The Observer crossword from May 10, 2020
I don’t think there was much to frighten the horses in this Everyman crossword.
But, yes, below there is a lot of discussion about the 24ac/21d combination.
And also about whether Natalie Wood sang or not.
Everyman gives us the usual generous dose of anagrams (all with non-dubious indicators!), three ‘trademark’ cads (&lits) – two of them (16ac, 25ac) being … um … very familiar.
No rhyming couple this time but we’ve got BODY & SOUL (at 3d and 11d).
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | CLOTH-EARED | Idiot to listen to Observer bigwig (not really listening) (5-5) |
| CLOT (idiot) + HEAR (listen to) + ED (Observer bigwig, short for ‘the editor’) That said, The Observer doesn’t have a crossword editor (although things might have changed). |
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| 6 | JU-JU | Extraordinary power sees prison term reduced, twice (2-2) |
| JUG minus the G at the end, and then once more the same | ||
| 9 | WAIT AND SEE | ‘Substance’ and ‘limitless mass’, we’re told; time will tell (4,3,3) |
| Homophone [we’re told] of: ‘WEIGHT’ (substance) AND ‘SEA’ (limitless mass) | ||
| 10 | IDEA | Notion discovered in review of encyclopaedia (4) |
| Hidden [discovered] in: ENCYCLOPAEDIA, then reversed [review of] | ||
| 12 | EMBANKMENTS | Frantic Met’s about to save people offering defences (11) |
| Anagram [frantic] of MET’S, going around {BANK (save) + MEN (people)} | ||
| 15 | NEVILLE | One of two footballers, calm, returning with malice concealed (7) |
| Reversal [returning] of EVEN (calm), with ILL (malice) going inside The brothers Phil and Gary Neville both started out at Manchester United. Phil is still the manager of the Lionesses (the England Women’s team) while Gary is one of the co-owners of Salford City FC and also a property developer nowadays. |
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| 16 | LOOFAHS | Bathroom features: abrasive hard sponges, primarily? (7) |
| LOO (bathroom), followed by the first letters of: Features Abrasive Hard Sponges One of those Everyman clues that we now call a “cad” (clue as definition). Also one of the clues where you have to take a lot of starting letters, indicated by – regular Everyman solvers won’t be surprised – the word ‘primarily’. See also 25ac. |
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| 17 | HALIBUT | Some narwhal I butchered to get seafood (7) |
| Hidden solution [some]: narwHAL I BUTchered | ||
| 19 | NATALIE | Wood that sang, perhaps (of birth, that is) (7) |
| NATAL (of birth) + IE (that is, id est) This is about Natalie Wood (1938-1981), an award winning Hollywood star. Although she starred in the 1961 film version of West Side Story, she didn’t actually sing in it (her voice being overdubbed by Marni Nixon). But, apparently (see comment @3), at times Natalie Wood did sing with her own voice (notably, in Gypsy). And so, I adjusted the definition. I also deleted some irrelevant bits to avoid any confusion. |
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| 20 | NEANDERTHAL | Hansel and Gretel running with wobbly legs away from brute (11) |
| Anagram [running] of: HANSEL AND GRETEL, with SEL,G (an anagram [wobbly] of LEGS) removed I’m not sure a Neanderthal deserves to be called a ‘brute’. |
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| 23 | IRIS | Flower taken from Fair Isle (4) |
| Hidden solution [taken from]: FAIR ISLE | ||
| 24 | COMPROMISE | Company minutes with potential to settle (10) |
| CO (company) + M (minutes) + PROMISE (potential) Everyman could have left out ‘minutes’ and chosen COM for ‘company’. |
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| 25 | GAGA | Primarily, geriatric and getting asinine? (4) |
| First letters of: Geriatric And Getting Asinine What would fellow blogger Pierre have made of this? Well, he would probably have said: “This is becoming a weekly clue type, and I personally find it rather clunky and repetitive. It’s a cad. The initial letters of the last four words of the clue.” Everyman may consider this as one of his trademark types of clue but clearly some solvers seem to get weary of them. Especially since they nearly always use the indicator ‘primarily’. The clue as a whole is once more the definition but linking ‘geriatric’ with ‘gaga’ is really one step too far for me. [I won’t tell my mum] |
