It’s convenient that The Observer is today carrying an article about the Everyman which lists the setters — it says it started with Ximenes, who was Colin Macnutt: in fact he was Derrick Macnutt, which Everyman knows because he’s in the grid; there was Alec Robins, Dorothy Taylor, Allan Scott (who is there as ASCOT, also Alan Connor himself perhaps) and Colin Gumbrell. Because of the need to fit these names in, Everyman has apparently missed out on the usual rhyming clues and the self-referential clue. Can anyone say who Philippa is?
I thought this was trickier than usual, but it was a good crossword and there are no major gripes.
Definitions in italics, underlined. Indicators (homophone, hidden, reversal, etc.) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | OVENWARE |
Casseroles, say, old and new, Vera smashed (8)
|
| o (new Vera)* | ||
| 5 | LIMPET |
Weak shell of elegant mollusc (6)
|
| limp e[legan]t — limp = weak | ||
| 10 | DOROTHY |
Girl crashed hot rod approaching | end of motorway (7)
|
| (hot rod)* [motorwa]y | ||
| 11 | HEARING |
Catching a chance to speak (7)
|
| 2 defs — I thought this looked dodgy but Chambers has ‘an opportunity to be heard’, so it’s OK | ||
| 12 | OTHER |
To back her – that’s different (5)
|
| (to)rev. her | ||
| 13 | HYGIENIST |
Call for attention, receiving variable information about one health expert (9)
|
| h(y g(1)en)ist — hist! is the cry for attention, y is the variable, gen = information, 1 = one | ||
| 14 | SOLAR ECLIPSE |
In which Sun has special role diminished? (5,7)
|
| S (special role)* — &lit., S = Sun — ‘diminished’ the anagram indicator, which doesn’t convince me | ||
| 18 | AIR-CONDITION |
Cool, American, ironic? ‘Not I!’, troubled Democrat’s interrupting (3-9)
|
| A (ironic not I)* containing D — A = American, D = Democrat | ||
| 21 | DOMICILES |
Homes, easy to manage, son: about half a mile (9)
|
| do(mi[le])cile s — docile = easy to manage, s = son — tricky to parse because ‘half a mile’ could be ‘mi’ or ‘le’, both of which are in the answer word | ||
| 23 | ASCOT |
A Highlander in a cravat (5)
|
| A Scot — A = A, Scot = Highlander — two different uses of ‘a’: as part of the wordplay, and as an indefinite article that can (according to some) be ignored | ||
| 24 | PAROLEE |
Exercises including a part for one released from prison (7)
|
| P(a role)E — PE = Exercises, a = a, role = part | ||
| 25 | ASTUTER |
Alan’s beginning | to get increasingly wide. Nothing’s consumed? That’s increasingly wise (7)
|
| A[lan] st[o]uter — stouter = increasingly wide, 0 = nothing — when Everyman says ‘consumed’ he means ‘eaten up’, ‘disappeared’ I think; seems a bit odd | ||
| 26 | ROBINS |
Songbirds steal in before | onset of spring (6)
|
| rob in s[pring] — rob = steal, in = in | ||
| 27 | DERRICKS |
Stacks by the German cranes (8)
|
| der ricks — der = the German (i.e. ‘the’ in German), ricks = stacks — A ‘by’ B can be AB or BA | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ODDS-ON |
More than likely to give you a good run for your money? (4-2)
|
| CD — the whole can be seen in two ways: as a comment on odds in a horse race and a general statement about likelihood | ||
| 2 | EARTHY |
Blue celestial body close to Mercury (6)
|
| Earth [Mercur]y — Earth = celestial body, blue in the rude sense | ||
| 3 | WATER POLO |
Endless battle to secure | first couple of points in game (5,4)
|
| Water(po)lo[o] — Waterloo is the battle, ‘po’ is the first couple of ‘points’ | ||
| 4 | RHYTHM AND BLUES |
Style of popular music? Butler had hymns playing (6,3,5)
|
| (Butler had hymns)* | ||
| 6 | IMAGE |
Likeness, as Father Time might say (5)
|
| I’m age — something that Father Time might say | ||
| 7 | PHILIPPA |
