When I’m not blogging I sometimes miss The Everyman, but when I did it a week or two ago it seemed to be becoming easier, and I wondered if Alan Connor was deliberately making it so in response to the several remarks that this was no longer an entry-level crossword. However, this one has shown that this is not apparently the case, because I thought this was very tricky and I’m still not sure of the parsing of one or two of the clues. I couldn’t find the usual rhyming pair or much of that type; two answers ended with the same three letters although they didn’t rhyme, and I’ve highlighted them in a rather doubtful grey, not the usual flamboyant colours which announce a discovery.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (Hidden, anagrams, homophones, insertion, reversal, etc.) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DISCOUNTED |
… deductions processed? (10)
|
| (deductions)*, &lit. — you could just about see the clue as a definition of ‘discounted’ — why the ellipsis at the beginning? | ||
| 6 | SHAD |
Quiet commercial for fish (4)
|
| sh ad — sh! = quiet!, ad = commercial | ||
| 9 | HEARTACHES |
Try facial hair, leading to sorrows (10)
|
| hear taches — hear = try (as in a court), taches are facial hair (moustaches) | ||
| 10 | GNAT |
Insect which, when knocked back, leaves aftertaste (4)
|
| If you reverse (knock back) gnat you get tang, which is an aftertaste | ||
| 11 | OF MICE AND MEN |
Startled Finance with memo describing Director: that’s a little novel (2,4,3,3)
|
| *(Finance memo) around (describing) D — D = Director, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is a fairly short novel, so can be called a little novel | ||
| 15 | ASH TREE |
Wreathes unopened, rearranged for source of wood (3,4)
|
| ([W]reathes)* | ||
| 16 | TEASING |
Flirtatious: like a pleasing crossword clue? (7)
|
| 2 defs, each of which could be definitions of ‘teasing’ | ||
| 17 | ALL EARS |
Alert! Debt changing hands two out of three times (3,4)
|
| The debt is arrears, which contains three r’s. Two of these change hands and become l’s (left and right hands) | ||
| 19 | RED MEAT |
Recorded match on the radio, leading to … beef? (3,4)
|
| “read meet” — read (redd not reed) = recorded (I think), meet = match | ||
| 20 | OFF THE RECORD |
Get some scoff there, Cordelia – with no one knowing (3,3,6)
|
| Hidden in scOFF THERE CORDelia | ||
| 23 | UFOS |
Buffoon’s regularly seen ‘ETs’ vehicles’ (4)
|
| [B]u[f]f[o]o[n]s — Unidentified Flying Objects | ||
| 24 | SPEECHLESS |
Absent-minded father of the bride might be this shocked (10)
|
| 2 defs — for the first one, if the father of the bride absent-mindedly left his speech behind he would be without a speech, i.e. speechless | ||
| 25 | DUST |
Add powder. Remove powder (4)
|
| 2 defs — the first one refers to cookery, where you dust the things you are preparing with say caster sugar, or some powder; the second one refers to cleaning, where you remove dust | ||
| 26 | WEASEL WORD |
Pop perhaps wanting a bit of waffle (6,4)
|
| I think this is a reference to the song ‘Pop goes the weasel’, where a word uttered by the weasel is ‘Pop’. There is a reference to it in Wikipedia which gives lots of verses and variations, but none of them have the third line which I learnt when young: ‘Mix it up and make it nice’ | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DAHL |
Author often adjacent to Rice? (4)
|
| Rice, which on the table is often adjacent to dal (an Indian dish) — dahl is an alternative spelling of dal and the reference is to the author Roald Dahl (1916-90) | ||
| 2 | SOAR |
Rise, being angry (audibly) (4)
|
| “sore” — sore = angry | ||
| 3 | OUT OF BREATH |
Rebuilt hut, barefoot and panting (3,2,6)
|
| *(hut barefoot) | ||
| 4 | NICOISE |
Normally involving: capers; olives (if stoned); eggs – primarily? (7)
|
| The usual first letters clue &lit. | ||
| 5 | ELEMENT |
Perhaps lead with a small amount (7)
|
| 2 defs: Ledd not leed; lead is an element, and a small amount of something could (perhaps at a bit of a stretch) be called an element of something. I don’t like the fact that Everyman has used ‘with’ as the link between definition and wordplay, something you don’t see in what I regard as the highest places; in other words it’s a possibly unfounded bugbear of mine | ||
