Everyman 4,086 by Everyman

by

Sunday so it must be a long walk for the dog (woods near Snape in Suffolk this time) then pub, beer and crossword

A loud crowd watching the Scotland / Ireland rugby game didn’t help. Anyway, all the usual Everyman regulars are here – self reference, place name, one word anagram, rhyming couple and primary letter all in one. Thanks setter.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. Grand university institute invested in gold diode that provides illumination in museum (5,5)
AUDIO GUIDE

They give insights silently to museum visitors hence illumination. G(rand) U(niversity) I(institute) in AU – gold & DIODE

6. Everyman’s adding additional remarks for naughty children (4)
IMPS

I’M – I AM – Everyman is & PS – extra notes

9. Maybe nose around, enrage sons? (5,5)
SENSE ORGAN

[ENRAGE SONE]* around

10. Naked war god in Jason’s ship (4)
ARGO

Is (w)AR GO(d) without it its outside letters or naked rather than just being a hidden answer

11. Land with mountain, protected place? (8,4)
NATIONAL PARK

NATION – land & ALP – mountain & ARK – protected place – so an all in one clue

15. Outstanding, like an Italian three-year-old? (7)
OVERDUE

Sneaky. DUE is Italian for two so a three year old would be OVER TWO – OVER DUE

16. Match official with reason to stop play that’s often repeated (7)
REFRAIN

REF(eree) & RAIN – a reason especially cricket is halted

17. Publicises trendy zeppelin (7)
AIRSHIP

AIRS – publicises & HIP – trendy

19. A skyscraper has many tales to be told (7)
STOREYS

I wonder how many of you wrote STORIES initially – I did getting the wrong one

20. Hong Kong hamper just about to go stale (4,3,5)
JUMP THE SHARK

[H(ong) K(ong) HAMPER JUST]* about. The phrase is used especially for TV series when the scriptwriters seem to have run out of ideas

23. Money, convenience, time (4)
LOOT

LOO – toilet, convenience & T(ime)

24. Old seaport resort: they’ll tell you who lives here (4-6)
DOOR PLATES

A re-sorted [OLD SEAPORT]*

25. Frenchman: Adam’s partner, you say? (4)
YVES

Sounds like EVE

26. Barely crawls? (6-4)
SKINNY DIPS

Cryptic def

DOWN
1. Likewise, mate’s not starting to get round (4)
ALSO

(p)ALS – mates without the first letter & O – a round one

2. Feast Ms Blyton knocked up (4)
DINE

ENID blyton reversed

3. What poppies do daily is obvious (4-3-4)
OPEN AND SHUT

Double definition – poppy flowers close up in the dark

4. Country, Charles’ realm: wet weather on English (7)
UKRAINE

UK – well Charles is king of the UK & RAIN & E(nglish)

5. Cavorting, randier, where dishes are seen (7)
DRAINER

A lot of people use dishwashers so dishes are seen less on drainers these days. RANDIER* cavorting

7. Spoil old lady and sons eating last of quince jams (10)
MARMALADES

MAR – spoilt & MA – old lady & and of quincE in LADS – sons

8. Characteristic of the broth or the stout? (10)
STOCKINESS

Possibly double cryptic def

12. Easy Street? Roll eye twice if dubious (4,2,5)
LIFE OF RILEY

A dubious [ROLL EYE IF IF (twice)]*

13. Workers make this – for George’s birthday party? (5,5)
ROYAL JELLY

Well worker bees make it

14. Tudor monarch and his antagonist welcoming love for sculptor (5,5)
HENRY MOORE

HENRY monarch & (thomas) MORE with O – love, zero – inserted

18. At the outset, partially render edible (cleverly orchestrating orderly kitchen?) (7)
PRECOOK

The expected Everyman first letter & all in one clue

19. ‘Not available’? Artist has risen, extremely heated (7)
SAHARAN

NA – not available & RA – artist & HAS all reversed

21. Ornamental case kept in perpetuity (4)
ETUI

Hidden in perpETUIty – the only word I know to fit ?T?I usually meaning the setter has painted themselves into a corner

22. Snakes in midsts of grassy copses (4)
ASPS

Middles of grASsy coPSes

 

50 comments on “Everyman 4,086 by Everyman”

  1. I liked this one a lot. Back solving it, after a tougher week last week. YVES made me smile, following on from OWEN a couple of weeks before.

