Everyman 3,777

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For those who’ve been following the progress of Everyman over the last few weeks, this one seems to be continuing in the same direction.

Personally I’ve been enjoying the ride. Yes, the clues are less precise, the surfaces are sometimes a bit rough, and a good editor / proofreader could do some tidying up: I’ve noted a few examples below.  But generally the answer is clear enough when you get to it, and often raises a smile.  In this puzzle I particularly liked the &lit at 18a, the images conjured up by the surfaces of 1d and 2d next to each other, and the neat construction of 17d.

My only real issue is with the use of French – we saw this in Everyman 3,773, and it’s here again.  I have no problem with 16a, where the answer is a French word that has been absorbed into English; nor with the use of common foreign words in wordplay, such as “the French” = le / la or “German one” = ein, which is standard crossword fodder.  But the answer to 25a seems to be an entirely French phrase – see notes below – which I think is stretching the rules too far for an English-language crossword.  The new Everyman setter is apparently familiar with French, but that shouldn’t be a requirement for solvers.

Apart from that, though, I think I’m with various people who have posted comments on the previous few puzzles: crosswords are supposed to be enjoyable, and perhaps we’re all taking this a bit too seriously.  Just my opinion.

Definitions are underlined; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

Across
1 GET ALL IN A LATHER Become agitated and doubtful hearing tall tale (3,3,2,1,6)
Anagram (doubtful) of HEARING TALL TALE.
9 TRAINEE Aintree’s frisky one needs to practice (7)
Anagram (frisky) of AINTREE.  But in UK English the verb should be “practise”: US English allows “practice” for both noun and verb, but this is a UK crossword.
10 ASTOUND Dust on a relaid floor (7)
Anagram (relaid) of DUST ON A.  Floor (as a verb) = stop someone in their tracks with a big surprise.
11 NEARS Within earshot, hides advances (5)
Hidden answer in [withi]N EARS[hot].  Advances (as a verb) = moves forward.
12 SYNTHETIC Mock speaker’s error? The jerk! (9)
Homophone (speaker’s) of SIN (error), plus THE TIC.
13 OVERACTED Piled it on, flamboyantly vociferated without uncertainty (9)
Anagram (flamboyantly) of VOC[if]ERATED, without the IF (uncertainty).
15 AUDIT HMRC inspection valued ‘gift’ with regular losses (5)
Letters dropped regularly from [v]A[l]U[e]D [g]I[f]T.  Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, formerly known as the Inland Revenue or the tax inspectors.
16 OUTRE Exotic route off the beaten track (5)
Anagram (exotic) of ROUTE.  Originally a French word, and it still needs an E-acute at the end (at least according to Chambers), but it does appear in English-language dictionaries.
18 GUY FAWKES Fellow with effigies going around? (3,6)
GUY (fellow), FAKES (effigies) going around W (with).  Clue-as-definition (&lit): anti-government plotter whose effigies are carried around to ask for pennies and/or burned on Bonfire Night.
20 WARRANTED Battle cry: ‘Finally, We Stand Justified‘ (9)
WAR RANT + the final letters of [w]E [stan]D].
23 TROLL Saunters endlessly to find ugly dwarf (5)
STROLLS (saunters), without the two end letters.
24 TENSION Anxiety? One isn’t flustered (7)
Anagram (flustered) of ONE ISNT.
25 A DEMAIN A maiden bursts into ‘Nancy’s Farewell’ (1,6)
Anagram (bursts) of A MAIDEN.  “À demain” is French for “until tomorrow”, in the sense of “see you later” – so it could be said as a farewell in the French city of Nancy.  But I don’t think it’s a phrase that’s been adopted into the English language (and for example it’s not in Chambers), so it doesn’t really seem fair in an English-language crossword.
26 RED WHITE AND BLUE Socialist pallid and glum seeing display of patriotism (3,5,3,4)
RED (socialist), WHITE (pallid), AND BLUE (glum / sad).  The colours of the national flag in the UK, and indeed in many other places.
Down
1 GET INTO HOT WATER Find trouble, as you do, in a jacuzzi (3,4,3,5)
Double definition.  And a neat correspondence between 1a and 1d.
2 TEA CAKE Earl Grey, say, caught stripped naked, revealing a bun (3,4)
TEA (for example Earl Grey) + C (caught, in cricket notation) + [n]AKE[d] (with the outer letters stripped off).  The precise definition of a tea cake (or more usually teacake?) varies across the world, but in the UK it’s a bun, served toasted.  Or possibly a chocolate-covered marshmallow biscuit.
3 LANDSCAPE Painting captures promontory (9)
LANDS (captures, for example a fish or a new job) + CAPE (promontory).
4 IDEAS Fancies being in Mid-East (5)
Hidden answer in [m]ID EAS[t].  Fancies (as a noun) = fantasies or ideas.
5 A RAINY DAY Something to plan for in any diary, a break (1,5,3)
Anagram (break) of ANY DIARY A.  As in “saving for a rainy day”.
6 AITCH A long letter (5)
A + ITCH (as a verb: to have a constant desire for something = to long for it).  Phonetic spelling of the letter H, perhaps most often used when criticising someone for not pronouncing it correctly.
7 HAUNTED Worried relative’s energy caught in high definition (7)
AUNT (relative) + E (energy) in HD (as in HDTV).
8 REDUCE TO SILENCE Quiet countries EEC led astray (6,2,7)
Anagram (astray) of COUNTRIES EEC LED.  Quiet, as a verb.
14 TIGHT-KNIT Drunk to make garment ‘intimate‘ (5-4)
TIGHT (slang for drunk) + KNIT (to make yarn into fabric, typically a garment).
15 APARTHEID African people’s leaders overcoming hatred, one twisted regime (9)
Leading characters of A[frican] P[eople], over an anagram (twisted) of HATRED I.  Very nearly a clue-as-definition (&lit), except that “regime” has to be the definition because it’s not part of the wordplay.
17 THRONED Firm keeping personnel in position of power (7)
TONED (firm, as in muscle) containing HR (Human Resources, formerly known as the personnel department).
19 KNOW-ALL Pedantic king immediately oversees everything (4-3)
K (king in chess or cards) + NOW (immediately) over ALL (everything).  The definition is a bit loose: know-alls think they have the answer to every question, whereas pedants insist on correcting small details in one specific area.  But perhaps I’m just demonstrating that I’m a pedant.
21 AMISH Essentially Anabaptist: moral, insular, seclusionist herd? (5)
First letters (essentially) of Anabaptist Moral Insular Seclusionist Herd.  Clue-as-definition (&lit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish.
22 DRAMA Rada cast without lead in Macbeth (it’s a play) (5)
Anagram (cast) of RADA, around M (the leading letter of Macbeth).  “Without” in its archaic sense of “outside”.  I assume “Rada” is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which fits the surface, though that should be written in capitals as RADA.

