Over 200 puzzles now since our ‘new’ Everyman took over the reins of this long-standing puzzle. I think he produces a cryptic every week that fits the bill – this one was certainly in the slot.
I will leave you to pore over the matching pair, the ‘primarily’ clue, the Everyman reference, and the follow-on clue …
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 Exclaims: Aha! Rabat, somewhat hot African location
SAHARA
Hidden in ExclaimS AHA RAbat.
4 Manliest, but suffering indispositions
AILMENTS
(MANLIEST)* with ‘but suffering’ as the anagrind.
9 Spin doctor’s concern: where to get strong liquors
OPTICS
A dd.
10 Repeated: ‘Everyman bought a round!?’ (Right to be slightly moved)
ITERATED
Everyman is asking you to move the R in I TREATED one place eastwards.
11 Primarily, acknowledgement hollered on yacht?
AHOY
The initial letters of the last four words of the clue, and a cad.
12 Slur (not acceptable), curious, distorted, defamatory
SCURRILOUS
(SL[U]R CURIOUS)* with ‘distorted’ as the anagrind. U for ‘acceptable’ is from the U and non-U classification popularised by the upper-class author Nancy Mitford in the 1950s. ‘U’ meant ‘upper-class’, representing posh folk who would say ‘lavatory’, when non-Us would say ‘toilet’. And everyone these days says the ghastly Americanism ‘bathroom’, so we don’t have to worry any more.
15 Protecting Australia, Darwin shall reassemble defensive structure
HADRIAN’S WALL
An insertion of A in (DARWIN SHALL)* The anagrind is ‘reassemble’ and the insertion indicator is ‘protecting’.
18 ‘Remarkable cure-all’ – banal actress
LAUREN BACALL
(CURE ALL BANAL)* with ‘remarkable’ as the anagrind.
21 Pious posse on the rampage? You’re probably right
I SUPPOSE SO
(PIOUS POSSE)* with ‘on the rampage’ as the anagrind.
22 Bird seen back in Novosibirsk
IBIS
Hidden reversed in NovoSIBIrsk. This has come up a few times of late, but luckily there are lots of species of ibis, so for the obligatory Pierre bird link, I have gone for the Madagascar Ibis. It’s endemic to the island: in other words, it’s found nowhere else on the planet.
24 One who travelled far with dog hostelry (a hotel) rejected
HANNIBAL
A reversal (‘rejected’) of LAB, INN, A and H for the phonetic alphabet ‘hotel’.
25 That which neighs loudly, being gravelly
HOARSE
A homophone of HORSE.
26 Irate, Sir? Bats? They’re seldom seen
RARITIES
(IRATE SIR)* with ‘bats’ as the anagrind.
27 Means of obtaining fish and asparagus
SPEARS
A dd.
Down
1 Bears‘ bellies
STOMACHS
A dd.
2 Rum in peach drink that’s sweet
HOT TODDY
An insertion of ODD in HOTTY. The insertion indicator is ‘in’.
3 Fabulous fliers in dazes, we’re told
ROCS
A homophone of ROCKS.
5 Temperature in still: alcohol’s making blends
INTERTWINES
An insertion of T in INERT, followed by WINES. The insertion indicator is ‘in’.
6 Draconian measures with everyone uprising after extra-terrestrial docked
MARTIAL LAW
A charade of MARTIA[N], then W, ALL reversed. Since it’s a down clue, the reversal indicator is ‘uprising’.
7 State idea, answer for duck
NATION
You need to replace the O for ‘duck’ in NOTION for ‘idea’ with A for ‘answer.
8 Regularly ignored staid, hirsute brute
SADIST
The odd letters of StAiD hIrSuTe.
13 Secret agent redeployed where attention’s focused
CENTRE STAGE
(SECRET AGENT)* with ‘redeployed’ as the anagrind.
14 Frustrate detectives needing a parking place
DISAPPOINT
A charade of DIS, A, P and POINT.
16 Capital‘s aberrancy mostly represented
CANBERRA
(ABERRANC[Y])* with ‘represented’ as the anagrind.
