A good crossword from Everyman, not quite so easy as last week’s I found, but not too bad. It looks to me as if he has given up on the alliterative clues (remarkably clever while they lasted, but one must run out of such things) — the grid has very little colour in it — and instead has disciplined himself to having whole-word anagrams; or at any rate a large proportion of them. It’s hard enough to fill a grid and set a crossword without all these extra restrictions (the ‘primarily’ clue, the self-reference, now this anagram thing, and no doubt more that I haven’t noticed) that he imposes on himself.
Definitions underlined, in crimson. Anagram indicators shown like this *(anagram) or (anagram)*, indicators (homophone, reversal, anagram, juxtaposition etc) in italics, link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ASCERTAINS |
Proves sectarians will be dispersed (10)
|
| (sectarians)* | ||
| 6 | SLIP |
Knock back lager? That’s a mistake (4)
|
| (pils)rev. — as Google tells us, ‘A pilsner is a lager, but not all lagers are pilsners. Lager is a type of beer conditioned at low temperatures. Lagers can be yellow pale, amber, or dark. Pilsner is a pale lager and is is the most widely consumed and commercially available style of beer.’ | ||
| 9 | ACCEPTANCE |
Welcome when sporting cane, cap etc (10)
|
| *(cane cap etc) | ||
| 10 | AMMO |
Not taking sides of gammon and pineapple? (4)
|
| [g]ammo[n] — pineapples are, amongst other things, types of, or slang words for, hand grenades and so can be called ammo | ||
| 11 | SONG AND DANCE |
Carol, with mashed potato, perhaps making a fuss (4,3,5)
|
| song and dance — song = carol, and = with, one particular dance is the ‘mashed potato’, so mashed potato, perhaps = dance | ||
| 15 | SUNBEAM |
Ray Brown has gym kit (7)
|
| sun beam — sun = brown (verb, like tan), the beam is one example of a gym discipline, so is in a sense a piece of gym kit | ||
| 16 | OEUVRES |
Badly over-use bodies of work (7)
|
| *(over-use) | ||
| 17 | OSMOSIS |
Operating system‘s way of working is stifling small, gradual assimilation (7)
|
| (OS MO is) round s — OS = Operating system, MO = Modus operandi, way of working, is = is, s = small | ||
| 19 | SOLVENT |
Able to pay for chloroform? (7)
|
| 2 defs — if you’re solvent you can pay, chloroform is an example of a solvent | ||
| 20 | TOUR DE FRANCE |
State that’s stunned to host our excellent sporting event (4,2,6)
|
| t(our def)rance — trance = state that’s stunned, our = our, def = excellent (down with the kids) — I’m a bit uncomfortable with the definition of ‘trance’ | ||
| 23 | ERIE |
One of the Great Lakes is spooky, we’re told (4)
|
| “eerie” | ||
| 24 | SEMICOLONS |
Characters seen in Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; Henry V? (10)
|
| We are being inveigled into thinking that it’s something about the Henry plays by Shakespeare, whereas it’s just that semicolons appear twice in all that, so it’s a CD relying on characters = things one can type on a keyboard | ||
| 25 | TOGO |
One way to order food in W African country (4)
|
| Many food shops have sections called ‘xxxx to go’, where one can buy xxxx and take it away and eat it straight away | ||
| 26 | ATKINS DIET |
Starter of tree tufts rejected; detox’s not half | restricting Everyman in regime (6,4)
|
| [c]atkins, I in det[ox’s] — catkins = tree tufts, I = Everyman — one might say that grammatically it should be ‘me’ not ‘I’, but I think it’s OK: Everyman = ‘I’ and it’s restricting ‘I’ | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | AJAR |
A glass container’s open? Not entirely (4)
|
| A jar — jar = glass container | ||
| 2 | COCK |
Bird to draw back (4)
|
| 2 defs | ||
| 3 | REPROCESSED |
Predecessor treated and treated again (11)
|
| (Predecessor)* | ||
| 4 | AMALGAM |
Mixture showing some charisma, glam albeit retro (7)
|
| Hidden rev. in charisMA GLAM Albeit | ||
| 5 | NO CAN DO |
Number with ‘party in the county jail’? Out of the question (2,3,2)
|