Picked up tonic, one for a woman (8)
|
| “fillip” a — fillip = tonic, a = one | ||
| 8 | TOGETHER |
Continuously move up | bound by rope? (8)
|
| (go)rev. in tether — go = move, tether = rope — not a convincing definition until I looked in Chambers, which is quite firm about it | ||
| 9 | THE GREAT ESCAPE |
Film taking hour, for example, about a supermarket nearly | breaking record (3,5,6)
|
| t(h e.g. re a Tesc[o])ape — tape = record, h = hour, e.g. = for example, re = about, a = a, Tesco is the supermarket — phew; this took me ages and I nearly gave up on it and left it to you | ||
| 15 | LOOK AFTER |
Appear behind guard (4,5)
|
| look after — look = appear, after = behind | ||
| 16 | SANDSPUR |
Primarily, spiky annual notoriously distributing seedcases. Painful underfoot? Rather! (8)
|
| The usual first letters clue | ||
| 17 | PRIME RIB |
Proper mixture of Brie and meat (5,3)
|
| Prim *(Brie) — prim = proper — difficult because one is led to think it’s an anagram of Brie and meat, something I agonised over for a while | ||
| 19 | ACETIC |
Bill will have to call back for this kind of acid (6)
|
| ac (cite)rev. — ac = Bill, cite = call | ||
| 20 | STARTS |
Good man, having acquired skills, sets forth (6)
|
| st arts — st = saint = good man, arts = skills | ||
| 22 | COLIN |
Pass fashionable man (5)
|
| col in — col = Pass, in = fashionable |
Everyman himself (Alan Connor) stopped by an online crossword forum to say that
“I hope the name at seven down[ PHILIPPA] isn’t too distracting: it was required to make the other thematic material fit, so it’s thematic only in that it was from the part where the three surviving Everyman setters compiled the non-vintage clues.”
I solved the puzzle before seeing the article, sensed via the first names that something was up, but didn’t put all the pieces together.
Prior to that, Alan wrote on the forum:
There’s a piece in the print paper about #4,000 which we hope will appear presently online.
In the meantime, all past setters have vintage clues reappearing; the others were written in collaboration with the other two living Everymans. Every Everyman’s real-world name is included somewhere.
Nice touch to include all Everymen and their clues. Amazing there have been so few. I took 25 to be the characteristic self-deprecating clue. Thanks Everyman for a wonderful celebration. I look forward to solving #5,000.
No wonder I completely missed this theme. I’m still unclear what the “celebration” is; presumably Everyman celebrating his milestone?
I really am not a fan of puzzles where setters make the other setters the theme. It’s done to death these days, and very much an in-joke thing.
Thanks, Everyman (and every other Everyman) for the enjoyable Sunday puzzle.
Thanks, John for the detailed blog!
HEARING
Thought about a court hearing.
SOLAR ECLIPSE
Was feeling uneasy with ‘diminished’ as the anagrind. Considering that diminish=disparage in one sense and that I have seen ‘disparage’ being used as an anagrind (I vaguely recall), I am somewhat convinced.
IMAGE
Can we take ‘IMAGE’ to mean ‘Likeness as Father (God the)’ (in a theological sense)? Time might say, “I’M AGE”.
Quite a few of us were thrown by ASTUTER as the same clue appearing in both this crossword and the week before.
I hadn’t registered quite how involved this one was in celebrating the previous setters. Thank you to Everyman for the 4000th crossword and John for the blog.
KVa@5 I too thought about being given a fair hearing. For diminished I went down the musical route where a diminished chord is an altered major chord.
GfO . I hear you about setters valuing other setters but from comments that usually seems to please the regulars, although I don’t think it’s fair for newbies.
