Everyman 4,025/10 December

by

Nothing to frighten the horses here, I would say. Which is as it should be.

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 Highest in command initially skirts the issues
TOPICS
A charade of TOP, IC and S for the first letter of ‘skirts’.

4 Set point – fantastic – let’s pick up the pace
STEP ON IT
(SET POINT)* with ‘fantastic’ as the anagrind.

9 Clergyman rejected nonsense by idiot
PASTOR
A reversal of ROT and SAP.

10 Taunt accepted by Dad in France, English being distinguished
PEDIGREE
An insertion of DIG in PERE, followed by E. The insertion indicator is ‘accepted by’.

12 No, I engendered flipping contempt
DERISION
A reversal (‘flipping’) of NO, I and SIRED.

13 Sleep with partners in largish numbers
DOZENS
A charade of DOZE and N and S, who are ‘partners’ in bridge.

15 Refuse to camp: hope for resort and welcoming spa at the outset
COMPOST HEAP
An insertion of S for the initial letter of ‘spa’ in (TO CAMP HOPE)* The anagrind is ‘for resort’ and the insertion indicator is ‘welcoming’.

18 Delivering while almost asleep
DROPPING OFF
A dd.

21 More painful part of stomach, i.e. reticulum
ACHIER
Hidden in stomACH I E Reticulum.

22 When irritated, interfere after rector’s left one of the Canaries
TENERIFE
(INTE[R]FERE)* with ‘when irritated’ as the anagrind.

24 Something African National Congress tabled in opposing Nationalists, primarily?
SANCTION
The initial letters of the first eight words of the clue, and a cad.

25 Punctilious Detective Inspector leaves area
STRICT
[DI]STRICT

26 Fantastic Island that can be seen in comics
SUPERMAN
A charade of SUPER and [The Isle of] MAN.

27 In the East End, he got up and wiped out?
ERASED
How an East End accent might deliver HE RAISED. Except most people in East London don’t talk like that any more. But we know what Everyman means.

Down

1 Audio kit packeted ham-fistedly
TAPE DECK
(PACKETED)* with ‘ham-fistedly’ as the anagrind.

2 Kind of tense, drive over island for meat
PASTRAMI
A charade of PAST, RAM and I.

3 Everyman, perhaps mad, drew otters dancing
CROSSWORD SETTER
A charade of CROSS and (DREW OTTERS)* with ‘dancing’ as the anagrind.

5 Even movement of the ocean reported
TIED
Aural wordplay (‘reported’) of TIDE. ‘The scores are even/tied at three all.’

6 Carton half open, reptiles scurrying: nasty thing to receive in the mail
POISON-PEN LETTER
([CAR]TON OPEN REPTILES)* with ‘scurrying’ as the anagrind.

7 Drinks slowly in harbours
NURSES
A dd. ‘She usually nurses an orange juice for the whole evening.’ ‘She nurses a grudge against him.’

8 The Ivy’s serving tripe – but only starters, I believe
THEIST
A charade of THE and IST for the initial letters of ‘Ivy’s’, ‘serving’ and ‘tripe’.

11 Loading area in which you might go bust
PONTOON
A dd. PONTOON is also called Twenty-One, where you go ‘bust’ if the cards you are dealt exceed that number.

14 Parts of beans that are used for worship
TEMPLES
A dd. ‘Bean’ is slang for ‘head’.

16 Institute enshrined in the law finally validates insurance documents
POLICIES
An insertion of I in POLICE followed by S for the final letter of ‘validates’.

17 Got to camp
AFFECTED
Another dd.

19 Cowboys use these in Dallas so sparingly
LASSOS
Hidden in DalLAS SO Sparingly.

20 Exercise in the gym? Don’t look so sad
CHIN-UP
And another dd.

23 Up to now, Romeo not seen in comfy spot
SOFA
SO FA[R]. R for ‘Romeo’ is from the phonetic alphabet.

Many thanks to Everyman for this week’s puzzle.

42 comments on “Everyman 4,025/10 December”

  1. I don’t often comment these days, but having tackled almost Everyman puzzle (and what came before it) for around three-quarters of a century, this one must rank among the most enjoyable ever. Thank you Everyman, and all your alter egos who must have come before you through those many years.

  2. Thanks, Pierre for the blog.
    Enjoyable puzzle and a neat blog!

    ERASE:
    An academic question:
    Is RAISE pronounced differently in Cockney accent?
    CHIN-UP
    A minor observation:
    The second half of the clue leads to CHIN UP.

