Everyman 3,865

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Another fun puzzle from Everyman, with most of the usual features we’ve come to expect.

The clues range from pretty straightforward to quite complex, which I think is what Everyman intends (to give beginners a way in, while still challenging more seasoned solvers). We have some homophones, a handful of anagrams (with only one debatable anagram indicator this time), and one unrecognisable word in a clue which I’m going to assume is a Guardian typo. Three linked entries this time rather than two: 1a, 25a and 4d, each of which is two words both starting with C. As usual the surfaces are occasionally a bit rough, but there are some good ones – I laughed at 20a and 23a. Thanks Everyman as always.

Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

ACROSS
1 CRUISE CONTROL Stunt-performing actor given key for automotive device (6,7)
CRUISE (actor Tom Cruise, who is known for doing his own stunts in action films) + CONTROL (key).
8 OBOE Endlessly booed scordato member of orchestra (4)
Anagram of BOOE[d] without its last letter (endlessly). Everyman is known for somewhat eccentric anagram indicators; scordato is a musical term describing a stringed instrument where one or more strings are tuned higher or lower than their normal pitches. Whether that corresponds to “anagram” is a matter of opinion.
9 DUE PROCESS Course sped around with appropriate safeguards (3,7)
Anagram (around) of COURSE SPED.
Following due process = doing something properly according to the rules.
10 HANDEL Composer‘s name called out (6)
Homophone (called out) of HANDLE (a pseudonym or radio call-sign, or just slang for a name).
11 UNAFRAID Intoxicated faun to make incursion, being fearless (8)
Anagram (intoxicated) of FAUN, then RAID (incursion).
12 HANDIWORK Doing borders of Hawaii, then either border of Woodstock (9)
Two variations on an old trick: the borders (end letters) of Hawaii are H AND I, and either border of Woodstock is W OR K.
Doing = handiwork = what someone has done. Psalm 118:23 – “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.”
14 AIRS Eldest of children usually expressed pretentiousness (4)
Homophone (expressed) of HEIRS (eldest of children usually; this confused me for a while until I remembered that “eldest” could be plural).
As in “putting on airs” = being pretentious.
15 ICES Big cheese regularly chills (4)
Alternate letters (regularly) of [b]I[g] C[h]E[e]S[e].
Ice, as a verb = to cool something down using ice.
16 ADORINGLY Kerfuffle before token of love offered on vacation lovingly, lovingly (9)
ADO (kerfuffle = disruption) + RING (token of love offered) + L[ovingl]Y (on vacation = when emptied = middle letters removed).
20 TIA MARIA Dry in the morning; before start of afternoon, Italian’s knocked back liqueur (3,5)
AIR (as a verb = hang up clothes to dry) + AM (in the morning) + start of A[fternoon] + IT (Italian), all reversed (knocked back).
The liqueur was a fairly easy guess from the letter counts, but the parsing took a while.
21 MOUTHY Someone with a lisp’s shy, becoming talkative (6)
Shy = MOUSY, which someone with a lisp may pronounce as MOUTHY.
Slang for talkative, especially describing someone who isn’t afraid to say exactly what they think.
23 STRING VEST Vet’s confused after duck escapes holding underwear (6,4)
Anagram (confused) of VET’S, after ST[o]RING (holding) without the O (zero = duck in cricket scoring).
24 DIVA Singer‘s keen on retiring (4)
AVID (keen), reversed (on retiring).
25 CHEDDAR CHEESE Cheered and chased off something from Somerset (7,6)
Anagram (off) of CHEERED + CHASED.
The classic UK cheese, originally from the village of Cheddar in Somerset, but now copied everywhere.
DOWN
1 CABBALA Primarily ‘correspondence’: arcane Biblical beliefs; Abrahamic literature absorbed? (7)
Everyman’s usual “primarily” clue, using the initial letters of the clue words.
Belief system based on mystical interpretation of Hebrew Biblical texts, with various spellings including Kabbalah.
2 U-BEND Whereby unpleasant burden is exclusing reek, primarily? (1-4)
Anagram (unpleasant) of BU[r]DEN, without the initial letter (primarily) of R[eek]. I assume “exclusing” is a misprint for “excluding”; the “s” form is used in words such as exclusion / exclusive, but not as a verb in its own right, as far as I can see.
Extended definition: U-bend = a bend in a waste-water outlet pipe, which acts as a trap to block unpleasant-smelling sewer gases.
3 SOD’S LAW So Dad’s starter comes on a salad? Something bad will inevitably occur (4,3)
SO + starting letter of D[ad] + SLAW (salad of shredded cabbage or similar vegetables).
Alternative name for Murphy’s Law = “anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.
4 CHEQUERED CAREER Wildly cheered queer car that’s had good and bad times (9,6)
Anagram (wildly) of CHEERED QUEER CAR.
Chequered career (chequered past, chequered history, etc) = a mixture of success and failure.
5 NORWAY Some forsaken or waylaid in the country (6)
Hidden answer (some) in [forsake]N OR WAY[laid].
6 RECURSION Going back to find suspicious Puerto Ricans denied tap dancing (9)
Anagram (suspicious) of [p]UER[t]O RIC[a]NS, with the letters TAP removed. I think “dancing” is just telling us that these three letters don’t appear together in order, but I’m not sure it’s strictly necessary, except to make sense of the surface.
7 LASSIES Fool with slander, perhaps, about young women (7)
ASS (fool), with LIES (slander perhaps) around (about) it.
Lassie = Scottish word for a girl or young woman.
13 DREAMLIKE ‘Milk a deer’? That’s freakish, surreal (9)
Anagram (freakish) of MILK A DEER.
15 IDIOTIC Unwise to assemble 3rd, 7th, 9th, 20th, 22nd, 27th & 28th pieces from Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich (7)
The 3rd, 7th, 9th . . . letters in the specified composer‘s full name. Rather an obvious trick, but Everyman does like to provide a few easy clues to get beginners started.
17 REMATCH Mum’s overcome by strain when game’s played again (7)
MA (mother = mum), contained in RETCH (strain, as a verb).
18 LE HAVRE Corrupt chevalier’s heading off, abandoning one French city (2,5)
Anagram (corrupt) of [c]HEVAL[i]ER, without the heading (first letter) and the I (one in Roman numerals).
19 FRIGID Run into tree? Everyman would, becoming unresponsive (6)
R (abbreviation for run in cricket scoring) inserted into FIG (a type of tree), then I’D (Everyman, the crossword setter, would).
22 UNDUE Fun duet; ‘side splitting’? … a bit much (5)
[f]UN DUE[t], splitting away the outer letters (side splitting).
Undue (as in undue haste) = more than necessary.