While Everyman is meant to be an entry level crossie I don’t think the criticism applies in the case of Everyman 4,000. It was flagged in various places that this was coming up and It is a celebration of all the Everymen and Everywomen.
Held up by thinking 7d might be Penelope for a while.
Thought DOMICILES was neat. Didn’t know that definition for ASCOT.
Managed to parse THE GREAT ESCAPE after writing it out horizontally and spotting TESCo. Often find I have to write out down clues I have solved from crosses and definition before I can parse them.
Thanks Everyman and John
Me@8. I meant setters “cluing” other setters. Interesting predictive text substitution of “valuing” . Seems apt here.
Thanks for the blog, I thought this was a really good effort for number 4000.
Like Greg@4 I get fed up of Guardian themes referencing other Guardian setters , we had three in a month recently, but I can make an exception for this special case.
Great idea from Paul@7 for diminished, I think SOLAR ECLIPSE is a really good clue.
ASTUTER is the follow-on clue from last week , IMAGE is the follow-on from Everyman001.
I don’t mind the odd bit of in-house referencing, and of course for 4000 it’s fine, not that I was taking much notice. Many thanks to all the Everypersons over the years and to John today.
A very fine tribute for the 4000th puzzle I thought. I had hoped someone would have matched the historical clues with their setters. We know 25a is Alan Connor and 6d is Derrick Macnutt. I wonder which are the others?
Thanks to all involved.
me@5
IMAGE
Father Time: time personified as an old bearded man, usually carrying a scythe and an hourglass.
I didn’t know this definition of ‘Father Time’. I appreciate John’s parsing now.
Paul@7
SOLAR ECLIPSE
‘diminished’ in the sense you mentioned works perfectly.
Sorry, this annoyed me, with the worst anagram indicator I’ve seen for a while (diminished), the duplicated ASTUTER, and the IMO pointless “Special instructions”. After finishing it I still didn’t see the theme as I neither know nor care about the real names of Everyman setters. Five answers, two of which have either redundant or missing letters, hardly counts as a proper theme anyway.
But I’m certainly not claiming I could set a better crossword.
I liked TOGETHER, which I just couldn’t see – but it was the only word which fitted the crossers, and once written in, both the wordplay and definition suddenly made sense.
This is the second time in a few days I’ve not much liked a puzzle – maybe the uncomfortably humid weather makes me irritable.
Thanks Everyman and John.
I missed the theme completely so clearly it was solvable without any knowledge of who the setters were
If I consume the haggis slice from my full Scottish breakfast then it’s no longer visible?
Cheers J&AC
KVa@14 , I bow to nobody in my disdain for cricket, but I do know that Father Time is on the weather vane at the Lord’s cricket ground. .
As Bodycheetah @16 says, it was perfectly possible to solve this without knowing anything about the theme. The repeated clue from last week, when coupled with the special instruction and the #4000 made me wonder whether all the clues had been recycled from previous ‘Everyman’s, but I wasn’t going to go looking. I knew nothing about who has set Everyman puzzles either. In general, I enjoy themes in crossies, but it doesn’t worry me at all if I miss the theme but can solve the puzzle. Thanks to [all] Everyman[s] and John.
There is one clue from the first Everyman and one from the most recent. Does anyone know how many others are “vintage” clues?
A really impressive achievement, I thought, to put together a puzzle with 5 setters’ names, 6 ‘vintage’ clues*, and the other clues compiled jointly by the three surviving Everymen – yet still end up with a crossword that could be completed, as Bodycheetah and TT say, without any specialist knowledge.
(*I’m assuming that “clues from every era” means “clues from each of the 6 setters”, and like Jay @13 and Petert @19 I wondered which the others were. But the fact that they blend in unobtrusively is another tribute to the skill in setting.)
Congratulations, Everypeople one and all, and thanks John for the helpful blog.