| 7 | HANDMAIDEN |
Patriarch and ma identified, in some measure, source of help (10)
|
| Hidden in PatriarcH AND MA IDENtified | ||
| 8 | DATE NIGHTS |
Fruit coming at last, it seems, for romantic evenings (4,6)
|
| Date nights — date = fruit, but how ‘nights’ = ‘coming at last, it seems’ is beyond me. Perhaps it is simply saying that night will come eventually, but this is a bit feeble; you can probably do better | ||
| 12 | NEANDERTHAL |
Tattered, leathern and characteristic of bygone era (11)
|
| *(leathern and) | ||
| 13 | CATALOGUED |
Cold gâteau spread on a roll (10)
|
| (cold gateau)* — I’m not quite comfortable with on a roll = catalogued: the connection is only vague to me, but no doubt someone will explain | ||
| 14 | WHOLE FOODS |
Healthy eating, eg fried onion rings and donuts, did you say? (5,5)
|
| I’m bewildered here: OK healthy eating = whole foods, but is it simply that both fried onion rings and donuts are foods which contain the letter ‘o’ (a hole, = “whole”), so in a sense are ‘hole foods’? | ||
| 18 | SCRUPLE |
Collapse, having lost heart | after second misgiving (7)
|
| s cru[m]ple — s = second, crumple = collapse | ||
| 19 | RACKETS |
Rows – in a predecessor of tennis? (7)
|
| Rackets was a predecessor of tennis, for this clue to be sound. Maybe it was, but the games developed and changed so much over the centuries that it is hard to be sure. If by ‘tennis’ Everyman means ‘Lawn tennis’, then he is probably right, because (Wikipedia helped here) historians generally assert that rackets began as an 18th-century pastime, but what about real tennis, the version that was played by Henry VIII amongst others?
Anyway, ‘rows’ rhymes with ‘cows’, and rows = rackets |
||
| 21 | NEMO |
Fictional Captain seeing augury ascending (4)
|
| (omen)rev. — ascending OK because it’s a down clue — ref. Captain Nemo, from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne | ||
| 22 | USED |
‘Cast-off folksy Everyman’ – Editor (4)
|
| ‘us’ is what a folksy Everyman would say instead of ‘I’, Ed = Editor — the self-referential clue |
Always thought pop was the verb and the weasel (coat, stole?) the thing popped. Nice Sunday puzzle, ta both, now for a coffee and today’s.
Thanks John. A trickier challenge than previous weeks certainly.
I had DATE NIGHTS as Nigh + the final letters of ‘it seems’
And WHOLE FOODS has a definition linked to the Amazon subsidiary as well as the homophone wordplay.
Doughnuts and onion rings are both torus-shaped, so are hole foods! And CATALOGUED means “on a roll” with “roll” in its “list” sense (honor roll, roll call, etc.).
I agree with Heracles @2 about DATE NIGHTS.
Thanks John. I also found this a bit, well not Everymanish, and expect some comments.
Re the ellipsis in 1a DISCOUNTS. I have the same question. I tried doing something with DOTS but no luck so far.
DAHL is never next to RICE on any menus I’ve seen, even though I like subcontinental and other Asian food.
Still don’t get the parsing for WEASEL WORD, although I got the pop ok.
DATE NIGHTS and WHOLE FOODS parsed as did Heracles and mr penney.
pdm@4: if “pop goes the weasel,” then the weasel says pop, which makes “pop” a WEASEL WORD. It’s sort of pushing cryptic cluing into the realm of dad jokes, but it worked for me.
Ah thanks MrP@5. What I’d call a Christmas cracker joke. 🙂
Oh, and agree with your CATALOGUED.
I think I’ve got the ellipsis in the clue for DISCOUNTED. Ellipses are used for omissions, or “deductions”. I read the clue as def and anagram.
Or an &lit? ellipsis = deductions processed (in our brains). I’m sure KVa will put me right.
Thanks Everyman & John!
I think all parsings are in place now.
paddymelon@8
You are toooooo kind!
DISCOUNTED
I think your parsing makes sense. The & lit part isn’t yet clear to me.
The ellipsis is the def (It’s something DISCOUNTED/ignored/left out).
The only two words in the clue form the wordplay.
deductions processed: Another def?
DISCOUNTED
two defs & a wordplay. If the ellipsis can be DISCOUNTED once, it’s an & lit.
I think it is an &lit. processed is anagram indicator but the whole clue reads as a def if you insert an imaginary caesura or punctuation. And I think the question mark is there to indicate that as well.