| no. c(and)o — no. = number, co. = county, and = with — ‘and’ is the party (in the legal sense) that is in the county, the county acting as a jail — I think this is the right parsing; at any rate Everyman has avoided using the old chestnut about a party (a do) where nobody brings/drinks a can of beer | ||
| 7 | LEMON TREES |
What may be found in orchard as twitchy mole enters (5,5)
|
| *(mole enters) — not the type of tree that one normally associates with an orchard, but it can happen | ||
| 8 | PROPENSITY |
Disposition of person to wallow | in pity (10)
|
| (person)* in pity — ‘person to wallow’ indicates that ‘person’ is wallowing | ||
| 12 | DOUBLE-CROSS |
Match short, suggesting cheat? (6-5)
|
| double cross — double = Match (as in doppelganger), cross = short (as in angry) | ||
| 13 | ASSORTMENT |
Deranged maestros finally turn out medley (10)
|
| *(maestros) [tur]n [ou]t | ||
| 14 | ENAMOURING |
No geranium in arrangement? Charming! (10)
|
| (No geranium)* | ||
| 18 | SOFTEST |
So fine! Exam is gentle in the extreme (7)
|
| so f test — so = so, f = fine, test = Exam | ||
| 19 | SWAHILI |
Seriously widely adopted, hugely intelligible language – international, primarily! (7)
|
| The primarily clue — first letters — it was news to me that Swahili was hugely intelligible. | ||
| 21 | GOBI |
Inhospitable environment: island with marsh to the north (4)
|
| (i bog)rev. — the Gobi desert | ||
| 22 | PSST |
Call for attention; troops straighten, to some extent (4)
|
| Hidden in trooPS STraighten — some might be surprised that it’s a word, but it’s in the usual dictionaries |
NO CAN DO
I took CAN DO as ‘party in the county jail’. Though ‘can’ is slang for ‘jail’,
it’s not clear why ‘county’ is there.
John! Your parsing may as well be correct though I am not sure.
Thanks, Everyman and John!
Lovely puzzle.
I parsed NO CAN DO (one of my favourites) the same way as KVa @ 1
Also liked ATKINS DIET, AMMO, SONG AND DANCE
Took me ages to get SEMICOLONS my LOI
Oh and Thanks Everyman and John
I think it’s COUNTY JAIL as CAN is an Americanism. I loved this , it took me for ever to get SEMICOLANS. Also there is a rhyming couplet instead of the alliterative clues.
Thanks both
“The warden through A PARTY IN THE COUNTY JAIL” is the opening line of Jailhouse Rock, a famous NUMBER, in the sense of hit parade song. I realise this doesn’t fully provide the parsing but it helps justify CAN DO.
Oops. “THREW a party”.
Atkins diet was a shrug, as was the ‘county’ bit of ‘no can do’ … great reminder, Willbar, that nails it I reckon. All fun, thanks J and E.
Thank you , John.
Could someone please explain why “def” = “excellent”? What has “down with the kids” to do with it?
Def is a slang term. It means excellent/cool. Keeps appearing in these puzzles every now and then.
John probably means to indicate that ‘def’ in the sense of ‘excellent’ is a Gen Z usage.
Thanks for the blog, I agree withKVa @1 for NO CAN DO and Willbar@5 , it made me think of Elvis and it is in inverted commas.
Very good puzzle, John we have had two alliterative grids very recently .
1Ac and 3D great examples for Jay’s list .
I was surprised by PITY in the clue and answer for PROPENSITY .
I spotted the follow-on clue , LEMON TREES after LEMON THYME , to mark this there will be an extra Bank holiday in May .
Nicbach@4 mentions the rhyming couplet , SONG AND DANCE , TOUR DE FRANCE .
Enjoyed this one. Many thanks to Everyman and John.
?
Well spotted Roz! ?Two long single word anagrams for the list. It’s also not so long since we saw PSST. Under “Pierre’s Law” France doesn’t make it to the countries list, which now seems a bit harsh, so perhaps I’ll include it with a note.
?[I see Azed is a competition puzzle today, that will be fun! I saw a clue yesterday (I won’t say where, but you will all have no doubt also seen it) which caused me to learn how Azed derived his name!]
Sorry for all those “?”s. I don’t know why they appear as they’re not in the text I type. Something to do with copying and pasting I think think.
