Everyman 3,972

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The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3972.

This time Everyman gives us a bonus of four rhyming answers, but apart from that everything is in its place and all’s well with the world.

ACROSS
1 COMPLACENT
Smug observation, not involving me, to take place (10)
An envelope (‘to take’) of ‘place’ – lifted straight from the clue (not that there is anything wrong with that, as long as it is not too obvious, and, as here, it fits naturally into the surface) – in COM[me]NT (‘observation’) minus ME (‘not involving me’).
6 RSVP
Four letters demanding one reply? (4)
Répondez s’il vous plaît. Cryptic definition. We had ASAP in the same place in last week’s Everyman (with a somewhat different grid).
9 SHORTENING
Making a prune a cake’s ingredient (10)
Double definition, the first referring to cutting a tree or vine.
10 BRUT
Far from sweet, Shakespearean turncoat you and I rejected (4)
A subtraction: BRUT[us] (‘Shakespearean turncoat’) minus US (‘you and I rejected’).
12 INTELLIGENCE
What’s sought by Smiley and Scarecrow? (12)
Double/cryptic definition: George Smiley, the intelligence officer in many of John le Carré’s novels, and the Scarecrow who was looking for a brain in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum- and, again, other books by the same author.
15 DROOPED
Lost energy having run out, took performance-enhancing drugs (7)
An envelope (‘having’) of R O (‘run out’, cricket) in DOPED (‘took performance-enhancing drugs’).
16 PROSAIC
Routine spies’ operation, capturing resistance that’s turned (7)
A reversal (‘that’s turned’) of an envelope (‘capturing’) of R (‘resistance’) in CIA’S (‘spies”) plus OP (‘operation’).
17 LIBERTY
Impertinent behaviour that’s commemorated by a statue (7)
Double definition. An echo of last week’s PATRIOTISM.
19 RAIN MAN
Initially ‘Raymond’, autistic, in notable movie also named …? (4,3)
First letters (‘initially’) of the rest of the words in the clue, with an (approximately) &lit definition: in the 1988 movie directed by Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic savant named Raymond. The film won the Berlin Golden Bear and four Oscars.
20 SENIOR MOMENT
Forgetful episode: having ingested iodine, Spaniard meets consequence (6,6)
An envelope (‘having ingested’) of I (chemical symbol, ‘iodine’) on SEÑOR (‘Spaniard’) plus (‘meets’) MOMENT (‘consequence’ – “a person of moment”).
23 ERNE
Some Cabernet and a bird (4)
A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘CabERNEt”. Taking Cabernet as Cabernet Sauvignon, my glass of ’75 Haut-Brion probably contains more Merlot (but no merle).
24 MILLENNIAL
Member of ‘Generation Y’ converted a linen mill (10)
An anagram (‘converted’) of ‘a linen mill’.
25 TEST
Sample a slice of white sturgeon (4)
A hidden answer (‘a slice of’) in ‘whiTE STurgeon’.
26 IRIDESCENT
I travel on trail that’s glittering (10)
A charade of ‘I’ plus RIDE (‘travel’) plus SCENT (‘trail’).
DOWN
1 CAST
Actors in shed (4)
Double definition.
2 MOOD
Spirit, to those listening, sounded like a cow (4)
Sounds like (‘to those listening’) MOOED (‘sounded like a cow’).
3 LATENT PERIOD
Interpolated questionable stretch of inactivity (6,6)
An anagram (‘questionable’) of ‘interpolated’. Everyman seems to be making a habit of coming up with one-word anagrams.
4 CONTEND
Challenge Conservative nurse (7)
A charade of CON (‘Conservative’) plus TEND (‘nurse’).
5 NON-SLIP
Cleared up slop: inn less likely to cause accidents (3-4)
An anagram (‘cleared up’) of ‘slop inn’.
7 STRONG-ARMS
Gran storms off, seeing bullies (6-4)
An anagram (‘off’) of ‘gran storms’.
8 PUTRESCENT
After rotting, erupt with odour – becoming this? (10)
A charade of PUTRE, an anagram (‘after rotting’) of ‘erupt’, plus SCENT (‘odour’ – the only one of three -SCENTs to be so defined), with an extended definition.
11 A GOOD INNINGS
Instance of longevity, diagnosing no upsets (1,4,7)
An anagram (‘upsets’) of ‘diagnosing no’. A curiosity: in baseball, INNINGS is treated as a plural, with singular inning.
13 ADOLESCENT
Young American on benefits given small amount of money (10)
A charade of A (‘American’) plus (‘on’) DOLES (‘benefits’) plus (‘given’) CENT (‘small amount of money’).
14 TOP BANANAS
Outdo frantic bigwigs (3,7)
A charade of TOP (‘outdo’) plus BANANAS (‘frantic’). Apparently, the banana was an actual fruit given to the commedian on delivering the punch line in a popular skit, with the commedian as TOP BANANA as opposed to his stooges.
18 YUMMIER
More mouth-watering – Yankee with fewer teeth – not good! (7)
A charade of Y (‘Yankee’, radio alphabet) plus [g]UMMIER (‘with fewer teeth’) minus the G (‘not good’).
19 RUMBLED
Discovered truth about what neglected corporation may have done (7)
Double definition; in the second, the ‘corporaion’ is the stomach.
21 DIVE
Short day, then Everyman’s in dingy drinking den (4)
A charade of D (‘short day’) plus I’VE (‘Everyman’s’ – has).
22 A LOT
Verbally mete out lashings (1,3)
Sounds like (‘verbally’) ALLOT (‘mete out’).

