Everyman 3,989/2 April

39 comments on “Everyman 3,989/2 April”

1. Thank you Pierre. Lovely birdie. Knew OCHE, but don’t recognise your “One hundred and AAAATEEEE”

   I too liked the anagrind in OCELOTS. Ticks also for BEAT GENERATION, OTTO and MATURING.
   Never would have thought of an ELASTIC BAND as a stationery item, but then I haven’t bought any in decades, if ever.
   I just recycle any that come into the house. .

2. Drugs were allegedly involved in the BEAT GENERATION? Hmmm. I thought needing to know the detailed history of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as needed in be able to count in Foreign was a bit steep – though what else could it be? That aside, this was good, solid Everyman. Thanks, Eveyman and Pierre.

3. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre!
   Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog.

   Liked OTTO, BEAT GENERATION and REPAIR.

   PREVIOUS:
   Does ‘over’ mean ‘previous’ in some sense? Over, hasty and late! Maybe I am stretching. Must be just over-hasty and late.

   paddymelon@1
   I think this explains AAAATEEEE…

   The highest score possible with three darts is 180, commonly known as a “ton 80” (100 points is called a ton), obtained when all three darts land in the triple 20. In the televised game, the referee frequently announces a score of 180 in an exuberant style.

4. I enjoyed this even though my knowledge of The (un)Holy Roman Empire is limited to Charlemagne, but an OTTO seemed likely. I liked ARTICULATED and PACESETTERS best but there are many more worth a mention.

5. *stretching it…

6. Thanks for the blog, another very suitable puzzle, the rhyming pair often seems to be two long down answers , I wonder if they go in first. OTTO turns up quite often , like Tassie Tim and Nicbach it was a bit of a guess for me really .
   OCTUPLE for Jay’s list and perhaps PACE-SETTERS ? Azed ignores hyphens , I read somewhere that they are dying out at a much faster rate.
   I think WOOD PIGEONS coo on the chimhey pots to amplify the sound , it must be learned behaviour.

7. First met ‘a bit previous’ in Minder (along with very droll, sovs, monkeys, and ‘er indoors). Nice puzzle, thanks PnE.

8. Am I the only one who thinks there’s a problem with OCTUPLE? It doesn’t mean ‘four times greater’ – that’s ‘quadruple’.

   Pierre appears to justify it on the basis that 2 x 4 = 8, referring back to the ‘couplet’ in the clue – does that mean the whole clue is to be taken as an attempted &lit?

   But again there’s a problem with that interpretation – an octuple isn’t four times greater than a couplet. A couplet is, in its broadest sense, a ‘set of two things’ (eg lines in poetry). But an octuple isn’t, in its usage as a noun, a ‘set of eight things’, it’s ‘a quantity or number eight times as great as another’ (Collins). And a ‘couplet’ can’t be ‘a quantity or number two times as great as another’ – that’s double, not couplet.

   Roz @6 – yes, good to see the return of OTTO. For the record, previous appearances include:
   3934 German lad looking back and forth? (4)
   3943 German lad in bellbottoms (4)
   3959 German lad‘s behind, not taking sides (4)

   But I think this Otto is a bit unfair (as semi-suggested by TT @2). If you didn’t know the Emperor and weren’t able to look him up, then you were reliant on the wordplay, and ‘VII in Rome’ could easily be interpreted as ‘8 in Latin’. There might easily have been a chap called Octo, and there were no crossers to confirm or exclude.

   Sorry for my couplet of octo-quibbles, Everyman, and gratias/grazie Pierre.

9. Another good puzzle. For some reason took me ages to see PANTHER which held me up in the NE.

   Roz @ 6 when there are two long ones I always try to do them first. It’s best when they are at the top and bottom or down the sides.

   Thanks Everyman and Pierre

10. [me @VIII – ‘VIII in Rome’!]

11. I did look up and check OTTO, which extended my solving time, slightly. Other than that, all pretty straightforward.

    No countries or cities, but ESTONIANS, but some nice long anagrams.

    Thank you to Pierre and Everyman.

12. MrEssexboy@8 I did wonder about OCTUPLE , thought it could be eight lines of verse but perhaps that would be octuplet if that term even exists outside of babies. I never looked anything up, I take Everyman to the beach with Azed and my “new” Chambers is not allowed to go.
    Good to see that OTTO has grown up from being a German boy, one week he may become an engineer or even a cycle.

13. Roz @12, if OCTUPLE could be eight lines of verse I’d be happy with that, but it’s not a term I’ve ever come across, and I can’t find a reference to it anywhere.

    Re octuplet – in the babies sense that would of course be ‘one of eight’, not a ‘set of eight’, hence the equivalent of twin rather than couplet. But I see from Collins that it can be used as meaning ‘octet’, so yes, I think that would work (if octuplet were an anagram of couplet!)

14. I have checked Chambers now and found nothing to support the answer, my OCTUPLE as eight lines was mere speculation at the time to make the clue work .

15. I have a wood pigeon nesting in my loft. Last time I looked it was guarding two eggs.

16. As has been said before, recently Everyman’s clues have been much better than they used to be, and some of them have been clever and amusing, with a bit of thought sometimes required. I liked both the slightly contentious ones – OTTO (which is common enough European given name, and had to be the answer), and OCTUPLE (I understand the objections, but for me the question mark excuses any slight semantic/grammatical mismatch); also VANISH and the hippies’ predecessors in 9d.
    Thanks Everyman and Pierre.

