Everyman 3,898/27 June

66 comments on “Everyman 3,898/27 June”

1. Thanks Pierre and Everyman
   Managed to solve this (bar one) when half of 3 clues were originally missing in the online version.
   Liked UMAMI – because that’s my favourite flavour, not mild at all, and also liked the clue., partly for that reason, and the misdirection with the ( )
   Big cocaine bust for OCEANIC also tickled me.

2. Enjoyed this though needed a bit of help to get the last two which of course seemed obvious when I got them.

   CARPE DIEM made me smile and I thought DO WELL and ROOD were neat clues. Also liked ASHIER, IGLOOS, GRIDDLE, PROKOFIEV

   CUBIC CENTIMETRE took me a while – I knew it had to be an anagram but until I got the first and last letter of the first word and guessed the answer I couldn’t work out what words/letters to use.

   Thanks to Everyman and Pierre

3. I think the def in 17d should include ‘that’s’ (unless to griddle something means to set it on fire..??)

4. Other than @3, pretty straight-up puzzle. Like Pierre, never met Enid, but obvs. Smiled at the millonth appearance of Che, kept alive in cws long after the pics of him in his beret (yes, I had one) have faded away. [While in reminiscence mode, as a kid my favourite flavour was the intense savouriness, aka umami, of the concentrated juices congealed in the channel round the edge of the griddle after grilling steaks for the family] Ta, E, for the memories, and P for the parse.

5. gif@3, I thought so too, and was going to comment, but before I burnt my fingers I looked up to see if it was both a noun and a verb.. It is. 🙂

6. I don’t have a problem with the anagrist in CUBIC CENTIMETRE. I’ve got used to setters including symbols like CU in the fodder.

7. This is the grid Everyman seems to enjoy for a trio of alliterative pairs. It’s been used a couple of times before to this effect (see 3,894 and 3,890). Rather clever to get three phrases to fit this pattern as 1a has to be (6,7) in order to work with 4d. There’s also bonus alliteration in 11a this week.
   Thanks to Everyman and Pierre

8. I thought the surfaces were a step up, on the whole, making this a more enjoyable puzzle with highlights including the lovely cocaine/OCEANIC anagram noted by paddymelon @1 plus the partial anagram leading to COUNTY COUNCIL. I’m not normally a fan of the Everyman ‘primarily’ clues but JEROBOAM did make me smile. Finally, though the format is the same, the charades for PROKOFIEV and CHELSEA were both excellent with the latter taking the biscuit.

   Thanks Everyman and Pierre

9. Thanks for the blog, thought this was pretty good generally.
   Well spotted Jay@7 , I think it was the letter r last time.
   I am firmly in the camp that frowns on 4D, the letters for an anagram should not be partially substituted in.

10. Yes, thanks Jay @7 for pointing out the alliterative pairs. Strictly speaking CUBIC CENTIMETRE isn’t alliteration, as there’s a ‘hard’ C in CUBIC and a ‘soft’ C in CENTIMETRE.

    However, as I write that I realise there’s something clever going on: we have two hard C pairs in the top half – COUNTY COUNCIL and CLEAR-CUT – and a soft C pair along the bottom – CIVIL CEREMONY – and joining the two (or three) we have CUBIC CENTIMETRE, which is half-and-half.

    I’m with Pierre and Roz @9 on indirect anagrams. I think they add to the kinds of clue which are only intelligible to the cognoscenti, which is not really what I want to see in any crossword, but especially not in an Everyman.

    ginf @3/paddymelon @5 – I think GRIDDLE works either as a noun or a verb, with the “that’s” included or excluded from the def as appropriate. Of course in the verb sense, food that is griddled is set on (a) fire/source of heat, but hopefully only indirectly, with the griddle in between.

    PM @8: I was going to say, don’t you mean a bun, not a biscuit? …But now I find that CHELSEA biscuits are a thing (at least in Zambia).

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

11. I printed this off fairly early so had the added difficulty of three incomplete clues. Two were bunged in with a shrug, but German, standing as a single word clue, strangely worked for me. G for German and riddle because it was.
    All done whilst enjoying the Glastonbury coverage over the weekend – good entertainment all round.
    Thanks to both – and to those who have pointed out the clever alliteration.

12. I like your theory MrEssexboy @10, hard C at the top and soft C at the bottom with 4D providing the transition. If this was intended it is very clever.

13. tic@11. That’s exactly how I solved GRIDDLE with only have the clue, thinking it was a rebus, or an enigma, and lo and behold, when the rest of the clue was revealed, there it was!

14. [Sorry, not supposed to correct, but ‘half’ not ‘have’.]

15. A glass drawn from either four or six bottles to you, Pierre, depending (as I understand it) on where you might be tippling (non-intoxicating beverages included). And stay safe all.

