Now that there really is an entry-level crossword in The Observer on Sundays, Alan Connor can forget about making Everyman suitable for beginners. I found this one rather difficult and am not sure about three answers in the top left part, which are discussed below. It seems to me that they have to be, but parsing them has proved difficult. Maybe there is indeed something wrong with them and I am off the hook, but far more likely is that I’ve failed to grasp things properly. Anyway, I’ve entered answers and done a blog, with the suspicion that I shall have things properly explained to me.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (hidden, reversal, containment, etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | GYRATE |
Finally enjoy prize after good turn (6)
|
| g [enjo]y rate — g = good, rate = prize | ||
| 4 | ARMRESTS |
Perhaps clubs holding all that remains: hands seen at ends of these? (8)
|
| arms containing (holding) rest — arms = perhaps clubs (arms in the sense of weapons), rest = all that remains | ||
| 9 | INMATE |
Section of certain material one may wish to escape (6)
|
| Hidden in certaIN MATErial | ||
| 10 | ACAPULCO |
Somewhere in Mexico, a Catholic by cupola, trembling (8)
|
| a C (cupola)* — a = a, C = Catholic | ||
| 11 | GOLD MEDAL |
Good old crossword setter: lad’s flipping getting top award (4,5)
|
| g old me (lad)rev. — g = good, old = old, me = crossword setter — an opportunity for a self-referential clue | ||
| 13 | OTTER |
River creature getting closer in Cockney’s game (5)
|
| ” ‘otter” — Everyman likes the crossword cockney, whose aitches are always dropped — in the game of hide-and-seek one asks if one is getting closer to the object sought, and another word for this is ‘warm’, and if one’s getting very close one’s getting hot | ||
| 14 | PARACHUTE JUMP |
Leisure activity from which you may hope to be dropped? (9,4)
|
| CD I suppose — is it really a leisure activity? — it’s certainly not an activity of my leisure — I find it hard to believe that this is the answer — but it’s the only thing that fits, and dropping is part of it — how are you hoping to be dropped from a parachute jump? | ||
| 17 | PRIMES THE PUMP |
Esther shortly | dons formal footwear, makes timely investment (6,3,4)
|
| (Esthe[r]) in (prim pump) — prim = formal, pump = footwear, dons = put on, as in wearing or having outside | ||
| 20 | GAMMA |
After a month, publication rejected letter from Athens (5)
|
| (a m mag)rev. — a = a, m = month. mag(azine) = publication — in crosswords a letter from Athens is always (?) a Greek letter | ||
| 21 | OLD SCHOOL |
Traditionalists hold out |with loco beliefs in the end (3,6)
|
| (hold loco [belief]s)* | ||
| 23 | TOE-TO-TOE |
English books thrice rejected, embroiling English again in confrontation (3-2-3)
|
| (E OT OT OT)rev., and once you’ve done that you embroil another E — E = English, OT = books (Old Testament) | ||
| 24 | CANINE |
Dog tooth (6)
|
| 2 defs — another word for a dog, and a type of tooth — my guess is that since this is such a nice juxtaposition of the words it has been seen before, but no matter | ||
| 25 | SPINNEYS |
Secret agent’s drinking in pub by Earl’s woodland (8)
|
| spy’s containing, or drinking in, (inn E) — spy = secret agent, inn = pub, E = Earl | ||
| 26 | FEINTS |
Plays safe in t-shirts, to some extent (6)
|
| Hidden in saFE IN T-Shirts — I’m not very convinced that plays = feints; to feint is to make a move with the intention of deceiving someone, and Collins supports this and doesn’t really seem to have any overlap with ‘play’ | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | GOING APE |
Leave a fitness class, finding yourself off the deep end (5,3)
|
| going a P.E. — going = leave (?? — why don’t we have ‘leaving’?) a = a, P.E. = Physical Education = fitness class — going ape is becoming very angry or going off the deep end | ||
| 2 | RAMBLER |
One with a compass – point’s lost by him? (7)
|
| 2 defs: a rambler has (?) a compass to help with orientatation, and a rambler is someone who rambles on in their speech, missing the point | ||
| 3 | TOTEM |
Drink the writer raised, it honours a family (5)
|
| tot (me)rev. — tot = drink, me = the writer. Another chance for a self-referential clue that wasn’t taken | ||
| 5 | RECOLLECTED |
Looked back on scripture lessons: cool! (11)
|
| R.E. collected — R.E. (Religious Education) = scripture lessons, collected = cool (as in cool, calm and collected) | ||
