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Another pleasing and well-constructed puzzle from Everyman, with its now well-established trio of features: the rhyming couplet, the first letter clue and the self-reference.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Watch online series, Dead Smooth
STREAMLINED
A charade of STREAM, LINE and D.
9 S. American booze English knocked back; they’re hard to understand
ENIGMAS
A charade of S, AM, GIN and E, all reversed; the reversal indicator is ‘knocked back’.
10 A northern wally seeing Belgian city
ANTWERP
A charade of A, N and TWERP for the second largest city in Belgium, also known as Antwerpen (in Dutch) and Anvers (in French).
11 From the outset, Everyman’s vigorously ignoring teenagers aged 18
EVITA
The initial letters of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth words of the clue. The solution to 18dn is MUSICAL, of which EVITA is an example.
12 A détente almost arranged – very much the reverse!
VENDETTA
A reversal of V and (A DETENT[E])* The anagrind is ‘arranged’ and the reversal indicator is at the end of the clue, which is a kind of extended definition.
14 Examination including piano, in part
INSPECTION
An insertion of P in IN SECTION. The insertion indicator is ‘including’.
15 In November, Victor called out sin
ENVY
November and Victor represent the letters N and V in the phonetic alphabet and ‘called out’ is an invitation to pronounce them, when you’d get EN and VEE, which spell …
17 A little African-American celebrity
NAME
Hidden in AfricaN AMErican.
19 I’m surprised to get into starters of brie, langoustine, escargots, unusually: fancy, French food!
CORDON BLEU
A charade of COR, DON and the initial letters of ‘brie’, ‘langoustine’, ‘escargots’ and ‘unusually’.
21 Punishment for masses
LASHINGS
A dd. Many folk think of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories and ‘lashings of ginger beer’ when this word appears, but the phrase never appeared in any of her books. It did, however, enter public consciousness when it was used in a Five Go Mad special from The Comic Strip Presents television comedy series. It aired on the launch night of Channel 4 in November 1982, and unsurprisingly did not enchant Blyton fans.
23 National army’s hiding fear
ALARM
Hidden in NationAL ARMy.
25 Avionics not very developed in island capital
NICOSIA
(A[V]IONICS)* with ‘developed’ as the anagrind gives you the capital of Cyprus.
26 Stroke seabird: that’s an order
PATTERN
A charade of PAT and TERN. You know why I can’t.
27 Place residents with officers
LIEUTENANTS
A charade of LIEU and TENANTS. The first particle is indeed a French word for ‘place’; we use it in English having mangled its pronunciation in IN LIEU OF, or LIEU DAY, which is a day you take off in ‘place’ of a day you worked. Its etymology is essentially based on this: lieu for ‘place’ and tenant for the present participle of tenir, ‘holding’. So literally, a placeholder – which is what its original meaning was, as a substitute for higher authority. Why we British pronounce it ‘lef-tenant’ is something of a mystery, though there are plenty of left-field theories about it.
Down
1 Apparitions as may appear after cheese?
SPIRITS
A dd, with the second part hinting at spirits being offered as digestifs after the cheese course (except if you’re in France, where it’s fromage avant dessert).
2 Force summoned, ran amok
RAMPAGED
A charade of RAM and PAGED.
3 Architectural projection. Sometimes ecclesiastical? Primarily!
APSE
The initial letters of the first four words of the clue and a cad.
4 Property contracts: she does all sorts
LEASEHOLDS
(SHE DOES ALL)*
5 Celebrated what a melody is
NOTED
A dd.
6 Couldn’t stop thinking about uprising, perfectly proper?
DWELT ON
A reversal (‘uprising’, since it’s a down clue) of NOT LEWD.
7 Titian, perhaps drunk, suggesting something to draw at night
VENETIAN BLIND
A charade of VENETIAN and BLIND.
8 ‘Timid? You have backbone!’ says Spooner, to express thoughts plainly
SPEAK YOUR MIND
A Spoonerism of MEEK? YOU’RE SPINED! I know, I know.
13 Gallants to rematerialize after much delay
AT LONG LAST
(GALLANTS TO)* with ‘rematerialize’ as the AmEng anagrind. I will continue to write ‘rematerialise’, thank you. I am not going to prioritize that change any time soon. (And the Guardian/Observer style guide agrees with me, btw.)
