Everyman 3,959

60 comments on “Everyman 3,959”

1. Thanks flashling. Thought it was generally a fair crossie.

   Loved the anagrist ‘xenophobes’ in the clue for PHONE BOXES.

   The def for FRUIT MACHINES is spot on, the risk being to the user. Poker machine gambling in Australia is a ‘world-leading’ national problem, destroying people’s lives, and a way for organised crime to launder money. Gathering spaces for chatting and music have been removed to install these things wall-to-wall. But it seems we can’t live without them as the taxes raised go to pay for health care, roads etc, (and gaols and welfare for the unfortunate addicts and their families when their lives unravel). I remember the ‘one-armed bandits’. At least they used to slow people down having to operate a manual lever.

2. [Hear hear pdm, and I hate those Oh so fun and matey ads polluting young souls and my sport viewing!]

3. I enjoyed this and also thought it was easier than the last two weeks.

   Didn’t get MYNA – never heard of it.

   My favourites included: FRUIT MACHINE, CONSCIENCE, SAMURAI, MINIMISING

   Thanks Everyman and flashling

4. [Being “contrary to biology” needs dogma, not conscience 😉 ]

5. Fiona @3 Myna (usually spelt Mynah) is a talkative bird : in the crow family I think

6. HoustonTony @ 5

   I had heard of the Mynah bird but never seen it without the “h”

7. I too found this on the easier side, but enjoyable with some nice anagrams and devices.

   Did anyone see a follow on? I suspect I can see one to this week.

   Thank you to Everyman and flashling.

8. Thanks for the blog and the coloured grid, I thought this was very good overall and just the right standard. HAUTE CUISINE and EN SUITE were very neat, I liked the clever trick for CAPTAIN HOOK and similar in a way for DISMOUNTED,
   Two minor quibbles , nothing wrong, just a bit clumsy – contrrary for CON in 1AC and a line for ALINE in 19AC.

9. Shanne@7 no follow on for me on this one but Jay or MrEssexboy may have spotted something.
   [ PDM@1 and Grant@2 , sadly it is similar in the UK, I think they are called Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, mainly roulette here and in our betting shops. People can lose a lot of money very quickly. PDM do we need to add some honorary title when we address you? I have not got the message after Friday . ]

10. Only thing that got me was FALSE for synthetic. Thanks Flashling.

11. Roz@9. I also liked CAPTAIN HOOK and DISMOUNTED, especially because those operations usually occur at the beginning of the answer, in my failing memory.

    [PDM will be fine. It saves key strokes. That fifteen minutes of fame is never likely to recur. Besides I ‘borrowed’ the name. 🙂 ]

12. I don’t get why Nine is square

13. Antmanbee @12

    nine is the square of three – 3×3 = 9

14. MYNA was anew spelling for me too, but it had to be that. There was a SUIT in TRACK SUITS two weeks ago and there is another in EN SUITE.

15. Roz@9 I didn’t see anything. Another bird for the birds list though and a country for the geography list.

    Tony@5 the myna(h) is a member of the Sturnidae family, so more akin to the starling than the crow which is family Corvidae, of which I’m one! 😉

    Enjoyed this.
    Thanks to E and F

16. Some particularly witty surfaces this week, I thought. The delight of a long soak was well described in 4 (EN SUITE); my favourite was 23 – surely the seedy Oscar nominee being referenced is Last Tango in Paris? (It was nominated, but failed to win.)

17. Good Everyman, which I enjoyed.

    Like PM@11, I liked CAPTAIN HOOK and DISCOUNTED.

    I guess NINE is coloured because of the -INE ending, and SOPRANO being the ‘primarily’ clue – is that right?

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

18. I don’t understand the working for Haute Cuisine

19. Small point, but a pair of crotchets isn’t a minim. A pair of crotchets is a pair of crotchets.

    This felt a little awkward, as ever, but it wasn’t an unenjoyable solve. I almost liked 11 across 😀

20. ‘Oddly plucked’ gets rid of QUAIL’s Q, A and L, leaving U & I to be mixed with IN THE SAUCE. High is the anagrind.

21. Robi@17, NINE is highlighted because it is the clue in which Everyman includes a self-reference and, yes, the other one is the ‘primarily’ clue.
    Everyman isn’t the only setter to consistently include self-references, Boatman is also well known for this

22. Robi@17. I took the highlighting of NINE to be the characteristic self-referential Everyman clue.

23. Snap.

24. I would also like to thank Flashing for including the completed grid image. It’s very helpful, especially when the puzzle is a week old, and the highlighting is a bonus!

25. I did not find this on the easy side. I failed 23ac and I did not parse 12d.

    New FRUIT MACHINE.

    Liked PHONE BOXES, DISMOUNTED, EN SUITE.

    Thanks, both.

26. Thanks Jay@21 and PM@22; as I said above NINE has the -INE ending, although it’s pronounced differently to the -INE in the rhyming pair.

