What is now the usual Everyman, with a few tricky clues, but everything sound so far as I could see. Rather too many CDs for my liking. The rhyming pair is highlighted, as are the first letters clue and the self-referential clue.
Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (homophones, hidden, anagram, etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PERMISSIVE |
A letter is lenient (10)
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per missive — per = a (as in one per day/one a day), missive = letter |
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| 6 | ESAU |
Biblical character in thesaurus (4)
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Hidden in thESAUrus |
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| 9 | ADMISSIONS |
University department in which things may be granted? (10)
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CD relying on the facts that a university has an admissions department, and also that if you make admissions you grant the truth of things |
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| 10 | MOOD |
Atmosphere – ruination – that’s regressive (4)
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(doom)rev. — doom = ruination — if ‘that’s’ is deemed to be a demonstrative pronoun then it’s part of the indicator |
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| 12 | SCHOOL DINNER |
Food for the young fish initially diving deep (6,6)
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school d[iving] inner — school = fish, inner = deep |
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| 15 | ARRESTS |
Seizes chair’s comfortable features (not masculine) (7)
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ar[m]rests — armrests = chair’s comfortable features, m = masculine |
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| 16 | ATHEIST |
I refuse to believe in a model bank robbery (7)
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a T heist — a = a, T = model (model T Ford, a crossword regular), heist = bank robbery |
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| 17 | THWARTS |
Blocks two-thirds of the toady protuberances (7)
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th[e] warts — the = the and two-thirds of it is th, warts = toady protuberances |
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| 19 | RONALDO |
Trembling, drool about new American football star (7)
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*(drool) round (n A) — n = new, A = American — nice misdirection, because I was afraid I was going to have to look at a list of American football stars — Ronaldo is an ageing but in the past very great Portuguese and Manchester United soccer player — [or perhaps an arguably even greater Brazilian] |
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| 20 | MONEY-SPINNER |
What makes … what makes the world go round … go round? (5-7)
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money spinner — money = what makes the world go round, and if money is spun then fancifully it’s a money-spinner — I’m a bit unsure what the definition is; perhaps it’s a CD of sorts |
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| 23 | RAPT |
Gripped in booby trap (4)
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*(trap) — booby the rather unusual anagram indicator: it isn’t given as a verb or an adjective in either Collins or Chambers. Evidently Everyman is “adjectiving” a noun |
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| 24 | STROBE LAMP |
More than one character in finest robe lampooned, being flash here (6,4)
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Hidden in fineST ROBE LAMPooned |
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| 25 | ACNE |
Complaint heard in E. London, somewhere in E. London (4)
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“‘ackney” — ‘heard in E. London’ is an indication that you might hear this in East London, and Hackney is somewhere in East London |
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| 26 | GRAND TOTAL |
A monkey and 20 ponies? (5,5)
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Another CD: a monkey is slang for £500 and a pony for £25, so £500 + 20 x £25 = £1000, which is a grand |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PEAL |
Ring? Strip (you made out) (4)
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“peel” — peel = strip, the homophone indicator being ‘(you made out)’ |
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| 2 | ROME |
Where one inevitably ends up emulating the locals? (4)
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Yet another CD based on the two expressions ‘All roads lead to Rome’ and ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’. |
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| 3 | INSECT SPRAYS |
Part of religious group, saint prays for means of repelling creepy-crawlies (6,6)
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in sect s prays — in sect = part of religious group, s = saint, prays = prays |
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| 4 | SLIP-ONS |
Some laceless items, podalically oriented – not starchy, principally? (4-3)
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The first letters &lit. clue, which I was very slow to see, partly because I didn’t know what ‘podalically’ meant — it isn’t in Collins |
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| 5 | VANILLA |
Nondescript vehicle Everyman will advocate at the outset (7)
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van I’ll a[dvocate] — van = vehicle, I’ll = Everyman will — the self-referential clue |
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| 7 | SPOONBILLS |
Nestle with William’s feathered friends (10)
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spoon Bill’s — spoon = nestle, Bill’s = William’s |
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| 8 | UNDERSTOOD |
I see below rose (10)
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under stood — under = below, stood = rose (got up) |
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| 11 | HIGH-INTEREST |
Like attractive accounts when entire thigh’s displayed (4-8)
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(entire thigh’s)* — like attractive bank or building society accounts |
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| 13 | SANTA MARIA |
A Samaritan adrift in Atlantic ship (5,5)
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(A Samaritan)* — The Santa Maria was one of the ships used by Columbus in his Atlantic crossing in 1492 |
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| 14 | DRAWING PIN |
Alluring security measure that keeps paper in place (7,3)
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drawing PIN — drawing = alluring, PIN = personal identification number |
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| 18 | ST PETER |
Doorman who might give you hell? (2,5)
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Yet yet another CD — St Peter was the doorman at the gates of |
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| 19 | RUN-DOWN |
Shabby slate (3-4)
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2 defs — if something is run-down it’s shabby, and to slate someone is to run them down |
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| 21 | MART |
Take public transport up to find shopping centre (4)
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(tram)rev. — tram = public transport |
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| 22 | OPAL |
Gemstone? It’s love, mate (4)
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0 pal — 0 = love, pal = mate |
Thanks John.. I read ADMISSIONS as a double definition, and didn’t notice the question mark. It would seem that Everyman intended it as a cryptic definition. I’m also not sure what he intended with MONEY-SPINNER
I liked GRAND TOTAL, had to look up the slang and do the sums.
