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I found this week’s puzzle a bit clunky and niggly, with some fairly unconvincing surface readings. Let’s see what everyone else thought.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Excitedly earning tip, returning a coat?
REPAINTING
(EARNING TIP)* with ‘excitedly’ as the anagrind.
6 Bulk of the artificial intelligence from land on Indochinese Peninsula
THAI
A charade of TH[E] and AI.
9 Duck and swan given kind of seed: with this, get in!
OPEN SESAME
A charade of O, PEN and SESAME. The magic words to open the cave.
10 In Macbeth, a dagger is one mainstay
PROP
A dd.
11 ‘Time to get up, Mr. Warne: would you like some dried fruit?’
RISE AND SHINE
Several elements of knowledge required here. First, you have to take Mr Warne to be the late and legendary cricketer Shane Warne (fair enough). Then you have to recognise that he’s Australian (also fair enough). Then you have to convince yourself that if an Aussie were offering Warney some dried fruit (pizza was more his bag, to be fair) with the phrase ‘Raisin, Shane?’ it might sound a little bit like RISE AND SHINE (not quite so fair enough). A clue a bit along the lines of Noddy Holder confusing KIPPER TIE with CUP OF TEA, which has appeared in crosswords in the past. We’ll move on.
15 In Hamilton – or Mansell – we see overpowering force
NORMANS
Hidden in HamiltoN OR MANSell. 1066 and all that.
16 Swallow pork pie first, and rest
LIE-DOWN
A charade of LIE and DOWN.
17 Feeling queasy and green in France, Everyman leaves
VERTIGO
A charade of VERT, the French word for ‘green’ and I GO. I’m not convinced that you can clue VERTIGO with ‘feeling queasy’. ‘Queasy feeling’, for sure, but that’s not the same thing.
19 With pie standing in for a roast: most inadequate
ROPIEST
Everyman is inviting you to replace the A in ‘roast’ with ‘pie’.
20 Nastily, he invited one to fail to reach fruition
DIE ON THE VINE
(HE INVITED ONE)* with ‘nastily’ as the anagrind.
23 In audition, furrows … finding lice
NITS
Aural wordplay (‘in audition’) for KNITS.
24 So, you grill bananas to magnificent effect?
GLORIOUSLY
(SO YOU GRILL)* with ‘bananas’ as the anagrind.
25 Wildly yearn, losing resistance for musician
ENYA
(YEA[R]N)* with ‘wildly’ as the anagrind. The Irish singer.
26 Fling glove – not good – a loud exhibition
LOVE AFFAIR
A charade of [G]LOVE, A, FF and AIR.
Down
1 Burrow into ground for parsnip?
ROOT
A dd.
2 Spy to stay up
PEEK
A reversal of KEEP. ‘Up’ is the reversal indicator, since it’s a down clue.
3 Breathtaking goddess, like Erato?
INSPIRATION
A dd. Erato is one of the muses, hence INSPIRATION. It’s also one of the commonest answers in crosswords, since naff all else fits E?A?O.
4 Tense idiots crowding front of limo: they’re left hanging
TASSELS
A charade of T and an insertion of L in ASSES. The insertion indicator is ‘crowding’.
5 Primarily ‘named’ – or maybe ‘in name alone’, legally?
NOMINAL
The initial letters of the last seven words of the clue and a cad.
7 Those whose régime may often be seedy?
HERBIVORES
A cd.
8 ‘Germinate’, loosely translated when primate principally involved?
IMPREGNATE
An insertion of P for the initial letter of ‘primate’ in (GERMINATE)* The insertion indicator is ‘when … involved’ and the anagrind is ‘loosely translated’. You have to see this as a cad, otherwise there is no definition.
12 Risen on the wing, glimpses of emperor penguin pets: that’s novel
STEPPENWOLF
A reversal of FLOWN, EP for the initial letters of ’emperor’ and ‘penguins’ and PETS. The 1927 novel by Hermann Hesse.
