I thought this was very difficult and there was a period of panic when I thought I’d have to give up and ask for help, but eventually one fell, a fairly obvious one really but it defeated me for a long time, and the others were then solvable. It took a long time to get started, but once I had done so everything went in easily enough, until I reached the impasse already described.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (homophone, reversal, hidden, anagram etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | HEAD |
Bit of beer and a nut (4)
|
| 2 defs, one referring to the foam at the top of a glass of beer and the other a slang word for the part of the body | ||
| 3 | DITTO MARKS |
They mean the same thing (5,5)
|
| CD — not the same thing as each other, but the same thing as the words above — this utterly defeated me and I had to use electronic aid | ||
| 9 | REED |
In the lecture hall, study example of pond flora (4)
|
| “read” | ||
| 10 | ASKING OVER |
Cambodia’s king overtly to embrace act of invitation (6,4)
|
| Hidden in CambodiA’S KING OVERtly — for no good reason I was very slow to see that this was a hidden; it took me ages | ||
| 11 | COUNTRY HOUSE |
Old pile in a state: bingo! (7,5)
|
| country house — country = state, house = bingo (Collins doesn’t seem to mention this but Chambers does as army slang) | ||
| 15 | EXTREME |
Excerpt of text remembered in the end (7)
|
| Hidden in tEXT REMEmbered | ||
| 16 | SOAPBOX |
Basis of a speech? (7)
|
| CD relying on two senses of ‘basis’ | ||
| 17 | SELFISH |
Briefly make the case for mullet? That’s mean (7)
|
| sel[l] fish — sell = make the case for, fish = mullet? (the question mark justifying the definition by example) | ||
| 19 | TEDIOUS |
Heath promises to be monotonous (7)
|
| Ted IOUs — Ted = Heath (British Prime Minister 1970-74), an IOU is a piece of paper which says “I owe you …” | ||
| 20 | HARVEST MOUSE |
Mother’s involved | with suave bewhiskered type (7,5)
|
| (Mother’s suave)* | ||
| 23 | CARRIER BAG |
Two airlines with grand facility for customers (7,3)
|
| carrier BA g — the two airlines are carrier and BA, g = grand | ||
| 24 | META |
Everyman, I appreciate that, is given to self-reflection (4)
|
| me ta — me = Everyman, ta = I appreciate that, and I gather that meta is when something refers back to or is about itself, like a book about books or a meme about memes. News to me. | ||
| 25 | MIXING DESK |
Being sociable with group of journalists where music is made (6,4)
|
| mixing desk — mixing = being sociable with, desk = group of journalists (as in ‘our Paris desk’, the journalists who are based in Paris) — as Collins says, a mixing desk is a console used to mix sound signals | ||
| 26 | HYPE |
Primarily, hoopla yielding phoney enthusiasm? (4)
|
| The first letters clue that is a regular Everyman feature | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | HARD CHEESE |
Bad luck that’s likely to grate? (4,6)
|
| 2 defs — but the cheese isn’t doing the grating, it’s the cook — however, I think this is it | ||
| 2 | ADEQUATELY |
Commercial to liken Luxembourg to | last thing in luxury – well enough! (10)
|
| ad equate L [luxur]y — ad = Commercial, equate = liken, L = Luxembourg | ||
| 4 | IN STYLE |
Splashy, tinselly, less large: so trendy (2,5)
|
| *(tinsel[l]y) | ||
| 5 | TAILORS |
Adapts Swift etc for the audience (7)
|
| “tale-ers” — Swift etc are writers who tell tales [as many point out, it’s more likely to refer to Taylor Swift — talers or tale-ers is indeed a bit of a stretch] | ||
| 6 | MEGASTARDOM |
The writer, funny character, to cover dirty old men in intros: great note! (11)
|
| me gas tar d[irty] o[ld] m[en] — me = the writer, gas = funny character (as in ‘she’s a gas’), tar = cover (as in ‘tar and feather’) | ||
| 7 | RAVE |
Positive review of DJ’s gig (4)
|
| 2 defs — as in ‘rave review’, and a DJ’s gig might be called a rave | ||
| 8 | SORE |
Lover-boy rises, inflamed? (4)
|
| (Eros)rev. — but it could just about have been (sore)rev. giving EROS — however, I went by the position of the comma — all this ambiguity could easily have been avoided by ‘Inflamed lover-boy rises’ | ||
| 12 | TREPIDATION |
Partitioned carelessly, leading to apprehension (11)
|
| (Partitioned)* — an Everyman complete anagram | ||
| 13 | ABSOLUTELY |
Yes, you: all bets are off (10)
|
| (you all bets)* | ||
| 14 | EXASPERATE |
Old flame, slippery sort, heading off to scold and enrage (10)
|
| ex asp [b]erate — ex = Old flame, asp = slippery sort, berate = scold | ||
| 18 | HOVERED |
Performed a chore, removing duck that’s lingered awkwardly (7)
|
| ho[0]vered — hoovered = performed a chore, 0 = duck (cricket) | ||
| 19 | TUSCANS |
In France, you run over small Italians (7)
|
| tu scan s — tu = in France “you”, scan = run over (as in read quickly), s = small | ||
| 21 | SCAM |
Flipping computers making a racket (4)
|
| (Macs)rev. — Macs are the computers | ||
| 22 | CRUX |
Wine before kiss, that’s the heart of it (4)
|
| cru X — cru = wine, X = kiss |
TAILORS
I thought of Taylor Swift.
