One or two that I’m not quite sure about, but no doubt that is me and you will probably put me right. Otherwise this was a good illustration of what we all must hope The Everyman has become: sound clues, the right level of difficulty, and some nice wittiness.
Definitions underlined, in crimson. Link-words in green. Indicators (homophone, hidden, first letters, etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated like this: *(anagram) or (anagram)*
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DECLASSIFY |
Remove restrictions on students I caught in dare (10)
|
| de(class I)fy — class = students, I = I, defy = dare — declassified information is information that has become public because of the removal of restrictions on it, often under the principle of freedom of information | ||
| 6 | TRAM |
Public transport in shopping centre that’s revolutionary (4)
|
| (mart)rev. — mart = shopping centre — wanted LLAM but no | ||
| 9 | MALAPROPOS |
Poor plasma set is quite unsuitable (10)
|
| (Poor plasma)* — I was thinking that this was an anagram of plasma with prop inside it (but why I thought prop = set I don’t quite know) and was all ready to grumble — but then I realised that the anagram indicator is ‘set’ not ‘poor’ and all is well | ||
| 10 | SCOT |
Seen in royal racecourse, topless Northerner (4)
|
| [A]scot — the royal racecourse is Royal Ascot | ||
| 11 | COUNTRY HOUSE |
Regretfully rue cosy hut? No, it’s a grand home (7,5)
|
| *(rue cosy hut no) | ||
| 15 | OVERRUN |
Deliveries proceed quickly in storm (7)
|
| over run — over = six deliveries in cricket, run = proceed quickly — storm as a verb | ||
| 16 | BEWITCH |
Dog suppressing disgusted expression in entrance (7)
|
| b(ew)itch — ‘ew’ is the disgusted expression (yes I also thought this was pretty feeble, but it’s there in the Oxford dictionaries so the setter is off the hook), bitch = dog — entrance is a verb, not a noun as the surface suggests | ||
| 17 | EARHART |
Early aviator regarded highly as redoubtable trailblazer, primarily ? (7)
|
| The first letters clue that we always see in The Everyman, well up to the best standard | ||
| 19 | SPOONER |
Male, hairy: to him it’s a salutation! (7)
|
| Very nice Spoonerism clue which reverses the usual process: to Spooner, if you reverse the initial letters of ‘Male, hairy’ you get ‘Hail Mary’, which is a salutation | ||
| 20 | WESTERN SAMOA |
Land one time in blazing row with Massenet about second piece in Manon (7,5)
|
| *(row Massenet) round [M]a{non] — Everyman said ‘one time’ because it was only known as Western Samoa until 1997 — in case you’re wondering what the surface is all about, Manon was the French composer Massenet’s most famous opera — but I have my doubts about ‘piece’ to indicate a single letter although it fits with the surface | ||
| 23 | ERNE |
Sea eagle‘s gross, we’re told (4)
|
| “earn” — an erne is a sea eagle, and to gross a sum of money is to earn it | ||
| 24 | ATTENDANCE |
What ten dancers will hold: an audience? (10)
|
| Hidden in WhAT TEN DANCErs | ||
| 25 | SASH |
Special Forces getting hot in military gear (4)
|
| SAS h — SAS = Special Forces (Special Air Service), h = hot | ||
| 26 | AMPERSANDS |
Characters in R&B, &c.? (10)
|
| The CD stares you in the face: an ampersand (&) is a character in R&B, &c., amongst others — not so sure about the question mark, as there is no doubt that an ampersand is as described | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DUMB |
Not smart to send up bishop with slander (4)
|
| (B mud)rev. — B = bishop, mud = slander | ||
| 2 | CELL |
In report, betray group of spies (4)
|
| “sell” — to sell is to betray in the sense ‘sold us down the river’ | ||
| 3 | APPROPRIATE |
Assume it’s suitable (11)
|
| 2 defs — one with the stress on the last syllable, one with the stress on the second syllable | ||
| 4 | SWORN IN |
Given investment, son made more comfortable (5,2)
|
| s worn in — s = son, worn in as a pair of shoes that have become more comfortable, having been worn in (I think worn in = more comfortable, not made more comfortable, which is ‘wore in’, in which case ‘made’ is a pretty odd link-word) — investment as in ‘investiture’ (under ‘investment’ Collins has ‘a less common word for investiture’) | ||
| 5 | FOOT RUB |
Service provided by personal digital assistant? (4,3)
|