27. Jay@15 yes the bird and country list keeps growing, I did not know the Mynah was related to the starling. It makes sense, the starlings in our garden can mimic anything.
    Mike@16 good spot for the Oscar reference .
    Boatman nearly always has Boatman in two clues, one referring to I, me etc, the other a sailor, AB, OS, TAR , JACK , SALT etc.
    He will also occasionally make reference to our most distinguished commenters.

28. Couldn’t get beyond human singers *and* have never seen the bird H-less, so I don’t feel bad about not getting 22d

29. I know this is me being befuddled on a sunday morning but I’m afraid I still don’t understand why 2D is NINE. (My partner and I did this independently, both were stumped by it and both ended up lamely bunging in nana even though we each felt e had to be in there somewhere.)
    I appreciate 9 is the square of 3, but there’s no 3 in the clue and lots of numbers are the square of another number.
    I suppose n, here, signifies “note” – as opposed to north, number, Norway, unknown-number, etc etc…..
    Otherwise a fairly standard Everyman oeuvre: I originally had GIVE OUT, till the crossers scuppered it, liked CAPTAIN HOOK, SAMURAI & ARIADNE, and was pleased at the absence of a quasi-spooner.
    Thanks to Everyman for the mental workout and to Flashling for the much-needed explanations

30. Wellbeck@29 I sympathise over NINE , I think the word play is fine but I never like to see just square as the definition. Perfect square or square number would be better as that means the square of an integer but there are still an infinite number of those.
    Every number is really a square , even negative, imaginary or complex numbers.

31. NB: note = N in both Telegraph and Times lists (of single letter indicators). Times allows note or key to indicate letters A-G while Telegraph does not.

    NINE is a square (of 3). Which is almost as helpful as using note to describe any letter between A and G, but it is kosher under ‘the rules’.

32. Paul b @31 that’s interesting. Are the Times and Telegraph “house rules” available somewhere?

33. Thanks Roz & paul b. Clearly I shall just have to add “n may sometimes mean note” to the seemingly infinite list of words which can be indicated by an initial…

34. Roz@30, I share your dislike of “square” as a definition, even if almost all of them don’t have names. I think when Azed used this recently he at least wrote “small square”. I don’t much like “base” as a definition for “e” either, on the same grounds.

    On the other hand, of all the squares in all the number systems in the world, it seems it has to be “nine” as the answer.

35. Tim@34 , Azed did use small square but it was word play N AND INE not an actual definition. You are right, it is nearly always nine but I suppose those letters fit with many words.
    I like base=e , it is the only natural base for many things. Calculus, differential equations , analysis ,especially complex analysis , hard to get any to work without using e .

36. I’m very late to the party today, but wanted to add my appreciation for the puzzle and blog. Thanks Mike @16 for pointing out some nice witty touches; I also smiled at Everyman’s self-deprecating self-portrait (“ultimately tolerable square”).

    Robi @17/26 mentioned the -INE ending at 2d; we also have a bonus rhyme this week – PRALINE, to go with FRUIT MACHINE and HAUTE CUISINE.

    Shanne/Roz/Jay – I didn’t see a follow-on either. Petert @14 has an intriguing spot, but if we have to go back more than a week it’s going to get a bit mind-boggling. We’ll need an orrery (or astrarium?) to forecast the next transit of Everyman. Like Shanne I think I’ve spotted a connection for next week, but I’ll keep shtum till then.

    I share lady g @19’s slight musical quibble. Only if the two crotchets are at the same pitch, and ‘tied’, i.e. sounded as a continuous note, are they equivalent to a minim. (I’m sure cellomaniac will correct me if I’ve got that wrong!)

    And finally – good to see OTTO again! (as hinted at by Roz last week) For the record, previous appearances of OTTO include:
    3934 German lad looking back and forth? (4)
    3943 German lad in bellbottoms (4)
    We’re all going to be thoroughly bamboozled if the next ‘German lad’ clue turns out to be HANS.

37. Roz@35, I agree that natural logarithms are useful, and natural (as opposed to picking a base to match that of our notation). But doesn’t that utility follow from d/dx e^x = e^x? (The only function f(x) with this property and f(0) = 1, which seems to me the way to define e.)

38. Tim@37 yes it is not so much the logs themselves that are useful ( they are ) it is the exponential function itself , this is the inverse of the logarithm function if you use base e. In differential equations this function is so easy to work with, even for complex numbers.

39. MrEssexboy@36 I have spotted nothing so I will eagerly wait for next week.
    I do have several orreries , try saying that on a Friday night.

40. Jay @ 32 u r very welcome to mail me at pbringloe at gmail dot com.

41. Roz@38 – I think what worries me is that when the C2014 definition of e as “the base of natural logarithms” is correct but not useful in deriving anything. Shortening this to “base” then opens up as many possibilities as “square” does. Admittedly there are not many that are useful in crosswords – although “ten” or “one” might be. I suppose I have to accept it as a convention of the domain.

