Everyman 4,020

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The usual (nowadays) sound and satisfactory crossword from Everyman. Because of the time of year, there is a bit of a fireworks theme and 4dn and 9dn don’t rhyme, as in the past, but are related in their subject matter.

Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (anagram, homophone, hidden, reversal etc.) in italics. Anagram indicators indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.

 

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 RESTRICT
Curtail relaxation that includes | brief prank (8)
tric[k] in rest — rest = relaxation, trick = prank
5 WHALER
Wholesaler offloading | dodgy sole; I’m seeking something more substantial (6)
wh[oles]aler minus oles, oles being *(sole) — a whaler is seeking whales, which are more substantial than soles
10 CRUMPET
Cold blast, heading off for hot buttered food? (7)
c [t]rumpet — c = cold, trumpet = blast
11 NON-STOP
24/7 drama, two Poles given crown (3-4)
no NS top — no = drama (the Japanese play, sometimes spelled noh), N and S are the two poles, top = crown
12 ENNUI
Weariness concerning, you and I said (5)
“on we” if you pronounce it as a French word — on = concerning, we = you and I
13 EVOLUTION
No, outlive inferior – as part of this? (9)
(No outlive)* — inferior the anagram indicator, which seems a bit stretched to me — the whole is a sort of description of what evolution is
14 OMNIPRESENCE
In recompense, arranged for attendance everywhere (12)
(In recompense)*
18 INCONVENIENT
Latest: nephew that is detained by nuns for causing trouble (12)
in conve(n i.e.)nt — in = latest (fashionable), n = nephew (a bit of a stretch? American English in Collins, not in Chambers; but it seems to make sense: presumably used in family trees), convent = nuns, i.e. = that is
21 SEPULCHRE
Implausibly cheers up touring large tomb (9)
*(cheers up) round l — l = large
23 AT SEA
Lost in fantasies regularly, abstracted at first (2,3)
[f]a[n]t[a]s[i]e[s] a[bstracted]
24 EARACHE
To some extent, fear a cheesy auricular annoyance (7)
Hidden in fEAR A CHEesy
25 OPINING
Volunteering work repeatedly trendy: good (7)
op in in g — op = work (opus), in = trendy, g = good
26 NESTLE
Starters of niçoises: endives cored, stale, curl up (6)
n[içoises] e[ndives] st[a]le
27 SKINNIER
Hide, hold back, becoming more emaciated (8)
skin (rein)rev. — skin = hide, rein = hold — not all that sure about the second of these but no doubt it’s in some dictionary
DOWN
1 ROCKET
Leaves, getting reprimand (6)
2 defs — the leaves are salad leaves
2 SPURNS
Turns down incentives including | bit of nepotism (6)
n[epotism] in spurs — spurs = incentives
3 REPAIRMEN
Resort with Everyman, from the outset, nagging people to fix things (9)
repair me n[agging] — repair = resort, me = Everyman
4 CATHERINE-WHEEL
‘We’re N.I.C.E. Health questionable? Exercise!‘ (9-5)
(We’re N.I.C.E. Health)* — I’m not clear about the definition and can’t see how it relates to exercise — Collins only gives the firework and the church window — ah, just seen it: Chambers gives ‘a sidewise somersault’
6 HINDU
Believer in growth industries, partly (5)
Hidden in growtH INDUstries — two possible hidden indicators, so could Everyman have omitted ‘partly’?
7 LATVIANS
Lazy type rising, | transfixed by a TV showing foreign nationals (8)
(a TV) in (snail)rev. — snail = lazy type — this looked a bit doubtful until I looked in Collins, which has ‘a slow-moving or lazy person or animal’
8 REPENTED
Regretted sports lesson having torn around centre field in the end (8)
re(PE)nt [centr]e [fiel]d — P(hysical) E(ducation) is the sports lesson, rent = torn
9 INDOOR FIREWORK
One that’ll go off, but won’t hit the roof? (6,8)
CD whose wit escapes me: if it’s an indoor firework it won’t go up in the air very far, ie won’t hit the roof
15 SENSATION
Impression is a success (9)
2 defs — two senses of the word
16 EINSTEIN
Physicist in 90s, sprightly (8)
(nineties)* — 90s = nineties
17 SCEPTRES
Staves conferred extremely piously to represent elevated status, primarily? (8)
The first letters clue, which looks a bit odd to me — perhaps someone will explain what’s going on
19 ASSISI
Anglo-Saxon meeting with keen Spanish affirmation in old Italian town (6)
AS “si, si” — AS = Anglo-Saxon, ‘si’ is the Spanish for ‘yes’
20 BANGER
Car, old sausage (6)
2 defs — an old car is a banger, and a banger is a colloquial word for a sausage
22 LOCAL
This describes something healthier in the pub (2-3)
lo-cal is an abbreviation for ‘low calorie’, i.e. healthier — the pub doesn’t have the hyphen