| Well that’s what I think it is, although as with so many CDs one can’t be quite sure: a personal digital assistant is a personal assistant who looks after your digits (your fingers and toes) and gives you a foot rub — my dislike of this clue was compounded by the fact that neither ‘foot rub’ nor ‘foot-rub’ is in Chambers, but ‘foot rub’ is in the Oxfords, so I had to give up on that line of attack | ||
| 7 | RECOUNTING |
Narrating another reckoning (10)
|
| re-counting — actually it’s more likely to be recounting than re-counting (although some dictionaries accept re-counting), but you have to think of it with the hyphen | ||
| 8 | MATTERHORN |
Discharge warning signal somewhere in the Alps (10)
|
| matter horn — matter = discharge (both nouns), horn = warning signal | ||
| 12 | HOW-DO-YOU-DOS |
Awkward situations, greetings (3-2-3-3)
|
| 2 defs — how-do-you-dos can be awkward situations (‘that’s a fine how-do-you-do’) and also greetings | ||
| 13 | HOMEOWNERS |
Householders, horrible horsewomen (10)
|
| *(horsewomen) | ||
| 14 | REPRESENTS |
Agent is bitter about shows (10)
|
| rep resents — rep = agent (a travelling salesman, a representative) resents = is bitter about |
||
| 18 | TINY TIM |
Small-time Everyman’s a pitiful character (4,3)
|
| tiny T I’m — tiny = small, t = time, I’m = Everyman’s (this was my penultimate one in and I was wondering when we were going to get the usual I/me reference) — Tiny Tim, a pitiful character from A Christmas Carol by Dickens | ||
| 19 | SIAMESE |
Messiaen abruptly composed description of blue-eyed cat (7)
|
| (Messiae[n])* — ‘abruptly’ tells you to remove the last letter | ||
| 21 | ANON. |
A little man, one who hasn’t been named? (4)
|
| 22 | LESS |
The French starters of snails – succulent? Not so much (4)
|
| le s[nails] s[ucculent] — ‘le’ is ‘the’ in French |
In 14D, resents = “is bitter about”.
21d is a hidden word.
Did I miss the matching answers?
Jackie@3. ATTENDANCE and AMPERSANDS are a near rhyme, but with different stressed syllables.
We’ve had some semantically linked pairs lately and I though it might be MALAPROPOS/isms and SPOONER/isms.
Thank you for the blog John.
I didn’t have a problem with digital assistant, someone who assists you with their fingers. For a moment there I was wondering if there was a variant spelling of shia tsu.
I quite liked the misdirection, indicating siri or the android equivalents.
The problem I did have, after twigging to the RUB, is that there are other 4 letter words that could have preceded it, eg back and neck, and FOOT isn’t really clued.
Scrap that. Of course, toes are the digits on your foot!
Weii, that’s a fine how do you do … don’t here it much these day, more’s the pity, one those lovely quirky expressions, like How’s your father. Nice Sunday puzzle, ta E and John.
… don’t hear it … (phonic error again)
Homo-phones (however sapient) after all. What do they say, er, about being human?
Lots of fun again from Everyman. I read 14 as two charades in search of a definition.
For those of us playing spot the week-to-week links there is of course ERNE. More obliquely (or perhaps desperately), the previous week’s theme coupled with the delightful clue for SPOONER gives us on a wing and a prayer.
A second appearance for Western Samoa this year – in January it was clued as an anagram of “awareness Tom” which I rather liked. Albania is still in the lead of course, with four appearances this year and a fifth if you go back to 2021!
I also noted the possible association Malaprop and Spooner.
Thanks Everyman and John
I’m with David @2. A little mAN ONe etc.
I parsed 14D as
about = re
shows = presents
So I didn’t share John’s reservations about “about”
Overall an enjoyable crossword though I wasted time trying to fit How-de-doo-dis into 12D and it took longer than it should have to spot the clever Hail Mary.
Thanks John and Everyman.
A straightforward enough Everyman that I don’t recall having any major problems completing. I parsed REPRESENTS as a double definition, which explains the ‘about’ part, and as others have noted ANON is a simple hidden. I liked the misdirection of ‘entrance’ in BEWITCH and the wit of HOW DO YOU DOS.
Cheers both, happy Sunday everyone.
Jay @11 (and Jackie/pdm @3/4) – a second appearance also for COUNTRY and WESTERN – which is the matching pair this week 🙂
Paul @10 – yes, nice to see ERNE back for a second week (no Eric or Glenda though)
adrianw @13 – I think the problem with that reading is that it means, as per Paul @10, there are two lots of wordplay but no definition – or else the ‘shows’ is doing double duty, both as def for REPRESENTS but also an element in the second charade.