17 Lesser celebrities in painful spots
BLISTERS
‘Lesser celebrities’ might be described as B-LISTERS.
19 … and uncertain expression is to lose freshness
WITHER
A charade of WITH for ‘and’ and ER. Why there is a random ellipsis at the front of the clue, I know not.
20 Landscapist‘s revolver
TURNER
A dd.
23 Tire in America, perhaps? Bear up!
HOOP
A reversal (‘up’, since it’s a down clue) of everyone’s favourite bear, POOH. Who would spell the word ‘tyre’. Except he wasn’t very good at spelling: ‘My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.’
Many thanks to Everyman for this week’s puzzle.
Found this tougher than usual and ended up with four I just couldn’t get for ages. Finally got one of them HANNIBAL and guessed two of the others OPTICS and WITHER but couldn’t parse them. Didn’t get ROCS
BLISTERS made me smile
Lots of anagrams
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
Didn’t get OPTICS and still don’t understand it. I get the “spin doctor” part, but how does it relate to strong liquors?
ROCS I also didn’t get, and I don’t see what dazes has to do with rocks.
WITHER and HOOP I also missed, but thank you for the explanation. Both quite tricky for this beginner.
I am the opposite. I get optics for strong liquor as optics are the measures used for spirits. I don’t get the spin doctor part. Please explain
The wordplay for HOT TODDY made me laugh out loud—well done Everyman! The TURNER-HANNIBAL and SPEARS-HOOP crossings took me ages (and I still don’t know if a turner is a landscaper or a tool), but the rest went in well enough, once I figured out how to spell SCURRILOUS. I have the same question as Vireya @2 about OPTICS.
Cheers to Pierre for another quality blog and bird link. When I hear ibis I think of what the Japanese call toki, the crested ibis, which almost went extinct but was reintroduced to Sado Island where it now draws tourists. They’re funny-looking but beautiful birds.
Fiona Anne @3: Thanks for clearing up the liquor side of OPTICS. For a spin doctor or PR specialist, optics refers to how something looks or comes off. For example, if an investment analyst gets treated to a lavish dinner by the company she’s being paid to analyze, maybe that’s not illegal but it would probably be bad optics.
Thank you for the blog and the beautiful birdie, Pierre.
The ellipsis in 19 I checked on the print version too, as sometimes the entries are different, but no, it’s there as well.
My attempt to explain it was that . . . sometimes represents an unfinished sentence, fading away.
Our former Prime Minister was a master of spin doctoring. Well, he’d like to have thought so. Wore hi-viz vests , caps, hard-hats, sports gear, whatever, at any occasion to make him look like Everyman (sorry Alan Connor). The thing is most could see through his OPTICS. (For those who don’t know, he was formerly in marketing, been censured since he lost the election, uneMPloyable elsewhere it seems.)
Mention of Nancy Mitford reminds me of Judy Dench in Love in a Cold Climate, a gorgeous series. Otoh, pious posses, of many denominations past and present, are a menace. Thanks PnE.
Nick@4 HOT TODDY made me laugh too, especially when I finally worked out the parsing as per Pierre. Before that I was thinking it should have been peachy drink.
My greatest chuckle was the surface for the self-referential, and possibly self-deprecating clue ITERATED.
Repeated: ‘Everyman bought a round!?’ (Right to be slightly moved). Love his sense of humour.
Got the spin meaning of optics but the spirit dispenser meaning, which I suspect has been around before, didn’t break surface of the neural swamp.
I don’t understand what OPTICS have to do with Spin Doctors? Anyone?
Is it the Spin Doctoring @11, or the OPTICS HYD@11. Spin doctors, those who want to influence ‘images’ eg in politics, as well as putting on their verbal ‘spin’/manipulation, these days in the television/print/photographic media, also try to influence the visual image, and will do anything they can do to enhance the positives or reduce the negatives in the visual images/OPTICS.
OPTIC, in the spirit measuring sense, is a British registered trademark (interesting to know if solvers outside the UK have come across them or call them something else).
This is the second IBIS we’ve seen in the Everyman this year. Back in May it was the ‘primarily’ clue.
