Everyman 3,990

43 comments on “Everyman 3,990”

1. Something of a Sandanavian feel to the top of this. Two very nice anagrams for the rhyming pair too (especially the young classical scholar!). I can’t say I found this harder than usual, though. Thanks, Everyman and flashling.

2. *Scandinavian

3. Thanks flashling, needed the parsing for OSLO. I found that this puzzle seemed to lack the Everyman sparkle, especially where he tells a story in the surfaces. I suppose that could add to the degree of difficulty with less connection, or more disguise, between def and wordplay.
   I liked the fodder for EDITORIALS (real idiots) and CONTROL FREAK (not for a clerk). BRIO my favourite.

4. I definitely did find this a lot harder than usual for an Everyman. Saw the Oslo parsing – after a fair while(!) – but completely missed the parsing of gamekeeper, which should have been obvious. Thanks to flashling for that.
   Loved: Control Freak, the Ancient Greek, and Maidens.

5. I think Everyman has been getting a little harder for some time, but still fair game for beginners. I saw OSLO only after thinking it was a 4 letter capital, very well hidden.
   Good fun as usual, thanks both.

6. Didn’t get why “up there, out of the blue” = threatening, or how “so” = very good. Probly just being dim.

   [pdm @3, ta for that Goossens link the other day … what a saga!]

7. gif@6. Yes with you ‘up there’. I was wondering if it was a triple definition but couldn’t justify that.

   [Re Goossens. Yes, fascinating. I missed all that, but then I was an infant in Queensland at the time. I was about to say, waiting for the movie or the doco, then thought I’d better ask the question. Missed that too:
   https://variety.com/2004/film/reviews/the-fall-of-the-house-1200532582/ ]

8. Thanks for the blog, good puzzle, perhaps a little trickier than usual . A few place names but nothing to make Jay’s streamlined list. TRINKET just makes the anagram list. A traditional rhyming pair, both well done. BRIO was very neat and I liked GAMEKEEPER but it could have used the butterfly in the clue.
   THREATENING I thought about for a long time trying to find something clever, think the second definition is very weak.

9. I did not parse 6ac OSLO or 20ac THREATENING.

   New for me: ARM = cobe (26ac)

   Thanks, both.

10. I found this more difficult than usual.

    Like PDM @ 3 I thought there was less (very little in some cases) connection between definition and wordplay/solution and that made it harder. I know not to expect exact synonyms in crosswords (that is part of the fun) but they seemed a bit too loose this time – to me anyway.

    Like Roz @ 8 didn’t really get THREATENING

    Thanks Everyman and Flashling

11. I shouldn’t bother but the error in the wordplay for ARMS AKIMBO is very annoying. Rice wine in Japan is properly called nihonshu, Japanese wine. A lazy shortcut for foreigners is “sake”, the romanised spelling of the Japanese character/word for liquor, alcohol prominently displayed on whisky, vodka, gin, soju etc. And it is pronounced phonetically, like “sahkay”. Saki, pronounced sahkee, on the other hand, is a Japanese name. Yes, I know there is probably a dictionary which gives saki as an alternative spelling of sake with the same mistaken meaning. And I also know that any foreigner can walk into a Japanese restaurant (at least outside Japan) and order “saki” and receive rice wine, (probably heated – horrors!) But that doesn’t make it acceptable, at least not to me.

12. [Ta again pdm]

13. Good fun I thought but concur with comments about 20a. Curiously, I did notice that the four corner letters of the grid also spell SO-SO. And we’ve had a recent run of words beginning and ending in O… OTTO, OSLO, ONTARIO

    Thanks to E and F

14. I should add that after calming down, I enjoyed the rest of the crossword, esp. the reminder of a biro as writing implement.

15. I thought it was harder to parse than normal. Solutions went in because there were enough letters to make them obvious. I thought the LPs etc were the platters. Wasn’t there a dj that played the platters that matter? Thanks Everyman and flashling.

16. That was definitely harder. I could not get STRUCK HOME, and it’s so obvious when you see the answer here. And without the H, I couldnt get HEAD FOR. But thanks for the great blog, I put this down as a learning exercise.

17. KL@11 I enjoyed your rice whine. Very educational 🙂

    Cheers E&F

18. Best I’ve ever done, got the all but one, so close to finishing my first cryptic!

19. Yeay Jonny m@18! Keep on keeping on. It can get very addictive but lots of fun, in good company.

20. Crispy@15 yes LPs are sometimes called platters, Chambers gives gramophone records. The term is used though for high-end turntables for the rotating base. My Linn LP12 uses a fancy zinc alloy called Zamak ( or Mazak) , my first Rega turntable had a glass platter.

    Jonny@18 which was the one?

21. Agree that Everyman is getting a bit harder. I didn’t greatly enjoy this – not really sure why, apart from a couple of poor (IMO) angrinds (up, ardent). And I go along with reservations about definition #2 of THREATENING.
    I did like CONTROL FREAK, BRIO.
    In my parsing of ON A PLATTER, the ‘platter’ is the vinyl record itself, rather than the turntable as suggested by flashling – I’m sure I remember annoying faux-cheerful radio DJ’s in the ’60s referring to spinning platters.
    KLColin@11 – you made interesting comments about the meaning of sake/saki in Japanese – but I think the clue is fair, since in (UK) English the word means rice wine – it’s not unusual for loan words to have different meanings to those in their original language.
    Thanks flashling and Everyman.

