Everyman 3,962/18th September

50 comments on “Everyman 3,962/18th September”

1. SPARROWs plentiful around here, Pierre – and they are a foreign introduced species. Good crossie. I was helped by spotting the A alliteration pattern. OUR FATHER (sort of) RHYMES with BALACLAVA. ON TIME was nice for the double Everyman too. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

2. Although Chad seemed a basic answer something was niggling me and when I checked the dictionaries I couldn’t find a reference to Chad as fish. Maybe someone could provide one and enlighten me?

3. I thought this quite challenging , in a good way, and it took a while for me to get going. Couldn’t parse 3d so thanks for the help on that.

4. Thank you Pierre, and for exporting your domestic sparrow, not. Very destructive of crops down here.
   However, they are also decreasing in our urban areas, the theory being that modern buildings are no longer built with eaves and other places for them to nest, as well as the general reduction in urban garden vegetation.

   Agree with you about SAMBAING, almost unpronounceable in English without an intrusive ”r”.
   CASSEROLE is marked as an anagram in the blog, but described as a ‘charade’.

   BALACLAVA, a very fine first letter clue IMO, for the CAD and contrasting ‘initially’ with ‘latterly’.
   Also liked AVOCADO with its cryptic-ish definition and the surface, and JUMPS.
   I don’t particularly like ‘lisp’ clues, but I suppose it’s no worse than the humour found in stammering or spoonerising clues.

5. David @2 — chad is in Chambers as an alternative spelling of shad.

6. I had no idea that sparrows were such hated birds. It was cute that the surface alluded to who killed cock robin.

   A very enjoyable puzzle from Everyman, who has been consistently good of late. My three favourites (nary an anagram among them) were the hiddens at 9a METATARSAL and at 6d OUR FATHER, and the brilliant surface of the trademark primarily clue at 13d. I also liked the alliterative trio, another “A” for Jay.

   Thanks Everyman and Pierre for the Sunday funday.

7. Saw the pattern and looked for the starting letters for the two words of the three long clues. Decided 1 ac had to be an anagram and so the two words had to begin with a or o. (Checked Jay’s list and so far, I think, no vowels used for the starting letter). Got CASSEROLE so knew the starting letter was a. Then got JUMPS and so ABJECT APOLOGY. Took a while before I got the other two long ones.

   Liked BOMBASTIC, WRITHE, HASSLE

   Did not get AVOCADO – still can’t believe I didn’t get that.

   Thanks Everyman and Pierre

8. Thanks for the blog, I remember thinking this was a bit trickier than usual, a lot of subtraction or bits added before anagrams etc. Not sure I would have liked it when I was learning.
   Agree with Fiona Anne that it is the first vowel for alliteration, it must be harder, Jay will confirm ? Also two countries and a bird for Jay.
   Intrigued by spuggie for sparrow, we do not say that but we do say spughawk for sparrowhawk.

9. Roz and Fiona-Anne, yes it’s the first time we’ve seen A as the alliterative letter and the first vowel.
   I enjoyed this one. CHAD reminded me of a Maskarade Christmas special a couple of years ago with very many hidden (unclued in the wordplay) fish. On checking I found that Maskarade had used the SHAD.

10. paddymelon @4: CASSEROLE is a charade – the first element is a subtractive anagram and the second is the LE bit.

11. Pierre @10. Compris. Merci.

12. I enjoyed this, but know from the timing it was a more challenging Everyman (the sort of time the daily cryptic takes, not the Monday easier version, whichever that one is).

    First time in ages I didn’t complete in one sitting but walked away with the southwest corner unfinished, to come back an hour later and wonder what the problem had been.

13. Today’s earworm, one for the birds, and how I really feel about sparrows or spuggies.
    Couldn’t get it live, but it’s from my most played album ever.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FniUPxpYYAU

14. It’s almost as if Everyman is training us “improvers” in the subtractive anagram, not a straightforward sort of clue but very clearly signalled.

15. I liked WRITHE, AVOCADO, AWEIGH.

    New: CHAD fish (thanks, google).

    Did not parse 17d SPARROW.

    Thanks, both.

16. Anyone have any thoughts about how many letters of a word “briefly” can indicate?

17. GrahamP @16 – sp. is the accepted abbreviation for species in biology, so it was OK by me.

18. Can I praise Everyman’s ‘hidden’ solutions? I completely missed METATARSAL within ‘eaten by fearsome Tatars, allegedly’. I saw TATARS inside ‘meal’, and lazily accepted that as the answer. There’s another very good one in today’s puzzle.

19. Yes, like some others above, I appreciated the well-hidden METATARSAL and OUR FATHER. I also liked the CAD (or semi-&lit) ACADEMY AWARDS.