picture of the completed grid

45 comments on “Everyman 3,972”

  1. A grammatical purist would not describe shortening as “making a prune”, because prune in this sense is not a noun.

  2. [Don’t know about Spaniards ingesting I, but they’re still digesting the 2 large Js they took in Qatar on Friday. Ditto large As for our boys just hours ago 🙁 ]

  3. From last week’s discussion I think this may be the 400th Everymen/women’s ever.
    Hence the 4 hundreds around the perimeter?

  5. Must have been having a SENIOR MOMENT. Although I thought a little iodine was good for you.
    My favourite is LATENT PERIOD for the surface, RSVP for the Christmas cracker chuckle, RAINMAN was a clever primarily clue, and SHORTENING, because it took me so long to see the grammar and that it wasn’t an anagram.

  6. Lovely to find out who Everyman is and to have his 200th puzzle.

    Found it more challenging than recent puzzles but was determined to finish it and did and since it was the 200th I sent it off.

    Loved the four long rhyming clues round the edges. COMPLACENT took me the longest but it was my favourite of the four – and I liked the different ways of cluing SCENT in each of the other three.

    My favourites included: SHORTENING (haven’t heard that used in a long time), INTELLIGENCE, PROSAIC.

    For a while I thought 15a was *dropped* but then I worked it out.

    Thanks Everyman and PeterO

  7. I believe that the four CENT endings mark that this is a centenary puzzle, the 200th, for AC. His 100th puzzle (no. 3,872 – also blogged by PeterO) had the same four CENT endings around the perimeter, though we didn’t know the significance at that time. This, I think, is the ‘quiet celebration’ referred to in the Meet the Setter article that appeared last week.

  8. Thanks for the blog, we got double our two cents worth, great spot by Jay for the 100th. Another very enjoyable puzzle, I liked RUMBLED and PROSAIC and the use of Smiley and Scarecrow for INTELLIGENCE. RSVP is the follow-on clue, I am glad the keys did not continue. Maybe David Bowie this week ?
    Does LATENT PERIOD count for Jay’s list ? One word to two.

  9. My last in was SHORTENING, which I should have got, but I see it more often in American recipes, translating to more usual UK ingredient terms for our weekly youthwork cooking sessions when I put the recipe together. I suspect, like sidewalk and fall (autumn), it originated in the UK, just persisted there when other dialects dominated here.

    I liked the four cents in celebration.

    Thank you to Everyman and PeterO

  10. Adding, I note A GOOD INNINGS and LATENT PERIOD and INTELLIGENCE and SENIOR MOMENT mirror each other in the grid.

  11. Tough puzzle.

    Liked COMPLACENT, RSVP, YUMMIER, RUMBLED (loi).

