Some good clues here: Everyman has been clever in discovering several apposite anagrams that make for lovely extended definitions. I’m still a bit unsure about one or two of the explanations though, but am sure people will do my job for me. We have the long alliterative clues at 1ac and 26ac, also 5dn, the first letters extended definition, and the self-reference at 9ac.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (reversal, homophone, hidden, etc) in italics. Link-words in green. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | STEPHEN SONDHEIM |
He penned hits, some unfinished sadly? (7,8)
|
| (He penned hits som[e])* — a very nice extended definition | ||
| 9 | MEGA |
Everyman starts to get awfully enormous (4)
|
| me g[et] a[wfully] — me = Everyman, the self-referential clue that always seems to be there although I couldn’t find it last week | ||
| 10 | AT LONG LAST |
Finally sag — not tall — crumbling (2,4,4)
|
| (sag not tall)* | ||
| 11 | USHERS |
Rushes (runs forward) to find help at a wedding (6)
|
| rushes with its r (= runs) moved forward in the word | ||
| 12 | SLALOMED |
Old males confusedly kept changing direction (8)
|
| (Old males)* | ||
| 13 | KNOCKS OFF |
Slays pirates (6,3)
|
| 2 defs — one in the sense of murdering someone, the other in the sense of pinching an idea or some such | ||
| 15 | FEAT |
Starter of frogs: to consume is an act of daring (4)
|
| f[rogs] eat — eat = consume | ||
| 16 | TWIT |
A little prat, with an idiot (4)
|
| Hidden in praT WITh | ||
| 17 | TIPSINESS |
Clues in meandering letter suggesting insobriety (9)
|
| tips in ess — tips = clues, in = in, ess is the letter S, which meanders a bit | ||
| 21 | PASTRAMI |
Former squeeze: ‘I will give you beef‘ (8)
|
| past ram I — past = former, ram = squeeze (? seems a bit odd, but perhaps in the sense of cramming something in it’s close enough), I = I — ignore the inverted commas | ||
| 22 | ANKLET |
Bank not originally allowed to give you trinket (6)
|
| [B]ank let — let = allowed | ||
| 24 | FOREWARNED |
Inept golfer’s cry — what he’s done — what you now are! (10)
|
| Fore! warned — the inept golfer shouts fore!, warned is I suppose what the golfer has done: warn people that a ball is flying in their direction (but I’m very uncomfortable with this and await a better explanation) — and after the inept golfer has shouted ‘fore!’ you have been forewarned | ||
| 25 | RATS |
Celebrity’s retiring? Oh no (4)
|
| (star)rev. — start = celebrity — but perhaps I’m wrong as I solve and may have to change things later: the answer could perfectly well be STAR and the wordplay (rats)rev. — bad clue in my opinion because there’s no knowing, although this is perhaps a bit more natural {later: I got away with it} — what’s the question mark doing in the wordplay? | ||
| 26 | SECURITY SERVICE |
Secrecy is virtue, working here? (8,7)
|
| (Secrecy is virtue)* — yet again Everyman has produced an excellent extended definition | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | TREASON |
Time to argue for mutiny? (7)
|
| t reason — t = time, reason = to argue | ||
| 3 | PLANE |
Tool that’s rudimentary called out (5)
|
| “plain” — plain = rudimentary | ||
| 4 | ELAPSES |
Goes past the Spanish church’s recesses (7)
|
| el apses — el = the in Spanish, apses are church recesses | ||
| 5 | SELF-SUFFICIENCY |
Fluffy ‘sciences’ I cast off, wanting independence (4-11)
|
| (Fluffy sciences I)* | ||
| 6 | NON-FAT |
Notification on nutrition forswearing adipose tissue, primarily? (3-3)
|
| The first letters clue, where the whole thing is the definition — as so often this is, although easy, a nice extended definition | ||
| 7 | HALLOWEEN |
Date movie (9)
|
| 2 defs, one being Oct 31st, the other referring to the 1978 film remade in 2007 | ||
| 8 | INSPECT |
Study Pietersen’s opening in cricket? (7)
|
| ins(P[ietersen])ect — no need for any knowledge of Kevin P or of the sport cricket, which will please some: the cricket is an insect | ||
| 14 | COINTREAU |
A neurotic trembled, wanting liqueur (9)
|
| (A neurotic)* | ||
| 16 | TEA ROSE |
Vacuous tortoise appeared to find a flower (3,4)
|
| T[ortois]e arose — arose = appeared | ||
| 18 | SWADDLE |
Bandage cut, drinking whiskey (7)
|
| s(W)addle — saddle = cut (as in a saddle of beef), whiskey = W in the NATO alphabet — Everyman has been careful in correctly saying ‘whiskey’, not the more usual ‘whisky’ — this one took me ages: I just couldn’t see how cut = saddle | ||
