Everyman 4,010

50 comments on “Everyman 4,010”

1. Thank you flashling. I parsed MANDOLIN as the vegetable gadget. Collins gives stoner as noun, first entry: 1. a device for removing stones from fruit. So someone who uses a stoner might also use a mandolin. That one tickled me, imagining a mandolin player on marijuana.

2. Thanks, flashling for the blog!
   MANDOLIN
   Looks like a kitchen connection…
   ‘Stoner’ is one who stones (removes stones from fruits–among other meanings, this suits us most).
   A mandolin (a vegetable slicer) may be kept by this stoner. Does this make sense?
   (‘Stoner’ is also a device to remove seeds from fruits but that doesn’t fit in here).

3. Or a mandolin (a vegetable slicer) may be kept on the shelf/drawer by the side of a stoner (a stone-removing device).
   I think considering ‘stoner’ as a person who stones sounds better.

4. But that doesn’t explain musical . And there’s no question mark, I spent some time looking to see if there was also an instrument used in masonry, but no luck.

5. paddymelon@1
   Almost on the same path…
   prajna??? 🙂

6. Mandolin is a musical instrument. No issues there.

7. I parsed this to my satisfaction last week, and I think it’s just a double def. Musical instrument and something that may be kept by a stoner.

8. Yes

9. Lots of good clues this week, including PLANKTON, FANTASTIC MR FOX, PINATA, PRESERVED, LAUGHING STOCKS, MOPING, NAIVE. (That last one nearly made me miss a clue this week 🙂 ) Have to run. (I know it’s a Sunday but …… ) Looking forward to others’ picks.

10. Held up in the SW for a while by bunging in “seasick” without really thinking.

    Favourites: LAUGHING STOCKS, PLANKTON, CLAM UP, HITCHCOCK, MOPING

    Thanks Everyman and flashling

11. Thanks for the blog, I thought that this was very good and just the right standard, I agree with PDM and Fiona for favourites.
    MANDOLIN , like PDM I thought of stoning fruit but it is not really suitable for that. Perhaps it is some drug reference that is far too modern for me.

12. For MANDOLIN I took it that in a well organised kitchen the mandolin might be kept by (next to) the stoner. Whether or not that was the intention, it worked for me at the time. Also, the Rolling Stones used one and they were Stoners!
    Good fun, thanks to Everyman and Flashing.

13. Yep it’s just what you might call a double association … one between musos and dope smoking, the other between two kitchen implements.

14. GiF@13. This.

15. If all the comments so far are right and I see no reason to doubt them, then I don’t think it’s a great clue.
    Thanks to Flashling for the blog, and to everyone else for making me realise it wasn’t just me that went ‘Huh?’

16. Perhaps it is a comment on kitchen gadgets that are never used. A mandolin(e) and stoner can be replaced by one good, sharp knife.

17. Typical Everyman. Even more straightforward than some of his recent ones. I was held up for a while by IMMODESTIES – I saw how the clue worked but was looking for anagrams including P rather than D for Penny – I gave it a rest, came back to it and saw it immediately. Don’t understand the puzzlement about MANDOLIN – seems a perfectly adequate double definition (derivation of name for kitchen tool is apparently that the hand movement when using it is similar to that used in playing the musical instrument).
    Thanks both.

18. [Roz@16. And a good supply of sticking plasters if you’re anything like me]

19. Yes Roz@16. My mandolin (kitchen implement) is still in its box. As is the ukulele someone gave me. And the exercise gadgets and walking poles. But I have my father’s butcher’s knife and whetting stone, and they both work really well. 🙂

20. [ PDM @19 . I only stone plums, we have a Victoria tree, but just use a Kitchen Devil knife. I do not see the need for a mandolin, perhaps in a professional kitchen needing many things sliced precisely . Crispy @16 I have never used a mandolin but would fear cutting myself far more than when using a knife. ]

21. So it’s not just me on 7d then. Not really convinced by anything so far. Perhaps Everyman will pop in.

22. VENUS DE MILO provided some ‘armless amusement, so I would add to the favourites.

23. Petert LOL. Agree, brilliant clue. Anagrind shaped and anagrist soil mud even for the def SCULPTURE.

24. Mostly this was fun, but I didn’t get MANDOLIN either, assumed that it was written by a non-cook thinking that mandolins stoned fruit. I do have a slicing blade on my rarely used food-processor and have used it when I had the processor out for something else.

    Thank you to flashling and Everyman.

25. I’m with Crispy @ 15 on MANDOLIN.
    I came here eager to learn the connection between the stringed instrument and drug-use (I must have led a sheltered life) only to learn that the explanation is that two kitchen instruments may be kept next to each other on some shelf.
    Ah, right.

    Which is a shame, for otherwise I rather enjoyed this creation. Admittedly there were some blindingly obvious anagrams – but I’m happy not to be too taxed on a Sunday morning, I grinned at VENUS DE MILO & MOPING, and even the quasi-Spooner worked as a plausible expression both ways. (Which is far from the norm with those things)
    Hey ho.
    Thank you Everyman for the challenge, and Flashling for the blog

26. Enjoyable puzzle. Favourites: LAUGHING STOCKS, PLANKTON (loi).

    I wondered about how to parse 7d MANDOLIN – ‘may be kept by a stoner’. I agree with flashling’s comment @21.