I’ve often defended Everyman’s style, but I found this one impossible without a lot of assistance. Thanks above for the parsing explanations, which reinforce my feeling that some of the clues are too convoluted for this slot.
padymelon@4, outside of restaurants, in many countries dahl and rice is a staple akin to meat and potatoes.
Thanks John and Everyman.
You’re right Paul T@12. The clue for DAHL didn’t mention menus or restaurants. My mistake. I can see they might both be on the table.
POP in pop goes the weasel means to pawn; the weasel is the shuttle in a loom, so the loom can’t be used until it is reclaimed. Pop is a weasel word because it is a innocuous word for a momentous undertaking. That was my take anyway, probably not Everyman’s.
Thanks nicbach@14, that’s interesting. Those nursery rhymes we sang as kids had such dark meanings. So glad I never went beyond the tunes.
I’m b-a-a-a-ck with DISCOUNTED. Ellipsis deductions processed isn’t an @lit as KVa rightly says.
I’m going dotty. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called, if it’s solvable. I don’t know what anyone else might make of this, let alone some of our newer solvers who it was nice to hear from last week.
Ellipses have a place in cryptics, but to put one right at the beginning of the first clue is a bit of of a stretch, in any cryptic. Perhaps Everyman thought he was being helpful doing that, as there was no follow-on, as in the other use of ellipsis, and it would make you think what could the ellipsis mean. One possibility that occurred to me was that it may have been a mistake in the typesetting, which has happened before. How is someone supposed to juggle all of these possibilities, especially if you don’t know what some of the conventions are?
Further to the discussion about Everyman extending the range of devices, and supposedly our skills, over time, there is the question as to when people come in. Not everyone started when Alan Connor started setting Everyman. There has to be some consistency in the crossword, for all-comers. There is plenty of variation in the daily cryptics for solvers to take their chances.
And dare I say it, but if Alan Connor is both the setter for Everyman and the Guardian Crosswords Editor, who is providing him with feedback? Hopefully he’s looking at these blogs and perhaps will call for test solvers from among the Everyman diehards and newbies.
Thanks for the blog , some nice clues , especially anagrams , but totally unsuitable for newer solvers. ALL EARS was neat and very precise.
WEASEL WORD , Nicbach@14 has it absolutely right , and you are right John with ” Mix it up and make it nice” . Third line , first verse. I have been through three generations of singing this.
8 down
COMING is NIGH
plus last letters of ‘it seems’
paddymelon @ 16
That is exactly what I was going to say following last week’s discussion. Someone mentioned that Alan Conner had indicated he intended to make the puzzle more challenging to stretch us – but as you said that leaves no room for newbies.
I found this much tricker than usual and not at all right for an Everyman.
Some well disguised hiddens and 17, my LOI, was particularly clever. Good to see the single word anagram back in the 1A spot where it has appeared on several occasions this year.
I noted that 26a is only in Chambers and Collins in plural form (though Chambers does say “orig. (in sing)…” so perhaps that’s ok.
Dare I suggest a new Everyman device has emerged … a common letter in the four corners, this time “D”. Perhaps the start of a coded message …
I didn’t find this one as tough as some of others did, but it wasn’t as quick to solve as Everyman can be.
I know the “mix it up and make it nice” line from “Pop goes the weasel” too. My parsing of DATE NIGHTS also used nigh + t + s. I groaned at the hole / WHOLE FOODS.
Thank you to John and Everyman.
Popping weasels… Does this help?
Thanks E and J
Favourites were HEARTACHES and DATE NIGHTS, the latter parsed as by many before me (date + nigh + t + s). Actually liked WHOLE FOODS, with onion rings and donuts both having physical, not only literal, holes within. Thought 5d was EVE (perhaps lead, to an event) + REST (small amount) and wondered where the definition was 😮
Thank you, Everyman and John.
Well, I’m glad some others found it a bit tricky.
I liked the wordplay for HEARTACHES, the well-hidden OFF THE RECORD and HANDMAIDEN, the good anagram for OUT OF BREATH, and the hole foods. I’m another who failed to parse the TS of DATENIGHTS.
Thanks Everyman and John.
Not exactly a thing of beauty for this solver. Regarding John’s comments about difficulty, I’m sure it was always a fun Sunday romp, but it’s been a while now since all that, as documented ad nauseam, and any Ximenean pretences will have by now been absolutely defenestrated. At least I found out what a DATE NIGHT is.