I’m with John E @1 – ‘resents’ = ‘is bitter about’. As in, ‘she resents her brother’s constant interference’ = ‘she is bitter about her brother’s constant interference’. I think it works perfectly (unlike a similar ‘about’ in a recent Enigmatist!)
John, re the WORN IN in SWORN IN – ‘these shoes have been worn in’ = ‘these shoes have been made more comfortable’ – does that work for you?
Thanks Everyman and John (hoping to see Roz’s perspective later on)
EB@15 thanks for pointing out COUNTRY and WESTERN. In fact the last time we saw WESTERN SAMOA was the puzzle in January in which it was partnered with COUNTRY CLUBS. They appear in the essentially same positions here except the grid is rotated.
Not sure I completely share John’s enthusiasm for this offering, though my list is a lot shorter for it than is usual.
11A’s anagrind isn’t an anagrind for me; 17A I really wish he wouldn’t; 20A why not ‘character’ instead of ‘piece’? Also I felt the definition was rather tagged on for this; 24A why ‘will’? 25A why ‘getting’?
In Downs I didn’t like sell much for betray; 4 Essex Boy had to work hard to get there, and John’s is nicer really, but okay apart from a poor definition; 19 the indicator, as quite frequently with this compiler, seems a stage on from what he actually means, which is ‘shortly’ (11A ind also a case in point).
Hardly ever do I congratulate Everyman, but 19A I thought a pretty good use of a chestnutty Spoonerism.
Jay@11&16, yes I thought I’d seen WESTERN SAMOA clued recently as country once or similar. Since it’s name change our neighbour has switched to driving on the left and jumped forward a day (the international date line being redrawn to the East).
Yeehaw! essexboy@15 Interestingly, Andy Doyle on the Guardian blog last weekend commented on the AMPERSAND clue, saying that R&B and C&W would have been preferable!
I, too, agree with John E@1 about “resents” = “is bitter about”. Two French composers this week. Will this be the beginning of another Everyman sequence?
Or M&S and S&M? Some people find the two interchangeable I’m sure.
Just for fun, here are all the locations Everyman’s taken us to this year…
Albania
Western Samoa (2)
Tahiti
Cape Town
Swed(en)ish
Accra
Budapest
Caspian Sea
Utrecht
Rhine
Guantanamo
Angola
Ontario
Himalaya(n)
Lithuania(ns)
Togo
Albania (4)
Monte Carlo
Rwanda(n)
Malawi
Pomerania(n)
East Indies
Oslo
Eritrea?
Sri Lanka
Gobi
Tahiti
Mogadishu
Emirate (2)
Lapland(ers)
Bratislava
Senegal(ese)
Abyssinia(ns)
Nairobi
Rome
Iran
Warsaw
Alsace
Quebec
(un)America(n)
Ecuador
Corsica
Siam(ese)
Perhaps he means Albania (5).
+1 for the personal assistant using their digits, as you need your fingers to do a foot rub.
I enjoyed HOW DO YOU DOS and I’m a sucker for using &c for etc, so I loved AMPERSANDS.
Thanks for the various people who pointed out the things I missed. Blog amended,
Should have said ‘Thanks to …’ really, but as it is one can read it as ‘thank heavens for …’.
Quite tough. Probably not very beginner-friendly.
I did not parse 21d ANON and was wondering how to describe 5d – is it a cd?
Liked BEWITCH, SPOONER (loi).
Thanks, both.
“Sell” generally means “betray,” often metaphorically , since money is not necessarily exchanged. But “sell down the river” has a separate and much more evil history, from the American days of slavery. The river is the Mississippi, and being sold — literally — to the more brutal plantations further south could be a death sentence. Some slaves committed or attempted suicide rather than go.
eb@15 Well spotted! I’d never have picked that up.
Thanks to Everyman and John.
Wow jay @22 did you collate them by hand!?
SELL = BETRAY is in Chambers – entry number 2 in my app version
I was happy with PIECE as it’s synonymous with “bit” so makes enough sense to me
Like bodycheetah@29 I have no objections to “piece” in 20A – it seems OK to regard the letters as the pieces of a word.
In 19, pace tlp@17, “Siamese” could be seen as describing a blue eyed cat in the same way that Magritte’s picture is not a pipe.