16. 14A. Enid reminded me of Enid Blyton. Is the name so uncommon?

17. Interesting observation essexboy@10 about the hard and soft C’s. Like Roz @12 I wonder if this was intended as if so is very clever. As to indirect anagrams: definitely beyond traditional Everyman.
    Thanks Pierre and Everyman

18. Ta pm @5 and eb @10, yes, to griddle something is to set it on (the) fire to cook. Shoulda thought of that.

19. I spotted 24ac would be a homophone almost immediately. It would have been my first one in but I couldn’t decide whether the solution was RUED or RUDE (if you are cross you might be rude). So it ended up being almost my last one in when ECONOMY alerted me to the third homophone ROOD.
    Clever of Everyman to find a triple homophone, which made me smile once I’d spotted it.

20. grantinfreo@18 I took it as the GRIDDLE ( pan ) is set ( put ) on ( the ) fire but I do see that the other works as well.
    VDS@16 Blyton is probably the most famous ENID, the name is very out of fashion now. It may return , Emily has made a massive comeback and Elsie is now on the way back as well.

21. VDS Prasad @16: there’s a reasonable list of famous Enids – but, to my shame, the only one I recognise if the aforementioned Blyton. I do recognise Avengers actress Diana Rigg – and am surprised to discover she was christened Enid, though not surprised she dropped it.

22. Good one this, I agree. Could someone tell me if the definition in 9ac is anything more than the sense of running a newspaper. Seems a bit broad to me.

23. GrahamP @22: I think there’s possibly more to it insofar as one can also run an article or a series and, of course, there is the associated concept of the ‘print run’ for a book as well as newspaper/magazine. And all of those are, to some extent, publishing. Not sure if that helps.

24. Largely enjoyable crossword with a few rather strange surfaces eg 23, and some Yoda-speak as in 18.

    IMHO, it’s fine to include a word with a standard abbreviation, such as street for ST in anagram fodder. However, copper could be CU, PC, PS, DI, PW, SC etc, so that seems to me to be unfair.

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

25. adrianw @19 – my experience exactly with ROOD. When I first looked at this, with the half clues, I thought “I am sure that I shall think those three clues are really clever, if I can ever work them out”. Fortunately, someone on last week’s blog pointed out that they weren’t all there, and I found the full clues on the pdf. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

26. Yes, I thought this was a good fair crossword but thank you for two explanations. I hadn’t fully parsed 23 ac and failed to see that ‘gets’ could be ‘dig’! I was also rather baffled by 17 d but if you take the overall clue as “that’s set on fire”, it is fine. I particularly liked 1 d “Chelsea” because my daughter teaches at Chelsea School of Art.

27. Christopher @26: It’s not DIG = get (although that’s a nice thought – she really gets/digs Stockhausen), it’s DIG = grub, as in ‘grubbing up’ bushes etc. ‘For starters’ tells you to put the French ‘un before dig, and ‘gets’ tells you to add the jumbled-up steed on the end.

    Forgot to mention before – is COHERENCE really the same thing as ‘union’? Surely coherence = unity, cohesion = union.

28. I ticked CHELSEA and OCEANIC, both very good.

    On 4d, I think that the sort of indirect anagram that is totally frowned on by nearly everybody is the “think of a synonym for this word and make an anagram of that” type. Don Manley gives an example in the Chambers Crossword Manual:

    Small pebbles possibly coming from the country (7)

    in which we’re supposed to think of “English” as an anagram for “shingle”. But as Robi suggests @24, lesser degrees of indirectness seem to be acceptable to lots of setters. I thought 4d was ok as CU is the obvious abbreviation for “copper”.

    Many thanks Everyman and Pierre.

29. I agree with lord Jim @28 about 4d and with LARGO you have to convert 100 to C and then subtract it which seems conceptually similar to convert copper to CU and anagram it. Each to their own

30. [To reduce the keystrokes, if anyone should mention me again, and to distinguish from the distinguished PM (Postmark), who is on top of the echelon, and worthy of PM.
    If anyone is interested, I chose my nom de plume when I first found 15sq and had no idea what a ‘penny drop moment’ was.
    When I found out I morphed that into my Irish ancestors and an Australian animal (not quite spelt that way) hence paddymelon. PDM – geddit?
    Feel free to reduce the keystrokes and just call me PDM or ‘Eh?’ … a Queenslander end of almost every sentence, and maybe more fitting.]

31. GrahamP@22. My thoughts also.

32. Enjoyed this puzzle and the comments above but I don’t understand the issue with 4d. Copper is Cu just like Everyman is I. Pretty sure I’ve seen the latter used as substitute anagram fodder with no fuss. Am I missing something?