| 19 | SCEPTIC |
Putrid conservative penetrating? I’m not so sure (7)
|
| s(C)eptic — septic = putrid, C = conservative (actually it doesn’t: C = Conservative, as in the Conservative party, so it looks as if Everyman has slipped up here: if somehow he had rearranged the words so that Conservative came at the start of the sentence it would have been OK; alternatively it could have been ‘Putrid Conservative penetrating?…’, which might have been a rather extreme political statement but would at least have been sound) — ‘I’ in the clue refers to the answer, not to Everyman | ||
| 20 | MALAWI |
A week in large African country – or a small one? (6)
|
| Mal(a w)i — Malawi is the small African country, Mali the large one | ||
| 23 | KIROV |
Drink of vodka at openings in Russian ballet company (5)
|
| kir o[f] v[odka] — kir is the drink — ‘at openings’ seems a bit of a strange way to indicate first letters, but I suppose it’s OK — good, that means that my guess of rats as opposed to star for 25ac was the right one |
When I saw the grid I thought that, as previously, the two words in each of the 2 long across clues and the one long down clue would all start with the same letter. And so it proved – also helped that they were all anagrams. SELF-SUFFICIENCY was my FOI.
I think it was only a few weeks ago that Everyman used the same grid and pattern.
My favourites were SWADDLE (couldn’t parse it until I remembered that a saddle was a cut of lamb), INSPECT, FOREWARNED
My LOI was PASTRAMI – I kept thinking that the beef would be Japanese for some reason.
Thanks Everyman and John
Ditto, Fiona Anne @1 – that grid is a giveaway for us experienced Everyman solvers. Plenty to like here. I am quite happy with the way you parsed FOREWARNED, John – that’s how I saw it. I don’t mind ‘conservative’ cluing C, either – we are told to ignore punctuation, aren’t we? TIPSINESS was my last in for no obvious reason, once I saw it, eventually. Thanks, Everyman and John.
Nice one, Everyman, and nice blog too, John. I agree with TassieTim@2, that your parsing of 24A FOREWARNED is correct.
I thought the top and bottom alliterative clues (1a and 26a) were particularly good, with brilliant surfaces to go along with the excellent anagrams. 1a, while not difficult, was my COD.
25a RATS is one of those clues that some folks don’t like, because the action word, in this case “retiring”, comes in the middle of two possible definitions. This is not a defect, in my opinion, unless the crossers don’t resolve the issue. (That’s what crossers in a crossword are for.)
Cheers all, from sunny and warm(ish) Ottawa. Things are looking up after a tough winter. (If only we could say the same about Eastern Europe.)
TassieTim @ 2
How lovely to be called an experienced Everyman solver.
It’s nearly two years since I decided to start learning how to do cryptic crosswords – and I’m so glad I did.
The third time we’ve had S as the alliterative letter (remember SECRET SERVICE and SUMMER SOLSTICE in 1a?). And here for the first time we have 15 lights in the top and bottom rows, not the usual 13.
The extended definitions this week were particularly good I thought. I had the same parsing for 24a. The accuracy of the Conservative C didn’t occur to me at the time of solving, but I shall look out for this in future.
Thanks Everyman and John
I saw SCEPTIC, the same way as Tassie Tim, imaginary punctuation, or even just a pause. I’ve seen constructions like that before in cryptics.
I recently read something regarding capital letters … that you can ignore them if they’re there, but they should be there if they should be. Either way is fine by me. Just another trick in the setter’s box of tools.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM favourite for several reasons, including misdirection with ‘he penned’ , ‘hits’ , ‘unfinished’ , ‘sadly’.
The anagram option didn’t immediately jump out, and then we had a choice of a couple of indicators, so which fodder?
As John says , a very nice extended definition.
Quibble about ‘wanting’ as the connector in SELF-SUFFICIENCY. It seems like the opposite. If you have self-sufficiency surely you already have independence, to some degree. And ‘wanting’ to me usually means that another clue part is needed, not the solution.
Thanks for the blog, Jay says it is the third S , I was aware it had been in once before . I did not realise it was the first time it was 15 letters .