    I could not parse 9ac making a prune = shortening

    Thanks, both.

  12. Thanks Jay @ 7

    I hadn’t spotted the link to the centenary.

    [I went to look for the 100th puzzle and was surprised to see that I hadn’t done it – after all it was lock down and I was stuck at home instead of with family. Then I had a look as some other puzzles around that time and none appeared to be completed. Turns out that when my laptop had a problem at the beginning of November which didn’t get fixed until 11th November, the fix erased its memory of all the crosswords I had done before 11th November. I remember that when it was fixed and I got back in none of my saved passwords were there anymore – fortunately I remembered most of them. Weird.

    I might try the 100th again anyway after doing todays – and maybe go back to the first which was well before I started doing crosswords.]

  13. A bit tougher than usual. For RSVP I had a SENIOR MOMENT and first of all confidently put ASAP there. As this didn’t affect any crossing words this remained uncorrected for quite some time until the déjà vu resolved itself…

    Liked INTELLIGENCE, YUMMIER and the -CENT quartet.

    Thanks both.

  14. Thanks, Everyman, and congrats on the milestone. And thanks for the blog, PeterO.

    Paddymelon – by my reckoning, 4,000 will be 9th July next year (assuming we miss out three weekends for Christmas, New Year and Easter).

  17. Nice commemorative puzzle; I took that there were 200 in 2 Across clues and 200 in 2 Down clues.

    I liked ‘making a prune’ for SHORTENING and the clever interpolated anagram for LATENT PERIOD.

    Thanks Everyman and PeterO.

  19. Have we really enjoyed, or in my case endured, 200 of these new Everymans? How time flies.

    As some will recall, I had become nearly sure that these efforts were the product of Qaos in The Guardian, so I must now apologise to the person I believe goes by the name of John Tabraham. Genuinely sorry, sir.

    I have no comments to make about today’s clues. Just well done ‘AC’ on your 200th appearance. I’m sure producing one of these per week is not easy.

  20. Thanks Jay@7 for the explanation of the CENTs, that makes sense (no pun intended). Congrats to the recently unmasked Everyman for your 200th puzzle! As a new solver I’ve probably only done about 15 of them, but your puzzle is something I look forward to every week, even if I make a mistake like I did here putting dropped for DROOPED. The clued meaning of RUMBLE was new to me, as was “lashings”. Thank you PeterO for the excellent blog.

  22. Don R @21 – is “lashings of ginger beer” an authentic Blytonism or was it invented by the Comic Strip? I have a feeling it’s the latter.

  24. Everyman’s not one of my regular solves, but I was intrigued by AC’s (gratefully received) bit of self-promotion in his recent Meet the Setter Guardian blog post. I really enjoyed it and was pleasantly impressed with Alan’s cluing.

    I didn’t spot the Nina, despite knowing it was a centenary puzzle, but then, I very seldom do spot them.

    17ac, LIBERTY: I think “that’s commemorated” etc. is all part of the definition, isn’t it?

    3dn , LATENT PERIOD: great anagram.

    8dn PUTRESCENT: do.

    11dn, A GOOD INNINGS: hat trick!

    13dn, ADOLESCENT: could also read as DOLE=benefits, S=small (clothing)?

    19dn, RUMBLED: I got in a tizz over this one because I jumped to thoughts of what a far worse-neglected corporation might do, with the synonym ‘tumbled’ (tum bled). However, RAIN MAN couldn’t be wrong and eventually, I looked at it again and RUMBLED/tumbled it! Now, wasn’t someone recently writing about clues with two possible answers?

    John E@1, I think you’re right that ‘prune’ as a noun for the action is not in dictionaries but I find it easy to imagine someone actually saying “I gave the hedge a good prune”, colloquially. Perhaps a question mark would have been in order?

    Widdersbel@22, I’m not going to check all the Famous Five books I still retain, but I think you’re probably right.

