Everyman 3,929

72 comments on “Everyman 3,929”

1. Thanks john. Just a thought. Might only be me but I use a desktop with a large screen and I find the lime green link words a little difficult to read. A little darker would be good.

   Definitely a vote for ‘soldier’ in IGLOOS. Typist must have had frozen fingers.

   I liked WASTE NOT WANT NOT, for the indicator and the fodder and the syntax. I just liked it.

   My professors in the 70s wore ripped up academic gowns in protest at having to wear them at all. No tweeds down here.

2. And I was wondering about our pair today being the phrases with w … w ? They almost scan as well.

3. Ha – I read ‘solider’ as ‘soldier’, I now realise, so that didn’t cause me any concern. I also read ‘professorial’ as ‘professional’ but did realise that later. I never did get that answer . I had _W_E_IEST but couldn’t find a word that fitted the clue (closest was ‘dweebiest’). Even TWEEDIEST is a bit of a stretch, surely. I guess it is an oblique reference to the stereotype that professors – indeed, all academics – are supposed to wear tweed jackets (with leather elbow patches) but, like paddymelon, none of my profs/lectureres did. A very weak clue IMHO. I think you are right, paddymelon, about the three W…W answers. Some nice clues, but a few too many contrived ones. Thanks, Everyman and John.

4. I enjoyed this overall especially the fun clues. Wasn’t sure about parsing 13. I thought maybe UP refers to University of Pennsylvania, but is it just “at university”? Also can someone help me understand SOU = small change?
   Cheers John & Everyman.

5. Paul @4: “up” is Pommy slang for being at university, particularly Oxford or Cambridge. A sou was a small French coin, back in the pre-Euro days of Francs. I suspect it went out some time before the Euro came in.

6. For the first time in ages I found Everyman really heavy going and didn’t enjoy it much. Got there in the end but needed a bit of help unfortunately.

   PHOTOSHOP, WAGGISH and SPARROW were my favourites

   TWEEDIEST was my LOI and I didn’t get it either.

   Thanks to Everyman and

7. John (oooops)

8. Thanks for the blog, I was another to completely miss the solider.
   Agree that W is our alliteration triplet , another letter for Jay, not quite as good as usual , the word down the middle often ends in the same alliteration letter. MITTEN was my favourite.

9. I’ve been fascinated for years by the phrase ‘go up’ to (usually) Oxford or Cambridge at the beginning of studies, or the term.

   [I met a one time BBC journalist in the 70s at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, who told me he was ‘sent down’ from Oxford, meaning expelled for bad behaviour. His father was a Judge, and it’s an amusing irony that being sent down in a Court is to be sentenced to imprisonment, literally being sent down the stairs to the cells below.

   I don’t remember anyone being ‘sent down’ from Uni for bad behaviour at the ones I went to here in Oz. Too many people behaving badly perhaps, and too close a connotation with convict transportation. There were very vigilant about plagiarism though, which, if discovered, usually resulted in failure and having to leave anyway.

   The term for temporary suspension (again Oxbridge) is even more fascinating and amusing. ‘Rustication’ (from Wiki) ‘derives from the Latin word rus, countryside, to indicate that a student has been sent back to his or her family in the country, or from medieval Latin rustici, meaning “heathens or barbarians”.

   But it might be a mark of people destined for greater things. The Wiki list of the rusticated includes: (no first name needed) Milton, Dryden Shelley, Wilde, and Betjeman. ]

10. I thought that 6dn was needlessly obscure, and I only got it courtesy of the crossing letters – there aren’t too many possible solutions to H_I, the first part. CDs tend to annoy me anyway, as if the compiler couldn’t be bothered to come up with a constructional half for the clue. 16ac was my LOI because it was a >very English clue, and I’m not.

11. Thanks TT@5 (& PM@9 for interesting elaboration). A couple more bits for the memory banks.

12. Paul @ 11 , TT and PDM are quite correct but in my whole academic life I have never heard a single person say ” going up ” in this sense. I think it only remains in crosswords.