37 comments on “Everyman 4,020”

  1. Fun puzzle which I recall was a bit trickier for me than average. John, far from my area of knowledge or interest, but I think SCEPTRES may have something to do with the coronation ceremony. I wasn’t aware indoor fireworks were a thing. Sounds even more dangerous. Thanks John & Everyman.

  2. Thanks, John for the blog.
    SCEPTRES
    Agree with Paul@1. ‘Staves (as the plural of staff) conferred piously’ seem to be related to the coronation ceremony.
    INDOOR FIREWORKS
    The surface tries to mislead us towards ‘Someone who gets suddenly angry but not very very angry’. That’s all I see.
    Liked WHALER and NON-STOP.

  3. I saw INDOOR FIREWORKS as Kva did. My favourite was EINSTEIN.
    I agree that this was at the harder end of the Everyman spectrum.
    Thanks both.

  5. Sorry. John. Just saw the last bit of your explanation of CATHERINE WHEEL.
    I was always in awe of girls who could do cartwheels.

  6. Unlike others I completed this crossword in one of my quicker Everyman times, but wasn’t sure how to parse INDOOR FIREWORK, which I’ve seen, and certainly don’t hit the roof as usually static. Otherwise all clear here.

    Paddymelon I can still cartwheel, although I’d want to practice a lot before trying a one-handed cartwheel or round-off.

    Thank you to Everyman and John.

  9. Thanks for the blog, good spot from Jay@8 for the extra bonfire night answers.
    I also wondered about N=nephew for 18Ac and I could not find it.

  11. [Shanne@6. I’m impressed, after looking up the one-handed and the round-off. Makes my head spin.
    Roz@10. Looking forward to that. I’m in a shambles until I load up my printer. Had to drive 30ks for the cartridge.]

  12. Thanks Jay@8. . Bonfire night down here, formerly called Guy Fawkes’ night, (at least in Queensland, NSW had Empire Day in the middle of the year) is a thing of the past, as it is in our fire season, and now there is legislation against that. I remember BANGERs and ROCKETs, and CATHERINE WHEELs, that jumped into our neighbours’ stash of fireworks, or theirs jumped into ours, and kids went and set off letterboxes, and dogs barked and the whole neighbourhood erupted.

  14. Boo for the disgusting WHALER at 5ac. I have seen film footage of whalers pulling wounded or dead whales onto their boats and the amount of blood flowing was horrendous. There is no reason to kill whales in the 21st century.

    Guessed INDOOR FIRELOCK or SIDELOCK for 9d but could not parse it. Oh I see I got it wrong anyway.

    I did not parse 3d and did not quite parse 8d only got as far as PE in RENT (torn) + E (centre fiEld) + D?

    Thanks, both.

  16. [Jay@13. Agree, but more for the humans, while the pets, dogs especially, used to bark and try to catch the little bungers, called Tom Thumbs.]

  17. NW was tricky for me, I recall. I parsed INDOOR FIREWORK as a firework (“one that’ll go off”), but “won’t hit the roof” because the roof is the outdoor top of the building (indoor being a ceiling, usually). I never knew they were a thing.
    Couldn’t parse ENNUI – was thinking “you and I said” referred to just UI, couldn’t see where ENN was coming from.
    Favourites included LATVIANS, OPINING, WHALER and ASSISI.
    Thanks Everyman and John.

  18. I liked the wordplays in NON-STOP, INCONVENIENT and LATVIANS, the good surface for LOCAL/LO-CAL, and the INDOOR FIREWORK cd. I was also somewhat bemused by the use of inferior as an anagrind.

    Thanks Everyman and John.

  20. For those who insist on a rhyming pair with their weekly Everyman: we have (much shorter than usual, so possibly unintentional) ENNUI symmetrically placed with AT SEA.

