I enjoyed solving and blogging this Everyman offering. Nicely constructed, and with a wide variety of subject matter to get your teeth into.
There are the trademarks as usual. The two linked clues are REMEMBRANCE DAY and MIDSUMMER NIGHT. A number of clue as definition types as well. And one or two less obvious, but perfectly fair clues to stretch solvers once they’ve got a few crossing letters. I liked the range of subjects referenced today: plenty of authors and poets, a bit of chemistry, an artist, some geography, and a royal scandal.
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 When making comeback, some overuse botox? Certainly
TO BE SURE
Nicely constructed clue to get us going (if, like me, you always start with the first across, that is). Hidden reversed in ovERUSE BOTox.
5 At first, servant can help out and pull something, heavily
SCHLEP
A charade of S and C for the first letters of ‘servant’ and ‘can’ and (HELP)* Chambers tells me that Everyman could have had SCHLEPP or SHLEP had he so wished: the SCH phoneme is the hint that it’s a transliteration from Yiddish. Penguin, Schmenguin …
10 Salve composed of lithium, lead, aluminium and teensiest bit of magnesium
LIP BALM
Bit of chemistry. A charade of four elements (all metals, as it happens): LI, PB, AL and M[G].
11 In Channel Isles, traces of some old ruined cutter
INCISOR
A charade of IN, CI and the first letters of ‘some’, ‘old’ and ‘ruined’.
12 Extremely palatable sauce that’s often seen in starters?
PESTO
A charade of PE for the outside letters of ‘palatable’, and the initial letters of ‘sauce’, ‘that’s’ and ‘often’. A cad.
13 Pop star into opium losing head, addled, becoming less clear
MISTING UP
Everyman in inviting you to put Mr Sumner, or STING into ([O]PIUM)* The anagrind is ‘addled’; the removal indicator is ‘losing head’.
14 The seminar is about an artist
HENRI MATISSE
(THE SEMINAR IS)* Nice spot for the anagram.
18 Old author ashen? Mr Sheen will refresh
HERMANN HESSE
Another good spot. (ASHEN MR SHEEN)* The Nobel Prize winning German author best known for Steppenwolf and Siddhartha.
21 Passage ceded regularly in own sweet time
HALLOWEEN
A charade of HALL and EE for the even letters of ‘ceded’ in OWN.
23 Affair, maybe – often unethical romance, primarily?
AMOUR
Another cad, with first letter indications for the first five words of the clue. Everyman uses this clue type a lot. In his favour, you could say it’s an easy clue for newer solvers.
24 American state that’s next to Russia
GEORGIA
A dd, referencing the two GEORGIAS – the country and the US state.
25 Actor who’s started to honk a bit?
GOSLING
A whimsical clue, referencing the Canadian actor Ryan GOSLING. Geese honk, but if you’re a baby goose, then you’ve only just started to honk. Geddit?
26 Watching the old getting home, for example, to give accommodation
EYEING
An insertion of YE for the supposed old word for ‘the’ and IN for ‘home’ in EG for ‘for example’. The insertion indicator is ‘to give accommodation’.
27 Sound, sounded sound
STRAIGHT
Neat clue. A homophone of STRAIT, which if you ‘sound’ it, becomes STRAIGHT, which also means ‘sound’.
Down
1 Plath poem recited, Chomp with Part of Mouth
TULIPS
A homophone (‘recited’) of CHEW plus LIPS. Sylvia Plath’s poem can be found here, but it’s a melancholic reflection from a hospital bed, so probably best passed over for now.
2 Reportedly purchase permit to get around city
BYPASS
A charade of a homophone of BUY and PASS.
3 For starters, Scrubs, Oz, American Dad! are revolutionary kind of TV
SOAP OPERA
A charade of the initial letters of ‘Scrubs’, ‘Oz’ and ‘American’, POP and (ARE)*
4 Derby cameramen drunk at solemn occasion
REMEMBRANCE DAY
Another well-clued anagram. (DERBY CAMERAMEN)*
6 Prickly sorts, front of cast at start of play
CACTI
More initial letters: of ‘cast’ followed by ACT I.
7 Survive … hold on … no hint of recovery … then this?
LAST GASP
Another cad. A charade of LAST and G[R]ASP.
8 Instances of fabrication producing hats
PORK PIES
A dd cum cd. PORK PIES is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘lies’ but are also a type of hat.
