For much of this crossword I was thinking how pleasant it was, but towards the end some of the clues seemed to become rather tortuous. Who knows if I’ve actually got it right — I may be barking up the wrong tree — but there were some clues that I’m a bit doubtful about. Which will encourage the poster a few months ago to mention my crabbiness. Sorry — I’m hard to please!
Definitions underlined in crimson. Indicators (homophone, hiddem, anagram etc.) in italics. Link-words in green. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | GRAND SLAMS |
Runs down with £1,000 for sporting coups (5,5)
|
| grand slams — grand = £1000, slams = Runs down — ‘grand slam’ is a term that I would guess is originally from the card game bridge, but it has become applied to tennis tournaments: if one wins Wimbledon, the French Open, the Australian Open, and the US Open, one has the grand slam of tournaments, and the individual tournaments are known as ‘grand slams’ (colloquially just ‘slams’) | ||
| 6 | DIVA |
Stradivari’s taking in opera singer (4)
|
| Hidden in StraDIVAri | ||
| 9 | DISEMBARKS |
Disturbed bird makes a little sound, heads off (10)
|
| *(bird makes) s[ound] — ‘a little’ for the first letter is perhaps a bit doubtful: it’s really ‘a little of’ — this is a tricky clue because we are so used to seeing ‘heads off’ as an instruction to remove the first letters — ‘disembarks’ = ‘heads off’ in the sense I suppose of leaving a ship: not the first thing one thinks of | ||
| 10 | DISC |
In retrospect, I had doubts, ultimately, about record (4)
|
| (I’d)rev. [doubt]s c — c = about (circa) | ||
| 11 | ON ONES METTLE |
Ready to meet Nelson at sea (2,4,6)
|
| (to meet Nelson)* | ||
| 15 | ADAPTED |
Nowadays, timely journalist moved with the times (7)
|
| AD apt ed. — AD = Nowadays (Anno Domini), apt = timely, ed. = editor, journalist | ||
| 16 | ORDERLY |
Disciplined hospital employee (7)
|
| 2 defs — orderly means disciplined, and an orderly is a hospital employee | ||
| 17 | AT HEART |
Really, a tango with Queen? (2,5)
|
| a t heart — a = a, t = Tango (NATO alphabet), heart = Queen? (the playing card) | ||
| 19 | SCROOGE |
Snarling crabby reclusive ornery old grouse (economical, primarily!) (7)
|
| The trademark first letters clue, extended definition | ||
| 20 | COPPER KETTLE |
Policeman to pen in protesters getting something for tea? (6,6)
|
| copper kettle — copper = policeman, to kettle is to pen in protesters | ||
| 23 | IDES |
Two-thirds of wives-to-be selected 15th March, perhaps (4)
|
| [br]ides — brides are wives-to-be — the Ides were days in the Roman calendar that fell roughly in the middle of the month. In March, May, July, and October it was the 15th day of the month. | ||
| 24 | UNDERWHELM |
Fail to impress when lured astray before Mass (10)
|
| (when lured)* m — m = Mass | ||
| 25 | OUST |
Remove some fibrous tissue (4)
|
| Hidden in fibrOUS Tissue | ||
| 26 | ENDEARMENT |
Doting, tender name? (10)
|
| *(tender name) — Everyman has tried to make this an extended definition, but I’m unconvinced: is ‘doting’ good enough as an anagram indicator and how does the three-word phrase equate to ‘endearment’? I think that’s what it is, but … | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | GIDE |
English insult offered up for French dramatist (4)
|
| (E dig)rev. — dig = insult, ‘offered up’ because it’s a down clue — André Gide (1869-1951), French author | ||
| 2 | APSE |
Part of church where mobile phone use might be heard (4)
|
| “apps” — one may have apps on one’s mobile phone, and I think this is probably what it is, but does ‘apps’ = ‘mobile phone use’? | ||
| 3 | DEMONSTRATE |
Express to voice anger (11)
|
| 2 defs, both of them maybe a bit arguable: to demonstrate is to express (in a sense) and to demonstrate is to voice anger in the sense of going on a demonstration — I should have thought that at the very least a question mark at the end would have been appropriate | ||
| 4 | LEARNED |
Student deserved to become erudite (7)
|