  2. I liked this one a lot. Back solving it, after a tougher week last week. YVES made me smile, following on from OWEN a couple of weeks before.

    STOCKINESS I was pleased to get.

    And yes, I wrote STORIES.

    Thanks to flashling for an illuminating blog, and Everyman of course.

  3. Thank you flashling. I wondered about your description of audio guides as being ”silent”. Shows how long it is since I’ve been to a museum, and how far behind I am with modern technology. I don’t even have a smart phone with earphones!

    Me too with STORIES/STOREYS. Had my head in the clouds.

    Liked the surfaces for LIFE OF RILEY and LOOT, and the double entendre with ”dishes” in DRAINERS.
    I take it that CRAWLS is the swimming stroke, as in Australian crawl? We never say that here though. It’s freestyle.

  5. I too had a walk with my dog near Snape – just past the Maltings. Then a roast dinner at home for us.

    I did get STOREYS but that was because I had the crosses.

    Liked JUMP THE SHARK – which helped me get NATIONAL PARK. Also liked YVES

    Thanks Everyman and flashling

  6. I liked SKINNY DIPS and STOCKINESS, but would have preferred ‘like an Anglo-Italian 3 year-old’ for OVERDUE. Thank you E & f

  7. Thanks Everyman and flashling

    AUDIO GUIDE: Liked the explanation in the blog (as did paddymelon@2).
    SKINNY-DIPS: liked it for the misleading surface (OK. after all it’s a CD).
    STOCKINESS: liked this as well. This and the above CD–I got the solutions
    first and then parsed them.
    ROYAL JELLY
    How does ‘birthday party?’ clue JELLY? Help.

  8. KVa @ 6

    I think that at most children’s birthday parties there is jelly to eat – well they did when I was a kid – a very long time ago

  10. ETUI is one of those words, like SMEW and REREDOS that one (that I, anyway) only runs across in cryptic crosswords.

  11. .Fiona@7 and KVa@8. I liked the joke in the clue for ROYAL JELLY, but the last thing I’d serve up at a child’s birthday party would be jelly. What a mess! And on a serious note, I’ve seen an adult choke on jelly. If you laugh or gasp and it goes down the windpipe, it takes up the whole space and blocks the breath.

  12. Thanks for the blog, JUMP THE SHARK actually comes from Happy Days and Fonzie did
    actually jump the shark on water-skis .
    PDM@2 we do say front-crawl and back-crawl or often just crawl, for official events it is freestyle and backstroke .
    Not keen on AUDIO GUIDE having diode in the wordplay.

  13. KVa @ 6
    The clue says “for George’s birthday party?”
    George is the oldest child of Wills and Kate, the second in line for the throne, and thus royal. The query calls into doubt whether or not jelly is served (see paddymelon @10).
    As with others, I got the wrong STORIES.
    Thanks Everyman and flashing.

  14. Favourites: REFRAIN, AIRSHIP, ROYAL JELLY, OVERDUE (when I finally parsed it!)

    New for me: JUMP THE SHARK (loi).

  15. I left STOREYS on the first pass so didn’t fill it in until I had crossers.

    Traditionally children’s birthday parties serve JELLY and ice-cream, although that means homemade birthday fare, a party in the garden with traditional games and possibly a children’s entertainer. Prince George at 11 is a bit old, and although I remember being served jelly at children’s parties when I was attending them, I don’t think it turned up at children’s birthday parties my daughter attended. It could possibly still appear at royal birthdays, their childhoods tending to an old-fashioned vibe.

    Thank you to flashling and Everyman.

  16. Roz 11,

    Quite a lot of people talk about diodes* these days, though fewer about triodes, tetrodes, pentodes etc.