13. I had BLEH not BLAH, and think both are equally valid (if equally ugly).

    I think I’m going to stop doing Everyman: I haven’t enjoyed any of them since the new person took over.

14. Roz @12 – and period dramas on the Beeb.

15. The first Everyman I haven’t been able to finish in months, with about 5 clues I couldn’t get.
    Still, every day is a school day so I at least learnt some new words.

16. Thanks Everyman and John. I agree about the tortuous surfaces this week. Sorry to hear gladys hasn’t been enjoying the Everymen – for me they are mostly much more fun than this.

    I had an unfair advantage for 16a, as in my recollection all my tutors wore tweed jackets! Here’s Roger Penrose looking tweedy/professorial (not that I ever studied maths/physics/cosmology… at least not yet).

    [pdm @9 – ‘down’ = away from university also features in one of those apocryphal sayings attributed to Rev Spooner. “You have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures; and you have been caught fighting a liar in the quad. You will leave Oxford by the next town drain.”]

    ‘Describing’ = ‘going round’, as in 18d, is one of my pet peeves in crosswords. In the sense of ‘describing a circle’, it’s the line that is being traced, not a space that is being enclosed. Whether there is any enclosure involved depends entirely on what kind of figure is being marked out, not on the word ‘describe’.

    Not sure if Blah of this parish does Everyman, but if he drops in, congrats on the namecheck!

17. Roz@12 and you don’t wear tweeds either?

18. essexboy@16. Love the spoonerisms! Hilarious.

19. TT@12 of course and old novels, there is also something about London and trains , up trains and down trains, somebody here will know more ?
    Paul @ 17, tweeds are not really my style, when we have a 60s dance night the students say I am the only one who does not have to bother to dress up, not sureif that is an insult or compliment.
    MrEssexBoy@16 in projective geometry we have inscribed and described figures, more maths for you to study.

20. I had Sweetiest for 16 across (most insipid) but I couldn’t parse it

21. Thanks Roz @19, my education continues. Up = to London is definitely a thing in my part of the world, ‘up trains’ are London-bound. I always thought Mr Brown goes up to town on the 8.21, and that the pussy cat went up to London to visit the Queen, but apparently I misheard in both cases.

22. Thanks Everyman and John. I agree this was slightly harder and a little less polished than some recent Everymans but still had some lovely clues – HOI POLLOI made me laugh.

    I had no problem with TWEEDIEST – whether it’s in any dictionaries or not, I’ve definitely heard this usage before. Likewise “going up to the Varsity” is a phrase I’m familiar with – albeit probably from books rather than real life.

    Essexboy @16 – I have the same peeve over “without” (which means “outside” in the sense of “beyond” rather than “surrounding”) but words are defined by usage, and these have become established crossword conventions – along with “some” that John peeves about – so on the whole I think it’s best to admit defeat and move on. Ho hum!

23. I’m with gladys – there’s no reason why 14a can’t be BLEH. Both BLAH and BLEH are made-up words expressing a noise of displeasure. If only one is in a particular dictionary, the dictionary is wrong!

24. [ Thanks Eb@ 21 , Mr Brown definitely goes OFF to town , for the pussycat I have heard both UP and DOWN to London, different versions. ]

25. Thanks John.
    It wasnt until I read your blog that I discovered that what I had read as soldier was (and still is) solider. Not that it helped much as I found this one off my usual wavelength.

26. muffin@23 BLEH is not in my Chambers 93 but I agree it should be and is a valid answer. It may be in later editions. It was definitely a thing for the young at one stage but has been replaced by MEH largely.

27. I liked ECONOMIC, WASTE NOT WANT NOT and SOUFUL but I thought BLAH and TWEEDIEST were especially weak and I agree with John that the surfaces generally in this puzzle are distinctly clunky. Essexboy @16 is of course strictly right about “describes” but as with the use of “some” as a hidden indicator, it seems to me that the acid test is whether the clue is fair to the solver, and so long as the solver remembers that the setter need not “say what he means” I think these two are.
    I believe that on what is left of our railway system the UP line is the one for trains heading towards London and the DOWN line the one for trains leaving it behind. That, of course, doesn’t work on lines running E-W and it will be interesting to see what convention they dream up when East-West Rail gets completed (assuming it does). To add to the problem, EWR will link the two great university towns so the alternative convention won’t work either.