On Saturday May 1st last year, PeeDee, who was that day’s blogger on the previous Saturday’s Prize, lost patience with Roz, partly because she had injudiciously dropped a potential spoiler about that Saturday’s current Prize (the theme was Naked Gardening Day). PeeDee’s other issue was that Roz was then complaining regularly about the easiness of the puzzles being set. PeeDee then challenged her to blog herself if she knew so much better. This conflict resulted in Roz saying she was withdrawing permanently from this forum and PeeDee saying he would never again blog a Guardian Saturday puzzle. One of those resolutions proved more durable than the other.
I resurrect this notable moment on 15 Squared just to suggest to the last plantagenet that he or she might decide to set puzzles according to their standards, join the blogging team, or just shut up.
Thanks to both. I found this harder than usual, but none the worse for that.
I also saw COUNTRY and WESTERN as the pair. I think it worth nothing Everyman always has a related pair which can be by rhyme, oppositeness or common use. The rhyme bit is not essential. Of course that is when he (?) is not into alliteration. I enjoy looking for these little setting foibles each week.
(Mystogre — I think you meant noting, not nothing)
I found 16a to be cleverly mis-leading — thinking about dog breeds and types of doors and gates before, as the Brits say, the penny dropped.
Enjoyed the two definitions-by-example (SPOONER and AMPERSAND), which perhaps makes another matching pair?
I don’t care for the petty squabbles here, Spooner’s Catflap, though I note you yourself have been less than equitable, and certainly less than polite, on several occasions in exchanges on this blog. On the other hand, I am quite sure that both PeeDee and Roz, despite any previous disagreement, have valid opinions, expressed well, and like others here I am more than prepared to hear from them.
Resurrect what you like, my good friend, but please please, do feel most welcome to control yourself, or as they say, ‘put a sock in it’, ASAP. Your remarks in my view are not helpful or necessary. For the record, I will not be setting or blogging anytime soon, as these endeavours are already well covered and cared for here.
I hope Gaufrid isn’t reading this. As a consequence of a recent disagreement we may have lost both Gervase and Roz, whose contributions I really enjoyed and from whom I learned a lot. This is meant to be fun, and in good spirits.
Back to the crossie, I’m impressed by Jay@22. Owdjadothat?!
Thanks to Everyman I now know a lot more about the country formerly known as Western Samoa, including Paul Tutukaka’s contribution@18. I did look to see if Manon had a connection to Western Samoa, but only came up with Gaugin, and that only indirectly. There is an island called Manono, in Western Samoa,
Paul Tutukaka @10, ‘wing and a prayer’ . Clever! LOL. Let’s see what next week brings. I’ll be looking out for birds and countries more closely in the future.
the last plantagenet: it’s not surprising that your comments arouse antagonism, consisting as they do of almost incessant complaining about how you didn’t like the crossword in question. They are neither “fun” nor “in good spirits” as paddymelon says. Why someone persists in doing crosswords by setters they don’t enjoy, just to complain about them, is a bit beyond me.
Lord Jim makes a valid point. I have certainly dissed a number of Everyman’s crosswords over the last few years, but they are all that is worth attempting in our weekend paper.
I’m sure Everyman reads this blog at least occasionally, and if we keep him(?) honest and in search of improvement then a bit of crit is no bad thing imho.
That said, other than a few random surfaces, this was a pretty decent and enjoyable effort. The reverse Spooner even raised a chuckle.
Western Samoa had me bushed.
Earhart was an aviatrix
Rob.
Loving the handbags TLP and Spooner’s Catflap! Here’s a suggestion for the alliterative pair clue next week – cryptic crossword and cancel culture.
My favourite clue today was the reverse spooner and I’m usually no fan of the spooner clues —. this was terrific
Also liked declassify and foot rub tho it took me a while until the b appeared . Can’t believe I missed ampersands when they were staring at me oh well
I had4D as shown in _ seemed to make sense.
@Duane – brilliant idea!
Got through this in two sittings, first one hampered by a tad too much gin the previous night in honour of the Queen.
No grumbles at all, pushed us which is a good thing.
Good puzzle. Spooner was great.
Thanks for keeping the blog open for long. ( I’m in India and the c/w is published in The Hindu almost after 3 months). Even though I solve it fully one or two will always be like fill up the blanks or sheer guess. So I refer your blog for explanations. e. g. In this 18 A Tiny Tim. Thanks John and I, me, am etc.
I refer to your blog