(Or because there is the ‘etc'(not et al.) is it referring to the bird/tail-er?)
SOAPBOX
My top fave.
Thanks John for the great blog!
I took TAILORS as a double reference – the Gulliver bloke and the singer. I seem to remember that this was a bit challenging for the last few, but not too much so. Like you, John, it took quite a while to see the hidden ASKING OVER, and I learned a lot about Cambodian royalty (I had thought the Khmer Rouge had abolished it). I also had EROS for a while. Thanks, Everyman and John.
HARD CHEESE
Couldn’t the ‘likely to grate’ mean ‘suitable for grating’? If this sense
is correct, then the surface seems fine.
TAILORS
Should there have been a question mark at the end of the clue
(Irrespective of whether Taylor or ‘taler’ was considered by Everyman)?
I find taler means speaker/orator. In the sense of one who tells tales,
is it whimsical?
5D tailors – sounds like (“for the audience”)-Taylor (as in Swift and all her first-namesakes). Didn’t get this at first but seems more obvious now particularly as it seems my whole family (but me) are currently obsessed with Ms Swift
Defeated by the ditto marks – what IS a ditto mark? – and the tailors, which is pretty tenuous. Have never come across the word “taler” being a teller of tales.
Now that the Quiptic has moved to the weekend, has the Everyman got harder? It seems to me that latterly it has.
Rather difficult, probably because it’s not written all that well, in my opinion, plus there are a couple of weird-ish entries, DITTO MARKS and ASKING OVER. MEGASTARDOM I’d single out as a particularly awkward or complicated clue. Maybe he’s getting annoyed at being told he’s too difficult? Took me a while to find one I liked, but the clue for ABSOLUTELY did it, despite the plural usage for the anagrind. A good spot I thought.
Ui Imair
ABSOLUTELY
If we take it as ‘all’ & ‘bets’ are off, will the cryptic grammar work?
Or is it a convention to consider an anagram fodder singular in the cryptic reading?
Found this quite difficult and awkwardly clued in places. Thought BIRTHMARKS would possibly make a better choice than DITTO MARKS. Favourite was ASKING OVER, very well hidden.
Thank you, Everyman and John
Before the game became the (American?) Bingo! in the UK it was housey-housey, and you shouted House! to signify that you’d got a full card: I didn’t know it was ever army slang.
I also made the TAILOR a reference to Ms Swift rather than the Dean.
I remember this taking quite a while: I thought there was a less clumsy name for DITTO MARKS but can’t think what it is, so it must be that. I liked SOAPBOX and ABSOLUTELY: didn’t like the vague definitions for HARVEST MOUSE and CARRIER BAG: took forever to see HEAD. Yes, the Everyman is getting tougher.
I also thought Taylor Swift for TAILORS and I don’t remember having any problems with DITTO MARKS, nor parsing MEGASTARDOM fully.
I solved this one quicker than other recent weeks, but still in the same ball park as weekly Cryptics.
Thank you to John and Everyman.
I was with the Gulliver bloke for TAILORS,I can’t see the singer etc. here.
This took much longer than the Quiptic, which I think I went to mid solve, still, I chuckled a bit
Thanks for the crossword and blog. It might be from Everyman but I don’t think it’s for everyone any longer.
Thanks for the blog, once again I have had a lot of complaints this week from people who just do the Everyman .
ASKING OVER is very well hidden and TREPIDATION an excellent complete anagram for Jay’s list.
HARD CHEESE I think is okay , mature cheddar is likely to grate, ripe Camembert unlikely.
Definitely the singing Swift for me, much as I love Jonathan I think tale-er is too much of a stretch.
