Everyman 3,966/16 October

73 comments on “Everyman 3,966/16 October”

1. Thank you Pierre. Needed your help with NOBELIST. Don’t find it arcane, just didn’t get the parsing. Quite clever, Everyman, not me, obviously.
   I thought this wasn’t up to Everyman’s finest surfaces and fun. Liked UNDER MILK WOOD and chuckled at ABBOT.

2. Nerves can be single fibres, and one shudders to think of esoteric Roman obstetrics, but the fast foods galoot’s chips in a pot were fun. Thanks PnE.

3. As usual, plenty of fun, with all the usual trimmings (primarily, rhyming pair of UNDER MILK WOOD with A FAT LOT OF GOOD, self reference in NOBELIST). Of the latter, it took me a while but I was able to construct it, then check that the word was actually used. The Truss clue was nice – and, as you point out, Pierre, unexpectedly topical. I also liked TREASURE for the clever &lit. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.

4. As usual, I didn’t find Everyman as “easy-end” as everyone else seems to, failing on ANTE, NOBELIST, ACUTE ACCENTS and CUT CORNERS. I keep plugging on with this setter in the hope of getting used to their wavelength, but I never do.

5. gladys @4 – ACUTE ACCENTS was my last one in – it took an embarrassingly long time for the obvious staring me in the face to make it through to my brain.

6. I had mill instead of MILK for the Welsh poem, with which I am sadly unfamiliar: mill is better suited to wood, but milk is funnier. Another great puzzle from Everyman. A FAT LOT OF GOOD was my favorite.

7. Could someone please explain the wordplay in 3d? I understood that “terribly” meant an anagram of “austere r” so I managed to find “treasure” but what are “What’s shown” and “wrong” doing?

8. The bottom half went in quickly but (like TassieTim @5) took me a while to get ACUTE ACCENTS which held me up in the top half.

   Liked A FAT LOT OF GOOD, NOBELIST (my LOI), THERETO, NERVE, PIRATES (made me laugh)

   Didn’t get the definition for ANTE

   Thanks Everyman and Pierre

9. Crosser@7 , my thoughts on TREASURE , you seem to have the word play fine. The rest is a sort of extended description, – What’s shown when terribly austere , right?= TREASURE ?
   no it does not , so it is Wrong. There is no real definition in the clue.

10. Thanks for the blog, found this a little more awkward in parts than recent Everyman puzzles.
    Some good clues , Fiona Anne @8 has a good list, I once went to an exercise class in Barbados, and it was genuinely called – Pilates of the …..

    To begin at the beginning : It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black…………………..down to the sloeblack , slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

    Everyone should try to listen to this at least once, preferably with Richard Burton as the narrator.

11. 8d brought to mind the theme of a Philistine puzzle earlier this year which reminded me of the ‘Llareggub’ reversal.
    Can’t help but think Everyman missed a trick in that 4d and 25d are reversals of each other and could have been clued as such. They also happen to be in symmetrical grid positions.
    Everyman’s now taken us to over 60 geographic locations so far this year, some more than once 🙂
    Thanks to Everyman and Pierre
    ?

12. Thank you, Roz @9.

13. I’m with Gladys on this one. Last week’s I completed ( with one small error). This week – only managed about eight clues. Even given some of the answers here I wouldn’t have got them. How some people complete them in less than an hour I’ll never know. Everyman usually goes with me for at least 3 days before completion. On to the next one.

14. gladys@4. I find Everyman quirky and varying in difficulty. I get the image of her/him with tongue firmly planted in cheek, while we solvers are chewing our pencils. But, as with the rest of the week, there are setters who appeal to some and not to others. Keep plugging away!

15. And Wolfmoon@13. Slow typing.

16. Crosser @7 and Roz @9. While I got TREASURE for the same reason as Crosser, I think it’s unfair in a crossword for newbies not to have a proper definition.

17. Wolfmoon@13 I used to take all week to do Everyman, carry it around and my grid would get really scruffy. I did think this one was a bit too tricky in parts.
    Crispy@16 I agree it is unfair really, and a few other clues were a bit much.

18. Wow. First Everyman since I started nearly two years a go where I managed about ten clues. I normally get 95-100% complete, but this one had me stumped.

    I wouldn’t have got UNDER MILK WOOD in a million years, but let myself down with some of the other clues that I should have got. It’s been a busy week with work and young children getting up at all hours in the night are not massively helpful for crossword solving ?

