Another sound Sunday puzzle from Everyman, with the usual trademarks which I am sure you will have discovered for yourself if you are a regular solver.
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 The Fairy King in Borneo resort
OBERON
(BORNEO)* with ‘resort’ (read as re-sort) as the anagram, gives you Will’s King of the Fairies.
5 Craving for drink, son moves eastward in short-sleeved top
THIRST
Everyman is inviting you to move the S in T-SHIRT three places to the east.
8 Advice regarding no-fly zone? Let’s change subject
DON’T GO THERE
A cd cum dd.
11 Not hip, not fancy – and balding
THIN ON TOP
(NOT HIP NOT)* with ‘fancy’ as the anagrind.
12 Peacekeepers write: ‘Release from enclosure!’
UNPEN
A charade of UN and PEN.
13 Favourite – Oxford, perhaps – with a flower
PETUNIA
A charade of PET, UNI and A. ‘He was always teacher’s pet at school.’
14 How Spooner introduces Hancock to Starmer: a little furry creature
MEERKAT
The two politicians (one of whom is in fact now an ex-politician) are MATT Hancock and Sir KEIR Starmer. So it’s aural wordplay for KIER, MATT to give you the cute little critters who are always popping up in the TV advert.
15 Guilty! Eve naughtily eats, satisfying insidious serpent – in the beginning?
GENESIS
The initial letters of the first seven words of the clue, a cad, and a pretty good executive summary of the first book of the Pentateuch.
17 Word for word?
SYNONYM
A cd.
20 Step one – to be embraced by celebrity
STAIR
An insertion of I in STAR. The insertion indicator is ‘to be embraced by’.
21 Hubby explaining what happens after teams change ends?
OTHER HALF
A dd. The second element refers to a football or rugby match.
22 Ink in sketch representing where to find washers
KITCHEN SINK
(INK IN SKETCH)* with ‘representing’ as the anagrind.
23 Cuts some sweet chestnuts
ETCHES
Hidden in sweET CHEStnuts.
24 According to Cockney, Caribbean country’s having decentish innings?
EIGHTY
Cockneyspeak (in other words, with a dropped aitch) of HAITI. EIGHTY would be considered a decentish (but these days in this country not exceptional) lifespan.
Down
2 Dirty money’s source, concerning fraud in sports equipment
BADMINTON RACKET
A charade of BAD, MINT, ON and RACKET.
3 Burmese city developed ladders? Tell me more
RANGOON
A charade of RAN and GO ON. Think nylon tights.
4 Bedtime booze coming – drop of tequila – tops!
NIGHTCAPS
A charade of NIGH, T for the first letter of ‘tequila’ and CAPS.
5 Infant happy to count
TOT UP
A charade of TOT and UP.
6 Decorate cake – younger Scout getting lemonade finally – what keeps it cool?
ICE CUBE
A charade of ICE, CUB and E for the final letter of ‘lemonade’.
7 Keeps thick jeans out for cold-weather clothing
SHEEPSKIN JACKET
(KEEPS THICK JEANS)* with ‘out’ as the anagrind.
9 Desist from throwing up cooking vessels
STOP
A reversal of POTS. ‘Throwing up’ works as the reversal indicator since it’s a down clue.
10 Bean containers rejected in a mood
SNIT
A reversal of TINS. It pretty much had to be this with the crossers, but I had personally never come across this word and my dictionaries mark it as AmEng.
14 Mechanic’s nasty accident
MISCHANCE
(MECHANICS)* with ‘nasty’ as the anagrind.
15 Shocked exclamation: Gee! Venomous reptile!
GASP
A charade of G and ASP.
16 What the competent come up to score
SCRATCH
A dd.
18 What a patient needs is occasional sipping
NURSING
Another dd. ‘He spent the whole evening nursing half a lager.’
19 Everyman’s standing up with very loud resentment
MIFF
A charade of I’M reversed (‘standing up’) and FF for the musically ‘very loud’.