Thanks to E and P
paddymelon @12 – thanks, I have managed to find a definition in Chambers that relates to the activity of spin-doctors, not something I was aware of.
NORTH AMERICAN
(typically in a political context) the way in which an event or course of action is perceived by the public.
“what we really need in this circumstance is to make smart decisions in the best interest of student safety—not simply make changes that win political points for optics”
Thanks for the blog, I thought this was really good. BLISTERS was very neat , agree with PDM for ITERATED and HOT TODDY , I really liked OPTICS as a clue. Unfortunately it has invaded general management-speak, I have heard talk about the optics of having females around for a Physics Open-day.
Does anyone have a follow-on clue for this and the previous week ( not today’s puzzle) .
@Roz how about STONEWALLING and HADRIANSWALL?
12 Ac is curious. In the paper the “not acceptable” is right at the end. It was my only quibble since the letter U occurs twice in “slur, curious “. Perhaps the setter had similar thoughts because in the blog the order is completely changed , and a word has been swapped ??
Original clue- Defamatory, unpleasant slur, curious, not acceptable.
Thanks Jay , I would never have seen that.
Final point I think Landscapist for Turner is a bit harsh, he was so much more than that and I suspect his most famous works are sea-scapes.
Had the same thought re Turner, landscapist sounds lame given his great intensity and dynamism.
I found this crossword took me longer than an Everyman can, but not much. We visited a more places on the world tour with the SAHARA, CANBERRA and HADRIANS WALL.
Turner was whitewashed after his death, because his mistress at the end of his life, his landlady in Margate, was seen as below his status, and his sketchbooks of brothels and nudes suppressed. (Fascinating early Fake or Fortune episode trying to have one of his later seascapes accredited as his.)
Thank you to Pierre and Everyman.
The only one I didn’t get this week was ROCS and I still don’t understand it, even with the explanation above. Anyone? (I get the homophone part, but the rest…)
Anna D. ROCS were ‘fabulous’ as they were legendary, and mythical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc_(mythology)
AnnaD @21 cont. Rocks, synonym of dazes, stuns, etc.
Ah thanks! And why is ‘in dazes’ rocks?
Thanks. I posted my question as you were already answering it!
[Anna D. Snap. 🙂 ]
Thanks, Everyman & Pierre.
I had an interesting exchange with Alberich once over U/non-U and whether it should appear in crossword clues – my objection to it was that it’s archaic and not something younger solvers will be familiar with, hence unfair. He didn’t mind that aspect of it but his objection was that it’s an appalling concept. I have to say he was right.
grantinfreo @10 – it didn’t last time either… (you @6 here). One of those things – if you see it often enough it will sink in eventually!
I found this easier than usual, perhaps because there were quite a few anagrams. That said, I failed to solve 27ac and 23d neither of which made any sense to me.
Thanks, both.
I’m familiar with U/non-U terminology, but I wouldn’t define U as ‘acceptable’ and I don’t think Mitford meant it in that way. It simply stands for ‘upper class’, quite a different thing.
Impressive archive smarts Widders, so that was the faint echo. That it was so faint says just how swampy the ginf neural swamp is 🙂 .
Wot no roc pic?
Like Nick and others I thought the rum-consuming hotty was great. I always thought the singular of hotties was hottie, but on checking I found both are acceptable (if not exactly U). I also found that hotties were originally Aus/NZ, where they can also be hot water bottles (?)
Also interesting, to me at any rate, is that hotty/hottie is a homophone of haughty in accents with the cot-caught merger, i.e. much of Scotland/Canada/USA.
And while I’m on homophones, some here (Scots/Caribbeans/possibly others) might not pronounce HOARSE the same as ‘hoarse’. Not a complaint, just a little phonetic meandering.
pdm @9, spot on with the self-deprecation. Like Jay I spotted the follow-on WALL; I don’t think anyone has mentioned WALL and BACALL as the rhyming pair this week. Ta E & P.
For those struggling with optics – these are stock photos of pub optics – the ways pubs here serve spirits.