    Ah well. On to the next one. Must try harder! You can’t win them all.

    Thanks Pierre and Everyman.

19. UNDER MILK WOOD isn’t a poem.

    I still don’t understand CUT CORNERS.

20. Anna @19 a CUT is a joint of meat , topside etc. To CORNER an animal, say , can mean to confine.
    UNDER MILK WOOD is a play for voices, probably meant for the radio originally, I have seen several live productions and I have it on vinyl with Richard Burton.

    Good to see some newer solvers commenting.

21. Roz @ 10

    Yes, totally with you. The recording with Richard Burton is superb. Mine got lost unfortunately during a house move some years ago. His delivery and Thomas’ text is, well, poetical. Even though it’s not a poem.

    It’s not Welsh by language. Though the name of the town, which is supposed to be modelled on Talacharn, is sometimes spelled Llaregyb, ‘sydd yn fwy llednais’, as my Cydymaith i Lenyddiaeth Cymru tells me.

22. Roz again @ 20

    Ah yes, got it re CUT CORNERS. Thanks.

23. Anna@21 I think several towns have a claim. New Quay in Ceredigion has a good case. There is a Dylan Thomas trail there with supposed links, and it does have a fishingboatbobbing bay.

24. Roz @ 23

    Yes, I’ve heard New Quay mentioned in the UMW connection.
    It’s got a great ice-cream place, too. Or at least it did have, when I was in Aberystwyth.
    I’m going to be back in Cymru Fach for christmas this year – I’m looking forward.

25. Anna @19 – CUT = joint of meat; CORNERS = confines (verb). 🙂

26. Apologies for cross-posting 🙁

27. Thanks Camilla, too. Great name!

28. [To be pedantic, Lizzie is still Our Great Leader until the Tory party stitch us up with a successor]

29. I’m finding that the current Everyman crosswords alternate between one I solve in what I think of as good Quiptic and/or Everyman time (the one I’ve solved today) and a regular cryptic time (the one under discussion). I’d agree with others that this was a more challenging crossword, albeit at the quicker end of that time range. (I solve on the app so can see my solving times.)

    I love Under Milk Wood and had the earworm of Richard Burton reading it as I solved the crossword. I did own both the recording and the book but I lent them out and didn’t get them back.

    I too wondered why we got NOBELIST rather than novelist, it’s not completing a pangram, maybe it was because Everyman liked this clue better.

    Thank you to Pierre and Everyman.

30. [Anna@24 perhaps you mean the ice-cream place in Aberaeron , very near. It has honey ice-cream, they keep their own bees ]

31. UNDER MILK WOOD was written as a play for radio. There have been many stage versions and a film. The film, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole and Siân Phillips amongst others. was shot in Lower Fishguard. The Burtons used to drink in the Freemason’s Arms in Dinas Cross, a pub I used to frequent. Unfortunately, I was away at college at the time and missed the entire thing.

32. I wondered about the ANTE ETNA pairing. Both words have appeared a few times, clued as a reversal, so maybe Everyman wanted to show some originality, or maybe a variation on the pairs of clues.

33. Roz @ 30
    Aberaeron, ah you may well be right. Memory’s getting a bit hazy, it’s been far too many years since I was there. (Since Aberystwyth, I’ve lived in Dolgellau, Yell, Helsinki). I actually moved south from UK to Finland.

34. [ Thanks nicbach@31 , I have never seen the film, I will look out for it on TPTV although I probably prefer just to listen.]

35. I agree NOBELIST is a bit much for an entry-level crossword. I’ve heard them called Nobel Prize winners or Nobel laureates, but never Nobelists – perhaps our American contributors can tell us if it’s more common across the pond?

    And secondly, I’m not sure the definition is right, since a Nobelist is a person who receives a top award, not a “top award designation”.

    And thirdly, if as Pierre suggested he’d gone with NOVELIST, that would have provided a nice follow-on from last week.

    [Edit: last week we had LEO(n) TOLSTOY, clued as “novelist”. On checking, I find that he could very nearly have been clued as “Nobelist”: He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909; the fact that he never won is a major controversy. So perhaps it’s an intentional allusion on Everyman’s part?]

    One more quibble: CUT CORNERS isn’t the same as “tighten one’s belt”. The latter is to be frugal in tough times, to one’s own detriment; the former is to do a shoddy job, to take short cuts, usually to the detriment of others.