I think the clue type for 1 across is ‘can I get away with this’.
Onwards and sideways to 4,037.
I guess it irks a bit because deduction isn’t really reduction.
I got down to my last four clues after a tussle and gave it a break. Came back and took as long again to get those (WEASEL WORD, ALL EARS, WHOLE FOOD, DUST) and that was after a friend said “no” to my efforts at WEASEL-FOOD, DASH and ALL CARS
Won’t be doing this week’s. 1-week protest!! Not that it’ll register. But at least it stops me being a moaner. I don’t like being a moaner.
Beginners beware! I found this as tough as a Saturday Prize puzzle if not more difficult.
Favourite: HEARTACHES.
New for me: RACKETS = a ball game for two or four people played with rackets; WEASEL WORD.
I needed help from google to parse 26ac – Pop! Goes the Weasel which seems to have had various meanings over the centuries with the pawning (pop) of a coat (weasel & stoat -> coat in Cockney slang) being one of the later ones. I settled on Pop! Goes the Weasel being a sort of nonsense statement because the sound a weasel makes is not ‘pop’. And a weasel word = words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading. I think that I parsed WEASEL WORD in the same way as mrpenney @5.
14ac – I agree with mrpenney@3 that onion rings and donuts have holes so are hole foods -> whole foods.
Thanks, both.
As most people have said, more challenging than usual. I liked the popping weasel reference but am not convinced that weasel words are synonymous with a bit of waffle.
I’m with John in his dislike of with as a linking word & in 5D it’s not even necessary for a good surface.
I agree with Mr Womble@29 , weasel words imply deceit , waffle is prevaricating, although I have not checked Chambers for overlap.
In 1a DISCOUNTED – AlanC is playing with punctuation again, with the ellipsis …
… and then with apostrophes and single quotes in 23a UFOS – Buffoon’s … ‘ETs’ vehicles’ (4)
I wonder what GeneratePress will make of it. – It gets it right! I’m amazed!
NEANDERTHAL rhymes with Roald
😳…back to the drawing board after last week’s feeling of success. Only managed to complete half of it after hours and hours, so some of the wonderful comments above much -appreciated. Thanks all.
As a (relative) newcomer, I’m still trying to figure out how much of what I miss is due to my ineptitude, and how much it is that a crossword is actually more difficult than usual. I typically manage to complete all but 3 or 4 clues, but failed yo get 9 this week. The blog and comments are very helpful in my continued enjoyment of the Everyman.
I liked WHOLE FOODS, which I got, and thought ALL EARS, which I didn’t, was very clever.
Thanks to all.
We also have the traditional one-word anagram, in this case “deductions” for DISCOUNTED.
It had never occurred to me that the weasel said “pop!” I thought he or she went Pop by popping out of something. I had a toy with a crank that you turned to play the tune, and on “Pop!” the lid sprang open and clown puppet popped out. I learned the rhyme (it isn’t a rhyme) as
All around the cobbler’s bench
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun
Pop! goes the weasel.
I had no idea there were more verses.
[Shad roe is a seasonal delicacy on the Connecticut River, where in spring the shad swim up the river, and the females are carrying eggs.]
Thanks to Everyman and John.
Several here I didn’t get – nor ever would have eg ‘scruple’ or ‘element’ – very convoluted clue.
Also, my childhood memory (1950’s) of pop goes the weasel is:
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
THATS THE WAY THE MONEY GOES
Pop goes the weasel.
Hence – weasel to the pawn shop
I worked out shad by parsing alone, new to me.
Liked: All ears.
I at first thought to “cast off” might be Shed. It has the “ed” for editor. Figured out it must be Used, But I couldn’t parse “folksy”. Still can’t.
Bottom right-hand corner was tricky. Had to abandon and re-try later in the week.
Didn’t get: weasel word.
Half a pound of tuppeny rice
Half a pound of treacle
Mix it up and make it nice
Pop goes the weasel
Up and down the City road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop goes the weasel
Every night when I get home
The Monkey’s on the table.
Take a stick and knock it off
Pop goes the weasel
Mostly straightforward with a few knottier moments. I agree that the ellipsis for DISCOUNTED is unnecessary – the question mark serves to indicate that the clue is unusual. And I agree with earlier posters about the parsing of WHOLE FOODS and DATE NIGHT.
I liked the anagrams, the hidden words and the contronym DUST.
My memory of POP GOES THE WEASEL is as June Sherlock quotes @36. ‘Mix it up and make it nice’ must be a later bastardisation 🙂
I have never seen capers in a salade NIÇOISE – and where are the tuna and anchovies?