 

23 comments on “Everyman 3,777”

  3. French words that have passed into the English language can be used in an English crossword but I don’t like a setter using a pucca French word or phrase if it occurs to him when looking at the crossings at hand.
    An average solver may not know French but certainly he might know many French words and phrases because of a general interest in languages (if they are widely used in English-speaking countries). AU REVOIR may pass the test, but I am not sure about À demain or À la prochaine.
    As far as 25a is concerned, if the solver is left with the crossings, say,?D?M??N, will an English word finder return any result and help him?
    We must remember that Everyman crossword is used in papers outside of the UK by arrangement.
    A setter in India might use a Sanskrit word in his English language if it is widely known and the paper where it appears uses it. But not just any Sanskrit word.

  4. Living in Belgium, 25a was easy, but I agree that it’s not a well known expression for most English speakers. Sadly this week’s Everyman is rather too easy although it does not require any knowledge of foreign languages.

  6. Sil @5: yes, I’ve seen “essentially” used to mean “strip off all the outer letters and just take the middle letter or two”, but not usually “just the first letter”.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve never liked this middle-letter use of “essentially” and I think the first-letter version makes more sense.  You can often abbreviate a word (giving its essence in a shorter form) by using just the first character.  The middle letter works with an indicator such as “core” or “heart”, but to me it isn’t the essence of the word.

  7. Rishi @3: yes, I thought of “au revoir” too, which would pass the test for “most English speakers and dictionaries would recognise it”.  The boundary isn’t well-defined, of course, so there’s always room for discussion – but I think it’s somewhere between these two phrases.

