Everyman 4,037/3 March

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Another sound and pleasing puzzle from Everyman this morning. Clearly clued and with all the usual trademarks.

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 A serving of ice cream and a lot of champagne
MAGNUM
A dd. Good job trademarks are allowed in the Grauniad stable crosswords.

4 No longer popular, helped in the kitchen
WASHED-UP
Another dd.

9 Pest is banished in shade
NUANCE
NU[IS]ANCE

10 Courses of dried fruit announced
CURRENTS
Aural wordplay (‘announced’) for CURRANTS.

11 ‘Exotic‘ millionaire Cher cherished – to some extent
RECHERCHÉ
Hidden in millionaiRE CHER CHErished.

13 Warning signal, with skill, sounded
FLARE
Aural wordplay (‘sounded’) for FLAIR.

14 Yanked hair back rudely: this should stop
HYDRAULIC BRAKE
(YANKED HAIR BACK)* with ‘rudely’ as the anagrind.

Edit: in fact it’s (HAIR BACK RUDELY)* with ‘yanked’ as the anagrind.  Thanks to several commenters for pointing out my error.

17 ‘Because the greatest pleasure is wine’? Dear me!
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE
A charade of FOR (‘because’), HEAVEN’S (‘the greatest pleasure is’) and SAKE (‘wine’).

21 Some shout down to overcome …
OUTDO
Hidden in shOUT DOwn.

22 … rioting, perhaps without consideration
OUT OF HAND
A dd. The ellipses, as almost always, can be ignored; they are just there to improve the surface reading of the two clues.

24 Anti-royalist not about to be one serving?
PUBLICAN
[RE]PUBLICAN

25 Prison officer to make another sketch after reflection
WARDER
A reversal of REDRAW.

26 Everyman, wanting reverse gear, turns over fancy car
MERCEDES
A reversal of ME, R and CEDES.

27 Star pugilist’s memento?
SHINER
A dd.

Down

1 Hams and corn prepared for emperors
MONARCHS
(HAMS CORN)* with ‘prepared’ as the anagrind.

2 Took a quick look and bounced off
GLANCED
Another dd.

3 Only 5/7ths vague? That’s relative
UNCLE
UNCLE[AR]. Only five of the seven letters are required.

5 Extra line for one of central characters in Amélie?
ACUTE ACCENT
You could read this as a cad, I guess: one of the two central letters in the prénom carries an acute accent. Lovely surface, referring to the film starring Audrey Tautou.

6 Cattle in this place, crosses
HEREFORDS
A charade of HERE and FORDS.

7 Study old money in European kingdom
DENMARK
A charade of DEN and MARK.

8 Picture someone using Twitter?
POSTER
Another dd. Twitter, formerly known as X, that would be.

12 Work together, masking nasty smell in part of shirt that’s put away
COLLABORATE
An insertion of BO for body odour or ‘nasty smell’ in COLLAR, followed by ATE. The insertion indicator is ‘masking’. You need to read ‘that’s’ as ‘that has’.

15 Ancient, passionately heated, romantically omnipotent deity inducing tremendous eroticism, primarily?
APHRODITE
The initial letters of the first nine words of the clue, and a cad.

16 One offering to be more gentle
TENDERER
Another dd.

18 In absence of judge, objector banged up for 31 days
OCTOBER
(OB[J]ECTOR)* with ‘banged up’ as the anagrind.

19 A boy with djinn regularly seen?
ALADDIN
A charade of A, LAD and D[J]I[N]N and a cad.

20 Ornamentation, ceremony and ponderous pronouncement
POM-POM
A charade of POMP and OM, the sacred invocation in Hinduism.

23 Vulgar moment
FLASH
And another dd to finish.

Many thanks to Everyman for this week’s puzzle.

42 comments on “Everyman 4,037/3 March”

  1. I’m only just getting back into cryptics after many years, but I don’t understand where the L comes from in 14a. Can anyone enlighten me?

  3. Thank you Pierre. Agree a ”sound” puzzle this week. I knew OM from Buddhism, but I now learn it is, as you say in Hinduism, as well as Jainism, and Sikhism
    I also liked ACUTE ACCENT for the surface, and RECHERCHÉ, surface and nice hidden.
    Favs this week ALADDIN for the djinn in the bottle, and SHINER for the humour.
    A tick also for the misdirection with “crosses” (hybrids?) in HEREFORDS, but coming from the country and my Dad being a butcher, I know me cattle.