As usual, enjoyed many of the surfaces and some of the novel indicators.
Today’s earworm, which I’ve now had for 2 Sundays in a row, but that’s okay. Love it.
MONEY-SPINNER
Agree with the blog and paddymelon@1 that it’s a CD.
Cryptic reading: What makes MONEY go round?
Liked GRAND TOTAL and ROME.
Thanks Everyman and John!
18D ST PETER
Doorman at the gates of hell? He stands at the pearly gates, and his control of hell is by default.
I liked money-spinner once I’d worked it out. Not so keen on grand total which seemed to need a definition to be cryptic. St Peter is the doorman to heaven. If you are refused entry presumably the only alternative is Hell, where the music is probably better anyway
GRAND TOTAL
It’s said that in the days of the British Empire the Indian 25 rupee note had a picture of a pony on it, and the 500 rupee note that of a monkey. When the British soldiers returned from India they adopted these animals as slang terms for those amounts.
I loved GRAND TOTAL which I thought quite inventive. MONEY-SPINNER did my head in trying to parse, but I liked it anyway. A tick also for SPOONBILL.
Thanks E and John.
I found this a straightforward Everyman as the General Knowledge was within my ken. I liked GRAND TOTAL, but I’ve lived and worked in areas where monkey and pony are used for money
Thank you to John and Everyman.
Favourite: ROME.
New for me: monkey = 500 and pony = 25 (British slang in bookmaking/betting) – thanks, Jay@5 for the background info.
Thanks, both.
I parsed 1A slightly differently. A letter could be an allower so if you are a letter, you are permissive?
Thanks Everyman & John. A nice puzzle, nothing to scare the horses.
For me Ronaldo will always evoke the Brazilian no. 9 rather than Christiano.
1 ac ‘Lenient’ means penalising but mildly, while ‘permissive’ means not penalising at all. Tolerant would have been better. Perhaps Peter’s parsing is better.
Not been doing crosswords for that long since contributing the odd clue to my grandmother’s weekend Times or the family’s RT Christmas effort thirty years ago, but perhaps it’s indicative of my intervening hobbies that I thought we had a games reference at 2 down (SIMS) which gave me dismissive at 1A ( I thought if you are lenient towards a wrongdoing you are dismissive of it) and dial for 1 down although could only get the ring bit of it!
A very doable Everyman this time with some nice surfaces, favourites: ROME, MONEY-SPINNER, GRAND TOTAL, ATHEIST, ACNE…
Thank you, Everyman and John
I agree with Heracles@10, preferring the mononymous Brazilian to the Portuguese winker.
Perhaps ROME should be highlighted in the grid as one of Everyman’s trademarks, a geographical reference?
Thanks, John and Everyman.
[For 23a RAPT oed.com has “booby” as the two expected nouns, but also as a verb, and a variant of the Yiddish bubbe.]
Especially liked 2d ROME. Here’s a Brendan clue for ONE DAY “At unspecified time, not enough to raise capital? (3,3)”
Maybe it could be incorporated into Everyman’s clue, to give all three Roman proverbs at once.
Thanks for the blog; I couldn’t make heads or tails out of GRAND TOTAL, and only entered it because it was obviously correct.
I too thought for a moment that Everyman had found an American football player that he expected British people to know. (More likely an American {football player} like Christian Pulisic than an {American football} player like Peyton Manning, but neither one is particularly likely!)
