Everyman 3,986

by

Everyman as per usual

Lots of Double Definitions it seemed to me, can’t see a rhyming pair this week

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 PROCEDURES
Gets around senior journalist’s ways of working (10)
ED – senior journo inside PROCURES – gets
6 TIFF
It brought back very loud disagreement (4)
IT reversed & FF – very loud musically
9 CIRCUMFLEX
Character in La Belle et la Bête? (10)
Cryptic cum literal, there’s a circumflex in Bete even if I can’t get one in here
10 NEMO
Fabulous captain seeing portent heading west (4)
OMEN reversed – heading west in an across clue
11 RED LEICESTER
Elder recites awfully locally sourced food? (3,9)
Not quite sure why “locally sourced” but [ELDER RECITES]* awfully
15 ORLEANS
Duck without much flesh in coating of rillettes in French city (7)
O – duck, nil & LEAN – not much flesh – inside coat of R(illette)S
16 GOPHERS
Rodents: those who fetch and carry, we’re told (7)
Sounds like GOFERS, go for this, go for that
17 THE KISS
Slightly edited thesis describing king’s sculpture (3,4)
K(ing) in an edited THESIS*
19 SERVICE
Perhaps the army chaplain delivers this? (7)
Double def
20 GREENFINCHES
Atingle, seeing French birds (12)
[SEEING FRENCH]* atingle. One for Pierre methinks
23 EDEN
Everyman’s heading to find dingy venue where sinful behaviour occurred (4)
E – heading for E(veryman) & DEN
24 BRAINCHILD
Start to battle cloud storage issue: that’s an idea (10)
Start of B(attle) & RAIN “cloud storage” & CHILD – issue
25 EAST
Cinéaste describes this direction (4)
Hidden in cinEASTe
26 BRIGADIERS
Colonels’ superiors tidied up debris surrounding Latvian capital (10)
RIGA – Latvian capital in a tidied up DEBRIS*
DOWN
1 PACE
Speed of some spaceships (4)
Hidden – some of – sPACEships
2 OURS
Announced time for you and me (4)
Sounds like hours
3 ENUMERATION
Reckoning mountaineer will flail about (11)
A flailing about MOUNTAINEER*
4 UNFOLDS
Emerges and … decreases? (7)
Double definition
5 EVENING
Making plane when night approaches (7)
Another double def
7 IN EXTREMIS
Regrettably intermixes as a last resort (2,8)
INTERMIXES* regrettably
8 FLOURISHES
Flowery language suggesting waves (10)
Double def
12 EXPERIENCED
Felt professional (11)
Another double def
13 PORTUGUESE
Badly upset rogue state’s inhabitants (10)
[UPSET ROGUE]* badly
14 SLEEVELESS
Cold weather curtailed small elves’ dancing in type of clothing for summer (10)
Most of SLEE(t) & a dancing [S(mall) ELVES]*
18 STIRRER
Subversive spoon? (7)
Double cum cryptic def
19 SACKING
Plundering coarse cloth (7)
Double def
21 RIME
Sent up Arab leader’s old poem (4)
I misled myself here, thinking of AGA’S reversed for SAGA which delayed this bottom corner being solved, instead it’s a reversed EMIR
22 IDES
Primarily inauspicious day, especially senatorially! (4)
You knew it was here somewhere

29 comments on “Everyman 3,986”

  1. Thank you flashling.
    CIRCUMFLEX favourite, for the surface, wordplay, and def. It tickled me looking for the character, before I even saw La Belle et la Bête

    Could IN EXTREMIS and IDES be considered a pair? Both Latin, starting with I and ending in S? Long bow?
    And is there any significance in EAST and (of?) EDEN, and possibly THE KISS, or having to go west to find NEMO?

    OURS came late to me as I remember in cold-solving, needed a crosser first.
    Interesting anagrind ”atingle” in GREENFINCHES, but have to say that many of the clues this week didn’t seem quite so tingly to me.

  2. Thanks, Everyman and flashling (for the nice blog).

    GOFER (dictionary.cambridge.org)
    someone whose job is to be sent to get and carry things such as messages, drinks, etc. for other people in a company

  3. RE the character. There were comments on the Guardian blog last week saying that the circumflex is not a character, it’s a diacritic. My take is the character is ê or ”e circumflex” , n’est-ce pas?

  5. KVa@4, I’m sure Everyman knows what’s what. There was a question mark. I quite enjoy his sense of humour.

  7. I thought the RED of 11a and the GREEN of 20a might lead somewhere, but I couldn’t see anything more.

    Thanks Everyman and flashling for this Sunday’s workout.

  9. I think I’ve said before that I find double definition clues can be difficult to get. As there is no wordplay to help you are just trying to find a word that can mean both halves of the clue.

    I found both UNFOLDS and FLOURISHES difficult – I got them from the crosses but still don’t think they work for both halves of the clue. I really can’t see how UNFOLDS = decreases and how FLOURISHES = flowery languages or waves. And I didn’t realise that SERVICE was a DD at all.