Thank you John. I’m persuaded by both your parsing and KVa’s and Willbar’s extra interpretation for NO CAN DO.
I don’t know if it’s significant that the ‘AND’ from NO CAN DO and the AND from SONG AND DANCE formed a cross.
Then there was DOUBLE CROSS, but also SEMI COLON. Maybe Everyman was having a little joke there.
I liked SWAHILI. Apparently it is easier to learn than some African languages as it’s not tonal and uses the Latin script with one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbol, unlike English. I was once exposed to Swahili in an ‘immersion’ experience, designed for teachers of English as a second language to know what it feels like to be in a class where only the target language is used. It wasn’t so much the words themselves that produced a sense of being at sea, but the hand signals, body language, and tone of voice, volume, relative pitch etc to express emotions which were unknown and confusing. I had no idea what the teacher wanted of us.
True confession. In one of my beginner’s classes (both me and the students) I tapped myself on the chest and said “I’m X (my first name). There were then 20 people standing in a circle, tapping themselves on the chest, saying “I’m X”.
I wholly agree with Willbar @5 — to me the ‘party in the county jail’ was clearly a reference to Jailhouse Rock.
Liked SONG AND DANCE, SEMICOLONS and ENAMOURING.
Thank you to both setter and blogger.
I’m with those who went with the Elvis interpretation for 5d.
[Jay@12 the Azed is still basically a plain puzzle but a bit of extra messing about , there is also a clue writing competition, I never bother. Azed continues the tradition of Torquemada and Ximenes ]
Lemon trees in orchards? Not in the UK. Greenhouses, maybe. And “to go” is still a US expression to me – I say “takeaway” (or “carry out” oop North).
LEMON TREE, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Great song, but not entirely accurate – I used to love sucking on a lemon as a very little essexboy. Truth be told I still do.
(The song is based on the Brazilian original Meu limão, meu limoeiro, which for my money is even better.)
…and continuing the musical theme, I’m sure Willbar is right about Jailhouse Rock, but I was also reminded of 10cc’s Rubber Bullets – I went to a party at the local county jail…
Kudos to Roz for the follow-on, and ta for the bank holiday. There’s also another vibration of the takeaway string with TO GO.
Thanks Everyman and John.
I did not parse 20ac and 26ac.
New for me: Mashed potato dance (11ac); pineapple = hand grenade.
Thanks, both.
Lemon orchards are a thing, in California: lots of them, if you google.
The clue that irritated me, and as a result took me longest, was ATKINS DIET as the catkins, male flowers, are long dangling tails, not sticking up tufts. The female flowers, currently visible, are the tiny red tufts on buds where the hazelnuts will form.
I parsed NO CAN DO as suggested by KVa and Roz. ‘Def’ I think of as ‘definitely’ reduced to its minimum and I didn’t even think about that one, but three nights a week of youthwork means I absorb this language, and remember when the kids have moved on and the crosswords caught up.
Are we collecting punctuation marks? as we’ve had a few in these Everyman crosswords.
Thank you John and Everyman.
The Cambridge Dictionary specifically excludes citrus trees from orchards.
The Chambers (1999) definition of orchard is “an enclosed garden of fruit trees.” – nothing else.
Nostalgia time with Jailhouse Rock, LEMON TREE (very pretty as noted by eb) and the mashed potato, a dance among many I never mastered. I can see TOUR DE FRANCE as rhyming slang. “I don’t want to make a Tour de France about it”
Another pleasant solve from Everyman.
Like others, the jail party seemed to come from Elvis; a good clue, I thought. I also liked AMMO with a misleading surface and ‘state that’s stunned’ that I thought was a good nod to trance.
Thanks Everyman and John.
It certainly is a mistake to knock back lager (a personal view, obviously). Sláinte.
Def crossword & blog. I couldn’t have said that before today as ‘def’ is a new one for me. The question is what is more outstanding ‘def’ or ‘rad’ ?
[ MrEssexboy@20 , you have 3 Azed clues today, 6Ac, 23Ac and 1D . 13Ac was perfect for me. I still eat lemons and limes , cut them in quarters and eat them like an orange, keeps the colds away . Sherlock Holmes had a lemon tree in the corner at 221B Baker Street . ]
[Roz @29: 😀 Yes, he was a dab hand at de-juicing.]