33. [Thanks PDM @30. This site is such an education – first I’d heard of pademelons, or paddy melons, and it was only the other day I learned about bodhicitta.]

    Paul @32: Everyman = I/me often crops up as a component of a clue, i.e. in a charade or a subtraction or a reversal or a ‘cycling’, but as anagram fodder I’d consider it a no-no (though clearly that’s a matter of debate!)

34. I think the letters should actually be present in the clue for an anagram, could be an abbreviation or first letter, n for new or st for street just about okay . For this the U from CU is not present at all. CU is a substitution for copper.

35. Postmark@23. Yup, I’ll buy that. In the sense of “we’ve got this story about corruption in government, but we can’t run it since they’re our biggest donor”? 🙂

36. [essexboy@33, May you always be enlightened 🙂 ]

37. Roz @34, yes I’ve seen that view expressed before. But equally, some setters are fine with using, for example, “king” for R as part of the anagram fodder. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion as to what you think is fair and gettable.

38. I agree Lord Jim, if we did not have different opinions there is no point discussing clues. I think this one was easily gettable but not actually fair. I also frown on king as R and even one as I or A for an anagram. If we allow substitution , where does it stop ? Could we have two words, substitute in two words and make an anagram of those ?

39. CU next … well whenever. Not sure where you’d get away with that where there’s an editor other than in a Grauniad-style puzzle, but there we are. Apparently this was ‘sound’.

40. I daresay I’m not the only one who read “Tennyson heroine” at 14a and spent a while trying to make MAUD fit the wordplay. Apart from the Lady of Shallot, she’s the only Tennyson character I could call to mind.

    GrahamP @22 – “After talking to the lawyers, we’ve decided not to run the story.”

    grantinfreo @4 – I suspect CHE will be retired when “it” no longer means sex appeal and setters have forgotten the Model T Ford.

41. PS: as definitions go, “Latin expression” is a bit vague.

42. PM@21 Enid Bagnold looked dimly familiar on the Enid list, turns out she wrote National Velvet.

    TT@25 Your mention of somebody pointing something out made me realize one reason why I come to this site. Like many outside the UK, probably, I don’t know a single person who enjoys cryptic puzzles, much less who can point something out on the website. I come here for a chance to speak one of my languages.

    Robi@34? How does “copper” = PS, PC, SW? PS is maybe Police Sergeant, though I don’t recall seeing it in decades of reading English detective stories, but what are the others?

43. And thanks to you both, Everyman and Pierre.

44. Valentine @42, in case Robi does not return, I will butt in , sorry Robi.
    They are all police terms. Police Constable, by far the most commonly used for Copper.
    Also sergeant PS, woman PW, special constable SC, detective inspector DI, also DC and DS and even more ranks.

45. ^ OinC for Officer in Charge didn’t last long.

46. Blorange @45: and possibly only useful for setters trying to indicate a softly spoken Gloucester Old Spot?

    Btw, no pun on pigs intended- I have never liked that as a nickname for the police, even though they are not all saints.

47. paul b/Tees/Neo @39, I stand by my headline description of ‘sound’. I think I’m allowed to do that and then point out one use of a device that’s not to everyone’s taste. You, as a setter, and I, as a solver, are not enamoured of it, but it doesn’t seem to have bothered others. That’s crossword ‘rules’ for you.

48. adrianw @19 – I initially wrote in RUDE for 24ac, but then realised that it must be wrong because of the crossing letter with 18dn, and that’s when I remembered ROOD.

    I’m with miche @41 on the vagueness of ‘Latin expression’ as a definition for 12ac, but at least it was gettable from the crossing letters – once you had the whole clue to work with… I was scratching my head over that one for ages until I read in last week’s blog about the missing words. 11ac also remained unsolved while I only had “Opening of” to work with, but like others, I did manage to guess at GRIDDLE from “Germany” and thought it made a kind of sense, albeit only in crosswordese…

    Like Pierre and others, I’m not a huge fan of indirect anagrams – they fail on the fairness test. However, I think with the letters CU being together in the solution, Everyman just about gets away with it here. As indirect anagrams go, it wasn’t the hardest to spot.

    Roz @44 – gender-specific ranks for women in the police force are deprecated, so you will no longer see WPC – it’s PC gone mad, I tell you.

    Thanks for the blog, Pierre, and thanks Everyman.

49. Hi Pierre.

    As far as I know ‘sound’ means (or ought to mean) both ‘grammatically correct’ and ‘fair’. If people on this thread are in the main those who regularly solve Grauniad puzzles, then they’re not necessarily going to know what the concept of soundness implies, as the G’s puzzles don’t consistently demonstrate it. I hope that doesn’t sound rude, as it’s not meant to, but you’re in the box you’re in, as they say, and yours truly was for a long time in exactly that box.