    I think I’ve exceeded my quibble quota! I did like ACUTE ACCENTS though. Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

36. Anna @33 Honey icecream definitely Aberaeron.

37. I don’t understand the explanation of Treasure. What is the definition?

38. Agree with Essexboy’s quibbles. I didn’t understand why 17D needed ‘about’ twice – surely ‘uprising’ is sufficient on it’s own to indicate reversal? Like others, found this more challenging than usual particularly the top half. Favourite was 9D.

39. ROARTCO @37: my take on TREASURE is that the definition is either side of the wordplay – “What’s shown? […] Wrong!” (my exclamation mark) – with the wordplay providing the context within which the definition is to be interpreted.

    The implication being that, in times of terrible austerity, TREASURE (as in riches) is unlikely to be much in evidence.

40. …and I agree with Mr Womble @38.

41. Unlike Pierre, I did not find this to be an easy-end puzzle. NE corner too hard for me. I failed to solve 1ac ACUTE ENDINGS? as well as 5d and 13ac. Having entered ACUTE ENDINGS, I guessed 4d to be [K]EATS with a slightly weird eats = chips in a pot (ie food). I also wrongly entered MODERATION at 15ac. Total disaster!

    Never heard of 13ac NOBELIST. It seems weird to me. An Oscar winner is never called an Oscarist or an Emmy winner an Emmyist!

    Thanks, both.

42. Another Sunday, another reflection on last week’s Everyman.

    I seem to remember it was not quite as straightforward as the week before. As others have said, NOBELIST was a strange choice. I liked SHOWIER for the party, Truss’s truce, and the nicely hidden ETNA.

    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

43. I think it’s all been said by others but just to quickly add my voice to the tallies:
    – I was beaten by NOBELIST, putting NOVELIST instead and waiting til today to understand the parsing (never crossed my mind that I just had it plain wrong! first time in months, that);
    – TREASURE was a tad advanced/devious for Everyman, with an implied not explicit definition;
    – no idea why 17d had the extra ‘about’;
    – CUT CORNERS and ‘tighten one’s belt’ are conceptually different

    So no original thoughts to add! I really liked A FAT LOT OF GOOD though.

44. Rob@43: I never thought of the NOVELIST alternative so was reasonably happy with NOBELIST, while thinking it a strange word. I completely agree with all your other points. Can anyone please explain the second “about” in the surface for 17d?

45. Doesn’t the clue work out like this:
    “17 Most rambunctious, TS Eliot’s preface is one about … about uprising”
    TS Eliot’s preface is one = TSE IS I about = reversed to make ISIEST
    ON = about uprising to make it NO

46. Thank you Shanne that does, finally, make sense. Talk about unnecessary complications!

47. Shanne/AllyGally, that’s an interesting idea – two reversal indicators applied to different parts of the clue – but wouldn’t it lead to ISIESTNO rather than NOISIEST?

    Or, if the second reversal indicator is then applied to the whole lot (including the already reversed ISIEST), to NOTSEISI?

48. Or the uprising is both a reversal and rising the NO to the top of the clue?

49. Shanne @48: kudos!

    So uprising = up + rising
    ‘Up’ reverses ON → NO
    ‘Rising’ sends it to the top

    Still not totally convinced that’s what Everyman intended, but it’s ingenious 😉

50. Shanne@29: ever since the “new” Everyman took over, I have suspected that there are two of him/her, one of whom I find much harder than the other. This is denied by those in the know, but all I can say is that I had less trouble with yesterday’s Vlad Prize than I did with this Everyman, whereas today’s was OK.

51. Michelle@41 – I went the same route on 1A/4D, similarly not convinced of the latter. Backed out when faced with D_T for 5D and got that one, then 1A as POI and 4D.
    Can someone explain “denouments” (plural) in 1A? – apologies for my lack of acuity.

52. TimSee @51 – I don’t see that it matters whether ‘dénouments’ is singular or plural – all that matters is that it contains an acute accent to go with the one in le Carré, so there are more than one ACUTE ACCENTS.

53. TimSee@51. I too found this odd at first and had to wrestle with it a bit. There is a question mark at the end of the clue, so I don’t think we should feel too badly.

    Finally, I came down to the plural ‘dénouements’ just being an extra pointer to the plural ACCENTS, as there were already two e acutes in the clue, one from le Carré and one from dénouement, and as he wrote more than one novel, the plural dénouements works. I saw it as bit of a joke from Everyman, and hence the question mark.

    (That’s my take anyway. Maybe others have something different.)

