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Everyman with a puzzle to challenge us all after the clocks have gone forward. In the UK, at least.
Probably a 17ac of cryptic definitions this week for those who are not keen on them, but all the usual trademarks are there to help you once you’ve put in the anagrams (if that is how you go about these things).
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 It’s eternal, they say, in vitro meat
ROME
Hidden in vitRO MEat. Rome is ‘the eternal city’.
3 It shows axes, part of plotters’ designs?
GRAPH PAPER
A cd, with the ‘axes’ being pronounced differently in the surface and cryptic meanings.
9 Refer to model in Channel Islands on ecstasy
CITE
An insertion of T for ‘model’ (Model T Ford, very common in crosswordland if you’re new to all this) in CI and E.
10 Ultimately furious, into craw sticks one that’s extremely inferior
SCRAWNIEST
Not my favourite clue this morning. The surface is a bit nonsensical, for a start. A charade of S for the final letter of ‘furious’ and an insertion of I in CRAW and NEST. NEST for’sticks’ is another reason this didn’t make my podium today.
11 Trembling mankind, holy, welcoming Earth’s biblical promise
MILK AND HONEY
An insertion of E into (MANKIND HOLY)* The insertion indicator is ‘welcoming’ and the anagrind is ‘trembling’.
If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey (Numbers, 14:8, KJV)
15 What posh homes have (AKA station wagons)
ESTATES
A dd.
16 Primarily pecuniarily relayed or reimbursed according to amplitude?
PRO RATA
The initial letters of the last seven words of the clue and a cad.
17 Stuff what you can do to the WWW, you say?
SURFEIT
Aural wordplay (‘you say’) for SURF IT, which is what you can do with the wondrous thing that is the world wide web. SURFEIT as a verb has the sense of ‘stuff’.
19 Not half pretentious: opposed to Italian wine
CHIANTI
A charade of CHI [CHI] and ANTI. ‘Chichi’, or ‘chi-chi’ is an adjective meaning elaborately pretentious.
20 Origamist’s income?
FOLDING MONEY
A cd.
23 Small drink, adjacent to a finger?
THIMBLEFUL
Another (not entirely convincing) cd.
24 Quiet tune, mate
PAIR
A charade of P for the musically ‘quiet’ and AIR.
25 Bad neighbour accounting cryptically for taste?
ROGUE STATE
A reverse anagram thingy: ROGUE STATE would give you TASTE if you considered ‘rogue’ as the anagrind.
26 Say, this culture regularly disappears
CLUE
The odd letters of CuLtUrE.
Down
1 Presence of mind initially disturbed – making amends
RECOMPENSE
(PRESENCE O M)* with ‘disturbed’ as the anagrind.
2 Stimulator provoked vandals
MUTILATORS
(STIMULATOR)* with ‘provoked’ as the anagrind.
4 Shrinks showing barmy decrees
RECEDES
(DECREES)* with ‘barmy’ as the anagrind.
5 Spooner’s to espy deck in fog
PEA SOUP
A Spoonerism of SEE POOP.
6 Goaty god? Devil? I … I’m not sure … it’s chaos
PANDEMONIUM
A charade of PAN, DEMON, I and UM. A word coined by Milton in Paradise Lost as the place (etymologically) of ‘all evil spirits’ , but since the 1770s having a much broader meaning.
7 Like a piper or a clown?
PIED
A cd cum dd. The PIED PIPER is a legendary figure from the Middle Ages, originally dressed in multicoloured, or PIED clothing. And a clown’s costume would certainly fall into that category.
8 She’s dreadfully hurt
RUTH
(HURT)* with ‘dreadfully’ as the anagrind.
12 ‘Due’? Both late! For renewal PDQ!
AT THE DOUBLE
(DUE BOTH LATE)* with ‘for renewal’ as the anagrind.
13 Cleric at formal event embracing Pole: that’s smashing
CANNONBALL
An insertion of N for the [North] Pole in CANON and BALL.
14 It may resemble an elder, includes many
FAMILY TREE
Another cd.
18 Everyman on diet, after time eating seconds, becoming most large
TIDIEST
A charade of T, I for ‘Everyman’ and S inserted into DIET. The insertion indicator is ‘eating’. ‘She inherited a tidy/large sum of money.’