16 Loose faun sent off
UNFASTEN
(FAUN SENT)* with ‘off’ as the anagrind.
18 I calm us with arrangement that’s harmonious
MUSICAL
(I CALM US)* The anagrind is ‘with arrangement’.
20 Editorials making readers switch sides at first
LEADERS
Everyman is inviting you to make a right-left switch with the initial letter of ‘readers’.
22 Problem children
ISSUE
A dd.
24 Begin tennis tournament?
OPEN
And another.
Many thanks to Everyman as always.
Thank you Pierre and Everyman.
I appreciate the Spoonerism more today, now that I can see the text and the cleverness of MEEK? YOU’RE SPINED!
VENDETTA also clever.
Didn’t know the connection between SPIRITS and cheese. Was thinking it might have something to do with saying ‘cheese’ for a photograph.
Favourites VENETIAN BLIND, MUSICAL, and NICOSIA for the surfaces and wordplay.
Thanks Everyman for another fun crossword. I thought DWELT ON was an excellent reversal. And thanks Pierre for my military education regarding LIEUTENANTS. I must have only come across the spoken “Lef.. ” before as I honestly assumed it was a seperate rank.
My first one in was ENIGMAS which I liked. Went quite smoothly until I got to the last few. Took me ages to work out that the V was part of the anagram fodder for VENDETTA – and then I was stuck on the last three in the NW. Once I got EVITA (although I couldn’t see why it was the solution till now) I got my last two – RAMPAGED – which should have been obvious and SPIRITS – less obvious to me at least.
Liked: DWELT ON, VENETIAN BLINDS, PATTERN, CORDON BLEU
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
Thanks for the blog and all the extra information , I thought this was another very good Everyman, I agree with Paul@2 for DWELT ON , nice when a complete reversal works. Lots of other good clues to like.
Two minor quibbles, nothing really , just see what others think.
Do we draw VENETIAN BLINDS ? I draw curtains and close blinds, I know the draw is there for Titian.
Not sure VENDETTA quite works, MUCH is needed for the extended definition but the word play is now clumsy to put the V at the front.
[Roz@4. I don’t ‘draw’ either blinds or curtains. For me, that’s mostly a British term, learned from books. I might say ‘close’ the curtains, or ‘shut the blinds’, or even more pedestrian, ‘pull the cord’. And now you’ve prompted me to look up ‘drawing room’, also learned from British literature. Never knew it meant ‘withdrawing room’.]
[Looking forward to next week’s blog.]
[Nice to hear from you again Roz. Hope your’e enjoying the Com Games swimming. (I’m loving the track cycling.)]
Possessing only a moderate crossword-solving skill set, I find that Everyman is just my kind of puzzle. The clues are fair, and satisfying when parsed. I really enjoy his puzzles.
PDM@5 very interesting , I wonder what others say? Draw the curtains for me every time. Your (with)drawing room applies to the SPIRITS clue, women would withdraw so that the men could have their port or brandy and cigars.
Thank you Paul @6 it is nice and unusual to have so much swimming on the TV.
Failed to get SPIRITS although the answer, with all the crossers in place, was staring me in the face. I think this is pretty tenuous. Surely it’s port after cheese in the UK? And if it’s digestifs then they, indeed, are after dessert on the continent. Maybe living in Switzerland for 40 years has changed the way I think about the back end of a meal. Whatever. I failed to make the connection.
I did wonder if there was another explanation for SPIRITS, Gliddofglood, but if nobody can come up with one then maybe there’s nothing more to it. Port after cheese in the UK? Quaintly old-fashioned, I would say – definitely not a habit for millennials or Gen-Z, at any rate. And don’t expect them to remember to only pass the port to the left …
Quite tough. I did not parse 20d, 1d, 15ac.
Liked DWELT ON.
Thanks, both.
[Roz@8. Yes, the men in their smoking jackets. I thought they were the ones who were supposed to be withdrawing to the smoking room. I would have helped myself to the cheese and spirits from the butler on the way through. ]
27a – We seem to have quite a few ways of pronouncing LIEU: there’s also LEE, as in Beaulieu. The Americans get a bit closer with LOO-ten-ant
[ PDM@12 I thought the men had their cigars and brandy in the dining room and then retired to the billiard room, do not really know , get all of this from the Cluedo board. We need someone posh like MrEssexboy to get the definitive answer. ]
For as long as I can remember, Everyman has been closer to the Rufus than the Vlad end of the difficulty spectrum as it were, and they helped me get into the crossword hobby/habit when I was younger. The current setter continues that tradition, and I’m all for it. I also know that any momentary smugness I feel as I complete one will be wiped out by at least one of the Guardian setters during the week.
