Everyman 4,046

65 comments on “Everyman 4,046”

1. Isn’t the blog due only tomorrow? Is it all right to publish it today?

2. Swot I thought too, KVa.

3. Yes, flashling posted one earlier at a very difficult time for him. Hopefully, this time it was just through being thoroughly relaxed, with the Bank Holiday, and walking the dog to the pub.

4. Really enjoyed this one, with SPOONERISM the last in once all the crossers had been filled. Was really stumped by 1a and ended up putting in ‘afterparty’, but AFTERTASTE makes more sense. Good crossword albeit a bit more challenging than a normal Everyman in my opinion.

   Thanks flashling for the blog!

5. Fun puzzle, not too difficult. ST LO was new to me. Liked the Spoonerism, which isn’t something I always say.
   SATISFACTION and OVERREACTION for the rhymes, surely?

   Thanks E and F

6. Sorry for posting early again. No excuse other than bank holiday related alcohol poisoning. I’ve seen some replies have disappeared, sorry, no idea what’s happened when I realised about the date.

7. 12d CYBER MONDAY – A clever anagram, but why “In which…” and not “On which…”?

8. CYBER MONDAY
   Cyber Monday is a major online shopping event which takes place on the first Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States (so late November or early December).

   If it is the event (but not the day) that the setter is referring to, then the ‘in which’ seems all right. Right?

   Loved the clue!

9. Remember there’s a hard G in Angela, it’s close enough and funny too. Everyman used to be a little bit harder than the Quiptic, now I often turn to the Quiptic halfway through for an ego boost. It usually falls into place when I return. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t parse CAMBODIAN.
   Thankyou both.

10. Found this pretty difficult, “Spoonerism” took some time, liked “Upright” and “Auctioning” which was LOI, not helped by my having 25a as “Dash” instead of “Gash”
    Didn’t much like the homophones (“Airless” was passable…just” nor “Tumbler”
    Couldn’t parse “Satisfaction” which seems obvious now…
    Thank you to Everyman and to Flashling for the blog

11. nicbach@9 Hadn’t seen your comment, I think we crossed…
    I forgot it’s a hard G…yes, that makes the homophone work better for me. Thank you.

12. Others have enjoyed this so maybe it’s time I give Everyman a break for a while. I think he’s in need of an Editor.

13. Could Joanna also not be referring to the font which is considered to be the most upright italic font? Very tricky but good fun and I have learned a lot about polar bears even if it didn’t lead me to the answer. Thank you Flashling

14. In many ways a good puzzle but simply not suitable for the Everyman slot. I know people who just do the Everyman and have done for years and they have been very fed up in recent weeks, it is putting them off crosswords completely.

15. Good fun I thought. Agree with Judge@5 regarding the pairing of SATISFACTION and OVERREACTION.
    Thanks to Everyman and flashing.

16. Roz @14 I agree. I enjoy the variety of difficulty from different setters, but I enjoy a bit of simple fun from Everyman that seems to have faded. I’m sure you’re right that for many people, this is the only one they do. Maybe that’s why the Quiptic got moved to Sunday. However, I think it’s no bad thing to have two simpler and generally sprightlier and more light hearted puzzles for both beginners and those of us that enjoy variety. There have been a few comments that it was a deliberate move by the setter (I’ve no idea whether that’s true) but that is just a reason for the setter to move to a weekday slot. I also liked having two simplish crosswords on the same day (Monday) as, again, that was a change – both reasonably straightforward but two in one day so it took as long.

17. I enjoyed this but it took ages for the penny to drop on AUCTIONING, which along with ST LO I think were my LOI.

    I’d agree with nicbach @9, I took longer to solve this than both the Quiptic and last Monday’s Vulcan. I find the current Everyman on a par with some of the weekday Cryptics.

    Thank you to flashling and Everyman.

18. Dave@16 I am a sort of unofficail crossword hub at work, people ask me about clues from the Metro to The Listener, the ones who do the Everyman are doing all the complaining. They just want to do their normal Sunday puzzle in the paper, they will not even see the Quiptic because it is only online.

19. Roz@14. I had no idea the Quiptic is online only! I haven’t read a paper Graun in years.

20. After my typographical error yesterday when I referred to Brockwell’s blog as a ‘bog’, (my apologies to the poor man), I shall take greater care today.

    I have lost track of which puzzles are supposed to be easy and which more difficult. I do the Everyman more out of habit than for any other reason, and have just come to accept that sometimes it’s easier than others. I suppose I don’t really take it seriously, in the way that I take the weekday and Saturday puzzles seriously.