| 6 | REPRODUCE |
Copy badly executed procedure (9)
|
| *(procedure) — one of Everyman’s trademark full anagrams | ||
| 7 | SPLIT UP |
Part of Croatian city on high (5,2)
|
| Split up — Split is the Croatian city, up = high — if lovers split up they part | ||
| 8 | SCOURS |
Hunts, in scrubs (6)
|
| 2 defs — to scour a place is to hunt for something in that place, and scrub = scour (a saucepan, for example) | ||
| 12 | DEUTERONOMY |
Casting out money and Red Book (11)
|
| *(out money Red) — Deuteronomy is a book of the Bible — another complete anagram | ||
| 15 | CHINATOWN |
Punch a tenor, getting personal in area with many restaurants (9)
|
| chin a T own — chin = punch, a = a, T = tenor, own = personal — this is Chinatown in London: I would imagine that there are Chinatowns all over the world, but I can’t find out since as soon as I click on ‘Chinatown’ in my search engine it reverts to ‘Chinatown London’ | ||
| 16 | SPELLERS |
Those intoning M-A-G-I-C? (8)
|
| An &lit. I think — if you’re intoning these letters you may (hence the question mark) be casting a spell, and if you’re spelling out these letters you’re spelling the word ‘magic’ | ||
| 17 | POMPEII |
Grandeur that is retrograde, Everyman’s a tragic relic of former times (7)
|
| pomp (ie)rev. I — pomp = grandeur, ie = id est = that is, I = Everyman — now this is the real self-referential clue | ||
| 18 | UTOPIAN |
Perfect, working out pain (7)
|
| *(out pain) — another complete anagram | ||
| 19 | AGATES |
Ancient Greece’s artisanal trinkets’ expensive stones, primarily? (6)
|
| The first letters clue that is a regular feature of these crosswords — artisanal? — does Everyman know something about agates that I don’t know? | ||
| 22 | CRANE |
Bird that’s seen on building site (5)
|
| 2 defs — a bird, and in another sense something you see on a building site |
I agree about FEINT. I really couldn’t see how it fit with “play”, and it was my LOI. It took me a week; I only saw it buried in the wordplay when I came back to check the answers today.
I can see how FEINT could fit with play. The phrase ‘I’ve been played’ is used when someone has deceived you. And playing a part is an act of deception or artifice.
I missed GOING APE and ARMRESTS this week, and couldn’t parse TOE-TO-TOE even though I worked out that’s what the answer must be.
Play is the first synonym of feint here https://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=feint&title=thes and seemed fine to me.
Thank you John. No problem with FEINT= play. It’s a move in chess, amongst other things.
PARACHUTE JUMP ok by me as a leisure activity, often in tandem. For some older people it’s on their bucket list …. and they survive! My Dad was prevented from joining the paratroopers in the war as he was the eldest son and his mother would have had to give permission, which she didn’t want to do. So he settled for bungee jumping instead.
Yeah, CHINATOWNs everywhere, including in Sydney, with many restaurants.
GOING APE, I parsed leave as a noun, a going.
SPINNEYS was new to me, but clear wordplay.
I liked the potential escapee INMATE, and the RAMBLER.
GOING APE
GOING & leave both have the meaning of a farewell/departure but I don’t how to use them interchangeably in a sentence.
PARACHUTE JUMP
Whether it’s a leisure activity or not, it’s subjective.
However, the ‘from which’ part seems to work if we reading it as “P JUMP is something from which what we expect is ‘to be dropped (of course safely)’”
FEINTS
Seems a bit indirect.
Top faves: PRIMES THE PUMP and SPELLERS.
Thanks both!
Crossed pdm@4. Sorry.
If we read it as*
Maybe you’d hope to be dropped from having to do it 😉 …
😄
This was very difficult for me, struggled to get “Chinatown” and “Primes the Pump” (I am not familiar with this term), but I liked some of the surfaces.
Didn’t get “Feints” so DNF…it seems obvious to me now, but at the time, with all the crossers, couldn’t get “Tennis” out of my head, so left it and forgot to go back.
Thank you to Everyman and to John for the blog, (especially for parsing “Otter”).
I was happy with FEINT as a deceptive play or part play. I agree leaving would have been better than leave. Apart from anything else it would make it slightly more beginner friendly and I think Everyman should at least pitch it that way. I think the objections to PARACHUTE JUMP are more than a little pedantic. The surface reads like a joke after all.
Thanks both.