    Unless you repair AC30s…

    *As in “Light-Emitting” for one thing.

  17. Etu @15 I simply meant that DIODE is in the clue and directly in the wordplay unchanged , It is not wrong but I do not like to see it .

  18. Roz 16

    Ah! 🙂

    I see what you mean. We’ve had a few of those lately, and they do raise a flag in the mind.

    I seem to remember something like MORON being clued with MOON in the clue, and no I didn’t like that.

  19. I am not sure how Everyman would clue DIODE to avoid using it in the wording. I can’t think of a synonym. The scientists / engineers / electricians are unlikely to appreciate Everyman’s definition, and those solvers unfamiliar with diodes are likely to be mystified. I suspect including the word in the clue was the lesser of two evils.

  20. It is not technically “wrong” but for nearly every clue the words in the clue are messed about with before the answer.
    The modern range of LED wavelengths are brilliant , my students can get a very accurate value for Planck’s Constant from a simple LED experiment , it used to be very difficult .

  22. Thanks for explaining OVERDUE and SAHARAN. Couldn’t figure those out at all. Had JUMP THE SHARK but never heard of the saying.

  23. Liked SKINNY-DIP, STOCKINESS and OVERDUE. I had never heard of JUMP THE SHARK, but now Roz @11 has referred to the scene from Happy Days, I think I vaguely remember. It certainly fits with flashing’s explanation of a show running low on ideas.

    Thanks to flashing and Everyman.

  24. An entertaining Sunday solve. I particularly liked the Italian three-year-old for OVERDUE, the good anagram for JUMP THE SHARK, which I DNK, and the ROYAL JELLY for Prince George. The naked war god was not (m)AR(s), as I thought at the beginning.

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

  26. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who’d never heard of the phrase ‘jump the shark’.
    For anyone interested, Alan Conor (Everyman) made an appearance on Broadcasting House this morning on BBC Radio 4 talking about words for rain.
    Thanks to Everyman and flashling

  27. Enjoyable puzzle, great blog.
    My favourite was HENRY MOORE, which hasn’t been mentioned yet, for the touch of history.
    Other likes: OVERDUE for the amusement, SKINNY DIPS for the neat cd, LIFE OF RILEY and JUMP THE SHARK, for being devious anagrams.
    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

  29. grantinfreo @27 – people who read IMDB / Buzzfeed / TV reviews? I have said that I’ve stopped watching a series because it jumped the shark when … (currently Silent Witness) – it’s saying something has got so preposterous that it’s not worth watching any more.

  30. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark – ‘In 1997, (Jon) Hein created a website, JumpTheShark.com, to publish a list of approximately 200 television shows, and his arguments as to the moments each “jumped the shark”. The site became popular, and grew with additional user-contributed examples. Hein sold his company, Jump The Shark, Inc., for “over $1 million” in 2006.’

  31. [Agree, Sue@26. Many years ago, a bloke passing a Moore reclining nude in our local gallery forecourt said Well I wouldn’t marry her. My mum shot back You wouldn’t get the chance!]

  33. PDM @2: Australian crawl and freestyle are not actually synonyms. The rules specify that in a freestyle race, you can use any stroke you please. But for all elite swimmers, Australian crawl is their fastest stroke, so in practice it’s what everyone chooses. Some school-level swimmers have a faster butterfly or breaststroke than crawl, so might break the mold, but that’s very, very rare. Anyway, the point is that there is no stroke called freestyle.

  34. Somehow knew the phrase ‘Jump the Shark’ without knowing its meaning. Was amused then to see it used in Friday’s Guardian in Peter Bradshaw’s review of the new Bridget Jones film.

  35. This summer I did the backstroke
    And you know that that’s not all
    I did the breast stroke and the butterfly
    And the old Australian crawl
    The old Australian crawl.

    From ‘The Swimming Song’ by Loudon Wainwright III, perhaps better known in a version sung by Kate & Anna McGarrigle. Just in case it rings any bells with anyone else. My young daughters used to love the song, partly because it drove their mother insane.