  3. Everyman is pushing beginners a little with clues like 3d CROSSWORD SETTER but not too far I think. He is also very good with his hidden answers. There’s another one this week that took me forever
    Thanks for the crossword and blog.

  4. KVa@2. It’s not the raise, it’s ‘e raised. Or are you saying the Cockney should be applied to both parts?

  5. PEDIGREE as an adjective and sired for engendered in DERISION held me up until I checked dictionaries.
    COMPOST HEAP and DOZENS made me laugh when reading the surface meaning.
    I liked the double defs AFFECTED, NURSES and DROPPING OFF and the first letter clue THEIST.
    So is 3d the self-referential? It’s pretty hard to miss that.

  6. Correction, SANCTION is the first letter clue, and a good one. THEIST has a couple of first letters, as well. I like tripe.

  7. paddymelon@4
    In the absence of a separate homophone indicator for RAiSED, the Cockney indicator should
    be applied to ‘hE as well as RAiSED’ (Pierre too says so in the blog-to my understanding).
    ‘Raised’ the Cockney way vs ‘Raised’ the ‘other way’: Was curious to know the difference.

  8. KVa@7. I just thought the cockney applied to he, and Everyman was misdirecting with punctuation. But I now see that raised is a strange synonym for got up.

  9. Only RASED is there. So a homophone of RAISED is required (So the East ender has more ‘say’ here). No?
    ‘to raise it’=’to get it up’. Does it work?

  10. Yeah, KVa@9. Doing my head in. I don’t imagine that Everyman had anything like this discussion in mind. Who knows?

  11. Thanks for the blog, very good puzzle and I think the difficulty level seemed right.

    ERASED I took as in the blog, raised=got up in the sense of raised an army. In the East End implies that someone is saying it, so He raised becomes erased taking care of the missing h and i .

  13. rodshaw @1, that’s a nice compliment for our setter. And an impressively long solving career with Everyman, making your comment even more welcome. Don’t leave it so long till next time.

  15. Well for me I found that harder than usual, on the top left corner. Probably because I didn’t get TOPICS. CROSSWORD SETTER was a great clue. I always like truly self-referential clues like that.

    Thanks for the blog and puzzle.

  16. Nice crossword. Also managed all the Everyman usuals in spades. Fifteen letter rhymers, eight letter initial letter clue (also CaD), and one doesn’t get much more self referential than crossword-setter

    Thanks Setter and Blogger

  17. I found this a bit tougher than usual, tho’ not as tough as the one a few weeks ago. Enjoyed it anyway.

    Liked: PEDIGREE, NURSES, DERISION, CROSSWORD SETTER

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre

  18. I did wonder about PEDIGREE being distinguished, but like PM @5, the adjectival sense seems to be supported.

    I liked the good reversal for DERISION, and the anagrams for COMPOST HEAP, CROSSWORD SETTER and POISON-PEN LETTER, and the definition for TEMPLES.

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre

  19. Enjoyable puzzle. My favourite was TEMPLES (loi).

    I did not parse 6d (looked like an anagram but did not try to work it out).

    Thanks, both.

    nicbach@3 – I don’t think Everyman is aimed at beginners anymore. It’s just a regular cryptic puzzle.

  20. 27 across is a mistake to my way of thinking. We need the E (for he in crossword Cockney) plus a synonym for ‘got up’ which, as others have said, ought to be RAISED and not RASED. Okay for me otherwise.

  21. Maybe I just wasn’t on the right wavelength last week, but there a few things here to frighten ths horse.

    COMPOST HEAP – I got this from crossers, but couldn’t parse it. I actually returned to it two of three times during the week to see if I could figure it out. Even having read the blog I couldn’t get it until I started writing this comment. Am I understanding that we should read the anagrind as “for re-sort”?

    TEMPLES – Again, I got this, but couldn’t parse it because I don’t ever recall seeing or hearing “bean” used to mean “head”. In fact, I went down an internet rabbit hole looking for associations between beans and temples and could only find a brand of canned black beans

    PONTOON – similarly I was never aware of a pontoon as a loading area (or dock, as I see now in a coupld of online dictionaries)

    DERISION – The “sired” meaning of engendered was new to me (although I found out later that the original meaning was procreation)

    I got there in the end, but it felt like more by luck than judgement.

    Thanks to Everyman and Pierre.

  22. ‘Resort’ meaning to sort again differently is in Chambers, though only as a verb, not a noun, so it’s hard to get that clue to parse. Even so, we have seen that indicator used time and time again, and usually incorrectly, in puzzles, so it has become something of a staple.

