Everyman 4,069/13 October

by

Another pleasing puzzle from Everyman this week.

 

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 Take two buses back – one interminable, that’s about right – to outskirts
SUBURB
An insertion of R in BU[S] BUS reversed. The insertion indicator is ‘about’; the reversal indicator is ‘take … back’; the removal indicator is ‘interminable’.

4 Envisages crumbly pie crust
PICTURES
(PIE CRUST)* with ‘crumbly’ as the anagrind.

9 Object: Everyman has salad
ENDIVE
A charade of END and I’VE.

10 Emphasizes anxieties
STRESSES
A dd.

12 Uncooperative? Quite the opposite!
CONTRARY
Another dd, and an example of a word in English that is pronounced two different ways to express the two meanings. Mary, Mary, quite contrary …

13 Seaman perhaps on leave, a rest
GOALIE
I couldn’t see this for the longest time, despite being a fan of the beautiful game. It’s a charade of GO, A and LIE and David SEAMAN was England’s goalkeeper back in the nineties. He has been seen on telly a bit since. The devious bit is, of course, that ‘seaman’ will take most solvers immediately to AB, OS, TAR and so on.

15 Heartless hello – daggers brandished – daggers drawn
LOGGERHEADS
(HE[L]LO DAGGERS)* with ‘brandished’ as the anagrind.

18 Misbehaviour characteristic of the 2000s, you say?
NAUGHTINESS
Aural wordplay (‘you say’) for NOUGHTINESS, which whimsically could refer to the NOUGHTIES, a word we invented to refer to the first decade of this century. The Tenties or the Teenies for the subsequent decade never quite caught on, did it?

21 A professor is Greek, that’s lovely
ADONIS
A charade of A, DON and IS gives you the poster boy of Greek mythology.

22 Poirot’s one that’s been had, by Jupiter
HERCULES
A dd. Hercule Poirot was Christie’s fictional detective and Hercules was the son of Jupiter in classical mythology.

24 Posh comedian? I won’t react
NOBLE GAS
A charade of NOBLE and GAS. The inert gases that form group 18 of the periodic table: helium, neon, argon, krytpon, xenon, radon.

25 Act as inspiration for puzzle
BEMUSE
A charade of BE and MUSE.

26 Perpetual child’s play
PETER PAN
A dd.

27 Please raise one’s Stein in toasting, primarily!
PROSIT
The initial letters of the first six words of the clue, and a cad.

Down

1 Banksy’s materials: stone – and pencils? Not principally
STENCILS
A charade of ST and [P]ENCILS.

2 Bit of hubbub – a din – a geezer offering banter
BADINAGE
Hidden in hubbuB A DIN A GEezer.

3 Take apart so as to understand Lenurb?
REVERSE-ENGINEER
A bit quirky, but I liked this one. Brunel is the famous engineer, so a reversal of his surname would be Lenurb.

5 Greek character included in audiotape
IOTA
Hidden in audIOTApe.

6 It’s safe to chase articles needing rewriting
THE COAST IS CLEAR
(TO CHASE ARTICLES)* with ‘needing rewriting’ as the anagrind.

7 Whispering sound Bertrand heard
RUSTLE
Aural wordplay (‘heard’) for Bertrand RUSSELL, the philosopher and logician whose output was extensive; but if there is one work that people might associate him with, it is probably A History of Western Philosophy.

8 Framed élite soldiers? That man had
SASHED
A charade of SAS and HE’D.

11 Classical musician reworked her opus
ORPHEUS
(HER OPUS)* More classical mythology.

14 Not unknown for Hazel to follow hiphop artist
RAPHAEL
A charade of RAP and HA[Z]EL.

16 You can’t buy those who’ve betrayed their principles
SELL-OUTS
A dd. ‘Those’ is doing a bit of double duty.

17 In resort, easiest to be bored by island (in my opinion)
AS I SEE IT
An insertion of I in (EASIEST)* The insertion indicator is ‘to be bored by’ and the anagrind is ‘in resort’.

19 Tom likes this brief sleep, a becoming one
CATNIP
Everyman is inviting you to replace the A in CATNAP with I.

20 The solver: hazard, certainly
YOU BET
A charade of YOU and BET.

23 Priest raised sick in France? Ace
LAMA
A charade of MAL reversed and A. ‘Raised’ works as the reversal indicator because it’s a down clue.

Many thanks as always to Everyman for this week’s crossword.

