Everyman 3,934/6 March

31 comments on “Everyman 3,934/6 March”

1. Ah – not LIES. No wonder I couldn’t parse it fully. FIBS. Obvious now. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

2. Made a good start on this but found the last six very stubborn. For some odd reason took me ages to realise that TIN OPENERS and PIANO TUNERS were anagrams. And I hadn’t seen “one” for “joke” before in BONE-CHILLING.

   My last one in was FIBS and I groaned at myself when I finally got it.

   Favourites were BEACH BUGGY, PHRASE BOOK, ART HISTORY, DOMINATION

   Thanks to Everyman and Pierre

3. Thanks Pierre and Everyman.
   For once the pair helped the solve. Got BEER-SWILLING first, but stuck on the parse for BONE-CHILLING.
   PIANO TUNERS and GEORGE BUSH made me laugh. Liked the Spoonerism.

4. I don’t say ‘nose wet’ when I say NO SWEAT. I doubt anyone does.

5. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to complain about the pun in 4d NO SWEAT – not long as it happens. I thought it was a fun pun, and amusing wordplay, with the emphasis on play. (As PostMark might say, it’s a homeophone, not a homophone.)

   Now I’m waiting for someone to complain that oil doesn’t rhyme with Royal in 19d OIL RICH, another clue I liked.

   I loved this puzzle, one of Everyman’s best, with nary a quiblet in sight. 8d GEORGE BUSH was just about a perfect clue – my COD and perhaps clue of the month. (I would vote for its inclusion in Eileen’s book.)

   Thanks Everyman for the fun, and Pierre for the excellent blog.

6. Well, cellomaniac@5. I liked OIL RICH too, no problems there, and GEORGE BUSH was my fave.
   A pun is a pun, but NO SWEAT was neither a homophone nor a homeophone. It might work in the written word (which is what we have in crosswords), but not in the spoken one. Everyman did say ‘say’.

7. Thanks for the blog , agree with cellomaniac@5 , a lovely puzzle. Perhaps the GEORGE BUSH clue could have missed out the first three words.

8. Stupidly put CAN as the first word of 1a without checking, which made 1a CUES rendering 9a impossible. Once I had sorted that out it fell into place nicely.
   9a being my favourite.
   Many thanks both…now for for Paul in the Telegraph.

9. 1d = CUES

10. It’s true, no one says “nose wet” for “no sweat” – but I think I shall from now on, because it amuses me. If I remember.

11. Two possibilities:

    1) Everyman is from Zummer-zet;
    2) He is OTTO, the BEER-SWILLING but BONE-CHILLING Gestapo officer from an old WW2 film (in UNIFORM, naturally, and very much into DOMINATION) who hass vayss of making your nohss vet.

    Thanks E & P

12. I suppose this Everyman must be quite good as I have fewer quibbles than usual!

    Only seven anagrams here, which seems quite restrained, but some iffy indicators for me, at 1 across, 19 across and 5 down. It’s odd really, as those deployed at 3 and 12 down are fine. That consistency thing again? 20 across as noted by Pierre, and I’m fairly sure MAN as used here is an isle and not an island. NO MAN is of course 🙂

    But the resounding success of the day for me is the use of bachelor actually to mean B!

13. I thought this was good fun, one of Everyman’s best IMHO.

    To me, if you say NO SWEAT quickly, it sounds just like ‘nose wet’, and was one of my ticked clues. Others were PENMANSHIP for the good way that the charade was put together, and ART HISTORY for ‘the old are’ (I’ve been caught out before by that).

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

14. PEN in 9a — there’s your bird, Pierre! And thanks to you and to Everyman for the morning’s amusement.

15. [ Cellomaniac – if you pop back in your time zone there is an Azed clue just for you today, 24Ac . ]

16. Fairly straightforward from the crossers, even if I didn’t parse a couple. I liked the Spoonerism.

17. Liked NO SWEAT, PIANO TUNERS.

    Thanks, both.

18. Like Ros@7: The George Bush clue, excellent though it is, would have been even better without the first three words. And thanks for explaining FIBS as I had LIES and coudnt parse it.

19. I also thought that the George Bush clue came very close to being an extended definition and looked as if it could have been made into one. But George Bush bugged Gore; bugs is no good. Can it be rescued and made into an e. d.?

20. If we assume that Gore is still irked (as indeed he might be), then I think “He bugs Gore terribly” would work nicely as an &lit / cad, but I don’t blame Everyman for not going that route.

    I’m usually quite laissez-faire about homophones — my view is that as long as it’s a homophone for some reasonably large subpopulation of English speakers, that’s good enough. I don’t think NO SWEAT clears that bar: surely virtually everyone pronounces the S in NOSE as a Z, and nobody does so for the S in SWEAT. But it’s an amusing clue, and the latitude taken by Everyman is easily forgiven.

    I failed to parse 9ac, and I still wonder about LATEST = HIP. I suppose it’s because both can convey a sense of fashionableness, but the connection seems strained to me. Perhaps I’m just annoyed with myself for not spotting it: I was trying to figure out how to make LATEST = SHIP instead.

21. I prefer Kate Bush.

22. [ Thanks, Roz@15, for the Azed tip. I like that clue (and the solution), but I won’t say more for fear of committing a spoiler. ]

    essexboy@11, I plump for Otto the SS man.

    Ted@20, the issue for me isn’t whether homophones are close enough or not, but whether the key word (“they say”, “sounds like”, etc) necessarily signals a homophone. Why can’t it be a signal for a pun? Puns can be way more fun than homophones, as essexboy@11 demonstrates, and it’s all about word”play”, isn’t it?

23. [Cellomaniac @22 glad you liked it , yes it is in quarantine until Tuesday week when we get the blog, just note that it is so well clued that I could solve it without your specialist knowledge ]

24. Splendid crossword. I do not say that often in this slot.

25. We didn’t like bee for competition . Ok spelling bee but what else? A sewing bee isn’t a competition. Otherwise pretty good.

26. DNF; like TassieTim@1 I put in “lies” rather than “fibs” for 21 down (although I wasn’t happy with it). I’ve screwed up many times in the past by failing to remember “ibs” for irritable bowel syndrome.

    I think that “nose wet” is a fine homophone of “no sweat”.
    Like Robi@13 I find that if you say them quickly they sound the same; voiced and un-voiced sibilants are in many contexts not readily distinguishable.

    An excellent puzzle; thanks to Everyman and to Pierre for explaining a few answers that I couldn’t parse.

27. Loved this crossword, thanks Everyman. 14d was the last one in, and Pierre’s excellent blog reminded me of Monty Python’s Dirty Hungarian Phrase book.

28. 9a got me at first.
    20a tricky.
    Thanks.

29. We enjoyed this but didn’t parse fibs. Never mind – at least we finished!

30. I liked this too even it took me a to Sunday morning with different eyes on it to finish those that eluded me. penmanship eluded me, i think Man’s a bit of a stretch. Liked all the clues like others, big tick for this week. No quibble with No Sweat – I liked essexboy’s take on it.

31. If you have a heavy cold and your nose is running then uttering NO SWEAT will sound very much like NOSE WET. Makes this a very clever clue!

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