54. Agree Tassie Tim@52. Didn’t see your post, been taking too long cutting and pasting all the acute accents, and then deleting most of my originally much longer post. Yours is much more succinct.

55. TassieTim@52, paddymelon@53: thanks, it’s obvious now it’s explained (and the surface is better, as you say). I was stuck on reading it as a DD rather than a CD, despite the blog (thanks, Pierre). Thanks also to Everyman for the Sunday workout.

56. NOISIEST yet again . T S E – fine . Is one about gives i SI , Second about gives ON .
    T S E I SI ON – uprising for a down clue.
    The second process conserves parity so the first “about” is not needed and could be removed.

57. MrEssexboy @35 intriguing idea about Tolstoy and Novelist/Nobelist , if you think his omission was controversial then what about Lise Meitner ?
    Azed has a clue this week for our Australian solvers, 25 Ac .

58. I didn’t like the “definition” of TREASURE in 3d. Some things can be austere, i.e., plain, simple, unadorned, and still be treasured by many people, especially those for whom rococo embellishments give less pleasure.

    I too found this more difficult than most Everymans (Everymen?) but no less enjoyable for that. My favourites have already been mentioned, and they include the rhyming pair, with the welcome reminder of Dylan Thomas’s poetic play – now that’s a treasure.

    Thanks, Everyman for the more challenging fun and Pierre for the excellent blog.

59. [Roz @57, thanks for the reminder about Lise Meitner – the name rang a (Jocelyn) bell. I also recall you introducing me to Chien-Shiung Wu. The conservation of parity in cryptic crossword clues is surely a field of study worthy of a future (Ig)Nobel Prize.]

60. Not the easiest Everyman ever, but no great alarms.

61. Mostly fine, but two clues baffled me. I agree with others that 13ac NOBELIST is rather esoteric, and the definition is poor – it’s the recipient not the prize. 27ac also has a poor definition – THERETO means ‘to that’ or ‘to that place’.
    The obscure ‘definition’ for 3dn was unhelpful but the solution was fairly inevitable. My inner pedant frowned at Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece described as a poem!
    Also, TURN-OFF with a hyphen is surely something that loses one’s interest, rather than a stop?

62. Try as I might I still don’t understand the answer to 1 across. If someone can explain it I’d be very grateful as normally Everyman is a welcome puzzle for a Sunday afternoon…

63. I didn’t agree with Novelist. I don’t think it’s a real word – reminds me of a brand of golf gear called Titleist which always reminds me of a slang word for breast and I mentally pronounce to rhyme with bit heist..

64. Autocorrect changed Nobelist to Novelist!

65. A little tougher than usual, and definitely a few questionable surfaces. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get Acute Accents (Everyman has now given us a few grammatical clues like this), and Nobelist was the last one in (yeah got it, but no but didn’t like it)!

66. Well we can finally dispel one thought that I and a few others have certainly harboured – Everyman is apparently one person https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2022/nov/26/meet-the-setter-the-observers-everyman

    This wasn’t his best or worst, I liked French Bread but not the def for cut corners, as others have noted it’s not really the same as having to make do.

67. Chris @62 two of the letters (=characters) in Carrés denouéments have acutes over the e.

68. Apart from the misprint (?) for 8D I liked the next clue
    Nobelist ? I’ve never seen the word before.
    1A got me for a while.
    Rob.

69. I didn’t think this was easy end at all! Agree entirely with the comments on Treasure, and the cluing for TS Eliot just is too obscure for me. And glad to see some others also question cut corners vs tightening belt. But there were some great clues here such as 1ac, 9d 11ac, and 2d. Lots of great challenges, took me till Sunday morning to get the last three.
    I was trying to find reason to put ‘troll’ into 23d but was glad when other answers completely ruled that out. I rather like the clue for the correct answer.

70. Barrie @66 thanks for the link. It’s nice to be able to put a face and a name to Everyman. By pure coincidence I found a similar article on “Styx”, whose crossword in yesterday’s Herald was the first I have attempted. It’s a pretty good level of complexity and quite similar in style to Everyman’s, although 24a shows he’s setting for a predominantly Aussie audience.

71. Meet the setter: Styx

72. Ah, thanks Duane, I missed that, looks like he may have taken the slot previously occupied by Kropotkin aka Rex Benson who died a year or so ago. I seldom attempted those crosswords as I found them unfathomable so I’ll have a look at Styx.

73. 3d treasure is always hidden; is it shown? No, wrong.

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