Everyman 4,030

58 comments on “Everyman 4,030”

1. Week three for single word anagrams in the 1A slot.
   The ellipsis in 26a struck me as odd and led me to think that the 25a clue above may have been rewritten and would have originally ended with an ellipsis. If you add a J to the front of 25a you get JOUST which I can see connecting (whimsically perhaps) with “poser prancing” in 26a. Mere speculation of course.
   Thanks to Everyman and Flashing

2. Thanks Everyman and Flashing!
   Top fave: KALEIDOSCOPE
   (Our sound engineers (doctors?) may get vocal about it. But to me, it will be a ‘hearing aid’.
   So awaiting pun-dits’ comments).

3. I’m with Kva@2 with KALEIDOSCOPE, a truly awful pun; I loved it.
   I had all the bits to SPECULATE, but it took me ages to put it together. Pen and paper would have helped.
   Good Crossie, as they probably say in XXXX. Thanks both.

4. Thanks flashling.
   ASAP made me laugh because Everyman used the word primarily in the “primarily” clue, and then spelt out using initial letters.
   Liked the anagrind contorted in ARMS AKIMBO. I enjoy Everyman’s indicators, often novel ones, apt for the surface and the solution.
   SCORPIO was neat. Lovely misdirection with becoming upset: in APROPOS. Took me a while to twig to the definition.

5. ASAP
   paddymelon@4
   Agree. I liked it. just forgot to mention it.
   Acronym, primarily, using initial letters….(and ‘primarily’ primarily) …nice combo.

6. I don’t see how “becoming” defines APROPOS, though no doubt someone will quote a dictionary at me – the answer was obvious from the wordplay, given the crossers. And I couldn’t fit geomorphologists into 12d. Otherwise, the usual good fun on a Sunday. Thanks, Everyman and flashling.

7. APROPOS
   I think ‘becoming’ is in the sense of ‘appropriate/fitting’.

8. Agree, TT@6, I’d like to see them substituted.

9. KVa@2. LOL. Your comment @7 is also very apropos.

10. Your comment is very appropriate/fitting? Fine. But, your comment is very becoming?????

11. Tassie Tim@10. Despite your comment@6, I’ve tried, without success, not having Chambers, to find an online dictionary/thesaurus definition, with both becoming and apropos all in the one place. But I found meanings similar to how KVa@7 has summed it up and that’s how I resolved it last week.
    You may be focussing (as I did) on the sense of becoming meaning attractive?

12. Not thinking of buying the Chambers Mobile App? Very handy!

13. Liked VERMEER, OPEN SECRET, SKIPPING ROPE, SPECULATES

    Needed all the crosses to get KALEIDOSCOPE

    Thanks Everyman and flashling

    (and today’s puzzle -at last)

14. I thought Everyman was on his game this week. Others have mentioned my favourites, and for the same reasons, so I have nothing to add except to say thanks to Everyman and flashling for the satisfying and succinct Sunday stroll.

15. Re BECOMING. Is meaning fully transitive? In other words, does the fact that word A means, in some context, the same as B, and B means, in some context, the same as C, then A means C? I don’t think so. Example: quick means the same as fast [car]; fast [colour] – another context – means staying still. Does it follow that quick means staying still?

16. Thanks for the blog, I agree with your assessment.
    I had just read Jay last week about the initial anagram and then I did this puzzle, three in a row now.
    Is UZBEKISTAN new? Quite impressive to fit it into a grid.

17. TassieTim @15 – don’t a lot of crossword clues rely in meanings that only work in certain contexts. I thought of becoming / fitting / appropriate behaviour as in Jane Austen or possibly Louisa May Alcott, definitely older literature, or books mimicking that style.

    Straightforward Everyman but not my fastest solve.

    Thank you to flashling and Everyman.

18. Tassie Tim@15. I like your transitive analysis, and examples. Much more interesting than the clue itself.

19. Parsed KALEIDOSCOPE as “COLLIDE THOSE COPE”
    Liked the old-fashioned “&c.” in 17a SOCIALS – Why is it “etc” in the blog?

20. [ Fiona@13 you have got your wish but Jay has lost his sequence. ]

21. A word from Beginners Corner – it took me triple the time compared to last week. Full of double definitions I take a long time to see. I was expecting everyone to express how much more difficult it was but no…sigh…my resolve remains intact. Thanks to all.

22. Cara @21. Don’t be discouraged. There will be times when you think “Doddle”, and come here to find you’re in the minority. Enjoy that when it happens!

