. Mind you, if you look hard enough you can find things, even if they’re not there – how about country/Samoa and western/club(sandwiches).

    Thanks Everyman and PeterO (I second yesterday’s Laphroaig recommendation) for the fun.

  7. That’s Peter O and Everyman. Also loved 4D and14D. One loose end for us was ‘droit’ in 16A…..got it, but surprised it was clued as French….

  8. Roz @4, yes there were racehorses called Nureyev and Nijinski.
    Nijinski was probably more famous, but they were both sired by the thoroughbred Canadian horse ’Northern Dancer’, hence the dancing connection

  12. Whilst I finished it, I found this one to be the least satisfying Everyman in quite some while. I, too, originally thought of Nijinski prior to Nureyev but that obviously wasn’t going to work. And then when I thought of Nureyev, my first instinct was to refrain from putting it in, simply because I figured the least letter wouldn’t work with anything else. Only when I got to the downs did I realise I’d clearly been correct.

  13. Roz
    NIJINSKY is much more famous, but NUREYEV was infamous for coming first in the 2000 Guineas (one of the “classic” races), but being disqualified.

  14. Had a bit more trouble with this than normal for everyman, and I also missed the trademarks (apart form the ‘initially’ one). Again I got some help from Anna – she is beginning to show quite a bit of interest in doing these together. Lovely. Thanks, Everyman and PeterO.

  15. Found this super hard. DNF…and there was me feeling all clever and putting Shapiro for 19A (lawyer + Chapiro the painter) which meant it was even harder until I realized Sargent. Very humbling : ( Thanks for all the help here.

  20. Well done DuncT for spotting COUNTRY and WESTERN as the pair.

    Re the pronunciation of pace, I think we may have had this discussion before. In the traditional English pronunciation of Latin (still much used by lawyers, eg affidavit, sub judice) it sounds like ‘pacy’. The Ecclesiastical/Italianate pronunciation (much used by singers) would of course be pa-chay/pah-chay, as PeterO says. If you were trying to be authentically Classical (which I don’t think anyone does with pace) it would be pah-kay.

    Lovely puzzle, thanks Everyman; and best wishes to PeterO, hope the dismal headache clears up. I gather your part of the world is cold as an icicle – at least you don’t have to cross Salisbury Plain on a bicycle.

  21. Found myself placing question marks next to nearly all the clues, as definitions were too loose either for answers or subsidiary parts of them. The cluing mechanics questionable in one or two as well, for me at any rate, so not a particularly enjoyable solve.

  22. Thanks for the blog PeterO. Thorough as ever. I found this surprisingly tough by Everyman’s recent standards, hence I put it aside half complete and only got round to finishing it this morning.

    NABOKOV is indeed a splendid clue – and because that’s one of the few that came to me easily, I didn’t have the same problem as others over NUREYEV/NIJINSKI (and I’ve heard of both horses). Though I did have the same problem as Fiona Anne in initially entering PACE SETTERS…

    Thanks for the challenge, Everyman! Now to look at today’s offering…

  23. phil elston @18
    Emoji noted, but for the record I have access to that line of the blog only indirectly, as the date I choose for its publication. It does not reflect the date the puzzle appeared in the Observer (23rd), nor the date I entered the blog (22nd) nor the date I finally got around to proofreading it (29th), nor yet the date it appears in the publication used by most of our NZ contributors (some date weeks in the future). Work that one out. Pierre does include the Observer date in his title line, but I feel that the puzzle number is more pertinent.
    Roz @4 etc.
    The horses Nijinsky and Nureyev were half-brothers, sired by Northern Dancer, with the former having the more successful career. However, in the clue’s second definition, ‘defected to the West’ surely indicates Rudolf Nureyev, since Vaslav Nijinsky was born in Ukraine to Polish parents and grew up in Imperial Russia, leaving to tour the world before the revolution. According to Wikipedia, the disqualification was in 1980.

  24. DNF, due to not getting DOWN BOY, as all I could see was PACE BLAZERS which didn’t make sense to me … I face pace bowlers 4 months of the year! Doi!

    I thought the island was Rhum?

  25. Thank you Peter O , I knew it was Nureyev because of the defection and the number of letters, but had no idea of the connection to the thoroughbred.