22. grantinfreo@6
    So=very good: It was discussed briefly a month or so ago.
    We come across ‘so=very’ quite often, but ‘so=very good’ appears once in a while.

    (dictionary.cambridge.org)
    So
    used as a short pause, sometimes to emphasize what you are saying.
    Usage:
    So, here we are again – just you and me.
    (Very good/very well, here we are again…)

    Even if it is not convincing, it’s worth remembering that ‘so=very/very good’.

23. Liked STRUCK HOME, OSLO and ARMS AKIMBO.
    Just like others, I was looking for something more in the clue for THREATENING.
    ‘up there…sky’ seems like a mildly cryptic reference to ‘bad weather’ (as flashling
    said in the blog). Of course, we could be missing something.

    Thanks, Everyman and flashling!

24. I was looking for a Theodore Roosevelt “Speak softly and carry a big stick” reference with THREATENING and couldn’t help thinking about Legz Akimbo in the League of Gentlemen.

25. Ta for the very good, KVa @22

26. The turntable/disc definitions of PLATTER come from US English, where the original definition is “the circular, motor-driven surface of a turntable on which phonograph records are played” and the alternative slang definition is “a phonograph record”.

27. I really liked OSLO as it had the added twist of being what I always still call “an Oslo”. Anyone know where that came from? And ONTARIO was a very neat Oslo!

28. KLColin@11 Agreeing with you, and adding that the normal transliteration of the wine is “sake” with an e. Japanese is a language that allows for a word to end with what we call a short vowel, such as the E in “bed.” That’s hard for English speakers to handle, since that never happens in English, but it does in Japanese. Saki-with-an-I is an author, the pen name of H H Munro.

    GrahamP, what is it that you still call “an Oslo”? Words beginning and ending with O?

    I enjoyed this. This was the first time that the rhyming pair actually helped me, since once I had ANCIENT GREEK I looked for a rhyme in its symmetrically sited partner.

    Thanks, Everyman and flashling.

29. I agree this was a bit trickier than usual, 22 minutes for me this time. SACK was my LOI, and I didn’t parse THREATENING either. I also take issue with REAR and rhea being homophones. OSLO was my CoD.

30. … then there’s also the Oslo lunch …

31. This was my first ever complete cryptic, came here to check it was right and also to understand the parsing for a good number that I only got because of crossers: OSLO, THREATENING, MEDDLER (medlar fruit is new to me) and SO SO (guess I just need to remember that So=very/very goood as KVa says @22).

    Thanks for the blog, off to try this week’s now

32. Valentine @28… No, I learnt to call a clue hiding the answer (like ONTARIO) an Oslo . I’ve always assumed it was after some famous clue.

33. TanTrumPet @31 — well done! It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? 🙂

34. I too pondered the spelling of saki, but also the equivalence of arm/cove. Then I remembered the town of North Arm Cove not far from here at Port Stephens.

35. My friend tells me he got it from the clue “A city in “Czechoslovakia”.

36. Thanks Rob T @33, yes it felt great ? – I’m a bit annoyed that I’m missing two for yesterday’s Everyman, but hoping I’ll get them before next week!

37. WhiteDevil@29, re your assertion of a faulty homophone at 23a REAR, I note that Everyman did not say it was a homophone. He gave us a witty example of aural wordplay, which gave me (a rhotic speaker, by the way) a nice smile.

    Thanks Everyman and flashing for the fun.

38. Yeah, this was a bit hard; need a wildcard dictionary to get “struck home” and “threatening”. *Lots* of answers that I could not parse (including “threatening”).

    Got the “go slow” –> Oslo trick surprisingly quickly, but.

    Struggled with “rear”. To me that’s *not* a homophone of “rhea”. I keep forgetting that Poms, and Pom-derivatives like the antipodeans, don’t pronounce the letter “r”.

39. I had the same thoughts as Peter T @24 about Roosevelt and the League of Gentlemen (British comedy group not the similarly named film). Although I found it harder to parse a couple of contentious clues, it was a quicker solve than usual. Trinket and Editorials were favourites. Had to guess that there was a flightless bird that sounds like rear.

40. Arms Akimbo our favourite! Good solid crossword today, thanks all

41. Threatening and so-so were pretty weak, and never heard of brio so DNF missing just that one. Not a big fan of clues where one letter is promoted or demoted for some reason (praps because I never get them?)

    On the plus side Rafa, Trinket, ancient greek and open air were well clued

    On balance, only so-so.

42. I agree with Crispy – didn’t find it ” just so.”
    Platter OK – reminded me of sixties DJs.
    Struck home was a bit dated I thought.
    What’s wrong with warm sake? Often had it in Japan.
    NZers would have gone Moa, Kiwi, Ostrich, aah!

43. Agree with all those unhappy with saki. When a word is introduced into another language it is respectful to pronounce it properly
    There’s not a Japanese national who pronounce sake any other way and never saki (kee)
    I saw ‘ Fujiyama’ as a crossword clue recently and it infuriated me as again, no Japanese would ever refer to fujisan as Fujiyama
    Found this week hard didn’t understand some of the reasoning
    Liked manatee rapt and arms akimbo best

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