9 Dimmer sun might rise … after this?
MIDSUMMER NIGHT
Another cad. (DIMMER SUN MIGHT)* with ‘rise’ as the anagrind. Well, I suppose bread ‘rises’ and changes its shape …
15 A small island’s in these empty Australian waters!
TASMAN SEA
And another cad. A charade of A, S and MANS in TE for the outside letters of ‘these’, plus A for ‘Australian’. The ‘island’ is referring to the Isle of Man, and ’empty’ is the instruction to get rid of the middle letters of ‘these’.
16 Top Tory supports Article delivering seat of power to Europeans
THE HAGUE
A charade of THE for the definite ‘article’ and [William] HAGUE. Den Haag is the seat of the Dutch parliament.
17 Either of two writers to be annoying online, unblocked for the most part
TROLLOPE
A charade of TROLL and OPE[N]. Plenty of authors this morning: here you need both Anthony (1815-1882) of Chronicles of Barsetshire fame, and Joanna (1943 -), whose works have been described as Aga Sagas. She doesn’t like the term, claims that only two of her many novels feature an Aga and that you can also find themes of lesbianism, broken families and adoption in her work. And all that in rural England while the vicar’s round for tea. She is Anthony’s fifth-generation niece, don’t you know.
19 Where prince said he could be seen running (with no hint of running)
WOKING
This clue is going to date quickly, but I care less – it’s funny. You need to take R for the first letter (again) of ‘running’ out of WORKING for ‘running’. So it’s WO[R]KING. It’s referring to Prince Andrew’s car crash interview with Emily Maitlis after he became embroiled in the affair of the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. He claimed that on the evening in question, he could have been seen at the Pizza Express in Woking with one of his daughters, so couldn’t have been, as alleged, shagging a seventeen-year-old, trafficked American girl in Ghislaine Maxwell’s flat. Yer, right.
20 Either of two pilots River Island’s taken on
WRIGHT
An insertion of R in [The Isle of] WIGHT. The insertion indicator is ‘taken on’. Wilbur or Orville, your call.
22 Nothing good published about The Observer perhaps
ORGAN
A charade of O and G inserted into RAN. ‘The Observer ran/published the Prince Andrew story.’ ORGAN is a slang word for ‘newspaper’. I think it might have originated as a self-referential term in Private Eye (eye = organ) but I’m not sure.
Many thanks to Everyman for this Sunday’s puzzle.
Loved this one.
Re 9d, rise also means revolt so works fine as anagrind I think.
Hate 19. It’s already too obscure and dated.
Of course, swatty – the rise/revolt meaning is no doubt what Everyman had in mind. Thank you.
I liked 1a TO BE SURE, and 4d REMEMBRANCE DAY for its surface of the drunk cameramen. Also 21a HALLOWEEN was clever. (Pierre, I think you’ve forgotten to underline “sweet”, the definition being “sweet time”, ie the time when children go around demanding sweets.)
ORGAN is not slang (22d). It’s a genuine, if old-fashioned, term for a means of communication, especially a newspaper. The SOED gives its first known use in this sense as 1788. It is of course now usually used in a jokey way because of its smutty implications.
Many thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Mildly annoyed with myself for not parsing 19dn, but unlike icarustga @2 once it was explained I found it hilarious.
Some very neat ones, for example 12ac, 14ac, 23ac, 15dn, 16dn.
On the other hand, for some reason I found 10ac incredibly clunky and “sweet time” is a dreadfully weak definition of HALLOWEEN
Underlining of ‘sweet time’ now done. Thanks.
Merci Pierre – I spent an age trying to bludgeon something out of Harry and Meghan’s fondness for woke sermonising. I’d completely forgotten Andy and his laudable commitment to keeping in touch with the common people. Cheers
PORK PIES was an absolute cracker of a clue, in my opinion.
Pierre, it’s always a pleasure seeing your name as the blogger of the day! Penguin, schmenguin indeed…
I enjoyed tackling this – and given my lack of proper qualifications in chemistry, was particularly chuffed at getting LIPBALM as my first answer. I also enjoyed TASMAN SEA and the Wright bros – and my fave, for its sheer daft humour, was WOKING. I couldn’t disagree more with icarustga’s comment: given the mountain of worldwide media coverage of that shameful interviewee’s remarks, it can hardly be described as “obscure” – and describing something that happened less than five months ago as “dated” is, well, jejune at best….