| L earned — learn-id — L = student (this usage by crossword setters isn’t universally popular: it refers to a learner driver and L-plates, some say not a student), earned = deserved | ||
| 5 | MAKES DO |
Everyman receiving a knighthood – subsequently assuming initially dirty deals (5,2)
|
| m(a K)e s(d[irty])o — me = Everyman, a K = a knighthood (informal usage made familiar to those of a certain age by Yes (Prime) Minister), so = subsequently — ‘deals’ = ‘makes do’?: I’m not quite sure exactly how [As essexboy@15 says, ‘That’s all you’re getting. Deal wih it.’] | ||
| 7 | IDIOT-PROOF |
Fail-safe if I do troop manœuvres (5-5)
|
| (if I do troop)* | ||
| 8 | ARCHETYPES |
Models cunning, getting fancy cars (10)
|
| arch E-types — arch = cunning, E-type Jaguars are the fancy cars | ||
| 12 | ELDERFLOWER |
Source of wine from ancient river? (11)
|
| elder flower — elder = ancient, flower = river: a crossword staple: a river is something that flows, so is fancifully a flow-er | ||
| 13 | MARASCHINO |
Strong drink when harmonicas playing (10)
|
| (harmonicas)* — maraschino is a liqueur obtained from the distillation of Marasca cherries | ||
| 14 | BAR-HOPPERS |
For whom ‘proper bash’ moves around? (3-7)
|
| (proper bash)*, extended definition — bar-hoppers is not a word I was all that familiar with, but the meaning is clear enough and dictionaries confirmed it (bar as in pub) | ||
| 18 | TAKEN IN |
Had made alterations to e.g. jeans (5,2)
|
| 2 defs — had = took in, made alterations to e.g. jeans = took in — but how the second of these is ‘taken in’ I’m not sure — the first one is OK: ‘you’ve been had/you’ve been taken in’, but the second? | ||
| 19 | SO THERE |
Extremely tense and hot before end of story (2,5)
|
| so t h ere — so = Extremely, t = tense, h = hot, ere = before — ‘end of story’ as a shoolteacher might say when reading the riot act to a naughty pupil | ||
| 21 | CEDE |
Yield is small hard fruit, we’re told (4)
|
| “seed” | ||
| 22 | SMUT |
After second month in France, you will be served up mildly obscene material (4)
|
| s m (tu)rev. — s = second, m = month, ‘tu’ = ‘you’ in French |
The Chambers online dictionary says:
Take in
to make clothes smaller:
“These pants fit much better since I had them taken in.”
ENDEARMENT: Can’t think of any better explanation.
‘Apps’ as ‘mobile phone use’ seems a bit weak.
Thanks E and J!
MAKES DO: Deals(copes)……..I think it is fine as a definition.
Liked all the scrooge descriptors, the hamonicas playing, and the French you turned up. Ta both.
Like last week I found this was tougher than usual – even more so – only got just over half last Sunday morning and put it away. Returned in the week and finally got the rest.
I got COPPER KETTLE – couldn’t see what else it could be – but I don’t really get the definition. Likewise with TAKEN IN. Not helped by the print and online versions having different clues – trousers vs jeans.
I also thought MAKES DO had a strange definition.
ON ONES METTLE and BAR HOPPERS took a lot of playing around with letters and crosses to get.
Maybe just not on the wavelength this week.
Thanks to Everyman and John
Thanks for the blog, my favourites coincide with Grant@4 and I will add ARCHETYPES.
I try not to criticise Everyman , I like to read here what the newer solvers think about the puzzles. For this one I have to agree with John about several clues, especially 26Ac and 18D. I do not think I would have been keen on this when I was learning cryptics.
In 26Ac I understood the anagram indicator to be the question mark, and doting on its own to be the definition.
Thanks to Everyman and John!
DOTING can mean decaying so is perhaps ok as an anagrind?
For APSE I parsed it as “where mobile phone use might be” = APPS with “heard” as the homophone indicator
Cheers
H@7 that makes sense. Verb / noun misdirection. Nice
Thanks John.
For ENDEARMENT I wondered if, like Hoffo @7, ‘doting’, as noun, could be a synonym for ‘endearment’ (not that I found a dictionary listing for ‘doting’ as a noun), and the rest with question mark was whatever you call this kind of clue.
Bodycheetah@8. Didn’t know that ‘doting’ meant decaying so that’s a possibility too.