  8. At the time I wrote “Everyman back in the groove with some nice clues, plenty ok and maybe TRAINEE (and OUTRE) too simple.” 1a and 1d were each good in their own right, it is a bit unfortunate that they both start with GET. I liked both the surface and definition for ASTOUND, the nearly &lit of APARTHEID and THRONED. Thanks to Everyman and Quirister. As for essentially it works both ways for me, although like Sil I can’t recall having seen it used as the first letters before.

  9. Another solver wary of ‘essentially’ as a first letter indicator here – even if you could justify it, it’s surely too well-established as a middle-letter(s) indicator. Even Azed uses it as such. I think it was the previous week’s Everyman that had ‘fundamentally’ as a first letter indicator too, which seemed strange. (Fundamentally and essentially are synonyms admittedly.)

    I suppose we now know to be on the look-out for them in future Everyman clues.

    That technicality aside, I thought there were some very good clues and a lot of fun. Particularly liked GUY FAWKES.

    And Quirister, as for AITCH being perhaps most often used when criticising someone for not pronouncing it correctly, I used it a lot whenever I wrote fan letters to Steps. (I was a bit of a 19d!)  Thank you for the blog and thanks to the setter.

  10. I enjoyed this puzzle despite some saying it was too easy. It was just right for me and my aged brain. There were some marvellous clues I thought and I’ve ticked ASTOUND, GUY FAWKES, A DEMAIN (i didn’t know the expression but it seemed the most obvious arrangement of ‘A maiden’) and AITCH.

    Thanks to Quirister and the new Everyman who is improving week by week

  11. Because I happen to have studied enough French to know A DEMAIN, I didn’t think of it as problematic when I solved the puzzle last week, but now that it’s pointed out I can see the issue.

    I thought this puzzle was fairly easy. except for 13a, which took me quite a long time. There was a great deal to like, particularly the ingenious &lit at 18a and the simple but pleasing construction of 6d.

  12. Yes I agree with Quirister, I’m quite enjoying the ride…. a bit hesitant, but yes it is not dull. My wife was saying today that this setter seems to have a completely new set of abbreviations and indicator words. I feel that the French obsession is getting me down…we’ve picked them all up but I think liberties are being taken.

    The grids have been an issue as well, today we had twice the number of down clues and the novelty in Everyman of having two blanks in some words instead of three!! The length of words too has been a bit flaky, generally too many hyphenated words. With Colin I got used to there being oodles of challenging eight and nine letter words, and a regular 15 letter word, which was always fun.

    But adopt, adapt and improve: today I actually thought I was getting the hang of this erratic and wonky logic. What does that say about me??!!

  13. Thanks to Quirister and Everyman

    For me, no deterioration, but not much improvement either.

    Practice/practise shouldn’t get past an editor

    An effigy isn’t a fake – mock-up would have been better ( and also not have given the game away so quickly)

    I’m pleased my schoolboy French came to the rescue, but I’m not sure it’s fair cluing

    Know-all = Pedant? Possibly, but Pedantic?

  14. ^ Dansar, I must admit I was fine with ‘know-all’ at the time because I thought it could also be an adjective (eg a know-all attitude), but I cannot find dictionary support for it now.

  15. A little postscript on the topic of French words in English dictionaries.   I had a look in Chambers when cher (clued as ‘Nice expensive’) appeared today in Guardian 27,768.   Et voilà, mes amis, it was there.

  17. Altogether too many naff clues. Harsh words, but these things have to be said. The emperor has no clothes: this setter is not up to Everyman standard.

  18. I thought some of these are very clever, especially 26A ‘socialist, pallid and glum’ Just right for flag-waving on a dull morning in Auckland.

  19. I thought this setter was getting too easy, then I realized the grid is all wrong, as Terry Cawser @12 points out there are not enough blank spaces.

  21. Yes, I too am finally starting to enjoy this after a few ‘what the …..?’ earlier on. Just goes to show that our minds can still be a little flexible as we age (gracefully?)!

  22. Mark @21, I agree with your sentiment. Perhaps the inclusion of the french language linked clues is a ‘signature’ of this setter?

    There was something similar when the previous setter commenced; then it was around significant usage of ‘envelope’ type clues – we got used to those didn’t we?

     

  23. Thanks to Quirister for the parsing of 6 down, which I couldn’t figure out (though I got the answer).

    I don’t think that the use of French words is any less acceptable than, e.g., clues that require knowledge of English geography, or Shakespearean arcana.  I saw nothing wrong with “a demain”.

    Basically I liked this puzzle; mostly challenging but do-able.

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