G o g @5 DITTO MARKS look like ” ” . You put them under a word or phrase when it is being repeated. I write by hand nearly all the time so I still use them a lot, they are probably dying out as most people type.
What Shanne said @10 re TAILORS, DITTO MARKS, and MEGASTARDOM, and had the same thoughts as Roz@12 re HARD CHEESE..
I absolutely loved ABSOLUTELY, because I dislike the use of the word in the context when it means no more or less than exactly what Everyman said, YES! (And don’t get me started on 100%.)
Great fodder ”you all bets”. Not going to quibble about the grammar in the anagrind ”are off”. Happy to read it as an indication to anagram those 3 words, worth it for the laugh.
Roz@ 13. Ditto 🙂
DITTO MARKS:
grammarist.com: Ditto means the same as what has already been said, the same as what has been written above, the same as what has been written before. Ditto may be a noun, the plural is dittos. Ditto may also be an adverb. As a transitive verb, which is a verb that takes an object, ditto means to make duplicates or to do again. Related words are dittos, dittoed, dittoing. Ditto comes from the Italian detto in the early 1600s, and was originally used to avoid repeating the month and year in writing a series of dates. By the 1670s, ditto came to mean the same as above or aforesaid, in written English. By the 1770s ditto came to be used as a spoken verb, meaning to express agreement with what has been said by another. Soon, ditto came to mean a duplicate or exact resemblance. Ditto machines were popular through the twentieth century, making paper copies through a mimeograph process. Ditto machines were abandoned with the advent of Xerox machines.
A ditto mark (or ditto sign) is a symbol (“) which signifies ditto, meaning the same as above or before. The plural is ditto marks.
Wiki: Early evidence of ditto marks can be seen on a cuneiform tablet of the Neo-Assyrian period (934–608 BCE) where two vertical marks are used in a table of synonyms to repeat text.
This took some time, but I thought it was simpler and more fairly clued than some of the previous weeks’. Had trouble with “Asking over” (Was convinced an anagram of ‘Norodom’ was somehow involved…), “Ditto marks” went in immediately after getting the crossers. Taylor Swift was my understanding…Liked some of the clue construction…
Thank you to Everyman and to John for the blog
me@7 and pdm@14
ABSOLUTELY
I should have said ‘you, all & bets’. Left out the ‘you’ by mistake.
In principle, I am with pdm@14 on the cryptic grammar.
me@3 and Roz@12
TAILORS
I don’t know why John said tale-er in the blog. If you take it as ‘taler’ instead,
could it not mean ‘one who tells tales’ (I couldn’t find this meaning in dictionaries)
whimsically?
Of course, Taylor fits in more readily.
KVa@19 , perhaps John is very fortunate and has never heard of Taylor Swift so he was just looking around for something else.
TAILORS – Clearly the Swift is the American songbird, not the !rish satirist. With “etc” for the plural – all the other Taylors available here.
And “HOUSE!” is what you shout at bingo when all 15 numbers on your card have been called.
TAILORS
Grammar class
Is ‘etc’ permissible after a person’s name/surname?
Thank you John! I have been doing Everyman for some twenty years and this was one of the most difficult and obscure I have come across. I completely agree about your comments about 3 and 24 across. I still do not really get 5 down. I do think it is a problem when the top line is hard to fill in. Unfortunately, I was held up by 1 across because ‘rand’ which is hidden in the clue is a type of nut and bolt. I needed help to get the right answer. In a cryptic crossword, there should only be one possible answer to a clue.
Roz@12, yes, the first 11 letter single word anagram this year. There was a 12 last year, so we can hope…
It took me a while to get this out, and I ended up having to reveal ditto marks (birthmarks, dirty marks?). Many good clues too but I still don’t get megastardom. Why does great note work as a definition for megastardom – they seem to mean different things. Or am I misunderstanding something?
It was definitely juicier than recent offerings!
I don’t like ‘riddle’ clues like 3a (DITTO MARKS). No word-play to work them out.
Christopher @ 24 Adapts = TAILORS as definition. “For the audience” means sounds like Taylors. This is a fairly common name including the singing Swift, so Swift etc.
I agree with you about the general difficulty and you make a good point about the top line which should be very friendly to get started.
Agree Roz re Taylors/ tailors. ‘Talers’ would be a stretch even for this writer!
Alison #26, ‘great note’ (as in ‘of great note’) equates to MEGASTARDOM, says Everyman. The parsing is as blogged.
Favourite: EXTREME.