MARASCHINO/harmonicas was a lovely anagram. Liked the surface of ARCHETYPES and IDIOT-PROOF.
My favourite was BAR-HOPPERS. Like Fiona Anne@5, I didn’t know that meaning of ‘kettle’ but google confirmed.
I got taken in by TAKEN IN. With same number of letters at the beginning and end, and ‘alterations’ in the middle, I was looking for a 7 letter anagram.
like Fiona Anne@5. I didn’t know that meaning of ‘KETTLE’.
My protest days are long gone but it’s a term I’ve never heard. Had to refer to a higher authority on that one.
Completely agree with Soup. I found some of the answers a real stretch and although I managed to complete this, it didn’t feel as satisfying as normal.
I found this one tougher than I hope to find an Everyman, bearing in mind it is supposed to be entry level.
Having a garment TAKEN IN is only one option for an alteration, letting out to allow for expansion was/is so common that those pretty tucks on children’s dresses were inbuilt growing space and good quality men’s trousers are designed to allow alterations, both reduction and additional ease, without a complete remake.
There were some fun anagrams, maraschino/harmonicas particularly. I got COPPER KETTLE early, but held back on entering it as I wasn’t sure enough, needed the confirmation of ON ONE’S METTLE as the rhyming pair.
[Sorry for the partial double-post.]
I thought this was great, although tricky in places for an Everyman. I agree with ginf’s and Roz’s favourites, plus ‘to meet Nelson’ at sea (where else?)
In the spirit of helpfulness, I’d suggest the following solutions to John’s various unhappinesses:
ENDEARMENT:
1) How does the three-word phrase (doting, tender name) equate to ‘endearment’? Collins online: An endearment is a loving or affectionate word or phrase that you say to someone you love.
i.e. it can be equivalent to ‘term of endearment’
2) ‘doting’ as anagrind – I think bodycheetah had it right first time @8. ‘To dote’ in its original sense of ‘to be senile/silly’. OK, it’s archaic, but fair I think because we still use ‘dotage’ in that sense.
A super &lit
APPS are one ‘use’ of a mobile phone – another might be actually making a phone call!
DEMONSTRATE – ‘She expressed/demonstrated her opposition’ (by going on an angry demo)
MAKES DO = deals. ‘That’s all you’re getting! Deal with it!’
TAKEN IN – ‘He’s taken in / made alterations to those jeans I bought’
As for ‘little’ – I’m guessing John prefers Lou Bega to Bessie Smith? 😉
Many thanks Everyman and John.
paddymelon @ 10/11
I did know the meaning of “kettle” I rememberer reading about it and thinking how unpleasant it would be.
However, like Shanne @ 13 I held back on entering it as I thought the definition “something for tea” was rather loose.
[Apologies Fiona Anne@16, 5. I had the wrong end of the stick.]
essexboy@15
“APPS are one ‘use’ of a mobile phone – another might be actually making a phone call!” 🙂
Applications are one application of a mobile phone!!!
Thanks KVa @18 – and apologies for repeating the points you had already made re MAKES DO and TAKEN IN.
I don’t think of GIDE as a dramatist and found it slightly tricky for an Everyman, but enjoyed it.
essexboy@18
No apologies due. Your post@15 is comprehensive and makes an interesting read.
The usual mish-mash of okay and not-so-okay clues. Thus I agree with John as to the puzzle’s inconsistency, and I’m not finding the remarks from E’s apologists up the thread too convincing!
Of the seven, I did think however that 11 and 24 across were quite nicely-made anagrams.
Liked: UNDERWHLEM, ORDERLY, ADAPTED (loi).
Did not parse 17ac AT HEART apart from A+T; or 23ac (IDES = 15 March).
I’m with John re26AC – definitionless? tendername* -> endearment
I enjoyed this as usual. I thought ENDEARMENT was an excellent &lit / CAD and agree with essexboy @15 that “doting” works fine as an anagram indicator. SOED for “dote”: “to be silly, deranged, or out of one’s wits” – as well as “dotage” as a connected word there is of course “dotard”.
I think “kettle” for the police tactic is relatively new and might not have made it into dictionaries yet.
Many thanks Everyman and John.
MrEssexboy@15 you make some good points but normally I would respectfully disagree with you over several. Since it is the Everyman blog I will resist. I will say that for Everyman there should be no scope for these disagreements. When I was learning cryptics doing Everyman I wanted , and got, clarity and certainty for each clue.