Keep up the good work Pierre, and many thanks to Everyman for a pleasing puzzle!
Good Everyman with some fine clues.
Homophones are always difficult, but TU = chew seems particularly naff to me; anyone say ‘chew lip’ for the flower? [Sounds like one of Paul’s deliberately punning homophones.] Thanks Pierre for the parsing of TROLLOPE; I got ‘online unblocked’ as OE and then wondered what had happened to the P. At the beginning, I thought the ‘honk’ in 25 would be ‘gas’ but later realised my mistake. I quite liked the WOKING gag, and agree with Pierre that the anagram for HENRI MATISSE was a good spot.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Morning Robi. Does anyone say ‘chew lip’ for the flower? Er, me for one.
Thanks Pierre and Everyman.
Another ‘chew lip’ here.
An enjoyable puzzle with some neat clues, but I prefer my crosswords not to require the sort of knowledge in 19, or which criminal is currently Home Secretary (as in last weeks Prize).
re gosling (whom I’ve never eard of) no I dont geddit. Crap clue.
Lots to like in this puzzle. My favorites were 1ac, 14ac, and 27ac. I’m generally not a big fan of acrostic clues, and I could have done with fewer of them, but perhaps that’s just my taste.
A DNF for me, as I failed to get Woking, having already managed to forget that particular aspect of Prince Andrew’s debacle. The wordplay is perfectly clear, so I should have managed it anyway. I have no objection to the use of timely references, even if they might become dated: this is a newspaper crossword, after all.
At first, I thought that the part of the mouth in 1d was “two lips”, but of course that leaves “Chomp” with no role, so clearly Pierre’s parsing is the correct one. The initial consonants in “tulips” and “chew” are utterly different for me, but I can recognize that for many English speakers they’d be essentially the same, and as someone who believes that wide latitude in pronunciation makes homophone clues more fun, I have no objection.
I failed to parse SCHLEP: I got stuck assuming that H[elp] was part of the acrostic and couldn’t see how to get LEP.
Another lip chewer here, but I’m not sufficiently interested in the minutiae of royal scandals to know why 19d was WOKING.
Well, I must say I’m surprised by the chew lippers – it just shows that we are all different, and how difficult homophones can be. The way I say ‘tulip’ can be heard on the Collins site at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tulip
The ‘tulips’ thing wouldn’t work too well on the eastern side of East Anglia! “Too lips”. However I suppose saying “t’ewe lips” à la Miranda Hart might be seen as a bit poncey so in order to be ornery, we can perhaps chew it over. Tiny Tim’s (American pronunciation) “Tiptoe through the Tulips” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcSlcNfThUA is borderline.
Other than Americans, how else do you pronounce tulip other than chew lip. The link Robi gave at 16 sounds like chew lip to me
I rather enjoyed this – not difficult, the clues not necessarily always perfect but damn good fun. “woking” was very funny, and I definitely say “chewlips”. “Halloween” reminds me of being in Japan at that time of year and seeing a sign where the word was broken as “hallo//ween”. It made me smile as no English speaker would do it but a crossword compiler would.
A couple of weeks late to this but found it most enjoyable.
I’m only bothering to write to commend Pierre on the excellent blog, in particular the thorough explanation of WOKING.
Thank you
Late comments are still appreciated, Pedro, especially when they are complimentary about the blogger …
Finished it in an hour! Enjoyed this one, esp Pork Pies. Thanks for the blog, always good to compare how we parse it compared to everyone else.
I actually liked Gosling – thought that was a great clue. I don’t understand the construct of 19d at all and 26ac was a bit over thought as well I think.Got stuck on quite a few. Some of the best clues evaded me, 27ac, 7d 8d. I do quite like the twists in the style we are getting from this setter. Still quite hard for me
Nice. I liked Gosling, but I’m not a chew lipper. It’s spelled with a T, thus T’you Lip. Just like it’s T’yousday not Chewsday
Thanks Pierre and EM.
I parsed 1 down as “two lips” (part of mouth) and said “to hell with the chomp bit”. After checking on Google that Plath had written a poem “Tulips” I knew that had to be right.
Did not get 19 down; never heard of Woking.
Aside from that, loved the puzzle. Favourites were 8 down and 25 across. Thanks to Everyman and to Pierre.