  36. Balfour @ 35 vaguely remember Loudon’s version. Been meaning to go on a binge for a while now, don’t think I’ve listened to him for a good 15 years or so.

    Mostly very enjoyable for me this one. Got them all for once, though spent more time trying to figure out why the clue fit MARMALADES than I did putting it on the grid (never in my life heard “old lady” refer to a mother as opposed to a partner, so spent an unholy amount of time trying to make it work with MARM for “old lady”).

    I like bees so thought that ROYAL JELLY didn’t deserve that clue (vague definition, wordplay involving a royal I didn’t know existed). Wasn’t a big fan of DOOR-PLATES as it seems a fairly niche hyphenate, but managed to get it in. Triple def for LOOT enraged and pleased me in equal measure as it eluded me for most of the solve.

    OPEN AND SHUT also pleasing. I learned who Henry Moore was after filling it in, which was nice. I think my favourite might actually have been LIFE OF RILEY purely because I correctly guessed the wordplay immediately, then went round the houses trying other things before coming back to my first hunch with the crossers and almost seeing the letters rearrange themselves before my eyes.

    Completely missed the fact that NATIONAL PARK/JUMP THE SHARK was a rhyming pair — I think we have two pairs in this grid, as I’d assumed it was UKRAINE/REFRAIN. Not sure if there’s a minimum syllable “limit” on the rhymes though.

  39. The rhyme of JUMP THE SHARK led me quickly to NATIONAL PARK which I’d initially passed over – the first time I’ve found the device useful rather than merely entertaining, I think!

    Roz and others, re DIODE: I agree that it’s jarring when longer words are lifted from the surface, but here it was done well, with a kind of lift and separate; “diode that provides illumination” was almost certainly intended to mislead us into using LED, which indeed it initially did in my case, rather than “diode | that (which) provides illumination”. Furthermore DIODE was not only split apart in the solution but split across separate words with altered pronunciation, so it wasn’t obvious that it would be a direct lift. I thought it was a good clue.

    I’d planned to say that freestyle isn’t a stroke and is not synonymous with crawl (theoretically) – but I see that mrpenney@33 has already explained it perfectly.

    Thanks both

  40. Still very much a beginner, and find this blog incredibly useful! I enjoy the Everyman crossword, as I can’t just reveal the answer in frustration. Thanks flashling for these explanations.
    Just so I understand, for STOREYS, the ‘to be told’ indicates a soundalike?

  42. I wrote STORIES, which required me to assume that “to be told” was just part of the definition (rather than being a homophone indicator). I was then surprised at the lack of a US-spelling indicator, but I thought maybe our spelling of STORY (to mean a floor of a building) had infiltrated UK writing. Once the crossers showed me my mistake, I realized I should have known all along.

  43. Thanks Roz@12 for the explanation of the origin of ‘jump the shark’. I’d never heard of it. Also ETUI was new to me.
    Otherwise an enjoyable and not too difficult puzzle, thanks Everyman.

  44. A few too many bung-ins, like Overdue, which is borderline unfair.

    Never heard of Jump the Shark.

    Stockiness was nice.

  45. Found this one harder than last week but got there with a bit of online help! Liked SKINNY-DIPS; HENRY MOORE; OVERDUE. Husband knew JUMP THE SHARK, I’d never heard of it but always good to learn a thing or two. Can think of many TV shows it could apply to.
    Happy last weekend before daylight saving hits us here in Aotearoa.

  46. Enjoyed this puzzle and got it all out, but there were several answers that i could not parse; e.g. marmalades, overdue. Thanks to flashling for the explanations. I thought that “jump the shark” was too obscure (although i *had* seen the phrase).

    Wondered why “George” in respect of “royal jelly”. I thought it referred to one of George I, II, …, VI.

    The numbers associated with blog items are missing, at least in the version that I see.

    Addendum: The blog item numbers showed up *after* I had posted. Huh?

  47. Styx in the Herald was another DNF and some I don’t understand at all. Hate it when that happens.

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