    I understand that there is now a puzzle specifically for learners? Sounds like an excellent idea. Does that mean the others can be a bit meatier? Perhaps someone at the Guardian needs to rethink their puzzles and rank them in order of supposed difficulty.

    I will just add that the same problem occurs with their Sudokus. There have been occasions when the ‘expert’ Sudoku has been ridiculously easy …

    Anyway, this puzzle. For once, I thought the Spoonerism was worthy. Made me laugh.

    And I was held up by getting the idea in my head that 6ac was TONK, knot backwards, and it does indeed mean to best. Oh dear.

    It’s not a bank holiday here. Vappu (Mayday) is a major holiday here and is always on the actual day (last Wednesday). But it is Mothers’ Day and consequently a liputuspäivä (day when you’re supposed to fly the national flag).

    Thanks to flashling, have one on me.

21. Never heard of CYBER MONDAY and couldn’t parse SATISFACTION so thanks for the explanation of what a SAT is.

22. Tough puzzle. I found it harder than the Saturday Prize.

    Needed some help from google for the GK. New for me: Saint-Lô / St Lo; TRUMPETER swans.

    Took me a while to work out the spoonerism of BOWL A PAIR (to dismiss two batsmen in cricket) for 8d.

    I will certainly not recommend that any beginners attempt to do the Everyman puzzles by the current setter. Beginners can go back to do the old Everyman puzzles, for example from #3600 backwards in the archives, it is easy to find the puzzles by changing the number in the URL:
    https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3600
    https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3599
    https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3598
    etc

23. Roz and others

    I try different puzzles of different levels of difficulty in the Guardian (and more recently the FT). I try to solve as much as I can without help but find I usually have to use aids (word-finder, crossword dictionary etc) to complete the puzzle – but the amount of help I need varies considerably depending on the setter (and hopefully is getting less and less).

    Everyman was the first puzzle I began to be able to complete most weeks without aids and it gave me confidence that I was improving. Now that it has become more difficult I find I sometimes have to use aids to complete it and that has dampened my confidence. I wish it would revert to the previous standard.

24. I’m one of those whose only puzzle is the weekly Everyman, and while I have noticed an increase in difficulty, he’s generally managed to carry me along with him. The ‘hidden’ clues are often a particular delight. I completely missed ST LO this week, despite it being in plain sight – the break between ST and LO even came in the same place as the source words! I’ve not even got the excuse that I didn’t know the place: I’ve been there. As Everyman hints, it’s not always been well-loved. 95% was destroyed in the 1944 Normandy campaign.

25. My apologies Shanne @17, for wrongly attributing you to the comment last week. “We might yet see a good Scottish clue from Everyman about jockstraps.”

26. Surely the SAT should be flagged as a US test, or am I behind the times?

    The spoonerism only works for the non-rhotic.

27. I certainly found this harder than usual, and it was a DNF for me – my first failed Everyman in about a year since I started doing crosswords. I had TRAILER instead of TUMBLER at 17ac, although I couldn’t make it parse (I’d convinced myself that the ‘ER’ was HER ‘missing intro’, but nothing else); and this then led me to ORNATENESS for 14d – again, I couldn’t quite parse it, but swans being somewhat stately, and brass being interpreted as flashy had me convinced.

    I knew I had something wrong as I use the Guardian Puzzles app (which is still working), and it hadn’t given me the green tick. I went through the grid again this morning before coming to the blog and identified those two as the likeliest source of my errors, but I still couldn’t see the answers. I had thought of stutterer or stammerer for the ‘verbally’ part, but stumbler wouldn’t come to mind – and I’ve nho TRUMPETERS as a type of swan (although the brass part would’ve probably led me there had I got TUMBLER).

    Other than that, I laughed out loud at RECTANGULAR and I liked SATISFACTION and COBBLER. Both ST LO and BARI were new to me, so at least I improved my geography knowledge!

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

28. Fiona@23 you make very good points. Traditionally the Everyman has stayed the same and solvers have moved on to other puzzles if they want to as they improve. Now it seems to be trying to carry the solvers with it, this is not needed with many harder puzzles elsewhere , and it is leaving newer solvers behind.
    Michelle @22 very good point about older puzzles, I used to love them when I was learning.

    Poc@26 I am afraid that SATs have been in UK primary schools for many years now.

29. Now that there is the Quick Cryptic on Saturday and the Quiptic on Sunday, there is nothing to say that the Everyman should be a beginner’s crossword, although I appreciate it has changed in difficulty.

    I liked ‘the last’ for COBBLER, the dd for TRAFFIC, and the Spoonerism,

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

30. poc @ 26
    I am fairly sure they had SATs in the UK when I left. They weren’t popular! Don’t know about now.