I don’t remember this too well but I think I too found it more difficult than usual.
The Quiptic is supposed to be entry level but, possibly because it is set by different setters, it does vary in difficulty – it was not uncommon for the comments in the Guardian blogs and here to point out that the quiptic was more difficult than that Monday’s cryptic.
I will be disappointed if the Everyman ceases to be Everyman (and thus for everyone and good especially for those learning). It was the first crossword I was regularly able to complete without aids and I liked the consistency of standard.
My favourites: TOE-TO-TOE, PRIMES THE PUMP, POMPEII
Thanks Everyman and John
Like John, I was unsure about 1d GOING = leave unless going is taken as a noun that means departure (like paddymelon) but I can’t think of any examples of how to use it.
I am fine with parachute jumping being classed as a leisure activity or hobby. There are plenty of activities and hobbies that I do not want to take part in but they are still something that (other) people do in their leisure time.
New for me: PRIMES THE PUMP; CHIN = punch.
Thanks, both.
I found this very difficult . Got there in the end but only with much googling, anagram helpers and hair-tearing. I also had trouble with parachute jump as a leisure activity. Maybe it’s a generational thing – I’m in my seventies and parachute jumps are inextricably linked with forays behind enemy lines or escaping a burning plane during wartime. I’m sure for my kids it’s more a thing you do for fun or to tick off your bucket list.
I do hope Everyman returns to more achievable levels – this week’s seems a lot better.
Thanks for the blog, I think PARACHUTE JUMP is more of a leisure activity these days but the wording of the clue is poor, I want to do a jump with dolphins whilst writing my first novel .
I agree totally with the points made by Fiona @11 , also the Quiptic is not in the paper and some people will not do crosswords online. Perhaps ruining the Everyman is a ploy to get people to do the Quiptic so they can harvest everyone’s data.
According to a recent Guardian crossword blog, written by Alan Connor, the Everyman setter, he still sees the Everyman as a gentle crossword:
“And here’s a suggestion for new solvers. …. Sundays also offer the Observer’s Everyman, introduced in 1945 because the paper’s other puzzle is deliberately and astonishingly challenging. The Everyman has had only six setters; I am the sixth and I like to keep things gentle and solvers satisfied.”
I’m solving the current crop in the same times that I’m solving the weekly Cryptics, so colour me unconvinced.
London’s CHINATOWN used to be in Limehouse, there’s a dragon on a pole marking the area now, and there are also Chinatowns in Liverpool and Newcastle, which I’ve visited, so I suspect most ports.
Thank you to John and Everyman.
Agree with comments made by John and and Fiona and Roz and Shanne. I think Alan Connor may have moved a bit too fast and far. The introduction of the new Quick Cryptic has been well-received, but there are now 3 entry/low-medium level crosswords on the weekend, and with the Prize getting easier lately that makes 4. They’re all becoming a bit of blur, and it’s upsetting experienced solvers who are looking for more challenging crosswords, especially on the weekend, as well as traditional solvers of the Everyman, which seems to be getting more difficult. I think the editor may have to go for a ”reset”.
Chinatown in Manchester as well , we go every year for the New Year parades.
Hard for me to really comment on Everyman difficulty but I know quite a few people who have Everyman as their only puzzle for the week and they are very fed up .
Sorry PDM , I missed you @ 16 , the tradition for Everyman was that it would stay the same , not gradually challenge solvers more . As solvers get better they have many puzzles to move on to , Fiona here is a classic case. The Guardian QC is a great idea and Shanne does a wonderful blog but I suspect most solvers never look at blogs for the extra help.
I never see the Quiptic so I cannot comment, but I remember the Guardian having two good, basic puzzles nearly every week , Rufus, Custos Janus , Quantum etc. Most weeks now we get one or none. I would like to see Carpathian perhaps alternate with Vulcan on a Monday.
Thank you for all your comments. I had difficulty with the left hand corner as well. This can put-off beginners and less confident solvers. One across and one down were my last in. Not being convinced with GOING held me up with GYRATE. Stupidly, I could not recall the phrase GOING APE. Thank you again.
[If anyone is looking for an accessible crossword this morning, Vigo/Carpathian is in the Independent – very old Everyman-ish.]
[ Shanne@20 I have not seen much of Carpathian but the puzzles I have seen are perfect for newer solvers and very well set. Just right for Everyman or Monday Guardian . ]
I think FEINTS and plays are nouns here, not verbs.
