Everyman 3,975

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Feeling hungry for an Everyman blog?

Looks like Everyman has been preparing for the Christmas festivities with all the answers or clues in some way referring to food & drink. Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see a rhyming pair this time but the primary letter and self reference are here. Anyway Merry Christmas one and all. Thanks Everyman for the fun this year.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
5. Brief moment tucking into spicy sauce heartlessly – and pastry (6)
SAMOSA

MO – short time in a heartless SA(l)SA – spicy sauce

7. English poet shortly to compete, showing spirit (3,2,3)
EAU DE VIE

E(nglish) & most of AUDE(n) – a poet & VIE to compete

9. Male to pursue in sidecar, perhaps (8)
COCKTAIL

COCK – male & TAIL to pursue

10. Something visceral seen in nonfungible tokens (6)
GIBLET

Seen in nonfunGIBLE Tokens

11. Magical resin cooked, becoming sweeter (12)
CARAMELISING

[MAGICAL RESIN]* cooked

13. Fruit (some cheapo melons) (6)
POMELO

Hidden in cheaPO MELOns

15. Philosopher twice failing to finish piece of toast and apple (6)
RUSSET

Philosopher RUSSE(ll) without the last 2 letters & a bit of T(oast)

18. Displaying pep, she’s hired for meat-and-potatoes fare (9,3)
SHEPHERDS PIE

a displayed [PEP SHE’S HIRED]*

21. Artist in bistro in which wine can be found (6)
CARAFE

RA – artist inside CAFE

22. Everyman twice seen in places to drink, finding occasions to drink (8)
TEATIMES

I & ME – Everyman twice inside TEATS – places to drink for babies

23. Fellow with a stein’s oddly ignored bread (8)
CHAPATIS

CHAP – fellow and alternate letters of A sTeInS

24. Son moves in summer clothing, creating desire (6)
THIRST

S(on) moving in T-SHIRT

DOWN
1. What accompanies roll? What may follow fish? What’s something hard to eat? (4,4)
ROCK CAKE

Well you get ROCK ‘n’ roll & fish CAKEs

2. In Glasgow, is unable to foot the bill, we’re told, for appetiser (6)
CANAPE

Bad pun/joke time, in cod Glaswegian it would sound a bit like “cannae pay”

3. Fervid, stunted hired gun suppresses resistance that’s increasingly avid (8)
HUNGRIER

A stunted [HIRED GU(n)}* that’s fervid with R(esistance) inserted

4. Leaves when one’s not going to pot? (3,3)
TEA BAG

Cryptic def using tea bags rather than tea pots

6. Charlie, Oscar and Victor tucked into fizz American rejected, wanting salad ingredients (8)
AVOCADOS

C(harlie) & O(scar) & V(ictor) inside SO DA– fizzy stuff & A(merican) then reverse the whole lot

7. Lacier pants, that’s sweet (6)
ECLAIR

A pants LACIER* Is pants as an anagram indicator getting overused, maybe.

8. Ordered up dry Italian – and some that are served cold? (4)
ICES

SEC – a description of dry wines & I(talian) all reversed – ordered up

12. Groups of soldiers with no time for diets (8)
REGIMENS

T(ime) removed from REGIMEN(t)S

14. Cockney residence rented out; at first, tenant eagerly prepared eggs (8)
OMELETTE

Cockney that is dropping the H – (h)OME & LET – rented out & first letters of T(enant) E(agerly)

16. Starters of savoury Asian specialities – horseradish involved, mixed in soy? (8)
SASHIMIS

Starting letters time and clue as definition

17. Wine’s what you need when making meringues (6)
WHITES

Double definition

18. Is upset having eaten artificial seafood (6)
SCAMPI

CAMP – artificial, put on inside a reversed IS

19. What, ultimately, larger ovens may give you? (6)
ROASTS

Clue as def cum extended def – end of (large)R & OASTS – ovens

20. ’70s sitcom that’s pap (4)
MASH

Double definition

 

36 comments on “Everyman 3,975”

  1. Thank you, flashing and Everyman, and season’s greetings to you both and solvers all.
    With just the final syllable, CHAPATIS and SASHIMIS could be the rhyming pair.
    I remember doing this at breakfast time down here. Made my mouth water, but left me feeling very satisfied.

    Have tried to find today’s Everyman, but am assuming the Observer isn’t published today. Found an Observer New Review Christmas Special posted on the Guardian site 18 Dec.

  2. TEATIMES last in as there were multiple possibilities for the self-referential Everyman. Misdirected by places to drink, and the definition, occasions to drink. My favourite for the clue, and chuckles to boot.

  3. Been a busy week and can’t remember how I got on with this.

    I liked: RUSSET, CHAPATIS, WHITES, TEATIMES

    Thanks Everyman and flashling

  4. I’m a week behind on my crosswords, and I just did this one on Christmas Eve, so the food and drink motif was most appropriate.

    Favourite among all the delectable clues was the hard-up Scotsman at 2d. CANAPÉ.

    Thanks Everyman for the fun and flashling for the excellent blog.

    And a hearty thank you to all the setters and bloggers, and to all the commenters who make this site such a delicious treat all the year round. See you all in the new year (if I can catch up by then).