31. Bruised the ego a bit, this one. I’d never heard of St Lo or Bari. Or Trumpeter Swans [praise be to Google]. And I got precisely zero of the elements for SATISFACTION. Totally lost.

    But I’m a big fan of a tenuous homophone and RECTANGULAR was a joy. Slur your words like you’re drunk and it works perfectly.

    I also loved that for this week’s spoonerism clue, SPOONERISM was actually the answer. Very meta.

32. Pierre contrasts, rather neatly I thought, the relative difficulties of the Quiptic, Quick Cryptic and Everyman in the intro to today’s Quiptic blog.

33. I’ve been doing the Everyman on and off for 30 years and it has always been the standard for approachable crosswords. The quick cryptic is fine as a teaching tool, but doesn’t negate the need for the Everyman. Moving the quiptic to Sunday is just a mess, and it has also been notoriously inconsistent for as long as I’ve done it. Another vote for keeping the Everyman as it has always been please.

34. Just out of interest, the other one that I have always thought of as an approachable crossword is the Saturday Telegraph, and that seems to have got much hard in the last month or two. Maybe I’m just getting less intelligent!

35. This was seriously tough. Never heard of ST LO and struggled until getting AUCTIONING and TUMBLER aligned at last on Wednesday morning. Parsed a couple of clues differently: SATISFACTION as SAT + IS + FACTION and SPOONERISM as [American foot]BALLER PAIR. RECTANGULAR was most favourite. As mentioned by some already, would consider another rhyming pair.

    Thank you, Everyman and flashling

36. [Douglas @25 – don’t worry about it, I’m pretty sure it was paddymelon, but we were commenting on the inherent sexism of the use of bras in crosswords as the only supporters (although tees feature too), and I mentioned the jockstraps.]

37. Monk@33, why is moving the Quiptic to a Sunday ‘a mess’? It’s up to the editor to schedule the puzzles as he or she wishes, and since it’s online, what does it matter?

    The Quiptics have become much more consistent since Alan Connor took over. See my comments in the preamble to my Quiptic blog today.

38. How does “after” = “as to” in 1ac?

    4dn I’ve known since the Stone Age that what the UK calls a lift the US calls an elevator. But I learned recently that in the US is an alternative term for a platform that rises and falls rather than an enclosed box. The lift in that case is usually in an enclosed space, so nobody falls off.

    Thanks to Everyman and flashling.

39. AFTERTASTE
    concerning=AFTER as in inquire AFTER someone’s health

40. Quite a chewy puzzle. I enjoyed the tussle but didn’t get ST LO or SPOONERISM (very good clue). I liked CYBER MONDAY and SATISFACTION.
    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

41. I thought this was going to be welcomed as a return to a more approachable standard for Everyman. Clearly I misread the zeitgeist.

    I’d be happy to see Everyman continue to be an entry level crossword as long as the prize is consistently a proper challenge which I don’t think it has been recently.

    Loved the SPOONERISM

    Cheers F&E

42. Pierre @37 I just meant that having two theoretically easier puzzles on the same day has left some people wondering what is going on. I sometimes feel that people know more about the decisions being made than I do. Is there a blog or something that I’m missing?

43. Monk @42 – possibly this blog – the Guardian Crossword blog. This is the one that announces the new Quick Cryptic and says:

    “And here’s a suggestion for new solvers. Once you’ve built up a kind of toolbox of these tricks, you might want to try our Quiptic puzzle, which will now appear on Sundays. It’s an online crossword “for beginners and those in a hurry”. Sundays also offer the Observer’s Everyman, introduced in 1945 because the paper’s other puzzle is deliberately and astonishingly challenging. The Everyman has had only six setters; I am the sixth and I like to keep things gentle and solvers satisfied.”

    I’m not linking to the other blogs, because more than one link puts a post in the queue to be checked, but, there’s a discussion about the future of the crosswords in the Guardian/Observer when Hugh Stephenson retired, if you go back to December 2023, entitled Time to Take Stock, and a profile of Alan Connor, the Meet the Setter blog for Everyman from 26 November 2022, where in answer to the emboldened question he replies:

    “I see. And what makes an Everyman puzzle an Everyman puzzle?
    It reveals all its secrets if it’s interrogated well. It follows Afrit’s injunction and the Observer philosophy more generally. And I use the word “Everyman” to remind me to include as much of the world, old and new, as possible.

    If a solver has read the rest of the paper, he or she should know everything he or she needs, which is another way of saying that there’s a pleasure in including some placenames and surnames in spots where I might have been tempted to put what Hemingway called “the 10-dollar words”.”

