Auracaria caused me a real headache solving this
Word to the wise, don’t accidentally headbutt one when walking the dog round the pub garden, they’re hard and sharp and gave me a bleeding skull. Anyway back to Everyman.
A bit of L(itter) removed from S(l)OBS – layabouts
A & TT – isle of Man road race & A & IN – through & the isle of ELBA reversed – heading west
O(ld) & PAL – friend
RAN – administered & A & GROUND – venue. Not personally convinced by the definition but someone may have heard of this meaning
A re-presented [ORIENTAL OAK]*
Two definitions
An abrupt [CEREMON(y)]* acting up.. There was CHALK DUST, this blogger is just the PITS!
No C(irca) – about – in RE(c)ORDER – instrument
CO – for firm twice & NUT – crazy
CONTRACTION – shrinking with the second C – circa – about – becoming a P – quiet. Some might quibble that Everyman’s used about=c twice now
A misbehaving [ARREST AUNT]* Bad, naughty auntie
The primary letter clue, you should be expecting these by now.
TE (lawrence) moved along in TESTAMENTS
PASS* out as Cleopatra did, well maybe more than pass out.
SPOILS – ruins and PORT – a (fortified) wine
Black – no light & N(umber) removed from WI(n)DOW – glass
“TO – A – T” – done perfectly & IE – that is – with S(campi) inserted
Well one anagram of [TEHRAN AZ]* is NAZARETH
NARROW – bigoted & ESCAPE – pastime. Rhymes with 11 D
Sounds like blew
Start of E(veryman) & regularly D(od)D(er)Y. Everyman likes to gives himself a name check
Violinists do both
Sounds like principles
SEW – stitch reversed – up in a down clue & T(ime) & IN & DIES. Well this bit has me stumped, I’ve thought about dies used for shaping things but remain unconvinced. What do you think?
RUN – stretch as in a theatre run & FREE – on the house
Hidden in deCOR ONE Tends
Alternate letters of bEdRoOmS. Could almost be seen as an all in one this one.
A & S(mall) & I(sland) & A
Thanks Everyman. That’s me done so over to you for your thoughts.
Lovely to see ANAGRAM at 5d. I seem to remember that there were a few similar clues over a year ago at three month intervals and we were expecting another last September but it never arrived.
I might be misremembering when they appeared but I did note them: ENID BLYTON / TINY BLONDE, ERIC CLAPTON /NARCOLEPTIC, TOM CRUISE / COSTUMIER and now there is TEHRAN A-Z / NAZARETH – which I don’t think is quite as good as the previous three.
Liked CONTRAPTION, BOW AND SCRAPE
Thanks Everyman and flashling
Thank you flashling for your interesting blog. Hope you’re not too bruised by your run-in with Auracaria.
WEST INDIES: peripheral creatives are indies, independents, outside the main stream. music, publishing, fashion etc.
Auracaria?
[paul b@3. LOL I frequently struggle with the spelling of Araucaria and confess to copying and pasting from flashing’s intro to get it right! Maybe flashling was telling us how his vision was affected? ]
Fav was MCENROE. Brilliant surface with very apt indicators, abrupt and acting up.
You cannot be serious.
Thanks for the blog, another very sound puzzle and I think the standard was just right.
I agree with PDM@2 for WEST INDIES , the actual IN for the clue is a bit clumsy.
STATEMENTS was a very neat clue. MCENROE took me far too long, I could not get the C in the right place.
ARAUCARIA is very hard to spell , and to bump into, I think of – song about gold vehicle.
I thought the initial reference to Araucaria was going to be about the random prize crossword that turned up on the app, but checking, that was 13/09. Sorry to hear about the injury.
I parsed WEST INDIES with independents/indies too – a big debate in the sewing community about using dressmaking patterns from Indies rather than the Big Four probably helped.
This was one of Everyman’s quicker solves for me.
Thank you to flashling and Everyman.
14D Peripheral creatives could refer to the music scene. (Indie bands)
Thank you to Everyman and flashling. I had two queries but paddymelon has helped me out with one. I did not see the connection between Indies and independents. Thank you. But I agree with flashling that ‘ran aground’ and ‘went to seed’ are rather different. The first indicates an abrupt end but the second a gradual one. Nevertheless, the clue clearly led us to ‘ran aground’.
Clearly the tree incident caused more damage than I thought. Oops
Sorry to hear about your bleeding skull, flashling.
This was a very enjoyable puzzle. My favourites were SPOILSPORT, STATEMENTS, CONTRAPTION, ANAGRAM (loi).
Thanks, both.
Good fun I thought. Thanks to E and F.
Excellent list keeping Fiona@1 😉
A commentator mused last weekend as to whether “Everyman has a policy of gradually stretching us until we’re ready for all the obscure devices that the midweek setters use on a regular basis.”
Everyman responded…
“That’s so pleasingly phrased! It’s a minor part of the ‘mission’ and one I try to do only when it seems fairly obvious what the entry must be, but yes. (Ditto for terminology you only see in crosswords, etc.)”
Sorry to be That Guy, but it’s Araucaria, not Auracaria.
Couldn’t parse STATEMENTS but fine.
I thought that one was harder than other recent ones, and couldn’t get MCENROE, but I did really enjoy the puzzle, which I did on my phone while travelling around. @Michelle, thanks for sharing those other examples of the anagrams, which are great. Good fun Everyman and Flashling. Thanks
Sorry, I meant @Fiona
What’s a TOASTIE? Sounds tasty, I’d like one now.
Nice puzzle, thanks to Everyman and flashling.
Kind of like a grilled sandwich in your parts, Valentine.
Don’t forget the geographic solution at 12ac.
Missed MCENROE, and didn’t parse WEST INDIES.
Mostly good puzzle but:
1) the nz paper printed “acing up” rather than “acting up” which made16A a lot.more ‘interesting’
2) the ‘trickery’ of 3A is stretching it to become frustrating for these solvers.
3) stretch = run is stretching it, but we are running with it, given we have no choice.
Failed on the stupid ‘anagram’ clue (it must be stupid if I didn’t get it) and its crosser McEnroe, the latter not helped by the typo here as has been noted.
Completed this in record time this (Sunday) morning despite last night’s French feast (onion soup, beef Bourgogne, crepes Suzette, Chateaneuf du Pape ). I think 14D works best with “indies” as peripheral musos. Bon chance of
Syndicated in New Zealand Herald a good replacement for departed Kropotkin