 

24 comments on “Everyman 3,865”

  2. Really enjoyed the puzzle…took us longer than usual (15 minutes….not!). Thanks Everyman and Quirister. Still not sure in what sense key is a control.

  4. A decent Everyman, and I thought HANDIWORK was particularly enterprising.

    You could interpret the ‘scordato’ as ‘tune one of your Os to the top of the word’ rather than just an outright anagram indicator. I’m not saying you should interpret it that was, but you could.

  5. Boffo @ 4 – That’s an ingenious explanation! Would interpreting scordato as simply ‘discordant’  not convey the anagram indication?

    I’ve grown quite fond of Everyman’s quirky anagrinds, and I greatly enjoyed last week’s puzzle. HANDIWORK was a highlight for me as well!

  6. As Quirister says, a real blend of clues and, if that encourages more people to have a go, that’s fine by me.  Though IDIOTIC is a real giveaway (and I’m not sure idiotic and unwise are quite in the same place on the foolishness scale) and the DIVA/AVID trick is as old as the hills.  To set against those slight criticisms, I’m with Boffo in admiring HANDIWORK; assuming the typo was not Everyman’s own work, U-BEND is rather clever; I shared our bloggers smile at STRING VEST and had one of my own with CHEQUERED CAREER.  I’m not sure all solvers would be as generous as Quirister when it came to the removal of TAP to arrive at RECURSION: I’ve seen comments in the past regarding strictness of wordplay and instruction that suggest ‘dancing’ was a sensible inclusion as well as completing a nice surface.  Finally, I thought the Mouthy/mousy trick was clever – though perhaps not a trick Everyman should overuse…

    Thanks Everyman and Quirister

  8. Strange, I thought this was more straightforward than usual.

    ‘S’ and ‘D’ are next to each other on a standard keyboard, so that might explain the ‘exclusing’ typo. The clue for HANDEL was a bit of a chestnut, but that’s OK. There has been endless debate about whether a second anagrind is required when taking away letters that are out of order. I’m with Quirister in believing that it is unnecessary if the anagrind precedes the longer fodder, thus ‘suspicious Puerto Ricans’ can be resolved to RECURSIONTAP. However, I have been told on a clue writing site that the house rule is that two anagrinds are required.