    Liked: GOPHERS, BRAINCHIILD, BRIGADIERS

    Thanks Everyman and Flashling

  11. I think the “pair” this week are RED Leicester (which I suppose is “locally sourced” in Leicestershire, but it didn’t
    help) and GREENfinches. Yes, I tried BRAINSTORM first, and took forever to spot CIRCUMFLEX, even eith all the crossers.

  13. pdm @ 12 and gif @10 Thanks

    I got CIRCUMFLEX straightaway helped by remembering a similar clue for SEMICOLONS a few weeks ago – that time it took me ages and was my LOI.

  14. Thanks for the blog, I thought this was a bit trickier than normal. I too was wise to the character for CIRCUMFLEX, agree with PDM @3 . Like Cellomaniac@7 I noted the RED and GREEN but no amber. ENUMERATION a great example for Jay’s list .
    FLOURISHES and PORTUGUESE a rhyming pair ??

  15. Thanks Roz@14, ENUMERATION duly noted.

    Regarding the RED/GREEN pairing, we’ve seen Everyman use the beginning of words in symmetrical grid positions for related (sometimes antonym) pairs before. Here are some examples.
    FIRE/WATER, HEAVY/LIGHT, START/STOP, COUNTRY/WESTERN, MAN/LADY, SHORT/SWEET, GOOD/BAD, MAKE/BREAK, MAKING/BREAKING

    Thanks to E and F

  17. Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it… you know the rest. I guess a puzzle published on 12 March and blogged on 19 March was as close to the IDES as Everyman could get.

    Jay @15, thanks for explaining how the RED /GREEN pairing is consistent with the pattern of matching pairs (not always rhymes or antonyms).

    Pdm/KVa – I think in the computer world anything can be a ‘character’ – even a blank space! (see here for example)

    Actually we’ve had a long string of ‘characters’ (thanks Fiona Anne @13):
    3986 CIRCUMFLEX
    3985 Characters seen in riskier sports
    3984 SEMICOLONS (characters seen in Henry IV etc)
    3983 Title character
    And in 3981 we had ‘characteristics’.

    And my suggestion for this week’s follow-on clue: last week and this we’ve had two versions of paradise: NIRVANA and EDEN. Thanks E & F.

  18. Do others here recite cheese? I used to, but a crowd from the village, armed with pitchforks, came round, so I had to stop.

  20. Lots of groanworthy puns above, thank you all for the smiles before I get to church parade for Motherinv Sunday (which is likely to be as bad as it sounds. Not done this version yet.)

    An enjoyable puzzle, as ia the bantwr above.

    Thanks to Everyman and flashling.

  21. I too was dubious about CIRCUMFLEX, but Chambers allows it as ‘a mark of any kind, a symbol used in writing etc.’. All the same, I think we wouldn’t welcome random punctuation marks being clued as characters. Perhaps I’m wrong.

  22. Good research from Jay @15 and MrEssexboy @17, when I was allowed on the computer system at work my password was – Snowwhiteandthe7dwarfsinParis! – I could have used Riga I suppose to shorten it.
    Very clever NIRVANA and EDEN , totally missed that , your Azed clue today is 21Ac, best I can suggest .

    Cellomaniac if you return , Azed 29Ac was written especially for you.

  23. I dunno about UNFOLD = de-crease. If you unfold a piece of paper, it’s still creased. If you unfold a shirt, it wasn’t creased in the first place.

    E Begum@18 Perhaps you aren’t an elder. The villagers wanted proper qualifications for cheese recitation.

    Roz@22 What is an Azed clue? there is no 21Ac in this puzzle. Do you mean there is something special about 21ac in this week’s Azed?

    Thanks, Everyman and flashling.

  24. Valentine@23 it is the Azed puzzle today , a prize, so no actual discussion of clues for a week. Some clues are suitable for certain people .
    For you today there are three clues. 17Ac , 33Ac and 2D .

  25. Re 24ac. I was wondering if “issue” could not only be the referent for child but also for “rain”? That is, rain issues from cloud storage ( of water vapour).

  26. I was fine with CIRCUMFLEX as a character, but I can see why the question arises.

    In my experience programming computers, a character is any single unit in a character string, which would include letters, numbers, punctuation. In the old days, we would’ve said that a character was anything represented as a single ASCII code; presumably now we’d say Unicode instead. In any case, this leads to a conclusion different from poc @21’s view: in this context “random punctuation marks” are definitely characters.

    In the programming context I’m not sure whether a circumflex would count. The symbol “^” is certainly a character in this sense, but I think the circumflex in “ê” is not.

  27. Some fun here but I would never have got Red Leicester without a bit of help
    Don’t think it’s really fair to describe as ‘locally sourced food’ partic for those of us who are far far away in Chinese gooseberryland
    Liked so many esp. Orleans, brainchild, brigadiers and Rime. Discovered to my horror I didn’t know there was a second u in Portuguese. I’m an avid spelling critic, so a useful new learning

  28. Another nice offering, I ticked circumflex and Orleans and ‘atingle’ for the anagrind.

  29. Another good puzzle. Instinct told me Nightingale for the bird so that held me up for quite a while. Enjoyed brainchild and stirrer when I finally got them. Thanks to all.

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