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| 26 | ASTROLOGER | One who looks at signs: ‘logo-starer’, fancifully (10) |
| Anagram [fancifully] of: LOGO STARER | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | COWS | Bullies those with beef? (4) |
| Double definition | ||
| 2 | ODIN | Road signs every so often involved God (4) |
| The even letters [every so often involved] of: ROAD SIGNS | ||
| 3 | HEAVENLY BODY | Star perhaps loved by any he moved (8,4) |
| Anagram [moved] of: LOVED BY ANY HE | ||
| 4 | AUDIBLE | German car tooted endlessly within earshot (7) |
| AUDI (German car) + {BLEW (tooted, as in blew a horn) minus the W at the end} | ||
| 5 | ETERNAL | Timeless English aquatic bird on a lake (7) |
| E (English) + TERN (aquatic bird) + A + L (lake) | ||
| 7 | UNDENIABLE | Danube and Nile flowing? That’s beyond doubt (10) |
| Anagram [flowing] of: DANUBE + NILE I liked this anagram, very neat combination of fodder and indicator. |
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| 8 | UNASSISTED | Nudist’s sea-swimming without support (10) |
| Anagram [swimming] of: NUDIST’S SEA | ||
| 11 | IMMORTAL SOUL | What’s produced by conversion of us immoral lot? (8,4) |
| Anagram [produced by conversion of] of: US IMMORAL LOT How do you mean, Everyman likes anagrams? This is the third in a row. A pity that ‘immoral’ and ‘immortal’ are so close. The clue as a whole serves as the definition. |
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| 13 | ENCHANTING | Wench wanting to repeatedly lose weight to become delightful (10) |
| What’s left of: WENCH WANTING, after repeatedly losing the letter W (weight) | ||
| 14 | EVALUATING | Reckoning essence of native language is translated (10) |
| Anagram [translated] of the middle 10 letters of [essence of]: NATIVE LANGUAGE, seen as a whole At first, I was looking for an anagram of: [na]TI[ve] + LANGUAGE, which would have been technically better (but doesn’t yield anything useful). |
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| 18 | TURN-ONS | Stimulants: great amounts vessel contained (4-3) |
| TONS (great amounts) going around URN (vessel) | ||
| 19 | NO-HOPER | Nary a little laugh for a loser (2-5) |
| NO HO (“nary a little laugh”, you might say) + PER (for a) | ||
| 21 | MING | Unpleasant odour of ancient pottery (4) |
| Double definition Like others we did think of TANG (and PONG) but because we had COMPROMISE at 24ac, we looked for something else. MING is in Chambers: “An unpleasant smell, a stink”. But I agree, this is an unfortunate clue. |
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| 22 | LEAR | Poet to look like a wolf, reportedly (4) |
| Homophone [reportedly] of: LEER (look like a wolf, like a predator) | ||
My favourite was WAIT AND SEE.
New for me were CLOTH-EARED, and MING = foul smelling.
I could not parse N/EVIL/LE – because I was too focussed on malice = evil. Luckily, I discovered the footballers via google. I now see it is NEV/ILL/E.
I am sure that 19a is Natalie Wood. For all intents and purposes, Natalie Wood appeared to sing in West Side Story.
Thank you to Everyman and Sil.
For 19a, I vote for Natalie Cole – nine Grammys, 30 million records, and a famous father to boot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Cole.
Regarding 19A, apparently, Natalie Wood did her own singing in the 1962 film “Gypsy”.
Thanks both.
[The LP of the soundtrack of the West Side Story film sold millions, and had no mention of Marni Nixon or James Howard Bryant (Tony), instead featuring heavily the film’s actors. The singers got no royalties. I believe Leonard Bernstein gave some of his royalties to Nixon]
I don’t understand the suggestion of other Natalie’s; why is Wood in the clue then? Surely, it must be Natalie Wood?
I thought ENCHANTING was a good spot. I’m afraid that in WAIT AND SEE, I was thinking of ‘C’ and wondered how that was ‘limitless mass,’ doh!
I quite liked the clue for NEVILLE, although one needed the GK to be sure of the answer.
Thanks Everyman and Sil.
Re 9A, in what way is ‘sea’ a limitless mass? It has limits. ???
Jess and John @ 6
I interpreted this, very loosely, as a Vatican joke.