@Vireya 2 : Having read the comments I’m not sure that anyone has really explained what an optic is in the spirits sense. I only learned the word when I became a spirits marketeer in the 90s. An optic is a spring-loaded spout that is put on a bottle of spirits. The bottle is then inverted and hung behind the bar. When you order your gin, vodka, whisky or whatever, the barman/woman takes a glass and holds it under the optic and pushes up. The optic allows one measure of spirits to empty into the glass. The process is repeated for a double.
In spirits sales and marketing having your brand “on optic” is important. It is the house standard, the one you’ll get if you just ask for a gin and tonic, vodka and orange or whisky and soda. Most patrons don’t specify the brand they want (more fool them). If you do, the bar or pub will pour you a different brand from a smaller bottle they have. Brands on optic outsell other brands massively. So now you know.
Still didn’t get the answer though! One of 4 I missed. Doh!
me @31: a hoarse is a horse, of course 🙂
For 23a, I’m not sure that this has anything to do with Pooh’s wobbly spelling. “Tire” is simply how Americans spell the British “tyre”.
@poc 29 I had taken the U as universal (film classification), ie acceptable to all.
I wasn’t too sure about the spin doctor’s concern; I see in the ODE it is given as ‘mainly North American’.
I liked the R change in ITERATED, HOT TODDY for the alternative peach, INTERTWINED for the surface and ‘still’, and the painful spots in BLISTERS.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
I think the rhyme “Good kids go to bed with hotties, naughty kids get smacks on botties” must be Australian.
I knew the pub’s meaning of optics but not the spin doctor’s, and like Gliddofglood I took U to be acceptable in the film sense. I’m irredeemably non-U and usually can’t even remember which word is which anyway.
I knew Optic from working as a barman in my youth but never realised it’s actually a registered trademark. The things you learn doing crosswords 🙂
Cheers P&E
Agree with our reviewer that the Everyman puzzles maintain a good standard. This one no exception & this week pretty good too.
Like Gliddofgood@37 and gladys@39, I took U in 12a SCURRILOUS from the Universal film classification, something I (as a Canadian) only learned about from this site. (Although I did know U and Non-U from the Mitford books, which are still a good read.)
Also, elaborating on GoG@37 re 23d HOOP, Winnie the Pooh (full name Winnipeg) was born in Canada, so he would have spelled tyre with an “i”, unless his wobbliness got in the way.
Thanks Everyman for the fun and Pierre for the helpful and colourful blog.
Cellomaniac@42, I never knew Winnie the Pooh was Canadian , you will be claiming Paddington next.
Did anyone else get a different version of 12AC in the various formats?
I have written the newspaper version @17 , quite different to the blog version.
I solve on the Guardian app, and my clue matches that above.
Gliddofglood@36: yes, that makes more sense than Pierre’s explanation.
Like others, I think the film-classification sense for U works better than the Mitfordian sense in this clue. In the US, some schools use “U” as a grade meaning “unsatisfactory”. To an American that provides the most natural parsing of the clue, but if UK schools don’t do that then it doesn’t work.
Michelle @28 the spears refer to spearing a fish and asparagus spears
I struggled a bit understanding tire for hoop and still don’t fully get it.
But absolutely loved BListers for as much as it must pain those Once were A-listers, when they discover themselves demoted . Too funny
Where does the final “w” come from in “martial law” ?
Rolf @48 it’s short for ‘with’. So ‘with everyone’ becomes ‘w all’ which is ‘uprised’ into ‘l law’. Similarly without is wo.
May be a foodie or restaurant thing.
This crossword was okay other than 1A which is rather nonsensical.
1a is fairly clear – in the letters.
Liked this as a good challenge.
Got there, but like the IRD, taxing.
Sometimes just too British by far. There is a world out there!
Stuck with 6 to go – eventually got there with half of those, but gave up when still looking up whether Constable could possibly have had a contemporary called ‘Gunner’ for 20d. (I’d never have guessed Turner as a “landscapist”!) I vehemently object to 3d clued as “dazes”, and unfortunately was never going to get 9ac: aren’t they just… measures?!