  21. Several comments mentioning the other thematic words, which I could have coloured; and I like mrpenney@20’s rhyming pair, which I could also have coloured. Unfortunately the software doesn’t allow me to go back and amend the printed grid without going right back and starting the blog again, which I’m not going to do! It seems my questions over the SCEPTRES clue have been answered in various places, thanks.

  22. Thanks John and Everyman. I recall that in the past this setter has used non-rhyming thematic clues. They’ve occasionally been alliterative or otherwise related, as this example.

  23. I too found this a bit tougher than the usual Everyman, but none the worse for that. Like others, the NW corner yielded last, for no apparent reason once completed.

    I tried to connect the two long across clues as well. The best I could do was to think of Rishi Sunak, Donald Trump, or our own Pierre Poilievre as an inconvenient omnipresence.

    I did like the aural wordplay of 12a ENNUI (with the misleading you=U and the I standing alone) and 24a EARACHE (a different kind of aural wordplay.)

    Thanks Everyman for the fun and John for the colourful blog.

  24. For those who didn’t think they were a thing: indoor fireworks (sparklers, cake fountains, black snakes) are fireworks to light up inside. Because indoor fireworks are a category 1 fireworks, they are safe to ignite inside, as long as there is a flat surface and sufficient distance is maintained. We (in N.I.) had them in the 70s/80s because traditional fireworks were illegal.

  25. I’d have to disagree with the blogger assertion that is the standard reliable Everyman.. I’ve been doing them for about 18mths and generally improving as I do a bunch of other crosswords too. Over the last month or so, I’ve found myself floundering after 15-20mins with perhaps 25-30% of the grid done. I started doing Everyman because it was recommended as fun and approachable – I’m not seeing that recently. Gave up on 4021 after 2 attempts totalling 30mins and similar success. I don’t mind grinding on if there’s a couple of clues left to solve.

  26. In one of his books, Alan Connor’s short biog mentions that he has been successful with The Listener crossword I think 47 out of 52 times for the past year, so his own solving standard is pretty high since The Listener is generally regarded as the hardest of them all. So there must be the tendency to make his clues a bit tricky; perhaps he needs to be aware of this for some of his solvers.

  27. John@26. And his erudition in all things cryptic is probably second to none in his articles on the Guardian site, although they’re very educational. I read somewhere too that Everyman/Alan Connor has a plan to gradually (?) introduce solvers to more complex clues. Maybe he needs to slow down a bit.

  28. Re HG@25. For me, if I could complete the Everyman quickly, it wouldn’t be much fun. I doubt I’ve ever managed to solve that many of the clues straight off, without needing prior solutions to help me; hence I work my way round a number of times.
    The puzzles are one of the first pages I turn to when I get the Observer. I do the Killer Sudoku first, since I can do that much more quickly than the crossword, then spend whatever time I have “available” on the Everyman.
    If I spend half an hour and or so, and only have half of it done, that feels fine! After that I generally just go back to it at odd moments during the week and sometimes find that clues I had no idea about before suddenly leap out at me. Even if I complete it, there are often some answers I haven’t really understood the parsing of – hence resorting to this blog! (For which, thanks.)

  29. Thanks for the thoughts and replies above. It’s very much horses for course as to what people want from a crossword. Personally I’m not sure I will ever get tired of completing a crossword quickly!

  32. Opining as a synonym for volunteering is pretty tenuous.

    Like TanTrumPet@17 I couldn’t see where the “enn” was coming from in “ennui”.

    Found the puzzle to be very difficult, but got it all out without resort to wildcard dictionaries.

  33. I’ve heard of “indoor fireworks” (plural) referring to an explosion of anger, but never in the singular. Also never heard of sparklers being used inside, and am sure my mother would not have been happy with sparks landing all over the floor and furniture given the way we waved them around furiously as children.

  34. We had indoor fireworks in our Christmas crackers when I was little in the 60s. Not sure Mum was a fan. This was hard on the first pass, only got a handful, but yielded satisfactorily even a couple were unparsed.

    The snails in our vege patch are definitely not lazy.

  36. Yes, hard to know what to think if a “couple were unparsed”. The mind boggles – is this an emotional, intellectual or physical aspect of marriage that cannot be explained.
    I will leave it there before I dig myself too deep a hole.
    Nice puzzle.

  37. The girl next door was called Carol and she did cartwheels. Is Catherine wheel a variant from some locality.?

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