  23. I gave up with about half done when I began to find myself sitting and staring rather than engaged. I’ve commented a few times that they seem harder than 2-3months ago.

    Re: CROSSWORD-SETTER – I didn’t get it. Very difficult to sort the anagram out without some other answers in place. Otherwise you’re hitting and hoping for inspiration from the def.

    Have to say I get a bit tired of being challenged to come up with French words (e.g. pere) when I haven’t been near the subject since dropping it before choosing my ‘O’ level options at the end of 3rd year (i.e. about 40 years ago). Articles of foreign languages fair enough. Think I saw OST=east in German recently in a Quiptic.

  24. About this Cockney talk — as I understand it, “raised” in Cockney would be “ryzed.” Nobody’s mentioned that vowel shift. And — is “erased” pronounced with a voiced S (like a Z) in the UK? Like e-razed? In the US we pronounce it like e-raced, which messes up the homonym.

    Thanks to Everyman and Pierre, and a very happy holiday.

  25. I echo what Valentine said.

    I didn’t get PONTOON, as I wasn’t familiar with either definition. The game is called blackjack here, and I either didn’t know or had forgotten that it has other names elsewhere. To me a pontoon is a canoe-shaped floaty thing used to make things such as a pontoon plane, pontoon boat, or pontoon bridge.

  26. I agree with lady gewgaw@20 that ERASED doesn’t really work- there’s is no homophone indicator for the last 5 letters. I hadn’t noticed until I read lg’s comment. (Valentine@24 – yes the ‘s’ is usually pronounced like ‘z’ in the UK.)
    I suppose I vaguely know that ‘bean’ can be slang for ‘head’ but it’s not a word I’d use so I was underwhelmed by TEMPLE.
    Is a COMPOST HEAP really ‘refuse’? It may be composed of stuff that would have been refuse, but it’s being recycled into something useful.
    These are all minor niggles in what was a decent puzzle. Thanks both.

  27. Couldn’t parse TEMPLES because I’d forgotten ( if I ever knew ) that bean was a term for head. Dictionary suggests it’s old fashioned slang. I think it only appears in crossword land these days in that meaning.

  28. Mr. Womble, here in the US it survives at least in the form of the word beanball, which is a baseball pitched at the batter’s head. (The pitcher is immediately ejected if the umpire deems it intentional.)

  30. Pedigree might be a first for me where I worked out wordplay before considering definition. O level French came in handy. The only phrases I remember though concern a monkey getting stuck up a tree, and mischievously playing with a shaver. The family were called La Familie Lavisse. Don’t remember the monkey’s name.
    Favourite probably Crossword Setter.

  31. Got POLICIES wrong (I had codicils, and couldn’t parse it), and I didn’t parse TEMPLES either, but bean=head is fair enough.

  34. Valentine@24. In the absence of any direct knowledge, I’m interested in what you say about the Cockney pronunciation of raised/ryzed. That could be the key to solving the conundrum in ERASED. Very magnanimous of you as the homophone doesn’t work for you with the s/z. eraced/erazed

  35. Didn’t get PONTOON being quite unaware of either side of the DD, also left TEMPLES unsolved because I was clearly not applying my bean. Otherwise a perfect Everyman puzzle, very enjoyable, thanks to 3d and blogger.

  36. I don’t play bridge and I had never heard of beans meaning heads! Managed about 3/4 of it! Not too bad.
    I wonder if crosswords will have changed in ten years with different frames of reference or if many of these abbreviations and slang terms are sort of timeless?
    Thanks Everyman and Pierre

  37. I was introduced to cryptic crosswords 6 years ago by a friend who had an Everyman lying on the breakfast table. I almost immediately solved a couple of clues, and was quickly hooked. Since then I’ve done over 800 ‘Everymen’ downloaded from the Guardian site, so I’m hardly a beginner any more!
    I have to say the standard lately has been significantly tougher than that first puzzle that got me started. The NE corner of this one had me scratching my head for some time, so I think the ‘entry-level’ tag is no longer appropriate.
    Re the East End aspect of 27A, I really don’t feel it’s necessary to get too precious. It’s one of the host of crossword cliches and we know it indicates a dropped ‘H’, and there’s almost inevitably an element of homophone involved.

  41. Got it all. Temples almost caused a meltdown when Cath insisted writing it in without justification. ChatGPT 4 could find no connection between bean and temple until I finally twigged. I correct the artificial unintelligence so it might.get it right next time. Feels good to have done my bit for humanity today and it isn’t even 8.30am.

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