23. @19 Why is it etc in the blog? The software I use to format the blog really mangled the character so I used etc instead.

24. Another enjoyable crossword and apparently nothing contentious.
    Cara@21, Be encouraged by the fact you find DD’s more difficult than other clue types. That indicates to me you won’t be a beginner for long.
    Thanks flashling and Everyman.

25. Shanne @17: you are right that those words are interchangeable… but you don’t include ‘apropos’ because in those contexts, it wouldn’t be. As in my example @15, could we use ‘staying still’ to define ‘quick’, even though both can define ‘fast’?

26. [ Roz@20, maybe so, but like Fiona I was pleased to see that Everyman hasn’t abandoned this format ]

27. Quite tough. I could not parse 11ac (never heard of this Hitchcock film) and 20ac.

    Thanks, both.

28. @22 Crispy @24 Paul : ) thanks

29. Very enjoyable Sunday crossword.. apart from APROPOS which took a long while even with all of the crossing letters. Thought SKIPPING ROPE and KALEIDOSCOPE were really good even if the latter was only gettable for me later on in the crossword. Thanks for blogging Flashling 🙂

30. Typical Everyman. I agree it’s hard to think of a phrase where APROPOS and ‘becoming’ are interchangeable – I think it’s easier in the negative – ‘her joke was not apropos/becoming, considering she was attending a funeral’. But such stretched synonyms are very common in crosswords by most, if not all, setters (includiong in non-cryptic crosswords).
    Thanks both.

31. Cara @21 – this crossword did take me longer than the week before – about half as much again, but that could be what else I was doing when solving it, so not a totally reliable measure, nor a particularly long Everyman solve time for me. I solve on the Guardian app, so get times, whether I want them or not.

    Sorry TassieTim @25 – I can hear someone saying – “that was not apropos in that situation, totally unbecoming”, – as per beaulieu @30, in a scripted dialogue, not so much in real life. I’m hearing 1940s, 1950s literature in my head.

    You would struggle to make equivalents of quick / fast and dead in the same sentence, as in that situation you’re using the contranym/antonym meanings of fast. Fast, like trim, bad and quite a few other words can have opposite meanings (I once took part in a photography challenge that tried to illustrate both meanings.) Fast either means held fast or stuck or moving fast, or even not eating – but the first two are opposites. And the phrase the quick and the dead means the living and the dead, because quick in that context links to the moving version of fast, not the stuck fast version.

32. 19ac, VERMEER: N on its own only seems to be an abbreviation for ‘navy’ in America (per Collins online)

    20ac, KALEIDOSCOPE: great homophone!

    3dn, UZBEKISTANI: “action-film staple” seems rather vague for UZI

33. Liked: Uzbekistani – it was obvious that beatniks was anagrammed but then I was wondering whats the action film staple? Chase scene? Explosion? Statham? Aha its an Uzi. (“Uzi nine millimetre” – one of Arnie’s few lines in Terminator!)
    Didn’t like: Apropos – too difficult.

34. Chambers93 , the definitive volume for all crosswords has N=NAVY .

35. I loved that and completed it unaided and could parse most of it as I went (apart from having to think afterwards what “kaleidos” ”cope” might be!) Felt like a friendly grid as well as a lot of the crossers were helpful as opposed to just a lot of vowels!

    I also nearly put atropos not apropos till I went and looked both the definitions up. Definitely not Atropos!

    And I knew to move the 5th letter!

    Thanks Everyman. You’re definitely helping this beginner learn. Six months ago I couldn’t have done any of it!

    And thanks flashling too!

36. Welcome quietears, not seen you before. Keep going, we’re always here to help. You all should see what a mess of the paper I made being unable to spell kaleidoscope on the day. Ok I’ve not seen one for 50 years let alone seen the spelling

37. Roz @ 34

    Chambers 2011 12th edition also has that.

    May I ask why you stick to Chambers93.

    When I first started doing crosswords in 2020 during lockdown I was advised to get a Chambers Dictionary. The latest was out of stock but I managed to get the 12th edition for around £20.00 before the price rocketed. I’m happy with it.

38. @36 flashling hello and thanks! I’ve been doing these crosswords since the summer last year and getting better and better, crossword language starting to make sense and the “aha” moments are great! I do join in these threads quite often but usually several days late as I do them around my work/kids. I also enjoy watching the regulars discuss – sometimes quite enthusiastically! and seeing if the setters will come and discuss too.