28. [NeilH@27 – maybe it will be known as the Contour Line.]

29. I liked SOULFUL, PHOTOSHOP, MITTEN (loi).
    I did not parse 6d and I also do not understand ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’!

    New: went to the wall = failed.

    Thanks, both

30. “Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
    Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
    Solider Aristotle played the taws
    Upon the bottom of a king of kings;…”

    From WB Yeats’s poem, ‘Among School Children’, alluding to the legend that Aristotle was tutor to the young Alexander the Great. I hate to think how many times, as a student, I read this as ‘soldier’ and puzzled as to why Aristotle was thus described. This time I did actually see ‘solider’ as such in clue for 5D, but the translation into ‘soldier’ for parsing purposes came easily.

31. michelle @29
    “The man on the Clapham omnibus” is a rather dated expression for, appropriately, “everyman”. See here.

32. SC @30 – no legend. Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor.

33. I’m another who didn’t even notice “solider” and who found TWEEDIEST a tad weedy.
    But I forgave Everyman because of HOI POLLOI and SWEDISH, both of which made me giggle.
    And, further to Tassie Tim’s comment at 5: here in southwest France very small change such as 1, 2 and 5 centime pieces are still called Sous…
    Thanks to Everyman and John

34. I found this both more difficult and less enjoyable than recent Everyman crosswords. Some of the surfaces were not very good.

    I don’t think professorial means tweedy and I’m not sure that to spar means to squabble. I thought 25A was ‘gone to the wall’ at the beginning. I was another not noticing solider. BLEH is not in any of the main dictionaries, but is in Wiktionary.

    Thanks Everyman for the effort and to John for the good blog.

35. I’m nearly 50 and I’ve only ever heard of people being “UP” at university in crosswords.

36. I’ve not checked Chambers but this is one of the definitions of TWEEDY given in Collins:
    “accustomed to, preferring, or characterized by the wearing of tweeds, as in genteel country life or academia”

    You could argue that it’s a bit tenuous to say that “tweedy” and “professorial” are synonymous, or you could allow that Everyman is being whimsical here and enjoy the wordplay. Personally, I’m more inclined to the latter position.

37. Paddymelon@1, you’re right. I too use a desktop for the blog and it’s a little illegible. I must remember to choose something slightly darker next time.

38. Collins includes, for “up”:
    6a to a more important place: up to London
    6c (of a member of some British universities) at or to university

    (I have occasionally wondered which way is up if you’re travelling between London and university…)

    John, I’m afraid I don’t understand your objection to “some” as an inclusion indicator. Collins again: “some” = “an unknown or unspecified quantity or amount of”. If I take some wedding cake, I’ve taken part of the wedding cake. So some “vicar uselessly” could be (and is in this case) ICARUS.

39. widdersbel@36 I agree that TWEEDIEST is fair game really. [ make sure you try the Azed today, my favourite grid of all ]

40. [Roz @39 – I had a quick look at Azed earlier… and had to do a double take to check there wasn’t a mistake. Will definitely give it a proper go later. I’m assuming the competition clue is as straightforward as it looks, which provides a useful starting point.]

41. [ Not what you are probably thinking, I can’t say anymore. I would advise you to do a grid on paper for trying out combinations.]

42. widdersbel @36; that is the American English definition in Collins. The British definition is: ‘2. showing a fondness for a hearty outdoor life, usually associated with wearers of tweeds.’ The latter is also the meaning in Chambers and the ODE.