I have rarely found an Everyman “entry-level” since Mr. O’Connor has been responsible for it – I stopped doing it altogether for a while. It may be a wavelength thing, because I find some of the supposedly harder setters easier, but I see I’m not alone.
Hmmm. Everyman is definitely changing. When I started crossword my Father recommended Telelegraph which was gentler than other broadsheets and Everyman which was always fair and never had contentious solutions. It does not feel as if this is the case with Everyman now.
And Canine is just a straight clue – very little cryptic about it
I’m puzzled by the blog suggestion that 11 is an opportunity for a self-referential clue – it is self-referential isn’t it?
I found this tough but enjoyable, which is how Everyman often seems to me these days, but this was perhaps a bit too gristly.
I also found this on the harder side of Everyman, and I agree with the leave=GOING comments elsewhere – this held me up in the NW for a while. Even taking both as nouns (as per pdm@4), I can’t come up with any sentence where the two could be substituted.
Favourites were TOE-TO-TOE (which I wrote in first and parsed later, with a big smile) and SPELLERS which elicited a laugh.
I had the same reservations about GOING.
Stuck with PRIMES THE PUMP. Complete otherwise, therefore had all the crossers but never heard of the phrase.
Finished it all right, but it did take quite some time. Leave for GOING was rather jarring, and I felt ACAPULCO’s surface could be easily enhanced by simply rehashing it to A Catholic by cupola trembling somewhere in Mexico. Collins actually features “play” (noun) synonymous to FEINT in its Thesaurus. PARACHUTE JUMP was another one “ungettable” by itself, even with dropped hinting at JUMP, but as leisure activity you’d rather avoid (= be dropped from) it’s definitely valid. Favourites were many again, GYRATE, ARMRESTS, GOLD MEDAL, TOE-TO-TOE, POMPEII.
Thank you, Everyman and John
Squeaked in just under the half hour, but glad to be reassured it’s getting harder, not me getting worse!
PRIMES THE PUMP, TOE-TO-TOE and DEUTERONOMY were all ticks, but my favourite was POMPEII – delightful!
Good puzzle where I scrawled ‘a bit difficult’, as it seems others found it.
I can’t see the objections to PARACHUTE JUMP as a leisure activity. At least in the UK it’s often done for charity. I liked the wordplay in PRIMES THE PUMP, the nicely hidden FEINT, and the good anagram for DEUTERONOMY.
Thanks Everyman and John.
Defeated by RAMBLER. I came here particularly to see how to parse it. There I was looking for points of the compass and whatnot… Fail.
This wasn’t the easiest Everyman, but it was OK, whereas I’m still doing the week before’s which really is difficult. I normally reckon to finish the Everyman, Quiptic, Monday Cryptic and some of the week’s others on a random basis unless they are set by Paul in which case I don’t bother wasting my time.
Just a (whimsical?) thought… if I signed up to do a parachute jump, I might well have second thoughts and “hope to be dropped” from the plans.
I also struggled with the three in the top left.
For 2d I was looking in vain for a solution like TUMBLER which had lost a compass point from STUMBLER.
Enjoyed “spellers” once I spotted it.
For 15d I’m surprised no one has mentioned San Francisco and the eponymous 1974 movie with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.
Thanks Everyman for the challenge and John for the blog.
I enjoyed this puzzle even if it was a little chewy. I needed to go back for a second look, to be able to finish it. Last in DEUTERONOMY and the unfamiliar SPINNEYS, not a word used in Oz.
Being quite new to the Guardian’s puzzles, I have few pre-conceptions about level of difficulty but appreciate the range of brilliant setters and I take them as they come.
Likes – SPELLERS, RAMBLER, TOE-TO-TOE, POMPEII, PRIMES THE PUMP.
Thanks Everyman and John.
I was thrown for a while by SPINNEYS because if “woodland” is the definition, I couldn’t see how a plural of SPINNEY could be the answer. Shouldn’t the definition have been “woodlands” or have I misunderstood something?
Fabius@35, I too thought of SPINNEY right away, but didn’t enter it because I couldn’t see the justification for pluralizing it.
I enjoyed this, as I do all of Alan’s Everyman crosswords. 17d POMPEII was a brilliant self-referential clue. I wonder if the complaints arise because people haven’t got used to his style yet. I recall that there were lots of complaints about his predecessor at first, but they abated over time. Perhaps we are a bit resistant to change.
Thanks Everyman and John for the Sunday fun.