19 As maestro will do to ensure behaviour …
CONDUCT
Another cd, referring to the conductor of an orchestra.
21 … making comeback, damn celebrity
STAR
A reversal of RATS. The ellipses, as almost always, can be ignored – they are just there to make more sense of the surface readings of the two clues.
22 Dopy grin that’s seen in proposal
RING
(GRIN)* with ‘dopy’ as the anagrind. The bended knee kind of proposal, of course.
Many thanks as always to Everyman for this week’s puzzle.
I took it that a clown was pied in the sense of being hit with a custard pie – but this was one of a number of clues that felt like they were written with a hangover. I still enjoyed it, though, because that’s what we do.
@Karl T I also took it that way. Can’t say this was my favourite Everyman. Lots of very clunky clues this week.
Thanks Pierre. I also didn’t find the THIMBLEFUL convincing, and wondered what I was missing.
I got Chi Chi, in CHIANTI, from I don’t know where. Does anyone say it any more?
I found PDO last week, for AT THE DOUBLE, but can’t find it again now.
Not keen on answers where every letter is an abbreviation, ie CITE.
A ROGUE STATE is not necessarily a ” neighbour”?
I don’t think this puzzle was Everyman’s best work. Hard to find one that appealed. Maybe PRO RATA. Apt surface.
(Edit. Agree NathanB@2)
I read PIED as per Karl T@1.
Oh, it’s PDQ (not O, poor eyesight). Pretty Damn Quick. I’ve never seen that in textspeak or anywhere else.
PDQ is older than text speak – dates from 1875, apparently. I link it to PG Wodehouse and Bertie Wooster, so pre-WWI and between the wars, or similar manners of speaking.
I wasn’t convinced by THIMBLEFUL either.
Thank you to Pierre and Everyman.
PIED
Agree with Karl@1 and pdm@3
ROGUE STATE
Agree with pdm@3
THIMBLEFUL
That a ‘finger’ and a ‘THIMBLEFUL’ both mean a ‘small drink’ makes the clue
a decent CD, I think. Maybe there is an additional play with ‘adjacent’.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Ah, you’ve got something there about finger and thimbleful in terms of small drinks KVa@6. Still don’t quite get the grammar. A thimble is ”adjacent to”, or rather surrounding a finger, but still …
Guess it depends on your associative pathways; occurring with piper and pied, clown flashed up harlequin (similar era?) hence multicoloured, close enough to pied, so no pies! Hey ho. Otoh, surfeit as verb was a hmmm, although I liked the soundplay. Ditto KVa re finger qua small drink; maybe “Small drink, about a finger” might’ve been (a bit) better. Anyway, all part of Sundy fun, thx P’n’E.
And yes, the ? in 25ac works hard reaching all the way back to imply that a rogue state might be a neighbour …
grantinfreo@9
ROGUE STATE
That works for me. Thanks.
Back to THIMBLEFUL (KA: pdm and gif)
Maybe a stretch, but wanted to share this…
THIMBLEFUL in a cryptic way could mean a ‘finger’.
I find that ‘adjacent’ could mean ‘suggestive of’ and ‘bordering on’ figuratively.
(The issue is that if used figuratively, ‘adjacent to’ is used postpositively).
I thought of Harlequin first, then custard PIES struck e, not literally.
I thought Thimbleful was ok, because you can wear a thimble on your thumb, but Gratinfreo’s version @8 better.
Thanks both.
me@10
‘Adjacent’ is used post-positively (not adjacent to).
Thanks for the blog , MUTILATORS a very nice complete anagram and a concise , punchy clue . SCRAWNIEST the opposite and straight to Number 1 in my worst clue of the year table.
Agree with Karl@1 and others for PIED making a clever DD .
THIMBLEFUL – I often say “adjacent to” meaning approximately so it worked for me in the sense of two small drinks about equal in volume , see Grant@8 .
I googled clown pied, because I couldn’t make much sense of it, and it appears to be a kind of snake! All other parsings as per blog, and very much in Everyman’s style for me. Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
The custard pie option for the PIED clown is undoubtedly what the setter had in mind. Thanks for clarifying.
SCRAWNY means thin, meagre, or emaciated, not inferior.
I want to put in a vote for PANDEMONIUM. It was perhaps too straightforward to be a great clue, but I thought that surface and cryptic readings went together elegantly.