43. I’m another who can’t see what’s wrong with some as an indicator for a hidden word. I know it’s one of John’s bugbears, so I’d be interested to have the objection explained. I see it as some = a portion of, as per Lord Jim @38
    Likewise the objection to without. All anyone ever says when asked to explain that objection is that it doesn’t mean X, or Y. But all I can find is that it is a word that means outside, that outside has now replaced in common usage. What is it that limits its meaning in a way that the meaning of outside is not limited?

44. Can’t believe nobody’s yet objected to swede = turnip. The former is the big orange-fleshed thing, the latter (generally) smaller and white.

45. Other than that: I misread solider, also had BLEH, and needed a few checks to complete the crossword. Initially I had “welliewangers” in 1ac, but a) couldn’t parse it b) thought it should be two words and c) wasn’t sure it was really a ‘sport’.

46. I think my parsing was probably a bit misleading, as it suggested that a turnip could simply be replaced by a swede, whereas what I meant was that ‘like a turnip’ was ‘like a swede’.

    As for ‘some’ I suppose its defenders are right and I shall have to abandon my dislike of it, and move from saying that it’s wrong to saying that it’s inelegant, rather as Oliver Kamm in his book on grammar and pedantry defends usages that pedants criticise while saying that in his opinion they are not good style, and that he wouldn’t use them himself. I tend to think of the use of ‘some’ as similar to the use of ‘first’, which Don Manley in his manuals criticises, saying that ‘first something’ isn’t ‘s’; it isn’t the first letter of ‘something’.

47. Robi @42 – Fair point (I often get caught out by Collins with its mixture of American and British definitions).

    James @43 – If you are in your back garden, you are “without” (outside) the house, but you are not surrounding the house. But this isn’t really relevant to today’s Everyman so I’ll leave it at that and shut up now.

48. John@46 I wasn’t getting at you, but at the setter! I have known people who said ‘swede’ when they meant ‘turnip’ – or maybe it was vice versa, it was long time ago. It might also be regional variations in usage.

49. Thanks to Everyman and John. I came here mainly to find out whether there is more to 10a than the “SMITTEN without its starting letter” explanation. Reading “item beguiled” as suggesting an anagram of “item” and “not originally” as N (like John also mentioned), we already get a good part of the answer: sMItTEN. Only an S and a T are not accounted for. If one could somehow get ST from “Single knitted” (S from single may be okay, but I see no way to get T from knitted), the whole clue could be interpreted as leading cryptically to the answer, which would be rather clever. Anyway, the “SMITTEN without its starting letter” explanation is completely fine, it’s just that the presence of (ITEM + ST)* and N in the answer somehow hinted at there possibly being another hidden explanation.

50. John @46, I guess that you wouldn’t mind ‘some of’ like ‘part of’, ‘slice of’ etc as a hidden indicator. I quite like using discovered, although some frown at it being dis-covered.

51. The usage of swede and turnip does vary by region. In Scotland the neeps (ie turnips) you have with your haggis would be called swedes elsewhere. And anyway, the word swede itself comes from “Swedish turnip”.

52. What is “Corinthian” doing in 6d? Just suggesting Greek, or is there something that actually works in into the clue?

    No one has commented that stereotypically tweed-wearing professors are stereotypically male.

    tweeds male

53. I knew “sou” from “Les Miserables”, something desirable for most of the characters, and I believe it was a subdivision of a livre, so yes, TassieTim @5, very much predating Euros and even Francs.

    And the UP/DOWN distinction was familiar from a saying attributed to the Reverend Spooner: “Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad; you will leave Oxford by the next town drain.”- the “down train” being the one that goes away from Oxford, of course. Though I’ve probably heard people use it in this sense about as often as I’ve seen professors wearing tweed jackets.

    Agreed with others who say that Everyman has become less enjoyable of late – I wonder if this is because the current compiler is a team? I found today’s more enjoyable. but that is a comment for next week.

    Thanks Everyman, John and the other contributors.