42. essexboy@36, you are correct. It could be said that since two crotchets take the same time (i.e., use the same amount of a bar) as a minim, sthere is a sort of mathematical equivalence. When teachers are teaching beginners how to count, they might say, “if you are wondering how long a crotchet is, it is half a minim, so two crotchets would equal one minim.” However, as you say, two crotchets are only exactly the same as a minim if they are the same note, tied.

    [ Being North American, I don’t use crotchets and minims, I use quarter notes and half notes. The timing is more obvious. When I am playing with a brit, I have to translate in my head. ]

    I enjoyed this Everyman, and especially liked the anagram at 3d CAMARADERIE and the temperature rising at 12d CAPTAIN HOOK (as well as 9a MINIMISING, of course).

    P.S. I’m catching up slowly, but I’m still a week behind on my crosswords, so I’m only lurking these days, except for puzzles that are blogged a week later. But I am thoroughly enjoying the comments after I do each one. Thanks to the setters, bloggers, and all my favourite commenters (you know who you are) for all the fun.

43. I enjoyed this but may have found it slightly harder than most. The crotchet contention seems like many others where a clue encroaches on a speciality field. If two quarters were to be clued for a half, I doubt anyone would raise an objection that the equivalence may work for two apple quarters, but not for a quarter apple and a quarter pear.
    Thanks flashling and Everyman.

44. [cello @42, good to hear from you. I’d spotted your name once or twice in the latter stages of the Everyman blogs, like a shaft of evening sunlight after the hurly-burly of the day is done, so I guessed you might see my post.]

45. This is only the second Everyman I’ve attempted, but I found it rather on the easy side, definitely easier than any Quiptic I’ve tried and miles easier than a regular Guardian crossword. CONSCIENCE went in right off the bat and I never got stuck longer than a couple minutes. The clue for CAMARADERIE brought a big smile to my face. On to the next puzzle!

46. Tim@41 sorry I have not explained this very well , partly because I can’t use symbols on this keyboard. BASE has a more general meaning, for a^b , a is the BASE and b the exponent, so when we are using e^x the e is now the base. As you say any number can be a base ( in this sense or logarithms) but e is the one that really matters, so in that sense e=base comes naturally.

47. I will echo the comment of MrEssexboy@44, he is far more poetic than me, great to see Cellomaniac.
    Nick@45, Everyman is aimed at people learning cryptics, some of us learnt using Everyman a long time ago but we still do it.

48. @Roz Yes, essexboy recommended it to me for that reason as I’m a cryptic newbie. Earlier today (US time) I solved the new Everyman and found it much harder than this one, and there were three clues I still can’t quite parse. For some reason I found this one particularly easy, but still fun!

49. Nick @48 – I would agree that this was a particularly easy Everyman, I found this week’s to be more the usual level. Because I solve on the app I can see the times I take to solve a crossword, and this was quick.

50. I was all happy that I solved this in 20 minutes, a new record for me, and somewhat deflated to see everyone moaning at how easy it was!

    I thought DISMOUNTED was a stroke of genius.

51. Well it took me well over an hour and I have been trying to learn to do crosswords for two years now.

    This is supposed to be a crossword for newer solvers – not for people boasting they did it in 20 minutes

52. With you Fiona Anne@51. flashling did ask the question.

53. I found this one enjoyable and mostly just the right standard. I only spot the rhyming/alliterative solutions in retrospect so they don’t assist in any way with solving. Maybe eventually . . .
    14dn defeated me – I couldn’t work out the tenfold increase. A clever device, hopefully next time I’ll spot it!

54. Lots of clues were easy; some were impossible for me. DNF.

55. We did this relatively easily but could not parse Nine – now it makes sense. Liked Fruit Machine, Haute Cuisine and good to see Otto showing his face again! Thanks all

56. Well this was one I could finish, apart from oaty and Myna.
    Good crossword.

57. Enjoyable although I didn’t get the wp for Dismounted and now that it’s explained I don’t think much of it. Not a fan of Square as a def for Nine either.

    Everything else good.

58. Nice puzzle for a quiet Sunday morning of a long weekend.
    Now it is finished we can go fishing

59. Mynas were one of the first things I noticed when I came to nz. Black but a flash of white when they take off. NOT native _originally from India I believe.
    Missed Captain Hook as I stopped at Cook: hot in the kitchen and didn’t pick up on the pirate bit.

60. Very much enjoyed this especially Captain Hook. Conscience and camp …. and glad to see no one took offence by camp. Everyone gets offended by something these days.
    Didnt understand Haute Cuisine explanation, I have no idea how anyone could ever be expected to get that answer thru the method imposed. The ‘cordon bleu ‘ was a great help, without that it just didnt make much sense to me. But enjoyed everything else

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