21 Darts players’ limits discovered in Rochester
OCHES
Hidden in ROCHESter. The line behind which darts players have to stand before launching their arrows. One hundred and AIGHTEEEE … And if you didn’t know how to pronounce it, it’s an Eastender’s version of ‘hockey’.
Many thanks to Everyman as always for this week’s puzzle.
I suppose one could nitpick and say that the city of YANGON is in MYANMAR… but I guess there is some historical support for placing RANGOON in Burma. Nor do I pronounce HAITI like EIGHTY (the AI is a diphthong). I liked the RACKET/JACKET rhyming pair, and THIRST was neat. All in all, a pleasant and not too taxing solve for me. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.
Re EIGHTY, I was assuming he was talking literally about cricket. I’ve watched like about five cricket matches total, but I had assumed that 80 runs was a fair bit better than decent-ish. Thanks for the alternative lifespan interpretation, then–makes a bit more sense.
I’m surprised that SNIT is an Americanism. (It has the connotation of being an unearned bad mood, like when you get all hot and bothered because they give you too much milk in your latte or something like that. Why are you in such a snit over that?)
I found this a particularly straightforward Everyman.
Interesting you didn’t know SNIT, Pierre, because that’s another word in my idiolect that I can hear my Orcadian origin grandmother saying, but she may have picked it up from American work colleagues of my grandfather.
Thank you to Pierre and Everyman.
Tassie Tim @1 , I have a Burmese friend who calls the country Burma not Myanmar. I don’t know what he calls Rangoon. But then, I also know some Rhodesians who say, “and don’t you dare call it Zimbabwe.”
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
Could just be me being ignorant of SNIT, then. Here we’d say ‘Why are you in such a mard about that?’ Also gives you the delightful compound noun ‘mardarse’ for someone who’s permanently in a bad mood. Even D H Lawrence got in on the act.
Thanks for the blog, agree with Kevin@4 over Burma/Myanmar it is very complicated due to different factions so the clue is fine.
SNIT is new to me but I have heard snitty . Pierre@5 I think of mard as being soft and babyish rather than moody .
Many decades since I read any DH Lawrence, and don’t remember mard, with or with arse. Snit is not greatly common hereabouts but by no means unknown. It has a sort of snarky feel …
Enjoyable puzzle.
Favourite: BADMINTON RACKET (although I usually see this as racquet).
Pierre
Your blog on this puzzle is currently categorisesd as Independent not Everyman . Might be why so few comments so far.
Thanks for blog and thanks Everyman for the puzzle
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
I had heard SNIT, but never MIFF (MIFFED, yes).
Whoops. Now recategorised.
9d and 10d STOP and SNIT made POTS and TINS: linked clues?
Round here, if someone’s a bit mardy, there in a mood
Despite finding this the most straightforward Everyman for a while, this was a DNF for me – I bunged in GOSH instead of GASP and didn’t even think about the parsing.
I spent ages thinking KEIR-TONY and even KEIR-HERBIE before I realised it was Matt Hancock.
Many thanks to Everyman and Pierre.
Kevin @4 and Roz @6 Burma is complicated because of the unrest but generally, if a sovereign country chooses a name we use it. Renaming Rangoon I presume is a bit like renaming Bombay and many other ex colonial manglings. I used to feel it was hypocritical as we still call the capital of Italy Rome and the capital of Russia Moscow and no one gets offended at the French calling our capital Londres. However, on mature reflection, it’s a simple and harmless way of saying sorry for the brutality of colonialism to take out Anglicisms that were applied in such dreadful circumstances. Anyone who thinks Rhodesia is an acceptable name for an African country really has done more than just miss the subtleties or refused to go along with ‘political correctness gone mad.’ I used to live in South Cumbria and the tiny band of people who continued to style their address ‘Lancashire over the Sea’ were mostly quite unpleasant.
I thought GENESIS was a brilliant clue as definition and MEERKAT made me smile. I’ve always thought “mard” meant “soft”. In t’Potteries where I grew up we used “nesh” in a similar way, but we didn’t have a word for SNIT.
Thank you to Pierre and Everyman for a very fine challenge and blog.