39. After having (almost) finished today’s puzzle (not much impressed, to be honest, 12ac still to get).

    Failed to parse APROPOS, so filled with crossers in place. Liked KALEIDOSCOPE (most favourite), SKIPPING ROPE (Rope is an obscure and rarely seen Hitchcock; Compulsion based on the same true story is riveting), UZBEKISTANI and GEOGRAPHERS.

    Thank you, Everyman and flashling.

40. I also thought ‘action-film staple’ was a bit vague for UZI, it would have been simpler to just put gun.

    I liked the colliders’ cope and the extended definition for GEOGRAPHERS.

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

41. Fiona @37 , 93 is the first edition of The Chambers Dictionary, also my only edition but now my second copy. After lockdown the second-hand market collapsed, you can now get mint condition copies of 93 for less than £5.

42. @40 Roz, I may well be unique amongst the bloggers, I don’t have any dictionaries in the house or elsewhere. Mind you my teachers thought I couldn’t read until I was 12.

43. I suppose many people look at dictionaries online now but it is not for me, My first C93 fell to pieces but my “new” one is in perfect condition. I only really use it for Azed but I check things if people ask on here. Very impressive to blog without a dictionary.

44. Shanne @31: but wouldn’t that be making two observations? “Her comment was not relevant/fitting to the situation, and thus did not reflect well on her”.
    Roz @43 – I seldom look at a dictionary (online) when solving, and only really to check jorums.

45. Roz@34, cheers. I wonder what context it’s used in here, other than RN (which couldn’t, alone, justify it)?

46. TassieTim @44 – not in the contexts I’ve read it. Apparently I didn’t go far enough back – according to my daughter, APROPOS is used by Holmes in the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre with Watson clarifying by using “becoming” in response, in one of the later stories, written in the 1920s. Which I read so long ago, I couldn’t place, or find in a web search, although I found examples of Holmes using APROPOS meaning fitting / appropriate / becoming.

47. 23 minutes, so a little slow, but I loved KALEIDOSCOPE and UZBEKISTANI (Roz@15, it became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union).

48. Thank you WhiteDevil @47 , I meant new in the sense of Everyman, Jay is keeping a geographical list. It does not technically qualify because of the i on the end.

49. flashling@42. I would say you have a very special talent, the kind that may go unnoticed, as possibly did for you in your childhood, the verbal equivalent of a Rainman. Thank you. Appreciate your gift to us on 15sq.

50. The old-fashioned “&c.” in 17a SOCIALS meant that this clue ended with a full stop – something seldom seen, unless as part of an ellipsis “…” …

51. … one of which appears at the front of the clue for 26a POLYESTERS, without a corresponding ellipsis at the end of the previous clue 25a OUST.
    Is the setter playing around with typography? Or are these just typos?
    Thanks E&f

52. I am so pleased White Devil has resumed impressing us with his solving time. Otherwise how would we ever know either how clever he is, or how hard this week’s crossword is?

    Apropos was loi for reasons mentioned. Had to check the film, I had some sort of zone in mind. Everything else good, fun pun in carcrash clue except I couldn’t spell it.

53. I also had a spelling problem with 20a, initially transposing the I and E. Whats the old rhyme – “I before E except after K”? Apropos was my last one in too, but also an LOI when I realised that upset meant a complete reversal of sop or pa.

54. Found this one tough but enjoyable; all of the clues were fair except maybe for 17 across (“socials”) which I thought did not really work.
    Could not/did not bother to parse 20 across (“kaleidoscope”); the answer was obvious.

    Thanks to Everyman and flashling.

55. Another fairly easy puzzle – liked KALEIDOSCOPE
    Rob from leafy Epsom Auckland NZ.

56. WhiteDevil@42 please cease and desist with telling us your time! There are many beginners and slow learners (aka me) who simply enjoy the challenge of completing this by the end of the weekend, learning as we go & taking time to fully parse each clue. Thoroughly enjoyed this one edp KALEIDOSCOPE; APROPOS and SKIPPING ROPE (Hitchcock fan here). Thanks to all involved.

57. Geographer and kaleidoscope were very good.
    Misled other solver with no pressure, but in the end it was her pleasure to correct to my pleasure.

58. Cara @ 28 as with others, found this very hard ..i have been doing these for years but new setters seem to stump me for ages. i took both days of the weekend to finish it, although I don’t let it dictate my time. I found Apropos puzzling and still dont truly understand. Like many others, 20ac was obvious though I cannot say i really like ‘ colliders cope’ as something one would come up with up with . TBH I also didn’t really even have any true favourites today. Just hard all round, but clever piece of work, no question.

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