I was wondering whether I would be able to blog this when I solved it last Sunday but we seem to up again. I’ll be away and unable to fix up any errors when this is published.
The usual suspects are here but I have an issue with 18a – I can’t really make it work in my mind, perhaps I’m missing something obvious. I found this on the tricky side for an Everyman, how about you?
ACROSS
1. Demands and obtains kiss in ultimately lamentable performances (6)
EXACTS
End of (lamentabl)E & X – kiss & ACTS – performances
4. The red flag or The Stars and Stripes Forever? (8)
STANDARD
Two definitions, one a flag, one a song
9. Toiler you picture inputting something thunderously, primarily? (6)
TYPIST
10. Celebrated audibly in multiple flights (8)
STOREYED
Sounds like storyed – celebrated
11. Victorian cuisine: scoff a kind of dove, very excited (4,6,4)
MOCK TURTLE SOUP
MOCK – scoff & TURLTE (dove) & SO – very & UP – excited
13. ‘Athirst’ regularly rejected, being archaic: that’s agreed (3)
TIS
Alternate letters of aThIrSt
15. Brigade, the unruly kind (3-7)
BIG HEARTED
18. Endlessly devour exotic tea that’s excellent (10)
CONSUMMATE
I seems to be missing something here. I see CONSUM(e) – most of devour & an exotic TEA* but there’s then an M missing
19. English getting runs? One, for a long stretch (3)
ERA
E(nglish) & R(uns) & A – one
20. Out of Sellotape now, all of a sudden (2,3,4,5)
AT ONE FELL SWOOP
24. Alpinist’s regrettable lack of control (8)
TAILSPIN
25. Socialist in Caracas: Trotskyist? (6)
CASTRO
Hidden in caraCAS TROtskyist
26. An absent-minded shopper might be this vacant (8)
LISTLESS
Double def cum cryptic def & def
27. Read third letter aloud depicting Biblical impediment (3,3)
RED SEA
Sounds like READ & the letter C
DOWN
1. Guess teatime’s off? (8)
ESTIMATE
2. When computer’s overwhelming Everyman’s a kind of jelly (5)
ASPIC
AS – when & I – Everyman inside PC – computer
3. Cricket match on TV: fourth of batsmen in experimental gear (4,5)
TEST TUBES
TEST – cricket match & TUBE – television & fourth letter of (bat)S(men)
5. Blockbuster, tall tale with orc, rebooted (5,6)
TOTAL RECALL
A rebooted [TALL TALE ORC]*
6. Invaders laying waste to Australian navy: they’re expected (5)
NORMS
A(ustralian) N(avy) removed from NORM(an)S – invaders
7. See our way to resort? Don’t worry (2,3,4)
AS YOU WERE
A re-sorted [SEE OUR WAY]*
8. Two posters stuck up displaying avant-garde art (4)
DADA
AD – poster twice reversed – see DADA
12. Music and cakes for guttersnipes (11)
RAGAMUFFINS
RAGA – music & MUFFINS – cakes
14. Charmers, ones that are often fruity (9)
SMOOTHIES
16. Once again enthral, seeing cabbages pruned and half of fragrant sprigs (2-7)
RE-ENSLAVE
A pruned (g)REENS – cabbage say & half of LAVE(nder)
17. Chart with an old record climbing: it’s Spanish (8)
PAMPLONA
AN & O(ld) & LP – record & MAP – chart all reversed.
21. A plan’s arranged, not initially paying through the nose (5)
NASAL
P(aying) removed from [A (p)LANS]* arranged
22. Swears, finding piece of haggis in porridge earlier (5)
OATHS
A bit of H(aggis) in OATS
23. To some extent get along with other people (2,2)
ET AL
Flashling, the exotic tea is MATE. This caught be out too.
Thankyou Paul. I have just looked it up. It’s not tea though but a herbal infusion,
I think herb tea = herbal infusion so that’s fair. Mate seems to be on the tea list at most cafes these days.