The reference to Battle of Waterloo in 3 is appropriate given the date of the puzzle. The battle fought on 18 June 1815.
A fantastic celebration puzzle, congratulations and thanks to the present and surviving Eveyman setters.
Thank you John for the helpful blog, and commenters for further information.
Favourite: IMAGE.
New for me: SANDSPUR.
Thanks, both.
At the time of solving, I could not see what the celebration theme is/was but this article helped me
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2022/nov/26/meet-the-setter-the-observers-everyman to see that it is Everyman #4000 and that the previous Everyman setters included Allan SCOTT (almost referred to in ASCOT?), DOROTHY Taylor, Alec ROBINS, COLIN Gumbrell, DERRICK Macnutt.
Found one – OVENWARE 8th April 2012 , not sure who the setter was then.
I enjoyed this (only my second Everyman in living memory – tackled purely because it was a celebration). The only thematic name I recognised was Derrick (I have a 1966 book at home by D S Macnutt). I also learned on the same day that the current Everyman is Alan Connor, a name I have known for some time as the writer of articles in the Guardian. Alec Robins is another familiar name, but I didn’t twig that while solving.
Thanks to John and other contributors, and to Everyman for the crossword.
And another – LIMPET February 5th 2017 , must be the previous setter.
4,000 Sundays, that’s a long time! Good tribute crossword; nice setting to get in all the references, even if PHILIPPA had to appear.
I particularly liked the couple of points in WATERPOLO; I spent ages trying to work in N,S,E or W.
Thanks Everymen and John.
Great detective work Roz @24/26. Here’s the 8 April 2012 puzzle, no. 3418 – would Allan Scott have been the setter then?
And here’s the 15² blog. I see there was a bit of controversy about Dave GORMAN, whom Andrew thought “perhaps a rather obscure reference for an Everyman”. 😉
The then Everyman explains all @8.
And here’s the LIMPET clue from 5th February 2017, no. 3669 – by Colin Gumbrell?
And the blog – our NZ friends actually outnumbered the closer-to-home commenters!
Thanks, Everyman and John. Very enjoyable puzzle, nice variety of clues and a lovely way to mark the milestone.
michelle @23 – Ascot was a pseudonym used by Allan Scott in The Listener.
Great detective work, Roz and essexboy – I was hoping Alan Connor would share the details but you’ve saved him the trouble.
MrEsseboy@28 I deliberately try not to find out anything about setters, they are my enemy and that is all I need to know.
I do know that when I started the Everyman the setter was Custos from the Guardian but no help with the name of Custos.
I think we must have the last three now, the first wasXimenes , so two missing 60s to 80s ??
I asked Alan if he could fill in the blanks for us, and here is his what he had to say which he was happy for me to post here…
“OTHER is Alec Robins from some time in the distant past; I can’t remember the order but ACETIC and STARTS are Dorothy Taylor and Alec Robins from puzzles 1528 and 1529; DOMICILE is adapted from puzzle 412 (DSM) and EARTHY (and I think some others) are AS era”.
Thanks Alan!
ClerkesBird @21 as we were reminded at a family christening in France last Sunday, 18 June was also the anniversary of General de Gaulle’s first BBC broadcast from London in 1940.
Enjoyed the puzzle though I failed to parse 9d and was not aware of its theme.
I’m still struggling to parse Phillipa, can anyone enlighten further? I couldn’t find sandspur in chambers so still unsure on the definition of that one. I’m still a beginner after doing cryptics for a few years, can usually finish the quiptic in an hour but struggle to step up to the everyman and regular cryptics.
Re #34, PHILLIPA is, I think, explained fully in the blog (homophone). SANDSPUR was new to me too but gettable from wordplay – confirmed in Collins dictionary which is available free to all on-line. Not surprising, I’d say, that something special was done for Everyman 4000. Listener had a special dinner for their number 4000 in 2008.