  4. Alex and Admin@1,2: Yes I think Pierre forgot to look closely when writing the blog. Yanked And Rudely could both be anagrinds and yanked seeming the more obvious, but when blogging the Y in yanked maybe confused Pierre
    I can’t remember doing this. Everyman puzzles seem to vary in difficulty, I think I found this on the easy side. I know one or two held me up, but when I got them I wondered why.

  5. HEREFORD was another, despite having been a farmer, but I was looking at HEcrossRE, reading in as an inclusion indicator. DOH!

  6. My faves:
    FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (OMG! Intoxicating!), MERCEDES (Funny way to reverse a car! Fancy that!), ACUTE ACCENT (Lovely surface. An extra line of appreciation for Pierre’s explanation. prénom-What a cute & fitting usage!), HEREFORDS (Hybrids crossed my mind -just like pdm mentioned) AND the genie-us &lit ALADDIN!
    Thanks Pierre for the blog!

  8. pdm @3, I did think, well it aint santa gertrudis (an ex of mine is a brigalow girl, her family breeds ’em).

  9. Thanks for the blog , a more suitable style this week. If it is deliberate HYDRAULIC BRAKE is very clever having two possible anagram indicators of six letters. The idea for ACUTE ACCENT has been used a few times recently .
    MERCEDES has R= reverse gear ? Not in my Chambers93.

  10. This took me longer than usual though looking at it now I am not sure why – although there were a lot of double definitions and I do find them tricky. (And still not really getting OUT OF HAND.)

    Liked: FOR HEAVENS SAKE (for the sake), HEREFORDS (for the misleading crosses)

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre

  11. Fiona@10 rioting means things get OUT OF HAND . To dismiss something OUT OF HAND means you do not even consider it.

  13. [gif@8. Santa Gertrudis is a beautiful animal, a cross between zebu and European cattle. As you’d know, we have so many crossbreeds here to adapt to our climate, including Braford and Brangus crosses with Brahman. Personally I prefer kangaroo for the lesser impact on the environment. ]

  14. Roz@9: if you look on the gear stick of a manual car, then the reverse gear position is probably marked ‘R’. If you drive an automatic, then the display will probably show ‘R’ when you are in reverse. Personally, I don’t care what Chambers contains or doesn’t contain. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

  15. I was slow to get started but I enjoyed this puzzle.

    I agree with Admin@2 on the parsing of 14ac.

    Favourite: FOR HEAVENS SAKE, NUANCE, RECHERCHÊ, POM-POM, COLLABORATE (loi).

    Thanks, both.

  16. MERCEDES
    Reverse gear=R?
    I agree with TassieTim@14 barring the third sentence. This R-gear logic works for me.
    However, I always like to know what Chambers, Collins and other dictionaries say.
    Wiktionary says R=reverse.
    Couldn’t find it in Chambers and Collins.

  17. We’ve had the R reverse debate before. See also B bold, I information et al. I think the consensus was that if they’re commonly seen in the wild, then they’re okay

    I liked ACUTE ACCENT. Did Audrey Tatou have a cute accent? Probably

    Cheers P&E

  18. Favourite was probably nuance – which was also last in / parsed.

    A few too many DDs for my taste

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre

  19. This seemed more accessible than several of late. Much to like here: NUANCE, both longest ones (rhyming), MERCEDES, ACUTE ACCENT and ALADDIN.
    Thank you, Everyman and Pierre

  20. [Yep pdm @13, especially with the Brahman mix, a touch of magnificence. Agree re roo tho, green, lean and tasty too!]

  21. Good puzzle with a wider variety of clue types than usual (or so it seemed to me).

    I’ll concur with paddymelon’s favourites @3. Pedant’s corner: the lovely clue for ALADDIN isn’t strictly a CAD as ‘djinn’ is plural and our hero only encountered one, as I recall. The Arabic singular is ‘djinni’ – hence ‘genie’ 🙂

    Thanks to Everyman and Pierre

  23. 14a took me longer than it should’ve because I also took ‘rudely’ to be the anagrind, instead of ‘yanked’, and the E of BRAKE is found in both. I gave an admiring hat-tip to Everyman when the penny dropped.

  24. Adrian/Peter/Pamela

    Until you open a dialogue with admin, your comments will remain in the approval queue

  26. I thought WARDER but typed WARDEN, which made that whole corner of the puzzle take far longer than it should have, especially since that typo resulted in a word that fit the definition (though of course not the wordplay), so it took ages to catch my error.