In the US, the best-known CHINATOWNs are the large one in San Francisco and the one in lower Manhattan. In both places, the original first- and second-genetation Asian immigrants are getting priced out of the neighborhood, but the restaurants still remain. Here in Chicago, Chinatown is on the near south side, just north of the White Sox’ park (at the Cermak/Chinatown el stop, fancy that) and plenty of Asians still live there. I would imagine Chinatowns are larger here than in Britain, since our East Asian community is also larger.
I think what’s going on with the difficulty level of these puzzles is that Mr. Connor is simply getting more creative, and it’s hard for him to gauge how difficult the puzzles thereby wind up being.
[Worth noting. Chicago also has a Koreatown (take the Brown Line all the way to the end) and a Little Saigon (at the Argyle stop on the Red Line). Both neighborhoods also boast their share of Chinese places. Also, if I recall correctly, Washington DC also has a transit stop named after its Chinatown, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to that one. Also the one in LA, memorialized in film: “Forget it Jake–it’s Chinatown.”]
PRIMES THE PUMP – is a prim pump a thing? Dunno. Is “Primes the pump” a thing? Apparently so. This was tricky.
GOLD MEDAL – “old” = “old” ?!
New to me: SHINNEYS
Overall: top left corner was hard to get a toe hold in. For example: GYRATE – Not unlike “ration” in Quick Cryptic #2 last week, I couldn’t see past “prize” as a noun for quite a while. Is Everyman getting harder?
No stand out made me really smile clue, unusually.
Sorry, got it now.
Prim = formal; and Pump = footwear.
PRIMES THE PUMP = another new to me, then.
Zihuatanejo: hand-operated water pumps of a certain design required that you add a little water back into them (to expel the air) before they could pull any water out of the well. This is the literal meaning of priming the pump. The figurative meaning–a small, well-placed investment in order to reap a larger return–followed from that, and is now by far the more common meaning of the phrase.
LIke Fabius and Cellomaniac, I wondered about the singular / plural discrepancy in 25ac. Not the worst error in the world, but it could have been so easily fixed, as Fabius says, by adding an s to the last word of the clue.
I didn’t know about “chin” meaning “punch”.
I can add Boston to the list of Chinatowns. It’s much smaller than New York’s, San Francisco’s, or London’s, but it has some good restaurants, or at least it did when last I was there.
[If you’re ever in San Francisco’s Chinatown, you’re right near this plaque, which has always amused me, as it contains no indication that the event it commemorates is fictional. Sorry if I’ve spoiled this work, but it is almost 100 years old, so you’ve had plenty of time to read / see it by now.]
I have enjoyed hundreds of Everyman crosswords over the years. Sadly I shall be signing off from them, and all the other Guardian puzzles, as the dedicated app closes down today. No idea why, but there’s the rub. Thank you to all the bloggers, commenters and setters who have provided so much entertainment over the years.
I couldn’t complete this one but still had fun trying. A question to the Everyman veterans here: Is this the normal difficulty level for Everyman? And, sorry if this is a stupid question, but why is Spinneys plural when the definition is seemingly singular? Thanks so much John
Definitely more searching, and l liked 26ac but feint is a NOUN.
24ac not cryptic!!
From the cold Epsom in Auckland.
Rob.
Too hard, a lot of answers that I got but could not parse, and a lot of bad clue construction — clues that didn’t really work.
(Others have pointed these out.)
Not the easiest Everyman, but I believe the criticisms are unfair. There are only a couple of contentious clues, and I’m not convinced either of them is unfair. Play can also be a noun, as in “to make a play”. Parachute Jump is a very clever joke – “dropped” is doing double-duty in both a literal (if you want to do the jump you hope to be dropped from the plane) and figurative (most of us would hope to be relieved of the obligation to do the jump) sense. I think it’s the best and most consistent cryptic we have access to in print in NZ, and I look forward to the next one as soon as I finish it.
Hard. Didn’t get Pompei or Primes. Why is rate = prize?
Barrie, to rate something = to think it’s good = to prize it.
John, your summation of this puzzle at the start reflects my own thoughts exactly.
I was very unsure of the top left, but if you sqint a bit and close one eye, you can make it work.
Rob, move to Howick, it’s not cold here!
I have not enjoyed these lately and feel quite deprived of my usual Sunday (being ‘down under’) morning pleasure in the Everyman, which used to feel just the right balance of difficult and delightful.
Duane, to rate something is to see it as having high quality, to prize something is to desire it.
I agree with Barrie. The clue is loose.
Stumbled over Rambler but did the rest.
We should expect loose clues these days.
Expect, sadly, yes. Accept, no.