Not the greatest puzzle but not terrible either. It had the virtue that it could be completed by me. Thanks Everyman and Pierre
[For those puzzled by this week’s Everyman it now has a clue CORRECTION online. 4 across should read “Nitwit in protective cover taken aback (4)”]
Thank you Hadrian , I was going to ask about this but worried about spoilers , your post is fine , simply a correction .
Pdm@3: the chichi she shed ad that ran here a few years ago springs to mind.
And it was a thing when I was a kid to say to other kids who had their trouser flies undone, “XYZ PDQ”, which stood for eXamine Your Zipper Pretty Darn Quick. We also have the late Peter Schickele, who did classical music parodies under the pseudonym PDQ Bach.
Thank you mrpenney for exposing me to cultures unknown. 🙂
Rogue State. Allow me to go through this slowly because it has been annoying me for days. Definition: bad neighbour. On that basis, parsing ‘accounting cryptically for taste’ to get both rogue and state. Rogue for accounting cryptically as in a rogue accountant? Then, double lifting to produce a rogue version of taste? Or ‘accounting cryptically’ applied as an anagram mechanism to taste but then where do we magic up rogue from?
Ring of Power @22: It’s a wordplay-in-the-answer thingy. The phrase ROGUE STATE” is good wordplay for the word “taste”. In other words, the clue “Sample rogue state (5)” would work fine to get you to TASTE (with the surface reading leaving much to be desired–so sue me). That means that ROGUE STATE accounts cryptically (i.e., would serve as the cryptic half of a clue) for taste. Hope that’s clearer.
mrpenney thank you. I’m there now.
I think 19dn is better taken as a double definition: what a maestro does is conDUCT, and behaviour is CONduct. Still not a great clue, with “As” and “to ensure” not really fitting into the cryptic reading.
mrpenny@20, I too had to get Bach out of my head in order to solve 12d AT THE DOUBLE.
I thought this was a typical, and typically enjoyable, Everyman with a typically fine blog from Pierre, so thanks both.
Agree with others about the custard pie.
And Ted@25 that’s what I had for 19d
I really enjoyed this one, the groan out loud dad jokes were right up my street and I finished pdq. 5d, 6d and 17a all made me laugh so no complain from me, and thanks!
But 7d surely the clown is pied in the face.
Thought this was going to be a stinker as first sweep yielded little but then it came together nicely. Surfeit was my favourite despite its dodgy definition. I took pied to be from the diamond patterns they wear, not convinced by any custardy reference. To suggest that getting one in the face makes you ‘pie-d’ is a step too far imho.
Got it all out but found several clues to be clunky. I particular I agree with PIerre about “scrawniest” (10 down). I was OK with “thimbleful” (23 across), but.
I agree with Barrie@30 about “pied”.
With you on ‘pie-d’, Barrie. It all came together quickly enough in the end, but a few too many iffy surfaces compared to Everyman’s recent run of form. I liked Rogue State (after I saw the explanation, thanks Pierre), and Folding Money. Did anyone else think 3a was a little unconvincing as a CD? I don’t think the paper is really ‘part’ of the design, and it’s the graph that’s drawn on graph paper that shows axes, not the paper itself (although to be fair that’s its primary purpose).
Finished about 3/4 on first run and the rest at the second attempt a few hours later. Generally found it a bit clunky and had to come here to find explanations for 3 of the clues that I had answered but could not parse
Still remain unconvinced about thimbleful – it’s a small drink for sure; and a thimble sits on a finger so I guess you could say it’s adjacent to a finger. But then where does the ‘ful’ bit at the end of thimble fit into the finger part of the definition?
And sorry to disagree with all my NZ compatriots Barrie@30, Rolf@31 and Duane@32 but I’m convinced that pied for clown is a verb meaning to be hit in the face with a pie. These two completely different meanings of pied made 7d my favourite this week.
Well ok.
Started last night and finished this morning.
Surfeit a verb like stuff. You must be kidding. This is why we get a little frustrated at times.
A jester would have been more obviously pied than a clown.
Thimbleful another disappointing clue.
Otherwise very good.
Finally home to do our favourite crossword – FAMILY TREE & SURFEIT a couple of goodies. Definitely think the PIED is referencing clowns getting pied in the face!
This was a goodie for us after a long sociable weekend, thanks Everyman.