    There was also a Guardian supporters newsletter about where things are going with crosswords recently.

44. Douglas @25 – if a Scottish clue about jockstraps is required, can I suggest ‘Scotsman’s part drunk in member’s enclosure’?

45. Shanne @43 thank you, that’s very interesting. I will save the link.

46. Liked: METACARPAL
    CAMBODIANS: Bit of a breakthrough moment when I suddenly realised Everyman was inviting me to think of the (small) name of a river, not R, for the wordplay/charade/anagram fodder! Liked this. More satisfying when I eventually got it than 26a, which was an easier anagram spot.
    SPOONERISM – bowl a pair – this came to me one morning whilst shaving!
    TRAFFIC – I was stumped by this for a while because I had misspelled Metacarpal.
    COBBLER – couldn’t parse this.
    Some really tricky ones. All the more pleasing when I finished. Google etc employed quite a lot. Enjoyable, though.

47. Found this very challenging & Ms Womble & I needed to put our heads together to stumble through to the end. Some very clever & amusing clues all the same. Apparently, I’ve driven through St Lo but didn’t remember the name & couldn’t even see it in the clue.

48. Re comment No 10 – surely TUMBLER wasn’t a homophone? Wasn’t the “verbally” was part of the definition of stumbler, not a homophone indicator?

49. I agree with Judge@5 that the connected (note, not necessarily rhyming) answers are more likely to be SATISFACTION and OVERREACTION.
    Thanks for the fun and the blog.

50. I’ll buck the trend and cast a vote in favour of the sixth Everyman, and for the move of the Quiptic to Sunday. It gives me two less-fiendish puzzles on Sunday and two on Monday (Guardian and FT), instead of one and three. And if the Sunday Everyman is harder than it used to be (a subjective assessment), it’s still less fiendish than the Tuesday to Saturday Guardian cryptics.

    Regardless of the degree of difficulty, I thoroughly enjoy the Everyman puzzles for their wit and fun-factor, so thank you Alan for all you do to entertain us.

51. We do have to remember that Everyman sets for the Observer, and he can do anything he wants. I don’t know why but I just didn’t find this one as much fun as usual, “regardless of the degree of difficulty”, as Cellomaniac says@50.

52. TILT that both Americans and Britons have a test called the SAT. They’re quite different, though: yours (UK) appears to be for primary-school students, if what I’ve read is correct, whereas ours (US) is for university admission and is taken near the end of secondary school. The S stands for different things (Standardised vs. Scholastic).

    The A used to stand for different things as well: when I took the American SAT, the A stood for Aptitude. They changed it many years ago. Now A is for Assessment on both sides of the ocean.

53. Just to point out that Monk the crossword setter did not write comments #33, #34, #42 and #45 above, so perhaps Site Admin could please check out the ISP address from which they were sent, and compare the email used against the one I always use when posting at 225. Thanks.

54. Hi monk the setter, I’ve let Ken know and asked if we can protect your pseudonym.

55. Thanks Flashling @45 from Monk The Setter.

56. Monk @55

    I just tried to reply to your email address and received the following:

    Your message couldn’t be delivered to the recipient because you don’t have permission to send to it.
    Ask the recipient’s email admin to add you to the accept list for the recipient.

    Please advise

57. I think your nose is too big!

58. Oi Keep out of this Big Ears and your Noddy wife.

59. TRAFFIC – I’ve been confused over the tense here. Surely buy and sell would give traffic but the clue implies trafficking?

60. 10ac ?
    Liked the Spoonerism and have added it to my collection.
    Had to think about 24 ac.
    Liked 6d.
    Getting warmer slowly here in Auckland’s Epsom.
    Waiting anxiously for the northern rugby men
    Rob.

61. 81 mins – a PB for me.
    21ac Also Burl Ives, actor and folk singer. May not be a virtuoso but although I’ve heard of Charles Ives I couldn’t tell you anything he wrote. I liked spoonerism as the solution and Merseyside. Trickiest was Cyber Monday. Had Monday early but still couldn’t finish the anagram!

62. Not quite impossible. Got it all out with substantial use of wildcard dictionaries.

    Did not like bar=hostelry. A hostelry offers accomodation, a bar does not.

    Never heard of Cyber Monday.

    Favourite was 8 down.

    The days are getting longer. 🙂

63. DNF. Most unusual.

64. Lots of fun.
    Great puzzle. Thoroughly enjoyed spoonerism.

65. SPOONERISM; SATISFACTION two of our faves. We got ST LO & BARI, but took ages with TRUMPETERS. Overall highly enjoyable & definitely pushing us to think a bit harder, which is no bad thing.
    Thanks Flashling & Everyman.

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