17. VANISH did make me chuckle. Straight out of the Uxbridge English Dictionary on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

18. [MrEssexboy your Azed clue today is 1Ac , right upyour street , get 1D as well and numerous first letters to invade the grid on two fronts. ]

19. KVa@3. Thank you. I now get “One hundred and AAAATEEEE.” Used to watch darts in the Old Dart, which was very quiet and zen-like. Have watched more recently on cable TV at mostly US betting venues. Very noisy.
    In my first year of teaching in a mostly male-teacher school in the early 70s,, not only did I win the footie tipping comp (no idea of football, just read the form guide without bias), but I also won the card game 500 ( a bit like cut-down Bridge) and the darts comp. Not the way to win friends and influence people in your first year in the job. But that’s okay, my boyfriend was the Art teacher who was 6’5” and didn’t do any of this. He just had to say one quiet word and they all went silent, staff and students alike.
    Favourite zen-like activity was archery. I was very good at that. Even if I was left-eyed, right-armed, whatever.

20. Nice puzzle.

    Favourite: OTTO.

    New for me – the Holy Roman Emperors Berengar I and Otto I (for 18ac); PREVIOUS = over-hasty.

    Thanks, both.

    In my simplistic way, I was fine with 10ac as
    couplet = consisting of two lines of verse
    so four times greater than that would be
    octuple = consisting of eight parts or things (or lines)

21. I don’t see why ‘following fashion’ is an anagrind in 25 across. Can anyone explain?

22. Bluemoon@21

    My take
    Following fashion=after fashioning/moulding
    ‘Coolest’ becomes OCELOTS.

    An interesting subtext:
    Following fashion (in following the happening things) OCELOTS are the coolest.

23. paddymelon @1 you have provoked one of my bugbears:
    Unless you’re doing some strange processing you do not “recycle” your elastic bands, you reuse them. As in the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle”.

    But I suspect I’m in a losing battle with this usage

24. Why can’t you do GOLDENEY, Pierre?

    Thanks for the puzzle and blog, Everyman and Pierre.

25. Can someone clue me in to how PREVIOUS equates to LATE? One of 4 or 5 that I couldn’t get last week.
    Favourtite was VANISH.

26. TanTrumPet @25: It’s a bit old-fashioned, but late can mean ‘former’ as well as ‘deceased’, eg “The Conduct of the Late Administration, With Regard to Foreign Affairs, From 1722 to 1742”

    [Thanks Roz @18 – got 1ac, think I’ll quit now while I’m ahead 🙂 ]

27. Valentine @24, I can’t do the OPBL for GOLDENEYE because the clue is referencing the film, not the bird. Them’s the breaks.

28. [EB@26 well done and it gives you eight first letters to get started. A linguist should always be doing Azed. Today is actually quite tricky, try 20Ac , the answer is easy but the word play is off the scale. ]

29. Good fun I thought. Thanks to E and P for the blog.
    Late post but it’s been a busy weekend what with Maskarade (another great puzzle) and today’s Azed.
    Roz@6, yes, PACE-SETTERS makes the list, like Azed I don’t mind so much about hyphens.
    Re 20Ac in Azed today, I like it when wordplay crosses into the solution, but we’ll have to wait for next Tuesdays’s blog for that one…

30. lin@23Quite right. Sorry for the provocation. I’m surprised that I previously didn’t share that bugbear. I do now!

31. Just a hair under 20 minutes today, REPAIR was my LOI. I didn’t parse BEAT GENERATION, so thanks for that. OCTUPLE was my CoD.

32. 5d tricky; and 9d I found impossible.
    I liked 15a
    Rob

33. Had never heard of the film Goldeneye; needed a wildcard dictionary to get this one.
    Thought that “Otto” was totally unfair. Could not parse it, even after a web search confirmed that my guess had to be correct.

34. Being late to the party here in NZ, one question: Otto couldn’t have been anything else, but I don’t understand how it is a cryptic clue. Is it a dd?

35. I think Estonians is a follow on clue from last week’s Castilians. Otto was easy enough to get from my tourist-level Italian, but Holy Roman Emperors are well beyond my general knowledge! Like Douglas @17, vanish brought back fond memories of the ‘previous’ Barry Cryer.

36. I too failed on 9D and I can’t make Previous work for either definition.

    Vanish was good though

37. Got “previous” when I had all the down answers. Then realized it was “late” as in the late holder of some office.
    Similarly knew the Beat poets but only got generation when the cross clues were sorted.
    Thought it was Goldfinger for a long time.

38. Down here in kiwi I don’t ever think I’ve sent an elastic band as a stationery item it’s firmly a hair tie-upper tho you could b forgiven for saying ‘ item found in a school’
    My fave was vanish
    Priceless clue!
    Also Maturing was fabulous

    Being determined to solve 9d resulted in some good reading

39. The reasoning behind previous is bad.
    Few stationers sell elastic bands.
    ‘am I’ for everyman?
    Beat generation – really?
    Yeah, nay.

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