    Thanks, both.

27. Mandolin took me a while, but I didn’t have any objections once I ‘got’ it. The one that I frowned at was HITCH=jerk, but the dictionary says it’s a synonym as in hitching up one’s trousers – although it could be painful if one jerked too much!

28. Fairly straightforward but enjoyable Everyman.

    I liked the wildcat in retreat, the outfit in warship, and the misapplied formats in children’s book. A mandolin can be used, I think, to slice fruit as well as vegetables, so I suppose the net result might be to stone them. However, maybe the suggestions above that it might be kept next to a stoner was perhaps what was intended?

    Thanks Everyman and flashling.

29. I liked this. My take on MANDOLIN was two kitchen tools nobody ever uses, hence they are kept together, chucked in a drawer with spare cutlery and that knife sharpener that never worked etc. I thought it quite witty, but there was a lot of thought to reach that conclusion.

30. There’s a mandolin on the clean side of our cheese grater, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stoner. Well, the kitchen implement type.

31. Thanks to Everyman for a fun challenge and to flashling for the blog. I could not parse MANDOLIN and hoped for enlightenment. What I later found, which is as tenuous as anything else I have seen, is that there is an album named ‘Stoner Mandolin’ by an artist called Rob Blivion. Link here. Anyone else got any better ideas?

32. Thx to all for comments, I’ll go with Cobbler@31 great link to ‘Stoner Mandolin”
    Thx also to Everyman for a fun puzzle and flashing for the blog.

33. [pdm @19, the butcher next to our corner shop in the ’50s had a pedal-operated stone grinding wheel, about 2 ft dia, the bottom of which pased through a little trough. Did your dad have one of those?]
    PS What is “This” @14?

34. @Cobbler I found that link too but thought that’s far too obscure for a Sunday Everyman.

35. No, I didn’t get MANDOLIN either. Keeping it on the shelf or in the drawer “by” the stoner seems likeliest, but it’s a bit of a stretch (and likely to make the drawer stick…). Liked LAUGHING STOCKS and IMMODESTIES.

36. ?I asked Everyman about the MANDOLIN clue and here is what he said…

    Me: “…is the second reference to both a stoner and a mandolin being kitchen implements and perhaps being kept next to each other?”

    AC: “Yes… first two words first definition; remainder second definition with reference to a collection incl. a melon baller & other lesser-used items.”

    I wasn’t expecting the melon baller! 🙂

37. All very Everymannish with the exception of the peculiar MANDOLIN.

38. Jay @36
    Thanks for the report from the horse’s mouth (as it were); I had thought that mandolin and stoner as batterie de cuisine was the most likely reference, and it seems I was right. However, in searching for other possible explanations, I came across a site mandolincafe.com, and their thread “Mandolin the gateway drug, which gives a tongue-in-cheek look at MAS, which at first I took to be Mandolin Addiction Syndrome, but, officially, the A is Acquisition.

39. gladys@35: That drawer is always stuck.

40. 23 minutes, and like everyone else I was baffled by MANDOLIN. My favourite was LAUGHING STOCKS.

41. I liked PLANKTON.
    Thank you for the loyal and valiant attempts to explain MANDOLIN.
    I think it’s a weak clue.

42. From one one hears about Sir Alfred, 13ac could be regarded as having an extended definition.

    I’m another who failed to parse 7dn (MANDOLIN), but now that it’s explained I’m perfectly satisfied by it.

    I thought there might be a fish called a PINCHARD, using PIN[t] rather than PIL[s] in 16dn, so if not for the check button I would have failed to solve this one completely. There seem to be roughly a million fish names, so I assumed this was one I’d simply never heard of, but I actually have heard of PILCHARD, so I should have gotten this clue.

43. I think stoner is a reference to Dylan from the Magic Roundabout.

44. We use our mandolin regularly, my wife makes a particularly excellent potato bake using it. It’s too big to fit in the drawer where our olive pitter lives.

    Pilchard took ages, held up with carsick.

45. Found this one tougher than usual, but got it all out without recourse to wildcard dictionaries.

    I am completely unconvinced by the explanations for “mandolin” — including Everyman’s!

46. IT was obvious that 19D was an anagram but I’ve never heard of pinata.

47. never heard of a pinata! Fantastic fun and not only for kids
    Great fun to make too I don’t understand the mandolin explanation at all but liked this puzzle today… took my mind off the election a little

48. Dreadful result in the NZ election; fantastic result in the rugby and kudos to Ireland for a fantastic game; and this crossword appeared far harder than usual largely due to our impaired state of mind. Loved HITCHCOCK

49. Not convinced about 7D.
    Liked 18A And as an ex-schoolmaster, liked 21A
    I was late to this one but delighted with both results in the election and rugby.
    Pinata was new to me too.

    Rob.

50. Terribly hard this one for us. Maybe too exhausted after thrashing Ireland in the RWC.
    but we finished, finally.

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