PDM@6 you are quite right about capitals, if they need to be there they should be . A good spot from John here, conservative= C is not actually true and his neat solution would move it to the front.
I agree with Cellomaniac @3 and the blog regarding extended definitions, in fact the clues were pretty neat throughout.
Fiona Anne @4 you are an experienced solver now, glad you are enjoying it so much. It took me two years to get to grips with cryptics.
Roz @ 7
Thanks – I’m still learning…..
Nice steady solve for me. The long alliterative anagrams were nice. Another one who took a while to click that SADDLE is a cut and wondered about the order of RATS. Nor was I sure why we were FOREWARNED by inept golfers. Here there are several footpaths across golf courses and I feel more confident using them near more adept players.
I enjoyed this puzzle.
Liked INSPECT, COINTREAU, MALAWI (loi) and HALLOWEEN – which I see as a very clever triple def.
Thanks, both.
I took SADDLE to mean a mountain pass, also called a cut, but I agree that the setter’s intention was more likely to be the lamb reference.
Good, pleasant Sunday solve from Everyman.
I thought the clue for STEPHEN SONDHEIM was outstanding – extended definition or &lit if you prefer. I also appreciated INSPECT for the clue surface.
John is right that Conservative should be capitalised to indicate C. TT @2, I don’t think capitalisation falls under punctuation. It was only a small transgression though.
Thanks Everyman and John.
One of the better efforts this one. Agree with John about some of the anagrams and ambiguities. 11 across I wasn’t sure about ‘runs forward’ as it might just as easily have been ‘back’, 6 down, oh no not another one of those! 7 down I found impossible without crossers, and that was it for me.
Another enjoyable Everyman. Like Shanne @6 I took cut / saddle as a mountain pass (due to time spent in the hills & being vegetarian). Cheers all.
TLP @13, I think Everyman has used ‘forward’ before where I think it should be ‘back’. I don’t understand forward as it is surely going towards the back of the word.
Robi @15 you could move forward towards the back of the classroom say? Or the end of the word
I find it helpful to ignore all capitalisation, punctuation, italics etc. in the Guardian / Observer cryptics
Re USHERS – words don’t really have backs and fronts – that’s just a metaphorical usage based on the appearance of the word on the page, and like most metaphors it can be viewed in more than one way.
(I tend to think of ‘back’ as toward the left, and ‘forward ’as toward the right, because my eye moves from left to right across the page.)
What words do have, however, is a beginning and an end, initial position and final position. In the word RUSHES, R represents the sound you say first, and the final S is the sound you say last. So if the letter R moves forward in time, it goes to the right (at least in our alphabet!)
Nice puzzle, thanks Everyman and John.
No issues here, thanks both.
Blogs of other puzzles have the solutions in bold, which I find easier to read. Could we have that, please?
Do only inept golfers shout “fore!”? I thought they all did.
I liked the puzzle, thanks Everyman and John.
I wondered about the “forward” vs. “back” issue in 11ac as well. To me it seems that the R was moved back (toward the end of the word), not forward, but apparently others don’t see it that way.
There’s a similar temporal phenomenon. In the sentence, “The meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, but it was moved back one day,” apparently different people have different opinions about whether the meeting occurred on Tuesday or Thursday.
Ted@20 I see your point. In your example forward can mean forward in time to Thursday as per EB@17, or forward in the schedule/ queue of events to happen, to Tuesday. As ambiguity is the whole point of cryptics, I see no problem with either interpretation being available.
[Thanks Ted @20, interesting.
I realised after posting @17 another thing that might have influenced or reinforced my left back/right forward mindset. If you put the cursor over the left arrow in the top-left corner of the screen, it says ‘Click to go back’, while the right arrow says ‘Click to go forward’. Similarly with the ‘rewind’ and ‘fast forward’ buttons on old tape/cassette recorders.
Re putting meetings back or forward – I think it all depends what kind of metaphor for time, and your relation to time, you have in your head. A lot of people visualise future events as ‘coming towards them’, like an oncoming train.
Suppose, on our journey through life, we imagine ourselves at the front of our own little train, which we can visualise as the ‘letter train’ ABCDE, going thataway → . The future is coming towards us, like the letter train FGHIJ, coming thisaway ← . The first event that will meet us is F, the last is J.
Suppose then that we try to rearrange future events. If we postpone event G, or ‘put it back’, it will move to the right, so we meet it later. If we move event J up the list of priorities, or ‘bring it forward’, it will move to the left, so we meet it sooner.