I have never heard of MATE and STOREYED is a strange word
Favourites included: MOCK TURTLE SOUP, LISTLESS, RE-ENSLAVE, OATHS
Did not get NORMS
Thanks Everyman and flashling
Hello from a rather warm already Corfu. Mate is annoying as I’ve put it in another blog recently. Well I was in a rush to blog. Oh well. Thanks to those pointing it out
Thanks for the blog, I agree with Paul@1 , our South American students drink MATE and they call it tea. Found this pretty good overall, TAILSPIN and ESTIMATE for Jay’s list .
Not sure that PAMPLONA quite works , MAP PLONA or PLONA PAM are possible. I know that “with” can mean in either order but care is need when things are reversed.
Yes I did find this trickier than usual, especially RE-ENSLAVE. I just didn’t twig to the pruned cabbages (!?) and fragrant sprigs (half of what?).
I liked Everyman’s joke in the self-referential ASPIC. He seemed to have a bit of a foodie thing going on in several clues.
Thanks Flashling
For 10ac it goes without saying that storeyed sounds like storeyed
Surely you meant sounds like storied = celebrated ?
I could not parse 16d – apart from [g]REENS = cabbages pruned.
I have heard of maté tea but I have never tried drinking it.
Thanks, both.
I found this a slower solve than the previous week’s, but I often find the Everyman alternates in difficulty.
NORMS was my last one in, but often I find these subtraction clues difficult.
Thank you to flashling and Everyman.
Not sure about 4ac. To me (and Chambers) a standard is a piece of popular music which, unlike most, has retained its popularity over the years. I am not sure that national anthems fit that definition; they get played whether or not they are popular!
Thanks both, and all above for the explanation of mate (we have some so should have realised). I must admit I initially ‘justified’ mate as exotic tea = china tea and china plate mate as rhyming slang for tea, and then moved on without too much thought.
Sorry meant china plate mate…
[While we don’t mention today’s Everyman, he just fessed up on the Guardian Friday/weekend blog. We’ll hold that over (him) until next week here, but he has got in early, to his credit.]
Rich @11. “Stars And Stripes Forever” isn’t the national anthem. That’s “The Star Spangled Banner”. “… Forever” is a Sousa marching band number.
[For people who haven’t done today’s Everyman, one of the clues has now been updated, so disregard me@14.]
[ Thanks PDM @14,16 I thought it was just me. I will not be able to use the update but should not matter ]
Agree with Crispy @15 Stars and Stripes Forever is a brass band standard .
[Thanks PDM I was using the paper version and could not see how the clue worked. Went online and problem solved.]
MATE (pronounced mah-te) wasn’t a problem as I’ve lived in South America. It’s most popular in Argentina and Uruguay and taken with a metal straw. Chambers allows ‘the leaves of any plant infused as a beverage’ so it does count.
I didn’t much like 16d. Think of some vegetable and some fragrant plant, chop bits off them and join together?
Why ‘earlier’ in 22d?
Poc@19 before it was porridge (earlier) it was oats.
Stars And Stripes Forever isn’t the US national anthem, but it is the official US marching tune, so not far behind.
Thank you. I was worried about the disappearance of fifteen squared too. And I would not have understood a couple of these without you. Especially 16d.
@Adrian #8 err yes indeed. Glad you spotted the err umm deliberate mistake 🙂
I liked the archaic athirst as the basis for TIS.
Query about the grammar in OATHS for SWEARS. I thought someone would bring it up or I must be wrong but I can’t find online a verb/verb noun/noun equivalence.
6d and 16d are the worst kind of clues for me. I’d be interested to know how many people actually worked them out, as opposed to figuring out what they must be and then fighting to parse. Initials never cease to confound me as well. The most surprising words are apparently meant to be known to all by single letters.
@Bmo yes often the only way is to guess the answer and back justify. Exactly what I did for those two.
Didn’t remember that Normans were invaders — really should reread 1066 and All That.