I really look forward to them these days: well constructed and fair, with the regular idiosyncrasies a fun and clever addition. I enjoyed this latest one; the setter was on form.
I’m not sure what the problem is with SPIRITS: a brandy at the end of a big meal is hardly unknown, and probably more common than a port. I don’t get on very well with either and would probably choose a single malt, or more likely these days a glass of water!
I don’t have any VENETIAN BLINDs – too much hassle keeping them dust-free – but I wouldn’t be shocked if someone spoke of drawing them.
Thanks E&P.
1961Blanchflower, someone like Rod Stewart in Tonight’s the Night?
Everyman on a good run, I think. I agree with Roz about drawing blinds. It always confused me as a child how drawing the curtains could mean both opening and closing. I think what i have picked up from Agatha Christie confirms what Roz has learnt from Cluedo.
“I am speaking to you from the drawing room…” 🙂 Roz @14 is right as usual, here’s wiki’s take on it.
Like Rod Stewart, I draw the blinds, but only if they are side-to-side ones (i.e. curtains), not up-and-down ones.
Pierre, slight typo – you have paging/RAMPAGING for paged/RAMPAGED.
We can add ANTWERP and NICOSIA to Jay’s geographical list, but no ‘continuity clue’ this time as far as I can see.
I enjoyed this, and the blog; thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Thanks, blog corrected.
Agreed, lovely puzzle, just hard enough and informative blog. Thanks all round
Always a pleasure to tick off an Everyman. SPEAK YOUR MIND got a big groan from me.
I thought SPEAK YOUR MIND was great, and it made a lot more sense than Spoonerisms often do.
Lef- rather than loo-tenant is obviously the correct pronunciation 🙂 . (According to the SOED early spellings included levetenant and liefetenant.)
Many thanks to Everyman and to Pierre for the very informative blog as usual.
Agree with Roz at 4, though I’d probably have said ‘very good for an Everyman’.
As for 1961 at 15, I think the Everyman has in general suffered, with the compilerly sea-change, in that clues can be made harder by being too complicated, or plain clumsy, as with this week’s VENDETTA. This makes the puzzle unnecessarily hard to solve, in my view.
OTOH, when one looks back at the cluing of the like of Dorothy Taylor, Alec Robins and the one or two who followed in that hallowed tradition, things were indeed ‘well-constructed and fair’. Yes these are old-school people, and in all but one case under the earth, bless them, but they got their priorities right, and it should still be possible today to construct a puzzle with a ‘modern’ feel without ruffling, or even deliberately ruffling, Ximenean feathers.
I keep wondering if Everyman is more than one person, for the “feel” of the crosswords can be quite different from week to week. I found the preceding one had many pleasing PDM moments & a neat twist on the so-called Spoonerism clues. This one’s “Spooner” was a return to the norm. (I know some people like these clues, but surely the whole point about the good reverend was that his transpositions made sense both ways and so were genuinely funny. Nobody would ever say “you’re spined”.)
Then again, if it is just the one creator, I’m lost in admiration at the workload and readily forgive the occasional clunky clue.
Besides, I’m in no position to carp, having put STREAMLINES (streams for watch, and line for series) and then the best I could manage with 5D was SLEPT ON. I know, pathetic, innit? Especially since DWELT ON, once gently explained to me, is so good…
Many thanks to Everyman for the entertainment, and to Pierre for a lucid and amusing blog
I didn’t do this so perhaps shouldn’t be commenting, but I read the blog and a couple of things struck me in an otherwise very nice offering: 1ac: ONLINE — I’d have been happier if the clue had used the rather illiterate ‘on line’, which one still sees from time to time; and 14ac just seems wrong: ‘Examination including piano, in part’ — for the wordplay to work it should be the impossible ‘Examination including piano, in in part’. ‘Part’ doesn’t = ‘in section’
Pierre — in 25a NICOSIA is “avionics” without the letter V — “not very.”