New for me: HOUSE = bingo.
I could not parse 6d apart from the ME and DOM bits.
Thanks, both.
For 5d. I am in the camp of TAILORS/Taylors referring to Taylor Swift.
I’m another one who found this very difficult last week. I had DIRTY MARKS for a long time, on the grounds that both words could mean roughly the same thing – I’m familiar with DITTO, but not the term DITTO MARKS, despite having used them regularly over the years.
And I’m with Alison @ 26 regarding MEGASTARDOM being defined as “great note”. Thanks to lady gewgaw @ 29 for pointing out that “of great note” is the intended meaning, but the clue didn’t have the “of” part.
Favourinte was HOVERING, probably because I’d just finished my Sunday chores before doing the crossword!
Thanks to Everyman and John.
TanTrumPet@31
MEGASTARDOM
Expanding on what is said@29, a MEGASTAR is a person of ‘great note’.
By implication, ‘great note’ is MEGASTARDOM (someone may call it a stretch).
No ‘of’ needed in the def.
Thanks KVa@32, I think I can see it now.
I thought this was good fun and liked TREPIDATION, EXASPERATE & SELFISH among many others
EXTREME’s More Than Words seems like a particularly cruciverbal earworm
Cheers E&J
I’ve been doing these for a year now and had gotten to the stage of being able to complete (although it might take a week). I didn’t complete this week, was completely stumped by a few, e.g. DITTO MARKS, TAILORS.
Liked: TUSCANS, HARVEST MOUSE.
TEDIOUS: Once a word/name (e.g. TED Heath, Nicola STURGEON (Everyman #4047)) enters the setters’ lexicon arsenal, do they stay there forever, despite receding into obscurity in the real world, extra Crosswordland?
Zihuatanejo@35 – names do fade, but only very occasionally. There was a time that the word “actor” in a clue probably meant Tree (Henry Beerbohm Tree, 1852-1917), which was completely baffling to anyone starting out in cryptics, or at least it was to me.
Zihuatanejo (great handle, by the way): it depends a lot on the relative fame of the person in question. Prime ministers will probably always be fair game, but you’re more likely to see recent ones. As with presidents. Taylor Swift is in the realm of MEGASTARDOM right now, which is probably why we got her instead of, say, obscure pre-Civil War American president Zachary Taylor.
[On that note, I’m surprised at how many people didn’t get the TAILORS clue. Maybe it’s different in the UK, but our Tay-tay is very, very hard to avoid being exposed to over here right now. She was even Time’s Person of the Year last year, for goodness sake.]
@37: Ha, you remember the name of the town, don’t you, Mrpenney? My history teacher could rhyme off the names of all the Presidents from Washington to Reagan, grouped into The Founding Fathers, The Forgettables (including Taylor), the Antebellums, the Victorians(!), pre FDR and post FDR.
There’s no doubt that there has been a deliberate policy to change the nature of the Everyman which is continuing despite being less than popular. Presumably that is why the Quiptic was moved. I’m just puzzled as to why? It’s been like this for years and the clue is in the title. It was an institution but someone’s decided it needed to change. What I find odd is that I’ve never seen any solvers suggesting they wanted a change. Even the ‘I did this before my first sip of coffee’ brigade seemed happy enough with Everyman as a fun, moderate crossword. Editor or setter wanted a change I suppose but no one else did. I’m not moaning because I can’t do it, because I can. I just don’t find it as much fun as it used to be. If it’s just going to be a regular to hard crossword then at least get a setter that is a bit more light hearted to keep the Everyman vibe.
I’ve been doing the Everyman crossword for more years than I care to remember secure in the knowledge that I will be able to complete it with just enough brainwork to feel a challenge. Lately, however, I have had to resort to electronic cheating. I was beginning to wonder if this was because my faculties were fading now I am in my eighties. So thank you, fifteen squared contributors for setting my mind at rest: Everyman has become harder.
A sad demise. It is now little more than a mid-quality Guardian puzzle. What has been gained by these Draconian measures, I wonder.
Oh how pleased I was to read the blog comments and find how upset many felt about the Everyman. I too am in my eighties and when things start to get harder one inevitably starts to feel maybe faculties are waning. I felt encouraged when many including John found this difficult. I missed ditto marks and the Taylor clue.
I know quite a few couples who do the Everyman as their only crossword in the paper. They ask me about it and they are full of complaints, it is now nothing like a traditional Everyman puzzle.
A cynical view would be that they are trying to push people on to the Quiptic, this is only online so they can harvest all their data.