    I liked the CCs.

    Thanks Everyman and Quirister.

  9. I had the same interpretation of scordato as Mike at 5 – and I have to confess I rather liked it as an anagram-indicator.
    SOD’S LAW made me grin.
    Thanks to Everyman for the fun – and to Quirister for the blog.

  10. Lovely puzzle. Didn’t get AIRS but managed to parse the rest and like others HANDIWORK made me laugh. Lots of good clues and differed types of clues.

    Thanks to Everyman and Quirister

  11. I too wondered about excluse. My OED specifically mentions under exclusion [sic]: “the action of removing excrement”, but no mention of “exclusing.” Seems either a misconstruction or a typo; if there are typos in the clues can we allow ourselves typos in our answers?

    Having got 1 2 and 4 D and 25A very quickly I was feeling proud but became obsessed with the idea that 1A must be the singer (actor?) Chubby Checker and even though it made little sense – the “twist” of the key to start the car seemed perverse even for AZ let alone Everyman – it refused to go away until I got the other downers.

    I like the range of difficulty in the clues that Everyman seems now to achieve. Thanks Everyman and Quirister

  12. I enjoyed that very much. HANDIWORK was a favourite for me too. I vote for nmaking “exclusing” a real word (and in fact my spellchecker does not mark it incorrect Thank you to everyman and quirister.

  13. I confidently wrote in HEIR for 14ac, forgetting, like Quirister, that “eldest” could be plural. I did think have my doubts about whether “pretentiousness” worked as a clue for “air”, but I suppressed them. The correct answer is much better than mine.

    I can’t really make 2dn (U-BEND) work, even if I ignore the typo and allow the phrase “extended definition”, as it often does, to excuse a multitude of sins. I don’t understand precisely what portion of the clue is supposed to define a U-bend, or what the unpleasant burden is supposed to be (assuming it’s part of the extended definition).

  14. I’m with Ted@13.

    Maybe “Whereby reek, primarily, is excluded from unpleasant burden” works better as a definition that includes part of the wordplay to resolve the clue?

    I did, just, manage to finish it, so am pleased with the crossword in general, though, and with myself. I find the Everyman is pitched perfectly for me.  Thanks:)

     

  15. Strictly speaking, scordato (or scordatotura) isn’t “out of tune”; instead the instrument – violin usually – is tuned, but not to the usual notes. Biber’s “Mystery” or “Rosary” sonatas are written for a scordato-tuned violoin.

  16. Many thanks to both. The ones I looked sideways at have been mentioned and I still do not like AIRS. But it was all god fun and that is the main thing. It nicely filled in part of a very wet afternoon for me.

  20. I liked Tap Dancing. Also liked the H and I but stupidly missed the W or K.

    Like Ted I put Heir for 14A and that buggered up the rest of the corner. I do dislike homophone clues that seem, as here, to be the wrong way round.

    Thanks Q and EM.

  21. Good crossword today but defeated by 14ac, Airs. Funnily we both said hiers but failed to recognize the ‘expressed’ indicator. Never mind, we will return.

  22. Great puzzle. I too missed 13ac (maybe it’s a Kiwi thing) though I went completely off track with MISS. Thanks Everyman & Quirister

  23. Very enjoyable as usual these days. Particularly liked ‘handiwork’, ‘recursion’ and ‘tia maria’. Like a few others, blew it with 14a (LOI) by inserting ‘kids’ ( you’re kidding!) but was getting weary by then and it seemed like a good fit. Liked the real answer tho’

    Thanks to all

  24. Got it all out although I could not parse “airs” and “string vest”.  Enjoyed it anyway.  Thansks to Everyman and to Quirister.

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