35 comments on “Everyman 4,069/13 October”

  1. REVERSE ENGINEER was a delight. I don’t think I had ever heard of David Seaman, but a check after unraveling the word play (eventually, with crossers) produced him. The rest was up to standard, I thought, with all the usual features. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

  2. Thanks Pierre. I did wonder who was the famous seaman, (perhaps) as in a mariner, with the crossers -O-L-E, not picking up on the deception with the capitalisation coming at the beginning of the sentence regardless. But the wordplay GO A LIE was clear and a google check confirmed the footballer. (Edit: similar experience to TassieTim@1)

    I was thoroughly misdirected in the clue for REVERSE-ENGINEER. I did know Brunel but it didn’t jump out at me, and Lenurb does exist! Laughed out loud when I got it. Liked NAUGHTINESS as well, and PROSIT was a good primarily clue.

  3. I did not get GOALIE, having fallen in to the sailor-abbreviations trap that blinded me to the wordplay. And nho the goalie. One-nil to the setter.
    But I did enjoy the puzzle, with REVERSE-ENGINEER a clear favourite. I also liked LAMA, NOBLE GAS and RAPHAEL.
    Thanks, Everyman and Pierre

  4. Thank you to Everyman and Pierre. I enjoyed LOGGERHEADS for the parallelism in the clue as well as PETER PAN and RAPHAEL for their surfaces. NOBLE GAS was my LOI; Chambers noted that GAS can mean “an amusing or entertaining event, situation or person,” so I finally understood that one.

  5. Liked REVERSE-ENGINEER (Looked up if Lenurb meant something. found this: Le Nurb was the official newspaper (till 2019) of the Union of Brunel Students (UBS). ), SELL-OUTS, NAUGHTINESS and GOALIE.

    Thanks both.

  6. 23d LAMA – Thought the French word for “sick” was malade, and that mal as an adjective meant “bad”, or as a noun “sickness“.

  7. Especially liked 16d SELL-OUTS, where “those” is needed by both definitions. [Thought that one was “bad” and “sick” (and “wicked”).]

  8. Thanks for the blog, for NOBLE GAS I would prefer – I rarely react .
    A few clues have too many letters of the wordplay going directly into the answers , not wrong but clumsy . SUBURB , STENCILS and RAPHAEL .

  10. FrankieG@7, if you read the blog you will see that I particularly pointed out that ‘those’ is doing double duty.

  11. Very enjoyable, thank you. I had everything except catnip, I put catnap in and wasn’t happy with it, so I’m grateful for the explanation. I got goalie last of all, and partly because of a spoiler someone posted last week.

  12. Good puzzle. Loved the reverse engineering but totally failed on goalie. Could see it was a possible word but couldn’t connect it to the clue and kept wondering if I had rustle/Russell the wrong way round, but that didn’t help either. Foiled by sport again. Enjoyed the rest though, and thanks to Pierre and Everyman.

  13. Great puzzle. I struggled with the bottom left until I got noble gas. Peter Pan was my LOI and the clue I enjoyed the most – although I thought it more of a cd than a dd.

  14. Enjoyable challenge. Not recommended for beginners.

    I needed online help for the GK in this puzzle: non-reactive quality of NOBLE GASes (24ac); HERCULES being the son of Jupiter (22ac); and for 13ac GOALIE David Seaman – thanks, google – I never heard of him. Tbh I don’t know of any footballers except for Pele, Maradonna, Messi, Ronaldo, Best – all of which I learnt via crosswords. Football clues always go way over my head!

    Favourites: NAUGHTINESS, SELL-OUTS, REVERSE-ENGINEER, RAPHAEL.

    Thanks, both.

  15. Nice one, with REVERSE-ENGINEER a clear favourite and NAUGHTINESS a close second. GOALIE was devilishly misleading (but fair).
    [@Pierre: There is a typo in “krypton” in the blog.]

    Thank you, Everyman and Pierre

  16. [Pierre@10 – I had, of course, read your blog assiduously before posting @7. I had, while solving, independently noticed the “double duty”, and wished to express my approbation. Anything wrong with that?]

  17. With the O and E for 13ac I spent far too long trying to make the seaman be popeye! This was the only one I didn’t manage in the end. REVERSE ENGINEER made me smile. I got it from the crossers but still can’t see why object = END for 9ac

    Thanks for the blog 🙂

  20. WhiteDevil @18

    On this site it is rare for someone to post their time and I would prefer not to see times as I find it very discouraging when they are usually (invariably) very short and certainly shorter than mine – which I do not time.

  21. Many thanks to Pierre for the blog. I thought REVERSE ENGINEER was brilliant. Everyman, you defeated me this week 🤣. Like Ess @11 I had CATNAP and didn’t see the error until I came here. I didn’t get GOALIE either. Maybe I’ll do better today…

  22. I don’t understand in 14d why z is removed from Hazel ? Which words indicate this ?
    Apart from that ( and struggling with reverse engineer) managed to understand most clues. And really enjoyed doing it – although it took me the best part of the week on and off to complete !

  23. Hello, Holly. ‘Not unknown for Hazel’ gives you the removal indicator. ‘Unknown’ in crosswordland is usually one of the mathematical ‘unknowns’, X, Y or Z. I should have explained that in more detail in the blog: it amounts to ‘no Z in Hazel’, giving you HAEL to add to the RAP.