  25. Looks like Shanne@23 gave the full SP on ‘lashings of ginger beer’ while I was writing. Ginger beer is alcoholic, isn’t it? Shanne’s linked article mentions that “The GB makes an appearance at most meals, even breakfast. As Julian remarks, ‘ginger beer is a gorgeous drink – it seems to go with simply everything’.” Blyton may have omitted the follow-up remarks: ‘You’re my best friend, you are, George; I’ve always loved you’.

    Many thanks for the links, Shanne.

  26. Don Rogers @21 and others – apparently I need to read some Enid Blyton! This is the sort of thing that makes crosswords fun: I’m always learning something new and unexpected.

  27. TC @25 – ginger beer isn’t generally alcoholic, no. Neither is ginger ale. The ale/beer parts are misnomers, for some reason that I’m sure is on the internet somewhere. Although an alcoholic ginger beer variant was unleashed on the UK market in the alcopops craze of the 2000s/2010s.

  28. Homemade ginger beer, which is likely to be what Blyton was referring to, is alcoholic as it is brewed using sugar, yeast and ginger see this article. Commercial ginger beer only stopped being alcoholic in the 1920s during the American Prohibition.

  29. Rob@27, Shanne@28, the mother of a friend I went to school with used to make lashings of ginger beer, but I think it was only for the adults of the house, because it was (mildly) alcoholic. I certainly never had any of it.

  31. Crabbies had a bit of a moment with quite strong ginger beer , 5% or so. Ir was popular for a few years with the students but died out. I think most ginger beer/ale sold in shops is now non-alcoholic, used as a mixer with whisky etc.

  33. Thanks for the 1801 Tony , I never click on links as I am sure you know. I meant a moment in the sun, it was extremely popular for about 2 years after a strong advertising campaign. Shortly after Magners cider had its own burst of popularity.

  34. [I grew up in a ginger growing area of Queensland. Ginger beer was non alcoholic and still my favourite today. Very healthy. We used to grow the ginger beer ‘plant’ in primary school experiments. But if you want the alcoholic one, don’t try this at home, unless you know what you’re doing.]

  35. [ You are lucky PDM , we have one company , Fentimans , that does proper ginger beer and dandelion and burdock, quite expensive but a real treat ]

  36. [My recollection from brewing ginger beer in my teens is that the recipe involved enough sugar for the yeast to die from alcohol poisoning – about 14% ABV]

  37. Unusually, this was a DNF for me. Like White Devil @30 I’d entered CONTEST and thought 15A must be DROPOUT. Also got fixated on ‘prune’ as a dried plum and couldn’t justify SHORTENING. Also failed to spot the 4 CENTS – oh dear!
    RSVP once again raises the issue of 4 v 1,1,1,1. In my view if you can’t say it as a word (which you can with ASAP) without simply speaking the individual letters, it has to be 1,1,1,1.

  38. A slow burn for me this morning, but no complaints about the puzzle – all fair and good. DNF on 10a as I got Tart for “far from sweet” stuck in my brain and lost patience as it would not fit, and gave up. My favourite was Intelligence.

  39. I found this hard too, and made the same mistakes as a some others have ‘fessed up to, with a few more answers correct but not fully parsed.

    Not wholly convinced that ‘making a prune’ is something anyone would say. ‘Giving [it] a prune’ is more likely.

  40. Hard this week! Got there in the end… but it took me longer than usual, and I didn’t understand “making a prune” for shortening at 9ac (thank you for the explanation, and comforting to see I’m not alone objecting to the grammar!)
    My favourites were 12ac and 16ac – not prosaic at all, and a good test of the noodle for me!

  41. I found this hard. But appreciate the reasoning for the answers

    Never known a stomach being known as corporation ?
    Favourites : Brut , yummier, iridescent, shortening and dropped

    20 ac too hard for me

  44. Sweetening is what we use in our cakes and moet is good in spirit too.
    Other than those two alternative right answers, agreed with the fifteensquared answers.
    Nice evening in Waipu Cove – it isn’t raining.

  45. Vanessa @41,

    Never known a stomach being known as corporation

    Collins online:

    5. informal
    a large paunch or belly

    It’s a cryptic crossword chestnut, often cluing, for instance, the letters -TUM-. Don’t forget it now you know it.

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