Thus within the terms of that metaphor, back = to the right, and forward = to the left, but only because, in our minds, we have already imagined the train coming in the reverse direction from the one we are facing in.
(Of course others may visualise the future as coming from the left. Perhaps it’s influenced by what kind of writing system we grew up with, or maybe left/right-handedness? For what it’s worth, I’m a right-hander.)]
Paul in Tutukaka – I took so long to type that I didn’t see your post @21 – but I agree!
Moving a meeting forward brings it closer to now, moving one back sends it away from now AFAIAA from my experience in jobs that have meetings. But in crossword clues there isn’t really a now (apart from the idea that in crossword clues, solving operations are always happening now): they just exist at some point of interaction.
All I would say about this indicator is that if something like an R is moved back (‘runs back’) then due to across-clue conventions it would suggest a move to the left. I think ‘runs forward’ would always be ambiguous (not generally helpful for solvers in cryptic instructions) as the ‘front of the word’ can legitimately said to be either end, but as the R can only go one way here it’s not too bad.
We could go on to talk about ‘how far forward’, but then we’d soon be talking about just how imprecise some indication can be, as with e.g. any container clue instructions.
MrEssexboy@22 , if you really want to know how we define left and right you can look up the “impossible” experiment by Chien-Shiung Wu.
[Thanks paul b and Roz. Have just looked up Chien-Shiung Wu and her experiment – a bit much for me to digest all in one go! – will pursue further.]
Discussion on the “correct” interpretation of forward follows much other criticism of the current setter’s unconventional style. It’s certainly a stark contrast to his/her predecessor’s precision, but I’ve warmed to the ambiguity. (Conversely, once I’d “cracked the code” of the previous setter’s multi-part clues they became a mechanical Paint by Numbers exercise.) Perhaps the regular “primarily” clue (which also has its detractors) is a homage to Colin?
Roz and essexboy I looked up the experiment and couldn’t say what it was telling me. Apparently I’m supposed to understand the difference between “a mirrored version of the world” and “the mirror image of the current world.” They sound to me like the same thing.
The alliterative at 26a made 1a a write-in for me, I barely checked the fodder. Wonder if Everyman was tempted at 10a to roll out the old gag about where clowns shoes are made.
[ MrEssexboy@26 and Valentine@28 , sorry it is rather obscure but at least you know about Wu now. It shows something called non-conservation of parity for the beta decay of a neutron in a cobalt-60 nucleus. If parity is conserved we can not tell the difference between a particle process and its mirror image , this is nearly always true. For this decay there is a “preferred” direction for electron emissions so ts mirror image would look different. Our universe is slightly “left-handed” . ]
I think all this raving on about backward vs. forward is a bit precious. Once the penny dropped for 11 across, the answer was obvious. Likewise the quibbles about lower vs. upper case “c” to mean conservative.
I agree that John’s parsing of 24 across is correct; the clue is just very clunky. I agree with Valentine@19 that it is generally believed that all golfers shout “fore”, not just inept ones.
Couldn’t parse 18 down and 23 down; never thought of “saddle” as meaning a cut of meat (or a pass — cut — through a mountain range)
and completely forgot about the drink called “kir”. Thanks to John for the explanations.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle; thanks Everyman.
Like others I had cut as in a mountain pass, and it was my last one in. I’m pretty sure that Everyman has also used cut to mean a cut of meat relatively recently. With that and pastrami this week and mortadella last, I wonder if we’re starting to see a carnivorous theme?
I’m surprised at all the quibbles here, most of which I think are very nit-picking.
I liked 1A and 8D
The only clue I thought a bit feeble was 7D, I’m sure you can be a lot more imaginative with Halloween than ‘date’.
Interesting goings on in the Tennis world. Sour strawberries anyone?
I cannot keep up with the comments this week but v pleased we got this one cracked in two sittings, as one of us is feeling distinctly below par. No favourites but a good solid crossword. Thank you.
Thanks Barrie for bringing a bit of Kiwi common sense to these posts. I thought it was a cracking good puzzle this week.
I agree —too much detail to read re contributors’ comments on punctuation. I’m just glad to get nearly all there. I didn’t get swaddle, was too focussed on the whiskey
Loved -stephen s, elapses, forewarned, and knocks off. Wouldn’t it have been great to incorporate ‘knock offs’ in there somehow
1 across was my favourite too.
All good today. Not sure about letter being ess – seems a ibit like we have to try too many combos.
?