I got everything last week except CLEARANCES, which popped out at me this morning.
Thanks to Everyman and Pierre.
tlp @23: I certainly don’t think the current setter deliberately ruffles Ximenean feathers. Introducing him/herself on the blog for 3,785, he/she said “My brief requires clues which are solid in structure and which are solvable by beginners and by occasional or lapsed solvers”. And on 3,832: “I think of myself as a traditionalist, albeit one that’s fond of extended definitions”. The style is quite individual but I think that overall the clues work well and logically.
Clumsiness is perhaps in the eye of the beholder. I liked VENDETTA. As Pierre says, the wordplay gives us an anagram of A DETENT(E) followed by V, and then “much the reverse!” seems to me quite a nice way to say that in fact the V comes first. And of course it’s an extended definition.
Welbeck @24: the current setter has made it clear that he/she is an individual (blog for 3,832, comments 9 and 13 – you have to read both!). As to Spoonerisms, would anyone (apart from the reverend) ever say “The Lord is a shoving leopard”?
Thank you Pierre and to all the contributors (Pierrots?). You have all successfully taught me the mysteries of cryptics, so that I was able to complete this Everyman[and last week’s Cryptic] in reasonable time. Previously I was pleased if on a long train journey I completed half a dozen clues.
Having the anagram fodder on either side of the anagrind is pretty common in the Guardian so I just assumed VENDETTA was an anagram of the V and A DETENT but Lord Jim’s @27 is plausible too
Valentine @26 I’m not sure which week you’re referring to!
Pierre – why can’t you show a tern picture? I fear I must have missed something – it wouldn’t be the first time 🙂
Regarding SPIRITS, I took this to refer to the belief that eating cheese late in the day is likely to give you nightmares, perhaps containing ghosts or suchlike.
EB@18 geographies duly noted. I’m also seeing an emerging ornithological theme. Starting on 10 July with ALL OF A FLUTTER, ERNE, FLAMINGO, TIT, SCREECH OWL and HAWK, in the weeks since we’ve had ERNE (again), TERN (here) and I’ll say nothing of today’s puzzle…
Well Wil, @25, I too was having my Ximenean feathers ruffled by that one. But I think it can just about parse, with ‘including P, IN SECTION’. I suppose that can mean IN SECTION including P?
The ‘section’ though: that’s a bit of orchestra isn’t it?
Lord Jim at 27: fair point!
Valentine @26: that’s exactly how I’ve explained NICOSIA in the blog if you read it carefully.
bodycheetah @30: the rule is that for the OPBL, the answer has to be the bird, the whole bird and nothing but the bird.
Far out, Five Go Mad In Dorset was broadcast nearly 40 years ago. Now I do feel old!
Pierre@36 I see now that you did. I didn’t see the square brackets around the V, so it looked to me like a straight anagram.
One of the easiest crosswords for a long time.
Rob
Struggled quite a bit with this one, and had to use a wildcard dictionary. Quite a bit! Did not get the relationship between “spirits” and “cheese” at all, until I saw Pierre’s explanation.
In retrospect I liked almost all of the clues.
Thanks to Everyman and Pierre.
I have never heard of a lieu day.(27A)
Is it what you take after abad curry the night before?
Kiwisingle, you must have heard of days in lieu!
Your payroll manager will have, for sure.
Perfectly fine crossword, but where was the self-reference?
Barrie, the self reference was in 11a, which was also the ‘primarily’ clue. The difference this week being that instead of me, my, I etc. Everyman here equates to the E in Evita.
Ah so. Thank you.
Great puzzle. Vendetta was very nice.
Enjoyed this puzzle. Getting much more consistent recently which is good. My instincts told me Stilton for the cheese clue so that held me up a bit but finally realised cheese had very little to do with it. Venetian Blind was my favourite; mind you, Titian’s Venus painting is his best in my opinion and you’d want the blinds closed for that one! Thanks to all.
Thanks Pierre and E. On 6d I dwelt on ‘dream on’ for long which also conforms to the surface – uprise of order and about- ‘no mad re’ (but for the tense and placement of about). When I finally solved 12a, the penny dropped. Ha, ha.
Petert@17, I’m with you reg confusion over drawing of curtains, esp when reading Agatha Christie.