In terms of harvesting data ”they” could run an algorithm across comments here and on the Guardian
Sunday blog. For people who do Everyman in the paper version of the Observer, I suppose they could have a voice via the Guardian crossword email address as they’re one and the same. But unless it affects the number of paper buyers or subscribers I don’t suppose anyone will take notice.
Something similar happened with cryptic crosswords on Fridays and Sundays in a major daily. Some people didn’t like the Guardian-like setter (only even more rule-breaking and quirky), David Astle, in their Saturday paper, which had a prize attached at that time. People used to buy a particular paper based on their crossword preferences, as no doubt many still do. Following letters to the Editor, the Friday and Saturday cryptic setters were swapped. It’s still that way. The Saturday setter is very good, the quality doesn’t vary, the setting is straightforward, with sufficient challenge. You know what you’re getting and can just enjoy the crossword.
PDM we get a very self-selected sample on here, most people I know who do crosswords simply do it in the paper . They would never use a crossword blog or an APP or a newspaper website or all the other things I do not know about.
I do not know how people access crosswords online but that is what the Guardian/Observer wants people to do.
Why do they not print the Quiptic and the Genius ?
Paddymelon, is The Sydney Morning Herald the ‘major daily’ to which you refer? Or does Mr Astle have more strings to his bow?
Commenting here as this week’s Guardian Crossword blog discusses the difficulty of the Everyman crossword:
“When you think something’s hard, it then is. I mention this because there have been enough remarks recently suggesting that the Observer’s entry-level Everyman puzzle (of which I am the sixth incumbent) is “getting harder than it used to be” to make me worried that some solvers might be tempted to believe it.
Everyman is not supposed to be a taxing exercise. Looking at the recent range: it almost never uses a reverse hidden. It clues E with “constant” less than once a year. It never mentions Bolivian poets. Perhaps our new quick cryptic series has been so effective in its approachability, it has redefined the centre?”
Alan Connor goes on to link to the first Everyman in the archive, which sadly for him I sailed through in half the time a current Everyman takes me.
News to me that HOUSE = “Bingo!” or tht DESK – “journalists.”
I found this harder than usual, I join the crowd. Same for the current Everyman, which seems to have a blog already — doesn’t it wait a week?
Thanks, Everyman and John.
I think you’re getting your weeks wrong (as I often do — luckily I’ve got it written down so that I do the right one). This blog appeared on 26 May and was of the crossword of 19 May. The crossword of 26 May is being blogged today. The blog of today’s crossword will appear next Sunday.
Some new names for things – 2ac , 20ac
Liked 9ac and 19ac
Tricky at 25ac
Knew ‘stiff’ cheese but not ‘hard’ cheese.
Swift as in megastardom !
Am ready for the Poms tonite in Auckland.
Rob/
Got stopped by 24 across (“meta”). To me “meta” means “after” (Aristotle’s Metaphyics entailed the idea that metaphysics comes *after* physics.) The idea of “meta” meaning self-referential never entered my head.
Could not parse “exasperates” (14 down) since I took “scold”
to be “rate” (rather than “berate”) and could not figure out where the “aspe” came from. It irks me when people refer to asps (snakes generally) as “slippery”. They are not; snakes (except for sea snahave a very dry skin.
I was happy with 5 down (“tailors”). Roz@28 explains this clue very clearly. I agree with several others that Everyman has become unreasonably difficult and thereby much less fun than it used to be. Like Sardinista@40 I often need to resort to “electronic cheating”.
I had SPIN for the positive report and what a DJ does in 7D so that buggered up the NE corner for me.
Took a while to get started but then it began to fall into place. TEDIOUS; ABSOLUTELY & SELFISH our top picks. And ASKING OVER was great! We had DIRTY MARKS, otherwise all good. Thanks Fifteensquared & Everyman!
Today’s crossword convinced me that there are at least two Everymen!
This one was compiled by Mr Over-Tricky Everyman, I prefer the other one, Mr Normal-Tricky Everyman.
Well we met at a Buddist retreat and did meta bhavarna meditation, so probably can’t complain about meta but a bit obscure.
Ditto ditto – tried tilde which is a nice word too but approximately wrong.
Dislike. A real loss of a long term Saturday morning pleasure.
Didn’t get meta except by guesswork at the very end. Couldn’t get carrier bag until scam came to me – I’d been trying to figure something with IBM. Ditto marks would be easier for those of us old enough to have had to write everything by hand
It seems to me these are getting harder. I must remember to look for run-ons when all else fails. I agree with Jaq and my neighbour up the road in Howick.