54. TWEEDIEST sort of reminds of Tom Lehrer’s “ivy covered professors in ivy covered halls£”

55. John @46: thanks for responding on “some”. However I think there’s a difference between that and the “first” issue that you mention. The point that Don Manley and others often make is that in normal English, “first soldier” (for example) simply cannot mean the first letter of “soldier”, whereas “first of soldiers” possibly could. On the other hand, “some” can quite properly mean “a portion of” (as James put it @43), as in “some cake”. So it’s not wrong as a hidden word indicator, and I don’t see why it’s inelegant either.

56. Valentine @ 52 I think Corinthian is a nice touch, it indicates we need a Greek term for the common people on the omnibus.
    I agree with tweeds having a more male link in the academic sense, maybe not in the rural gentry sense.

57. Valentine@52 and Roz@56: I am afraid I am at a loss as to why the female academics who populate my imagination should stop wearing tweed jackets. The on;y gender difference I can see is that the male professors do not tend to pair a tweed jacket with a tweed skirt – they are in a minority if they do. I can remember one academic from my past who tended to wear tweed, but she was a Reader with aspirations rather than a professor… 🙂

58. Bit of a tiresome slog for me I’m afraid, like some others I just can’t get comfortable with what seems to be a rather jagged style.

59. [widdersbel @47, all you’ve done there is restate your point. Your example is of no value if you want to show that without cannot mean surrounding. Just swap without for outside in your sentence. Does it then show that outside can’t mean surrounding either? Of course not.
    The ‘beyond’ meaning of without is only one of many in the dictionary; the others seem comparable to the definitions of outside (none of which, in Chambers at least, is ‘surrounding’)
    I’m not asserting that without can mean surrounding, I am just sceptical of others’ certainty that it can’t. As it’s not a word we use much, if at all, our experience of it is limited. We have to rely on the dictionary, and I don’t think it’s possible, from the dictionary, to say ‘without means X only, and not Y, Z etc.’]

60. Roz@56 Rural gentry may wear tweed skirts, but they probably aren’t professorial.

61. I’ll add a concurrence to Lord Jim @38’s defense of “some”. It seems unobjectionable to me.

62. Collins 5 archaic ‘on the outside of’. That’s the without compilers use to mean ‘outside (of)’.

63. [It may be me, but I don’t understand why there are frequently repeated quibbles about what are accepted crossword setters’ devices]

64. I was always confused as a boy singing “There is a green hill far away, without a city wall”

65. [I confess I’ve never really given much thought to the ‘without’ question, but the discussion above prompted me to delve a little. Perhaps this sheds some light?

    “…though it was pitch-dark, and we were obliged to be escorted by grooms and groomlings with candles and lanterns; a very necessary precaution, as the winds blew not more violently without the house than within.”

    (William Beckford, Italy: With Sketches of Spain and Portugal, 1835) ]

66. Apart from some tortured clues, nothing to startle the gee gees here. I did like Hoi Polloi, but needed the crossers to get it. The sense of humour is similar to last week’s, which I enjoyed a little more. A mammoth blog to get through with 65 (mostly) interesting comments, although the “some” discussion was a bit tedious.

67. I thought this was needlessly difficult. These crosswords were originally supposed to be for beginners. That is far from the case now. I don’t find them enjoyable and nor do I find the clues particularly clever except in a few cases.

68. I thought that “tweediest” does not really work at all.
    To my chagrin, I missed/didn’t get the sou = small change component of 18 down; needed a wildcard dictionary to find the answer.

    Thanks to essexboy@16 for the Roger Penrose link; I found it delightfully fascinating.

69. I thought this okay, albeit I had Bleh rather than Blah. Too much Snoopy.

    ‘Soldiers’ had been corrected by the time this hit our shores.

70. I actually loved Mitten and think the clue was great
    Didn’t understand Hoi polloi and how we were supposed to find the answer
    But quite liked this despite the grumbles
    I also thought capetown was one word but obv not

71. Loved Hoi Polloi and Sparrow (obviously a reference to Edith Piaf). Could not get Tweediest. On the whole not too bad but preferred last week ‘s one.

72. Certainly tougher than last week. Done by tweediest and hoi polloi which I really enjoyed once I knew the answer.

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