    I think the bone of contention around Everyman puzzles is that they once demonstrated this ‘soundness’.

50. Fair point.

51. paul b @49 not rude but perhaps straying a wee bit close to patronising?
    I’m sure I’m not the only person who enjoys the Guardian puzzles precisely because the don’t slavishly adhere to the “rules” or somebody’s concept of “soundness”

52. Well, bodycheetah, in that case (or was it a box?) it would appear that I’ve just patronised myself. Or maybe not, as for the likes of you there was a ‘necessarily’ sneaked in there, included with the specific aim of accommodating those who knowingly delight in the in-deeds and other Guardianisms to which we are often exposed.

    I mean, you might be an expert, a seasoned practitioner, well-versed in the dark arts of grammatical construction as applied so relentlessly, not to mention tiresomely, to crosswords, sick and tired of convention and rules (what rules be they, ed?), now only hungry for the new of the absolutely shocking.

    Or something like that.

53. Save for the indirect anagram (which, incidentally, the Independent’s crossword editor will occasionally let pass) there is no funny business in this puzzle. There are no guardianisms that I can see. It is quite sound.
    I find the chopped-up, over-punctuated clues very clunky but that’s not the same.

54. Just reliving Monty Python on Netflix. Did they ever do a Crossword Commandments sketch?

55. Paul T, well, since you ask, yes: ‘Anagrams Gape’ is in one of the early books, and ‘The Man Who Speaks in Anagrams’ is easily found online.

    James, I don’t think I’ve said that there is any of what you call ‘funny business’ in the puzzle under discussion. Along with others, including you, I have said something about the anagram clue. I really don’t know whether the Indy’s editor lets constructions like that pass, so we’ll have to take your word for that.

56. For what it’s worth (he typed to an empty forum) I found ‘copper’=CU misleading but not unfair. When I’d tried making an anagram of ‘copper, crime etc: I’ with both (?) ‘bent’ and ‘activated’ as anagrinds, I realised something was up and thought again. I’ve seen the view expressed by a setter on another newspaper’s crossword (Independent, maybe) that indirect anagrams are not embargoed per se, just unfair ones. And, yes, there are other substitutions for copper such as PC and DI, so I’m not saying others are wrong for calling foul on this one. I’m just saying that I found it sound.

57. sheffield hatter, you probably ‘found it sound’ because – just like me – you had no problems finding the solution, knowing that it was clearly an anagram.
    If so, not sure whether that is the issue here.
    I think, Robi @24 echoed my thoughts.

58. Sil: I used the adjective “sound” with tongue in cheek, because it seems to have been the word to use last weekend, though I am not quite clear who started it or why. My original assessment was “misleading but not unfair”. I’m not sure what your point is, because if you – like me – were sure it was an anagram, and most other people were too, the only debating point is what constitutes the fodder. I agree that if you cannot identify the fodder, you may change your mind about it being an anagram (hence: misleading). But by the time I finally solved this I had enough crossers to make me fairly certain of the answer, and the U in CUBIC could only come from CU (hence: not unfair). This is slightly post hoc thinking, I suppose, but I think the way that I solved the clue justifies my finding no fault with the clue – or at least, not as much of a fault as some others are finding.

59. Yes, 4dn is obviously an anagram.
    And to make it work, we need two more letters, preferably to represent ‘copper’.
    But CU is not one that is unique, unlike ST = ‘street’.
    As a solver I’m OK with it, as a setter I wouldn’t be – maybe that’s it.

60. I think the term sound comes from Yes Minister and is very appropriate for crosswords. I have mentioned 4D a few times here because it is a particular dislike of mine, I like to see the actual letters on the page so I can do the anagram in my head. Other solvers and setters may disagree and I see their point, The issue could have been avoided if the setter could have changed the clue to have copper at the front.
    To balance my minor complaints I will add that I found this crossword pretty sound , fair and enjoyable, well done Everyman.

61. No issues with CU as fodder, yes it’s indirect but obvious so ok.

    Found 6d def iffy, everything else okay, albeit still not up to the polish of yesterEverymen.

62. All ok except for mega. Far too vague. Ended up with achoice of Leda or Hera. Perhaps mega for very good has not penetrated this far.

63. Finished it after a good long walk but still didn’t get Rood – grrr. Not as tricky as last week but maybe almost too easy at times?

64. Thanks to Julian and Sandy I wrote in “bona” for 8ac which caused no end of trouble completing the NW corner. A little difficult to justify ‘nob’ as a lovely person, though I’m sure some are.

65. Mega @ 8 is the only one that defeated us. Not kiwi idiom that’s familiar to us.

66. New lockdown gave us the time to finish this.
    Maga was tough for us, as was rood and hence economy.

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