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

20. A pleasant solve – thanks to Everyman, and also to Pierre for the blog and the sparrow.
    (And to Paddymelon: the Simon & Garfunkle link successfully expunged Barbara Windsor’s rendition of Ain’t It A Shame Sparrers Can’t Sing, which had previously been stuck in my head…)
    My dad always called them spadgers. He also called squirrels ‘squizzers’. He was from Leeds, so I’ve always assumed both are Yorkshire expressions…

21. Graham@16 I would say that usually , briefly means to take off the last letter, any more letters should have a better indication.
    The alternative is when a word has a standard abbreviation like 17D for this.

    Mike @ 18 a good point on hidden, two good ones here. Last week thought there was a pretty poor one.

22. Thanks Everyman & Pierre. Some very nice clues here, as already mentioned. And I am one of those who likes the usual twists.

    But I think one of the reasons it felt a tad trickier is the lack of precision in some places. I’ll pre-empt the last plantagenet by complaining about 1d, for example – “it’s gone pear-shaped” =/= “it’s something that is pear-shaped”. I’m normally quite forgiving about this kind of thing, but it did make it unnecessarily harder to solve. And it’s a shame because the wordplay part of the clue is really lovely. (I’m sure tlp will find a lot more to complain about though, so I won’t have stolen his thunder.)

    Going back to last week’s discussion of hidden words, I mentioned that it’s preferable for the word breaks in clue and solution to not coincide, which is why METATARSAL is so much more satisfying than OUR FATHER. Both nice clues though.

23. [Wellback@20. Spadgers , a great Northern word. Found it following this thread earlier today. How wonderful to have so many words for this little bird, so much loved, or so much maligned, depending on how you see it. Squizzers, for squirrel. We have a word here, squiz, which means a look at something. I’m now wondering how much of the Yorkshire influence there is in Australian English: Barry Bazza, Garry Gazza. Always thought most of us came from Irish convict stock.]

24. I don’t think that is peculiar to Australian English, paddymelon; here in ther UK I have seen Hezza for Michael Heseltine and Jezza for Jeremy Corbyn, and I dare say there are other examples. It was not, of course, just ‘Irish convict stock’. Anyone from your parts would, I am sure, and if you can get hold of it, be interested in Bill Douglas’s wonderful 1986 film, Comrades, that follows the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

25. More indicators that don’t indicate what the solver needs to do in this typical offering. Two or three poor entries too, with ABJECT APOLOGY, ARTISTIC ABILITY (not phrases one would expect to find in a crossword) and the awkward SAMBA-ING.

    At 16A, I wonder why having is there?

26. TLP@25. What’s wrong with those phrases?

27. Bill @26 – at a guess, tlp’s objection will be that the phrases are not in Chambers. But you and I know that they are common collocations and for for us that justifies their use in a crossword. Aren’t we the mavericks! Ximenes must be turning in his grave.

28. Pierre, apologies if you’ve done this before, but could I ask you to clarify the relationship between CAD (clue as definition) and “&lit”?

    (I ask because I think you were the one who introduced ‘CAD’?)

    My understanding was that CAD was intended as a replacement for &lit, because “clue as definition” is a more precise, and more readily understandable, way of expressing the idea that the whole clue functions both as wordplay and as definition.

    However quite a number of esteemed contributors on this site, including PostMark if I recall correctly, and Robi today @19, appear to be using CAD in a different way, suggesting perhaps that it’s looser than &lit, and includes clues which might be classed as ‘semi &lit’, ‘&littish’, or ‘with an extended definition’.

    Either way, both BALACLAVA and ACADEMY AWARDS today seem to me to qualify as full-blown &lits/CADs, since they meet the criterion of every word in the clue both contributing to the wordplay, and being part of the definition. (Though perhaps inevitably, the ‘definition’ in clues like ACADEMY AWARDS tends to be ‘whimsical description’ rather than what you’d find in a dictionary.)

    Like others here, I thought both clues were very good. In fact Everyman seems to be one of the most consistent producers of genuine &lits/CADs.

29. essexboy, I can take most of the blame for CAD as ‘clue as definition’. Bert and Joyce and a lunch in Leicester were the other contributory factors.

    Despite having done and latterly blogged crosswords for a bit, I was always confused by what ‘&lit’ meant – although of course it’s short for ‘and literally so’. I know Ximenes introduced the term, but even he admitted in his famous book that it was likely to be interpreted and understood in different ways. Then I saw other bloggers using ‘semi-&lit’, ‘&littish’, ‘extended definition’ and suchlike, so decided – in my blogs anyway – to replace all those with ‘clue-as-definition’. So I use it to describe all clues where the clue itself – as a whole – could be said to lead to the definition. It’s a catch-all; but if you want to carry on arguing what exactly constitutes ‘&lit’, be my guest. But perhaps in General Discussion rather than on my blog …

30. And if I may be permitted another blogger request: bill @ 26, please continue to comment; but please don’t feed the troll. He might be encouraged to think that people here give a rat’s arse about what he thinks about Everyman and be tempted to comment further.