Much trickier than your usual Everyman. Took me all week to complete and I felt quite a few of the clues were “meh”. I agree with Roz: I like some some clarity in parsing, not a sort of “oh well, I suppose so, at a pinch” reaction.
Today’s is much better and it’s all done bar one.
5 dn ‘Subsequently’ means ‘then’, not ‘so’ – so it should have been ‘consequently’. Bit of a contrived clue anyway.
I wrote ‘difficult’ on the top of this one, so it might have been a struggle for beginners.
I couldn’t parse ENDEARMENT, although if doting is an anagrind I can see how it works. K = knighthood is not in any of the main dictionaries (K = knight is in Chambers). I ticked ARCHETYPES for the charade, ELDERFLOWER for the ‘ancient river’, and TAKEN IN for the double definition, which seemed fine to me.
Thanks Everyman and John.
I am on the side of those critical of this puzzle. It was indeed difficult for an Everyman, but chiefly because of dubious definitions and usages. The six I found unsatisfactory (for reasons stated by John and others above) were: DISEMBARKS; ENDEARMENT; GIDE (to define him as a “French dramatist” is simply perverse); APSE; DEMONSTRATE; MAKES DO.
Wikipedia describes Gide as “Novelist, essayist, dramatist” and he was French so …
I stand by my remarks about the ENDEARMENT clue:
If ‘doting’ is the anagram indicator that’s dodgy in my opinion, because it’s an archaic meaning which isn’t signposted. At a pinch it might be OK, but if so then the question mark becomes the anagram indicator. And this is a complete no-no so far as I’m concerned.
Surely Everyman didn’t intend this. My guess is that he/she simply made a stab at an extended definition but was too woolly.
But as essexboy@15 says, ‘deals’ is good enough for ‘makes do’. I’ll amend the blog.
By the way, if you want to see something like the old Everyman, and you are comfortable with using a Murdoch publication. an excellent little crossword produced by top setters on holiday from the Times 15×15 is The Times Quick Cryptic on the back of Times2.
Bodycheetah@30 Wikipedia says “It is fiction that lies at the summit of Gide’s work” and describes him as “a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator” It seems a bit like describing Milton as a civil servant or John Donne as a secretary – it’s not untrue, but it’s a bit misleading.
17ac seems to have no definitive parsing description. No-one seems to be able to precisely explain the answer. Good. I thought it was just me. Bit poor for an Everyman, really.
Well it’s A/ T/ HEART isn’t it?
‘Queen?’ = HEART for me is a little bit of a stretch, presumably accommodated to get some kind of musical reference to the Bohemian Rhapsodists up and running, but the definition seems okay.
My favorite was IDES, maybe because I’ve never seen a 2/3 indicator.
After several attempts, I had all the solutions, with 3 unparsed. Before opening this blog, I went back and got the double defs of 3D and 18D, but still failed on 19D, which turns out to have been clearer than some of the others.
I was unfamiliar with KETTLE as a verb, but it’s in Collins as “British informal”.
GRAND SLAM is also used in baseball (a home run with 3 runners on base). I did not know GRAND could be used for pounds, but we use it for dollars.
Loved the BS track, eb@15. A true, if tragic, 6ac
I’m pretty sure kettle was discussed here recently, so I wrote that in. On ones kettle was a NHO, so similar (but different) to Shanne@13, the rhyming pair confirmed mettle for me.
What happened to Everyman 3942? Nothing showing up on May 8 at 09.35 BST
Still nothing!
FWIW my LOI (3942) was 24a. Although I got there in the end it took until Weds. a.m. until I parsed it. :o(
Agree with others that several of the answers (especially 17 across) simply don’t make sense.
Over all I enjoyed this and finished it with only a few parsing question marks – Disembarks (surely embark is head off), Makes Do & At Heart. Some lovely and challenging anagrams.
Not one of his best.
No one has queried the order of elements in 1A so I will. Where is the indicator for Grand being first?
Didn’t like 1A and didn’t know Gide was a dramatist!
Robbie.
Barrie@42: I think A with B can be either AB or BA. The solver has to work out the correct order. At least that’s always been my understanding.
Yeah nah. Not the greatest. Hope it is better next week.