  27. [PeterO, how did you fare in the storm out there on Long Island, which really got whacked? You’re entitled to use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety. It wasn’t bad in north central Connecticut.]

    Fine puzzle and blog, thanks both.

  28. I’m another who did not find this the most satisfying of solves, I’m afraid.

    Are expressions such as PACE BOWLERS, LYING AWAKE and DOWN BOY really cast-iron contenders for inclusion in a crossword? I’m not completely sure myself, while both INTERPLAYS, in the plural, and UNNOTED, as a word, whilst not out of court in the English language, felt a little odd to me to be seen in a crossword grid.

    I would have thought compilers should seek to avoid anything that’s on the edge in the above respects, but who am I to say but a punter.

  29. DuncT@17 and essexboy@20, good spot indeed (C&W) – and a great line from a wonderful movie.
    Thanks PeterO and essexboy for the nightmarish reminder of G&S’s surrealistic patter song. ladygewgaw@28, I hope 26a LYING AWAKE leads you to that song, if you don’t already know it. It’s brilliant.

  30. lady gewgaw @28
    I feel that your judgement is a little harsh. PACE BOWLERS is an accepted cricketing term, as an alternative to fast bowlers – Wikipedia seems ambivalent which is preferable: the relevant article is headed Fast Bowling, but starts off “Pace bowling (also referred to as fast bowling) …” Unless, of course, your point is that cricketing terms should be expunged altogether from crosswords. LYING AWAKE is perhaps more open to argument, but as my blog hinted, the Nightmare Song seems to me justification enough. I would recognise DOWN BOY as a command to a dog, or, colloquially, to a person as if to a dog.
    [Valentine @ 27
    We seem to have been hit harder than expected. By the looks of the ploughed pathways, we had not much short of 2 ft. I live in a condo with on-road parking, so that while the paths and roads are promptly ploughed out, the cars are ploughed in. I shall probably stay indoors until it warms up midweek. or otherwise I would have to fight my way through a berm of compacted icy snow before clearing the car. It will still require some work, but I will take all the help I can get from nature.]

  31. I was just about to thank you PeterO for the Rundgren pointer, which unfortunately I’d missed when reading through your rather good blog. For cellomaniac thanks too, though I have been into TR and Utopia etc for many years. I try to listen to things he has produced as well, as they usually turn out to be quite good.

    As for your comment on my #28 PeterO, certainly we can’t have cricketing terms removed as that would be sacrilege 🙂 However, Everyman doesn’t seem to have been alive to the connection you’ve described as to the Rundgren lyric, so I remain unconvinced for that one at least.

    PS was it you mentioning something awful to do with teeth? If so, I wish you well with all of that. Unfortunately I too am no stranger to the perils of Hampstead Heath, if you take my meaning.

  32. White Devil @24, Rum (possibly more correctly Rùm with a grave accent?) is the accepted spelling. Rhum with an h was a Victorian affectation, now rarely used.

    I found this puzzle fairly difficult, but I’m not sure there’s anything unfairly clued, and I certainly don’t see anything wrong with the grid fill. I rather liked BREADCRUMB for its slightly amusing definition.

  33. I think the characteristics we get each week should be considered the alliteration, like this week, or a connected pair which are not necessarily rhyming. Then there is initial clue as well.
    As always I mainly enjoyed this but muttered at the clueing a few times. NABOKOV was great.
    Thanks to both.

  34. I now see from Lady G@31 that the TR that keeps recurring must be Todd Rundgren, about whom I know nothing beyond his name and that he’s a recording artist. How does he figure in all this?

    [Peter, I’m glad you’re in a position to stay inside till you can excavate your car more easily. My drive will be easier to clear, and the snow isn’t packed hard.]

  36. I think this, compared to the last few weeks’ efforts, is as good an argument for there being multiple setters as we’ve had to date. I thoroughly enjoyed having more chewy, witty and erudite clues – long may it continue!

  38. I liked this one too and did quite well despite having no idea what a proscenium is or the horsey business
    I started out with Officer for the portraitist who I think does or did exist but then knew it was wrong with slept in
    Never heard of parchay but happy to learn

Comments are closed.