  5. Thanks for the blog and all the others this year, Merry Christmas to everybody and Happy Birthday to JWST , at least I am not nervous this year.
    Impressive setting to get all the food and drink in, like Cellomaniac @4 I think CANAPE has to be the winner.
    Did anyone find a follow-on clue?
    No Observer today, PDM@1 , yes a puzzle special last week in the Review including a jumbo by Picaroon.

  6. Are the follow on clues ROCKCAKE and ROCS? Particularly when rocs are in the same corner as HOT TODDY, STOMACHS and OPTICS the previous week.

    I enjoyed this, couldn’t see a rhyming pair either.

    Merry Christmas and thank you to Everyman and flashling.

  7. Good spot Shanne @6. Another possibility for the follow-on is T-SHIRT, with the ‘son’ moving to the right to create THIRST; last week we had I TREATED, with the ‘right to be slightly moved’, creating ITERATED.

    As for the matching pair, we have TEA BAG and TEATIMES (?) I suppose the ‘natural’ place to look in the grid is in the two long across solutions, CARAMELISING and SHEPHERD’S PIE. I did half-wonder about Sing a Song of Sixpence: when the PIE was opened, the birds began to SING 🙂

    Agree about CANAPE as favourite – the homophone sounds OK to my ears (and I see Fiona Anne hasn’t objected, so perhaps it’s OK to Scottish ears as well?)

    Many thanks Everyman for all the dainty dishes, flashling for continuing to blog even on Christmas Day, and I’d echo Cellomaniac @4 about all the contributors here.

    [Roz @5, has JWST been living up to your expectations?]

  9. Very imaginative from Shanne and MrEssexboy but sorry I am not totally convinced, maybe this puzzle is just a one-off with the food and drink and normal service next time. Sing a Song of Sixpence had a blackbird pie, not lamb.
    [JWST has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations , it will even last much longer as the fuel burns were much shorter then expected . I foolishly made a bargain with the Gods of Chance last year that i would get a tattoo if it arrived at L2 all safely unfurled and working properly. ]

  10. [Roz – good to hear about JWST, but very foolish re the tattoo. Will it be a space-related design? Pillars of Creation would be interesting, Black Hole maybe not such a good idea.]

  11. [ Just an image of the telescope , last February , I am not really the sort of person to have tattoos but the bargain was worth it overall ]

  13. Tony Smith @12. The Christmassy clues in the instructions are simple words or names related to the word in capitals. The other clues are standard cryptic. I found it easiest to get a few of the cryptic ones in place then use the crossers to find any adjoining Christmas words – most are fairly obvious once you have a letter or two, eg the SETTERS

  17. Merry Christmas to all the regular Everyman bloggers and contributors and to Everyman himself. Looking forward to another fun year.

  18. Thanks for the blog … . ‘Eau de Vie’ and ‘Shepherds Pie’ are eye rhymes. (This definition lifted from the web: eye rhyme, in poetry, an imperfect rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently (such as move and love, bough and though, come and home, and laughter and daughter).)

  20. I struggled to finish this one, with some crossing pairs causing head-scratching e.g. 3D and 15A, 19D and 24A. Blame it on brain fog from heavy cold!
    For a while I had WHISKS for 17D – there is some sort of association with wine, and of course a whisk is used to make meringues.
    Never heard of ‘sidecar’ as a cocktail . . .
    Like many I loved 2D.

  21. The parsing of 3d hasn’t been queried. It’s actually hire(d) gun* + R. So I don’t the wordplay quite works.

  24. Yes Greg sorry you’re right. I thought that didn’t look right when I wrote the blog but didn’t see what was wrong. Oh well. I’ll try harder next year 🙂 As an aside thankfully your ex blogger Sil is still amongst us. See the comments on Ken’s Christmas wishes.

  25. Thank you to everyone who posts this blog throughout the year – always instrumental in helping me understand the solutions that I’m sure are right, but I simply can’t spot the wordplay….

    Will anyone be doing the giant Christmas crossword that featured in the same New Review as this one… I’m desperate to know how some of those were parsed.

  26. Hawacote@25 there could be a blog , I think there was last time, but not certain as it is not an “official” crossword.
    You could put questions on General Discussion about clues. It is nearly two weeks now and the answers were in the paper so no issue with spoilers.

  27. Another pair is 6D & 20D making AVOCADO SMASH.
    Thanks everyone for the enlightenment and entertainment throughout 2022. Happy New Year to you all.

  29. It’s February 11 here and we are expecting a cyclone in the north of NZ. Keep safe everyone.
    Good crossword. Favourite was Omelette

  30. I did not like SASHIMIs – it is uncountable as is SUSHI
    Otherwise some good food clues and I liked CANAPE
    Rob.

  31. DNF 7A and DNP 19D

    I ticked Canapé as a Like but Omelette doesn’t work for me aurally.

    We got pretty wet in the Jan floods so not impressed that we have more to come.

  32. @Barrie my brother in law spent January in NZ visiting family. Unbelievably wet he said. And now you have a cyclone. Good grief. I thought our summers were bad.

  33. Yes Flashling, I’ve been here since 1982 and it’s the wettest I’ve known. Usually late Jan and Feb are sunny months.

  35. 16 d Would have been easy just to have left the last letter off with no effect to the whole puzzle and the borrowed word would have been correct. Pity

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