Jess and John @6
Re 9A, I totally agree. I found it a particularly odd (albeit amusingly odd) parsing as the homophone “c” in physics denotes the (speed) limit of the massless (i.e. light).
My partner and I had quite a tussle over 24a and 21d. I thought they were COMPROBATE (which technically means ready to settle) and TANG – my partner had the two correct solutions. Since we could both argue our respective cases with equal fervour, we ended with a stalemate. I bow to your vastly superior skills in these matters, Sil, but should such circumstances arise again, what would you suggest a poor struggling neophyte cruciverbalist should do??
Meantime, I liked cloth-eared and enchanted. Thanks to Everyman for the challenge and Sil for the explanations and for settling a week-long dispute.
Favourites were 3d HEAVENLY BODY and 7d UNDENIABLE, both very neat with clever surfaces. (Also liked the BODY and SOUL at 3d and 11d as you mention Sil.)
Like Robi @5 I don’t understand how 19a can be thought to be anyone other than NATALIE Wood. The definition is “Wood that sang, perhaps”, with the “perhaps” maybe hinting that she sometimes sang (as Michael says @3) and sometimes didn’t.
Re 16a, usually on fifteensquared World War 3 breaks out when there is a suggestion that LOOFAHS are sponges or vice versa (see for example the comments on Arachne 27,958). Personally I think it’s ok in that the word “sponge” can have a wider meaning than simply the aquatic animal, as in “plastic sponge”.
Many thanks Everyman and Sil.
DNF for me – I confidently put “tang” in for the smelly pottery, being another dynasty famous for its arts and meaning a smell (like the tang of something acidic). That left me with “comprobate” instead of “compromise”, a rare word but it also fitted the rather loose definitions used in Everyman.
Having praised Everyman in the past for a slightly fun “cad” approach which is not truly &lit, I felt the incessant “primarily” device and the less interesting surfaces made this much less fun as a solve.
Re “sea” I do not get this at all. I don’t think it’s the physics explanation (I toyed with it too) and it has to be either a homophone or somethings with the ends knocked off but I can’t see (sic) what!
And re Natalie Wood I vaguely recall her not being told Nixon was going to dub her voice entirely, and walking off set as a result when she found out. So she must have been enough of a singer to expect to deliver at least some of the part of Maria, which is pretty demanding. My parents old LP of WSS certainly has Natalie Wood prominent on the cover in text and picture form, so it was not a hard association to make.
Many thanks Sil and Everyman.
I don’t mind the primarily clues. Everyman is a crossword for starters. If you’re getting bored of them, move onto the harder crosswords.
19AC – It’s “Wood that sang, perhaps“. So that’s fine that she almost certainly didn’t sing in West Side Story.
Chambers has “limitless mass of water” as a definition for sea. The ongoing primarily clues make me chortle but each to their own
I’m another who had TANG and COMPROBATE. Never having heard of that meaning of MING, a four-letter word clued as smell and ending in G obviously had to be TANG. Editors should be on the lookout for such ambiguities.
Comprobate is a lovely word but how does it account for the “promise” in the wordplay?
MING as a smell is more commonly seen as “minging”.
poc @14 – how about PONG?
Bodycheetah @13; the current Chambers has: ‘A seemingly limitless mass or expanse;’ anyway, it’s still got ‘limitless mass’ in the definition.
Nice idea for comprobate but it’s given as obsolete in Wiktionary, and would also mean probate = promise, which would be a (long) stretch (?)
AndrewC@14: PONG was of course my first thought, but it doesn’t fit the pottery element of the clue, while TANG does.
Robi @19 all it needs is probate = promise which fits pretty well in the sense of a will. It may be obsolete but I can think of a dozen examples of equally obsolete or obscure words in this week’s puzzles…crossword solvers are pretty used to finding them. Who ever uses “the main” for the sea in real life, for example?
Muffin @16 my thought too – and also used to mean ugly, which is more familiar to me than a bad smell.
AndrewC @17 Unfortunately PONG is not ancient pottery although I’m sure you know this. I was totally flummoxed by 22d which is exceptionally vague and Edward Lear did not spring to mind. I ended up putting WEIR as I found two poets of this name and it sounds like “were” as in werewolf. Not convinced by leer = like a wolf. Ah well !. Thanks to Sil and E.
me @21 sorry, probate = potential, not promise!