    “Reverse gear” for R is especially clever as misdirection, since it makes you think that something meaning “gear” (in one of its several senses) is going to be entered backwards. Otherwise, the word “gear” isn’t strictly necessary except to make the surface reading work. (The clue is car-related anyway, so it’s actually fairer than usual to have reverse mean R.)

  27. I enjoyed that Everyman. Favourites were FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, NUANCE and COLLABORATE. LOI was HEREFORDS.

    I enjoyed the clue for MERCEDES, the OED gives R as an abbreviation for “reverse” since 1882: “An indicator R is..located upon the same pin as the reverse lever.” Engineering 10 March, 1882.

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre. Enjoy your Sunday, everyone!

  28. If I understand the terminology correctly (which perhaps I don’t), I think 5dn is “just” a cd, not a cad. I understand a cad to be the same thing as what some people call &lit, where the whole clue provides wordplay, and separately provides a definition, as in 19dn (my favorite clue in this puzzle, by the way). If there are two separate paths to the answer like this in 5dn, I can’t see them.

    To be clear, I’m not complaining about the clue: I think it’s quite a good cd.

  29. Pierre, MERCEDES isn’t a reversal, it’s a charade, no?

    pdm@13 and ginf@20
    The kangaroo can jump incredible.
    He has to jump, because he’s edible.
    I could not eat a kangaroo,
    But many fine Australians do.
    Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs
    Prefer him in tasty kangaroo meringues.
    Ogden Nash (The Carnival of the Animals)

  30. Nobody seems to have questioned the word ‘reversal’ in the blog of the MERCEDES clue. I can’t see that it’s a reversal. To me it seems simply that R = reverse gear, and turns over = cedes (just about I think).

    Yes they have (Valentine@29). I missed that.

  31. Nice to see normal service resumed. I thought ALADDIN was a superb &lit (once I looked up djinn). Agree with Ted@28 that ACUTE ACCENT is rather a cd. Not sure what the accepted definition of a cad is though. (I think it was supposed to provide more latitude than &lit, but I can’t recall in which direction.)
    Thanks Pierre and Everyman.

  32. 20d According to Chambers POM-POM, with a hyphen, is an anti-aircraft gun, the ornament is POMPOM (If you can’t be pedantic here, where can you be?)

  33. I love the discussions about whether a clue is a cd or a cad or an &lit. I’ve never understood the need to categorize clues. Either a clue is cryptic and clever and therefore fun, or it isn’t. What else matters?

    I liked this typical Everyman endeavour. The trademark clues were up to the mark, and the ‘primary’ clue was exceptional.

    These days I sometimes think that Cher is a bit recherche.

    Thanks Everyman for the fun and Pierre for the excellent and aurally correct blog.

  34. [Valentine@29. Thank you for introducing me to Ogden Nash’s Carnival of the Animals. . So much I’ve been missing out on, including a musical performance of Saint-Saëns by my Almer Mater, the University of New England NSW, Australia, and “hopping” chords.
    But kangaroo in meringues?? I get the rhyme, and I like both kangaroo meat and meringues, but together, yuk!]

  36. I’m with my Pacific coast countryman/paisano @35 it was a DNF for me by about six clues, which is my worst Everyman performance for years. Funnily enough I’ve been following the Everyman-getting-too-tough comments over the recent weeks and thinking they were all a little overblown, touch of groupthink creeping in. Today’s consensus is a return to normal service and I just couldn’t catch the wavelength.

  37. SW corner held me up, didn’t parse Mercedes, or Nuance. Both were bung-ins.

    Shiner was nice.

    Overall enjoyable on a truly miserable Auckland morning.

  39. ALADDIN; ACUTE ACCENT; MERCEDES; SHINER our favourites this week. Hope everyone here in Aotearoa stays dry today!

  41. Found this one a bit more straightforward than the previous couple. Also, I’ve almost caught up (in NZ Herald schedule). I’ve just finished this a couple of weeks late so instead of a rainy Auckland morning I’m in a gorgeous Cooks Beach day.

    ALADDIN and ACUTE ACCENT were my favourites this week.

  42. 5d The two central characters in Amélie are él and one of them has acute accent. So a cad straightaway.
    8d Present X was Twitter formerly, Pierre.

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