  25. I think FrankieG @6 is right about 23dn: “mal” can be a noun or an adverb (not, I believe, an adjective), and in either case “sick” is not one of its meanings. Too bad.

    Other than that small flaw, I thought this was an excellent Everyman puzzle.

  26. Well done Holly @22 , I used to carry the Everyman around all week , it would get very scruffy , look at it when I was travelling. You learn far more trying to sort it all out for yourself and ask questions a week later.

  27. I got most of this apart from ‘goalie’ having also been distracted by nautical matters, but I don’t get ‘gas’ as ‘comedian’.

  28. FrankieG @6 and Ted @25 (regarding mal in French): I’m arriving very much après la bataille, some three weeks too late, but you’re both technically right. Nevertheless, it is possible to use the word informally in its adverbial sense as a quasi-adjective to indicate feeling unwell or feeling bad, e.g. Je suis mal as an equivalent to Je ne suis pas bien (which could be translated, equally informally, as “I’m not great” or “I don’t feel great”).

    It is a bit loose, though; the expected word for the adjective “sick” would indeed be malade (with maladie for “sickness” and mal de/à… for a more specific ailment, e.g. un mal de gorge for “a sore throat”; j’ai mal au dos for “my back aches”). It certainly threw me – and I’m a translator living in France. (This clue was my last one in, for what it’s worth, with 13a GOALIE and 14d RAPHAEL only slightly ahead of them, with groans aplenty.)

    This is actually my very first message here, after lurking for a number of months (I got hooked on the Quick Cryptics and then the Quiptics – with mixed results[!] – and am now working back through some of the Everymans [Everymen?!]), so I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone at FifteenSquared who takes the time to produce such detailed blogs, as well as to all those contributors who add more information and encouragement still in the comments – it’s an absolutely brilliant, invaluable resource! (Without it, I would no doubt have given up on cryptics entirely after some of the tougher Quiptics!)

    Thank you, Pierre and Everyman, for this particular blog and crossword!

  29. Yet again, not a puzzle for beginners, so Everyman has once more betrayed its original raison d’être, which is such a shame.

    Never heard of David Seaman out here, and it wasn’t fairly clued either. Rest = a lie down: whoever says “I’m off for a lie” or “he’s having a lie” in that context?

    Catnip was borderline unfair too, Tom likes this is arguably used twice.

    Still testing positive for Covid, no wonder I’m grumpy.

    Edit – just seen Rolf is grumpy about the Goalie clue too. Good.

  30. 13 across “goalie” was impossible as far as I am concerned. The word came up in a wildcard dictionary search, but it never entered my head that this might be the answer. No one outside of the UK would have any idea that Seaman was a former goalie. Inside the UK only football obsessives, who need to get a life, would have any idea.

  31. Whitedevil@18; I thought we had weaned you off your tiresome time-bragging?

    No one is interested, and if it disheartens any solvers who don’t share your undoubted level of brilliance then that is a rude disservice to them.

  32. REVERSE ENGINEER & RAPHAEL our favourites this week, PETER PAN was our LOI. Overall a great wee puzzle on a grey humid day here in Whangaparaoa.
    @Rolf & @ Barrie we have heard of David Seaman – anyone who follows football in the last 30 years had heard of him! (Husband supports Chelsea, I’m West Ham, we’re both born & bred Kiwis who love football).
    Also @Barrie well said re WhiteDevil, v tiresome with the bragging of times. Hope you feel a lot better soon.

  33. Good comments from down under.

    A clue should either be solved by knowing the answer or parsable (I’m may be using that term incorrectly but I mean build the answer from the parts of the clue). Goalie was neither in my humble. It was extremely contrived.

    But reverse engineer was brilliant and the rest of the puzzle had some moments.

    BTW we managed to go the other way with Russel and came up with Popeye instead of goalie. We hoped that it was a uk version of shuteye but… and Bertie has 2 els…

  34. Agree , Barrie, so well said. Totally demoralising comment @18 for people like me who like to linger over it and it can take the whole weekend!
    Goalie totally eclipsed me I had Popeye for no other reason than the obvious and never heard of Seaman. Fave clue Naughtiness

  35. The penny didn’t drop on Seaman – and I’m an. Arsenal fan of 70 years. Assumed 14D was the name of a rapper and gave up. Except for the Beatles anything after. February 1959 is unimportant. A Rolling Stone don’t gather no moss.
    I did check the spelling for Bertrand Russell to confirm RUSTLE. I liked Hercules , Reverse Engineering and I think cat nap works well enough.
    BTW Stalin fooled Russell into reporting that the USSR was heaven on earth – called him a useful idiot.

Comments are closed.