There certainly are lemon orchards in Florida. [Fun fact: the larger of my two home airports, O’Hare, has the three-letter code ORD because when it first opened it was called Orchard Field. And that, in turn, because the land was once an orchard. No lemon trees in Chicago, of course.]
[The other one is Midway, MDW, which you won’t have heard of because it doesn’t handle any international traffic.]
And yes–I saw the CAN DO as an Elvis reference too.
The puzzle itself was enjoyable. I’ve gotten to the point where Alan Connor (our current Everyman) is one of my favorite setters–always witty, always clearly clued.
[P.S.: both names are World War II naval-aviation references: the Battle of Midway, fighter pilot Butch O’Hare.]
Well, Swahili is ‘hugely intelligible’ because it’s the lingua franca of much of eastern Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, and it is an official language throughout the whole area. It has around 80 million speakers.
In fact, my impression is that there have been far more rhyming pairs than alliterative trios — they are a lot easier to come up with. So the alliterative device is a rare treat that we can enjoy when it comes up.
I had the impression that “to go” for food is American for takeaway, but here it is in a British puzzle.
Never heard of the mashed potato dance. Catkins are new to me too — they may be what we call pussy willows, which have the same fuzzy bits.
1d Not all jars are glass — before glass was available the Greeks and Romans had ceramic ones.
Thanks, Everyman and John.
Many thanks, KVa @9, I’m showing my age!
@Valentine – pussy willow is a different thing – they are both tree flowers appearing in spring, the pussy willow a bit later than catkins that are very early. I would describe pussy willow and alder catkins as tufts, but most catkins, currently flowering here now, are long tassels
Valentine @34 may I recommend Wilson Pickett’s Land of a thousand dances which includes, among many others – sadly not a thousand though – the mash potato
Valentine, surely you’ve heard that I can mashed potato, I can do the twist. (That song is probably better known than the dance itself, which you’ll notice they aren’t doing in that video.)
Bodycheetah: we came up with two *different* songs that namecheck the mashed potato!
Oh, and just remembered I wanted to mention that the TOGO/TO-GO thing has old-chestnut status in American cryptics (which, yes, do exist).
Fell down on DOUBLE CROSS, since I had ‘strict diet’ instead of ATKINS. First failure in a while.
mrp@38 No, I’ve never heard of that song, though I’m probably old enough to. I just spent my youth under a rock.
Another fine crossword. I struggled with a few but all fair.
I’m surprised to hear of narrow definitions for orchard – presumably limited to what was grown in the local climate. Citrus were the most common orchards here in Northland, New Zealand, until the recent popularity of avocado orchards. With climate change, bananas (misi luki, rather than cavendish) are now considered by many here as the fruit of the future. Interestingly, while I have some in my home orchard, I’d refer to a commercial plot of bananas as a plantation rather than an orchard. A colonial legacy perhaps?
Thanks John and Everyman.
Good to see Paul in the blog and a good point. Banana plantation probably is colonial , mainly from the West Indies. I would use orchard for apple and pear , for lemon and orange I would use grove but I think the setter is fine here with lemon orchard.
Needed wild card dictionaries to get several of the answers, including “Atkins diet”. Could not parse this, either. The notion that “tuft” = “catkin” would never have occurred to me in a million years.
Could not/didn’t bother to parse several other answers.
Thought “double” = “match” was very weak.
Agree with both of Rolf’s points. Good challenge nonetheless, bit harder than some of his.
And yes to the Elvis parsing, I had already ticked the ‘can do’
But mashed potato?
Haven’t seen a catkin for more years than I care to count but lots of citrus orchards. As a chemist I should have got chloroform sooner but it’s rarely used as a solvent these days!
I could have a go at parsing Ray Brown but maybe he’s a British comedian who calls everyone sunshine. Or was that Ernie Wise?
Paul’s comments @43 brought back memories of driving through KeriKeri years ago on a school trip with the scent of citrus in the air. Beautiful!
Plenty of LEMONS in NZ orchards
Bit I did have trouble with 24@
I do hope we will get a Coronation puzzle
Rob.
Great puzzle, definitely trickier than the last few. Loved SUNBEAM and SEMICOLONS; couldn’t fully parse ATKINS DIET. Thanks all involved!