Reasonable fun from Everyman, but I hope s/he can be discouraged from using ‘essence of’ to mean ‘chop the first two and last two letters off’ – and applied to a phrase as well! Just unfair in my book.
Thank Sil
I enjoyed this puzzle, although I agree that Everyman should give the “primarily” clues a rest for a while and that we could do with somewhat fewer anagrams.
I found 20ac (NEANDERTHAL) and 11dn (IMMORTAL SOUL) to be particularly cleverly constructed. There does seem to me to be a technical flaw in the latter: the definition seems to lead to a plural (SOULS rather than SOUL), but the clue otherwise works so well that I think it can be overlooked. I understand Sil’s leaping to the defense of the maligned Neanderthals, but the word is often used metaphorically in English to refer to a brutish human, so I think Everyman is on solid ground here.
This gives me an excuse to recommend Jasper Fforde’s wildly imaginative and playful series of novels about the detective Thursday Next, which I think might appeal to many people here. They’re set in an alternative reality which differs from ours in many ways I won’t get into, except to mention that one of them is that Neanderthals have been revived from extinction via genetic engineering. They turn out to be intelligent and kind-hearted. In Fforde’s world, Sil would certainly be right, and this clue would be libelous. (Incidentally, while the first half-dozen or so books in the series are excellent, they go downhill rapidly after a certain point. Also, his two Nursery Crime novels, in which Detective Jack Spratt investigates crimes such as the death Of Humpty Dumpty and the home invasion of the three bears, are outstanding.)
Lord Jim @10, I was also waiting for blue murder regarding bathrooms not being loos in the UK and how we don’t want Americanisms seeping in. With regard comprobate, I still can’t see how probate means potential. Can anyone show a citation for this anywhere ? Thanks Everyman and Sil.
TANG could not be the answer to 21d – it is not an unpleasant smell. For this definition of MING, Chambers has the derivation as “orig Scot”. It was certainly in common use when I was growing up. I think nowadays it has taken on more offensive connotations, and wider usage, thanks to the derived “minger”.
DuncT @27 and Sugarbutties @26: I don’t think those of use with “tang” and “comprobate” are claiming they are better answers, we are saying that these are what we came up with. “tang” is a “pungent odour” according to Merriam-Webster, and pungent can mean sharp – certainly you’d say an acidic smell is unpleasant and has a tang, so it fits. “ming” is better if you accept the Scots and obscure usage with no indication – to me that’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Having found a fit I put it in and moved on. Usually I find an error when I cannot solve the across clue but again this seemed to work, within limits – those limits being that Everyman’s definitions and synonyms, like his anagram indicators, are pretty loose. So I left it at that. Turns out I was wrong, but there was clearly a degree of ambiguity afforded by the choice of clues and the looseness of cluing in general. It’s not a big deal (I don’t send in my entries so nothing lost) – I’m not that bothered by it, simply mentioning it here as it is the sort of thing discussed on this forum and I thought the fact that two clues fitted with an alternative (but poorer) explanation was of interest or would amuse.
Probate is the testing of a will so in a sense it is looking at the potential (what might be) and how it becomes the actual. As I said, it was close enough and I’ve seen worse synonyms. “compromise” is better, for sure.
As a solicitor, I have never seen a worse synonym than probate and potential
Well said TheZed@28, my feelings exactly.
I wonder if there is some hidden (or maybe not so hidden) messaging in the last couple of Everyman 1A clues?
Idiot to listen to Observer bigwig (not really listening)
A complete shambles, maybe, setter’s to be given time out, quick.
21d Ming is certainly not obscure usage in Scotland. Ming is the noun, and minging is the adjective. Often I struggle with answers that are not normal speak in Scotland, so I revelled in this one. No offence!
All very interesting.
I enjoyed this, agree 7D was a nice anagram.
I’ve heard of Minging so Ming seemed a reasonable extension.
NZ now Covid-free, long may it last.
So pleased to see Barrie back @33. I enjoyed this one too.. Have never heard of Neville, nor Ming meaning unpleasant odour.
Thank you Sil and Everyman.
Audrey, thank you!
Yes, have been MIA for a week or three. All good though. Keep those bowls biased nicely!