Pauline@16 mard was definitely being a cry-baby , nesh was more feeling the cold .
[Roz@17, is that really you? I’m inclined to think so because of the Potteries connection. If so, welcome back, I’ve missed you! But what did we use for SNIT back in the day?]
Yes Pauline and thank you , KenMac has been very diplomatic and I am very grateful . I do not know SNIT , have heard snitty rarely . We used to say someone has got a cob on , for moody, but no idea why.
Enjoyed 14ac as I am always happy to be reminded that Matt Hancock spoonerised is Hatt Mancock, which is a great name for a drag king.
Like mrpenney my 0 knowledge of cricket actually helped this time as I thought 80 might be a good score for a cricket game, not remembering that they’re usually in the hundreds. Also helped by my relative youth again as “snit” is in my vocabulary, possibly from 00s teen TV. Miff as a noun less so but sometimes I just have to trust the wordplay and learn a new word.
I’ve been reading “competent” as “component” all week so that’s a mystery cleared up.
Roz
Good to see you back
And I think recent Everymans have gone back to what they used to be – which is also good
Pleased to see you’re back, Roz, as I nearly always find your comments interesting.
I am familiar with mardy (and agree that it has cry-baby connotations) but not mard, though my parents always suggested that mardy might derive from “marred” meaning “spoiled”. Nesh definitely means “soft” to me, for example complaining too much about the cold. I too have come across snitty but not snit, and miffed but not miff.
This was everything I would like an Everyman to be, though I’m also happy for it to be a little harder.
I loved this one, as a learner I’ve found the Everyman now more enjoyable than the Quiptic, and more consistent due to the trademarks.
Interested to read the discussion above, I grew up in Shropshire and nesh was commonly used as feeling the cold. Not come across snit. Thank you Pierre.
Very approachable with some nice clues
Welcome back Roz, and thank you KenMac for your diplomacy. You do a great job of maintaining this site in the spirit of Gaufrid.
This was an excellent Everyman. 15a GENESIS was one of his best primarily clues, 17a SYNONYM was superbly succinct, and 14d MISCHANCE was a clever one-word anagram.
TanTrumPet @ 14, I too wanted the Hancock to be Herbie, but I couldn’t make KERB HERE fit, worse luck.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre for the weekend wit and wisdom.
Thank you Fiona , Monkey and Cellomaniac . I agree Fiona, having a good run at the moment.
I grew up near Nottingham, and almost every day came across “mardy” the adjective, but not “mard” the noun.
It seemed to be used most for sullenly unplayful children, who wanted things all their way.
Rox @19 – “having a cob on” is in Chambers as a dialect expression, but not from which part of the UK. We use it here in South Wales, but I’m not familiar with any of the other words mentioned above.
I agree that Everyman seems to be back on track.
I don’t normally try the Everyman, usually just the quick, quiptic and occasional Monday, but people were saying it was fairly gentle in the comments for the quiptic last week so I thought I’d have a go. Ended up being able to do all but one, and the one I couldn’t get was a word I’d NHO (SNIT). Maybe I should give the Everyman a go moving forward.
Thanks Pierre and Everyman.
Another excellent Everyman. That makes what, four in a row now? Sure this is the same bloke as was in harness a few months back?
Enjoyed Synonym and the anagram in 7D
I also assumed Eighty was a cricketing expression.
Yeah, very reasonable. liked DONT GO THERE, THIN ON TOP & KITCHEN SINK.
When I used to play Badminton I used a racquet but there you go.
Hi Barrie -it’s not a technical term but a score of 80 is decent. Actually it’s four score.
This was very easy. Far easier than it used to be.
This is my kind of Everyman, thought provoking, some head scratching, but solvable.
Thanks all.
For Kiwis today’s Styx in the Herald is quite good too. Liked 22D.
Forgot to mention 14A. Iwas trying to combine Keir with Tony. -too many letters. I see that Mat Hancock is an obscure British Politician.
10 minutes. Clicked totally with us and we flew through. Must buy a lotto ticket.