I now know that Stars and Stripes Forever has lyrics, but I’ve never heard anybody sing them. As far as real life goes, Stars and Stripes Forever is a mrach, played in parades.
MATE as tea is South American, short for “yerba mate,” and pronounced “mah=tay.” It’s traditionally drunk from a small (lemon-sized, say) gourd with a tube stuck in one side.(I have a couple, gifts from an Argentiean neighbor.) It has more caffeine than coffee, and is a common pick-me-up in its homeland.
Thanks, Everyman and flashling.
Pm@24, Chambers has Swear (noun) 3. An oath (archaic)
Is there a reason regrettably is an anagram indicator? Why does something being regrettable suggest movement or change.
I had the same query as Roz @6 with 17dn (PAMPLONA). We have to tread “with” as allowing us to join the parts in either order (that is, that “A with B” can mean BA as well as AB), and then reverse the whole. I think that’s OK, but it does seem convoluted for an Everyman.
I also wondered about the seeming part-of-speech mismatch in 22dn, but as Jay @28 says, it’s in Chambers, so it’s OK.
I carelessly wrote IN ONE FELL SWOOP for 20ac. Google NGram confirms my feeling that that’s by far the more common form for the expression, but of course the anagram fodder would have set me straight if I’d bothered to check, so I have no one to blame but myself.
I agree with those who found this unusually tricky for an Everyman.
Eddie @29, when you see something that’s all a wreck, you might say that it’s regrettable. It’s a stretch from other more obvious anagram indicators like “awful.”
Valentine @27: surely you’ve heard the joke version, “Be kind to your web-footed friends / For a duck may be somebody’s mother / Be kind to your friends in the swamp / Where the weather is very very damp…”
Thanks Jay@28. Have never heard ‘swear’ as a noun. I was wondering what verb goes with it. Found it on britannica dictionary as mostly US. ‘say’ a swear. Whodathunkit?
@paddymelon @jay
Chambers may think it’s archaic but a podcaster I listen to (The Allusionist) will warn you if “the upcoming episode contains three category 2 swears” for example.
Mind you, this is a podcast about language so she might well be using archaic terms!
mrpenny@31
[These are the words I remember
be kind to your web-footed friends
for a duck may be somebody’s mother
who lives all alone in a swamp
where it’s always cold and damp]
mrpenney@31 I’ve certainly sung the web-footed friends song, but by me that doesn’t make “Stars and Stripes Forever” a song, just an instrumental piece that somebody set words to after the fact. I wouldn’t call Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony a song either, even though the tune can be sung to the words, “This is the symphony/ That Schubert wrote and never finished.” A semi-serious answer to your probably semi-serious point.
I learned the second two lines as ‘
Be kind to the gentleman of the swamp,
He’s a dilly through and through …
You may think that this is the end
Well it isn’t, there’s another chorus coming …
(Repeated over and over until the final final line, wjich is
“Well, it is!”
Missed NORMS. My favourites were MOCK TURTLE SOUP and PAMPLONA.
Agree this was at the harder end of Everyman. Thought NORMS and SMOOTHIES both a a bit weak, but I liked STOREYED, CONSUMMATE and LISTLESS.
Definitely more trying this time round from NZ -mate was new to me.
And pamplona!
Rob
Found this puzzle very difficult; like others, I did not get “norms”. Using “swear” as a noun is very obscure.
I didn’t like NORMS.
The Australian Navy is the RAN not the AN.
The clue might have made some sense if it had been the AN laying waste to the invaders.
As it was only got it from N-R-S,
I have oats for breakfast so it was easy to find. I thought it was OATH as a verb and maybe an Americanism.
Oh dear did not complete! Failed to get STOREYED and RE-ENSLAVE; much harder than last week. Not sure why so many complaints about OATHS and STANDARD? Those were two of our first ones in. Thanks all!
This was a good puzzle.
Re enslave took a while – did not work out why but hey, you need to get the answer.
And we got the lot. Roll on spring and the rugby world cup.