31. Many thanks Pierre, that clears it up.

32. MrEssexboy@28 I will give my views for what it is worth.
    &Lit – the whole clue is read as the definition , the WHOLE clue contributes to the word play, no ifs no buts.
    CAD , semi &Lit etc- the whole clue is read as the definition, part of this produces the wordplay.

    I would say most people agree with the first, very long established.
    The second is more contentious.

33. Bravo, Pierre @30!

34. [And thanks too to Roz @32. It would appear from Pierre @29 that CAD was originally conceived as a ‘catch-all’, covering both &lits and semi &lits. Hence, according to that conception, all &lits would be CADs, but not all CADs would be &lits. I’ll stop now, rather than re-start the discussion in a different room 😉 ]

35. If you want to see some &lit clues, try

    For me, &lit means that ALL items in the clue are doing double duty, i.e. (a) fulfilling some role in the cryptic, and (b) some role in the definition. The clue must also read as an accurate definition of the answer word (which is why I don’t personally feel that the examples in last Sunday’s Everyman quite qualify). As always, I will cite The jungly mass one cleaves [M+AC(HET*)E] as an example.

    I think Peter Biddlecombe can be credited with the invention of the term ‘extended definition’, for clues that try to be &lit but don’t quite make it, needing a little extra help in defining their answers.

36. Well that link didn’t really work, did it 😀

    http://www.andlit.org.uk/azed/slip_search.php

37. Oh come on Pierre, life’s rich tapestry and all that. I don’t suppose many (apart from tlp) object to a variety of compiling styles, for example.

    Besides, I find myself agreeing with him about those two phrases. Guru Manley of Oxbridge was very clear on that in his revered tome, wasn’t he, something about yellow shirt not being acceptable while Brownshirt was? Or similar. He was on about it for a paragraph or two, anyway. Is he outre now?

38. Roz@8 and others. Re spuggie, always thought it was NE expression possibly derived from the Norse like so many of their words. First heard it from my husband (b Durham City). My Dad, a southerner but with RAMC, Durham Light Infantry in WWII, mentioned that the tommies could get on with the local populace while liberating the Low Countries whereas the officers’ French was incomprehensible.

39. On the &lit. matter, I tried to change from it (in my blogs as John) since I felt that perhaps it was old and fusty and perhaps newcomers to cryptics wouldn’t understand, but was never comfortable. The term ‘&lit.’ is long established and it seems sensible to use it, whatever its faults.

    But a complication is that an &lit. should really be where the WHOLE clue is both wordplay and definition. What if the wordplay gives a strong hint as to what is going on, but some of the words in the wordplay aren’t part of the definition? We get a number of variations: semi-&lits, &littish things, etc. The thing that makes it so convenient to use the term &lit. for everything is that in his clue-setting competitions Azed seems to use it as a catch-all for anything that has &lit. tendencies, so if we go along with that (and to me it seems sensible to do so, although I know people who don’t like it) then it isn’t really much different from Peter Biddlecombe’s clue-as-definition.

40. [Thank you Spooner’s catflap@24 for the recommendation about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Have been reading up on their UK website. An incredible story, with a terrible history, and far-reaching consequences. You’ve given me a whole new perspective on places and events and movements I’m familiar with here, and an endless bucket list now that I’m retired. ]

41. Another tick. LEGENDS held me up for a day or so.

42. Late to the party after a long flight so will just note the week-to-week continuity phrase “pear shaped”.
    Thanks Pierre (especially for your serve at 30) and Everyman.

43. Glad I checked back, good spot Paul@42, I looked and looked for something and found nothing.

44. Enjoyed this one. LOI was AVOCADO, eventually realised it fitted but couldn’t parse it.

45. I do the Everyman on the latter day, Saturday.
    Liked 1@ – but Chad got me.
    Rob.

46. I did a web search on “chad fish” and got nothing.
    Ergo I think 14 across was too obscure.

47. DNF. Gave up on legends and dent. Not wholly convinced by either.

    &Lit has always perplexed me, so happy with the alternative.

    Sparrows were only briefly endangered here during Covid when the cafes were closed. Not any more.

48. Just curious, is this an actually an anagram as opposed to an angrind?
    “23 Regrettably, the realist is more underhand
    STEALTHIER
    (THE REALIST)* with ‘regrettably’ as the anagrind”
    New to this site and ever so happy to have found it! Thank you!!

49. Too difficult for this long time solver I’m afraid!

50. Jane at 48 an anagrind is the name given to the word in a clue that indicates that there is an anagram. It’s usually a mayhem type word like smashed or crashed but this setter is known for using what some may say are dodgy anagram indicators and regrettably would be one. So the clue is an anagram, but the indicator is an anagrind.

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