Thanks to S&B
Friends of my grandparents actually used to run the Eagle Pub in London’s City Road – and yes, punters who’d spent all their earnings visiting the Eagle were then forced to pop (pawn something) for ready cash till next payday. A weasel, as Nicbach @ 14 points out, being a domestic item of some value, would have raised enough money.
So the weasel isn’t actually saying, or going, pop.
Weasel words are used a lot in advertising, as in “save UP TO fifty percent”. I’m with Roz as to whether this is waffle, or downright lying.
A lot trickier than usual, so I really needed the blog. Thanks to both.
Of mice and men and off the record are symmetrical clues that both start with “of”. Closest I can fine. First Everyman since Alan took over that I didn’t finish within an hour.
I also noted some interesting possibly related answers:
Out of breath = speechless
Date nights = heartaches (possibly with teasing as well?)
@37 I parsed folksy as: Everyman = me, but folksy being multiple people (including me), and thus, US. It felt a bit of a stretch.
First time in a while I haven’t been able to finish the Everyman as I couldn’t get WEASEL WORD, and don’t think I would have in another 50 years – but now I’ve seen the parsing it makes a bit of sense. Tough clue though.
Zihuatanejo@37 and Jaz@43 I took “folksy Everyman” to be a colloquial term for “me” as in: “Give us a clue”.
The related pair (they do not always rhyme) this week were OUT OF BREATH and SPEECHLESS.
Thanks for the blog.
The version Roz@38 gives is, I think, the Mike Sarne spoof version of the traditional nursery rhyme. Sometime Iin the sixties. It continues ‘Now if you have a weasel, and you don’t want to pop….’
[Valentine@35 – Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It: ‘Electric eels, I might add, do it | Though it shocks ’em I know | Why ask if shad do it? | Waiter, bring me shad roe’]
As a relative newbie I did manage to finish but agree it was trickier than some Everyman’s of late. ‘Weasel Word’ came to me from the down letters and a check on wikipedia – never heard the expression before.
I enjoyed having to really ‘work’ the clues to get unfamiliar words/phrases though. This puzzle felt like good ‘parsing’ practice as too often I find myself guessing the definition element and working out the answer from that.
Particularly enjoyed OFF THE RECORD, NEANDERTHAL and CATALOGUED.
Thanks Everyman for a good workout and John for the blog.
Mystogre@45 Usually the “pair” are symmetrically placed on the grid, but here one is an across and one is a down clue.
I’ve always spelt it DHAL.
DAHL
In Hindi it’s daal (d pronounced like th in mother). I find that dal, dahl and dhal are all acceptable variants in English.
More than usually difficult for me. DNF because of 26ac .Thank you everyone for helping me understand it’s parsing. Really appreciate it.
Thank you to John for the blog and Everyman for the puzzle.
A real curate’s egg, this one. Maybe I’m biased because I’m a big ol’ DNF, but some of this was dire, while others were exquisite. (DATE NIGHTS and WHOLE FOODS among those)
26a WEASEL WORD – “Pop perhaps”, just giving an example of a word in the song.
‘Mix it up and make it nice’ comes from Anthony Newley’s version of Pop Goes The Weasel(1961)
Certainly one of the more tricky Cryptics.
Liked the blog on ‘weasel words’ – was all ears there.
Rob from Epsom NZ
I was happy with Weasel Word = Waffle, which I note, a couple of the online dictionaries define as “Speech or writing that is vague, pretentious or evasive“. More dad jokes than usual this week – keep them coming, I say!
Similar to Paul T@12 I found this one impossible, without lots of assistance ( heavy use of wildcard dictionaries). Too tough by half.
Liked “(w)hole foods”, but, when I finally got it.
If Alan Conner, alias Everyman, has a bad week , he sets a difficult puzzle.
A bunch of stuff must have gone wrong the week he set this one!
Still not certain how “recorded” maps to “read” – any ideas?
I think it’s as in “my electricity meter recorded/read 237651”
Yeah nah.
All ears was too good for.us.
A bit discombobulating this one for us.
A slow start but got there in the end. Just filled in ALL EARS as the last answer because it was all that fitted but I couldn’t parse it so thanks for this blog.
Whole Foods was my favourite (I love a good dad joke).
I was 11 short of finishing, my worst performance for a long time. Sometimes it just happens that way but maybe this was just more difficult than usual