Concatenation @34, as nmsindy says it’s a homophone (soundalike clue), indicated by ‘picked up’ – if you ‘pick something up’ that’s being discussed on the next table, for example, it means you overhear it.
(Unfortunately, ‘picked up’ in a down clue can also sometimes mean ‘picked up by the tail and hung upside down’, i.e. a reversal indicator – you never know which one it is until you get the answer!)
Perhaps you weren’t familiar with the word ‘fillip’ meaning boost/tonic/something to hearten or stimulate? Here’s an old Guardian article:
“Labor has emerged victorious in critical byelection contests in Tasmania and Queensland in a significant fillip for the federal leader, Bill Shorten.”
So we have tonic = fillip = sounds like PHILIPP, and then ‘one’ = A (singular indefinite article)
‘for’ (connecting word between wordplay and definition)
‘a woman’ = PHILIPPA
Re SANDSPUR, here’s wiki on Cenchrus, “a widespread genus of plants in the grass family… Common names include buffelgrasses, sandburs, and sand spur “sticky bur”. Such names allude to the sharp, spine-covered burrs characterizing the inflorescences of the members of the genus.”
Don’t be discouraged if you’re struggling to step up to the cryptics – a lot of us here have been doing them for the best part of half a century, or more! I think doing the Everyman regularly is a good strategy, also the Monday cryptic is sometimes easier than the Quiptic.
Jay @32 – great stuff, that’s more than we thought… or more than I suspected, anyway.
(The man with a hotline to Everyman Towers…. Btw, are you the same Jay who sometimes posts on the Guardian blogs and who is based in the US? I ask because, if so, you seem to be awake at all hours of the night 😉 )
Eb@37, thanks, I generally only comment on Everyman, Azed and Genius threads, not the weekday cryptics (though occasionally I’ll dip into the FT) and I’m definitely not in the US!
(also, I keep lists, but you know that!)
Thanks Jay @32 I did not realize there were more “modern” ones. I have found EARTHY – 1st January 2012 , it was in my planets list .
nnsindy @ 35 and Essex boy @36, thanks for the clarification regarding Phillipa. I am unfamiliar with picking up as a homophone indicator so that’s what threw me. With regard to sandspur, I understand the wordplay but can’t see a clear definition. I can see that as a whole it could cryptically allude to sandspur but am used to seeing a ? at the end of cryptic definitions usually.
Concatenation @41 I think the clue as a whole for SANDSPUR is a good description. If you have ever stepped on one you would agree, I am so glad they are very rare in the UK. Perhaps RATHER takes the place of a question mark.
Thanks Alan for this warm celebratory tribute to your predecessors (and yourself). Perhaps it was slightly more difficult because you incorporated so many clues from setters who had quite different styles. And thanks John for the helpful blog.
Spotted the duplicated clue from last week, thought this was quite good actually although I completely missed the theme
Could not get 13 across, didn’t seem possible it was a word, so was trying to look up famous surnames… in the end gave up, and realise now it was my spelling that caused the issue! I loved 9 down – and 7 down too (my mum’s name.)
Thanks Everyman and thanks John!
I think, out here in the Antipodes, we are not as familiar with the history of Everymans? Everymen?
It mattered not a jot in solving this puzzle, it was fun and the inclusion of many proper names meant nothing until explained in the preamble.
Thanks to all concerned and long may the Everyman puzzles be a part of my weekend.
I cannot believe 7dn was one of our last in considering it’s my own name! Very enjoyable, definitely on the trickier side but thanks as always.
In my printed copy of the Herald, 13ac had “ariable” in the clue. As it exists as a word (apparently), I only arrived at hygienist by luck.
Yes I was wondering about ariable too
But having now read the background to create this particular puzzle,I
can only marvel
Found it hard tho
Variable! Well, that makes more sense. Love my Everyman every weekend. I’ve just done the maths and #5000 will be in just over 19 years time. Hopefully I’ll be around for that one.