Another pleasant Sunday solve.
I liked the AR(m) RESTS, the nicely-hidden STROBE LAMP, GRAND TOTAL, where I had to check the slang terms, and UNDER STOOD.
Thanks Everyman and John.
Thanks to people for pointing out my poor St Peter knowledge or the Ronaldo ambiguity. Blog amended. Or at least it will be in a moment.
There’s that *%@&! a=per again. Gets me every time. ‘ACNE made me laugh, STROBE LAMP was nicely hidden and I liked SCHOOL DINNER (the clue, not the actual dinners: ours were disgusting). I knew what the monkey-and-ponies clue was about but couldn’t remember what a monkey represented and had to look it up. Didn’t know either RONALDO, even if they weren’t American.
I’m guessing that two or three were a tad confusing to overseas solvers, not least GRAND TOTAL. And whilst I’d never say anything of a spoiler nature about this week’s, I reckon so too the clever 13 will be.
Thanks for the blog , GRAND TOTAL reminded me of DelBoy , thanks to Jay @5 for the extra.
INSECT SPRAYS very clumsy using prays twice . MONEY-SPINNER is so bad it could be entered for the Turner Prize.
ST PETER perhaps has Charon as a counterpart. As he takes you across the River Acheron you hand him your Obol and he says – Welcome to Hades , here are your bagpipes.
Thought this was pitched at just the right level for Everyman.
Regarding INSECT SPRAYS, can someone enlighten me where ‘S’ for ‘saint’ comes from? I’ve only ever seen the more common ‘St’. I also thought it a bit unusual to have the word ‘prays’ going straight from the clue to the solution.
Thanks Everyman and John.
(Edited as I forgot my manners. And also to say sorry to Roz as we crossed.)
Regarding Money Spinner I think the repition of “Go Round” may be a reference to the song “Money Money” in the musical Cabaret.
I very much enjoyed MONEYSPINNER for the absurdity of it all – made me smile when I got it.
I messed up the NE corner for myself by guessing SAUR for biblical character. A quick Google for ‘saur bible’ yielded Christopher Saur, who produced the first European language bible in North America – who knew?
I’d seen those slang terms for money in past puzzles, but didn’t remember them, so the parsing of 26ac was a mystery to me (although with crossers the answer was clear).
For 2dn, I only thought of “When in Rome …”, and I thought it was a pretty uninspired CD. I like it much better now that I understand it works in the two expressions.
I enjoyed this greatly. My favourites were ROME and GRAND TOTAL. Thanks for the extra detail Jay@5, very interesting.
Thanks to John and Everyman.
TanTrumPet@22: I believe S. is the abbreviation for San, as in San Miguel, San Pedro – i.e. saints’ names in their Romance language form. (Plural is SS. which raises interesting possibilities for clues.)
Apologies for coming in late – was busy with Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday.
Sorry, I meant to say too – S for saint is a RC thing: you see RC churches dedicated to SS Peter and Paul, or references to S Sebastien.
This was the first cryptic crossword I’ve ever finished so I was very pleased.
I think the money spinner clue and dots was just how you’d hear snatches of what someone’s saying while they’re spinning around in circles, I liked it.
@winstonsmith that actually was a spoiler comment for this week – 13 was the only one I hadn’t got and your comment sent my thoughts in a certain direction. Great clue but now I don’t know if I would have got there without your hint, which is annoying.
Nice crossword. Pleased to have finished it as tucked up in bed with either a foul cold or Covid. Wife despatched for test kits, not that knowing which ailment it is will make me feel any better.
GRAND TOTAL & ROME top ticks for us today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Rest up @Barrie there’s some nasty bugs out there.
Too hard. DNF.
Roz@21 — doesn’t Charon take you across the River Styx? What am I missing?
Pretty tough one but just managed it. Last one was RAPT. Thought SCHOOL DINNER was clever and used the rhyme to get MONEY SPINNER. I’ve not done that before. Also liked THWARTS and ATHEIST.
Best wishes Barrie – that virus has done the rounds of Auckland. Chest, eyes, throat, nose and ears!
We finally got there – with a lot of looking up and a few where we had only sorted out part of the clue – and one wrong. The components that added up to a grand were completely beyond our kiwi English – but we did hunt to see if a pony was a term for a thousand pounds.
We had ain’t instead of acne for 25 across – and little defense for it.