13 Envied Nice resort, that’s clear to see
IN EVIDENCE
(ENVIED NICE)* with ‘resort’ as the anagrind, which you need to read as ‘re-sort’
14 Pertly ruin gathering, in an obscene manner
PRURIENTLY
(PERTLY RUIN)* with ‘gathering’ as the anagrind.
18 Venetian game …
OTHELLO
A dd. The Shakespearean character and the card game.
19 … overturn gear
REVERSE
Another dd. I don’t see the point of the ellipses between these two clues. You can, as usual, ignore them, but setters use them to run two clues together when neither makes sense on its own. But that’s not what’s happening here. It makes no sense, and the singular noun is followed by a plural verb.
21 Where you could find central parts of East Siam?
ASIA
A charade of AS and IA for the central letters of the last two words of the clue, and a cad.
22 Tradesperson adding colour, extract of Goodyera
DYER
Hidden in GooDYERa.
Many thanks to Everyman for this week’s puzzle.
I hadn’t done the Everyman for quite a long time, but happened to buy The Observer last Sunday so obviously gave it a go. I very much enjoyed it, and in particular RISE AND SHINE, which made me laugh out loud. For me it works perfectly as “Raisin, Shane?” in an Australian accent. Brilliant.
Many thanks Everyman and Pierre.
Got 11a from definition but found parsing impossible till I came here – even though I knew who Shane Warne was. Not impressed
20a – Surely the expression is wither on the vine – never heard it expressed like this.
18d – Othello was The Moor of Venice – Venetian is a bit loose.
20a “Die on the vine” is a common expression in USA.
I have a vague idea that OTHELLO can also be called “reversi” which is almost REVERSE, but that to me is not justification for the ellipses. Several of the surfaces were very clunky, and I was unimpressed by the clue for DYER, but GLORIOUSLY was nice and had an amusing surface.
Many interesting clues. ‘Pen’ as female swan was a learning for me. I agree with you on 11a. ‘Ass’ probably is the most common crossword animal! (Cat would be close behind, I guess),
Thanks E and Pierre
11a made me laugh but, I’m sorry to say, I was laughing at Everyman, not with him!
Thanks Pierre
Lord Jim@1: I have never understood this Pommy obsession with that particular pronunciation. “Raisin, Shane” and “RISE AND SHINE” sound quite distinct to me. Still, knowing the obsession, I was able to solve it easily enough. Thanks, Everyman and Pierre.
Speaking as someone with a strong West Lancashire accent but married to an Australian wife with six Australian kids I was not convinced by 11A and thought it Everyman’s 19A clue for sometime. Having got some cross letters I was really hoping 20A would be “die in the ar*e”. Sadly not to be.
I found this a particularly quick Everyman to solve as the clues pretty much pointed to the word play without much distraction of entertaining surfaces. I also thought it worth recommending to newer solvers. (I’ll regret this now as today’s will be all what I find particularly obscure double definitions.)
Thank you to Pierre and Everyman
I enjoyed seeing the return of the rhyming pair, in this case RISE AND SHINE and DIE ON THE VINE. However, as an Australian, RISE AND SHINE did not work at all for me.
My favourite clue was STEPPENWOLF because its appearance was so unexpected. I read it about 50 years ago. I also liked HERBIVORES.
Thanks to Everyman and Pierre.
DNF for me, mostly due to shoving in LAOS for 6a – despite having little faith in it being right, I rejected correct answers that didn’t fit with it (I considered “from” a linking word and never got past that).
I liked 22d, partly because there might be a nod towards the colourful Danny Dyer.
I very much agree with Pierre”s comments. The best Everymans (??) are more enjoyable and less clunky.
I parsed the second word of 26 as a – f – fair, with ‘fair’ referring to, eg, a trade exhibition.
Tessie Tim @7 I feel your pain. I originally come from near to where Noddy Holder was born and worked in his hometown of Walsall for some years. I can identify not only the difference between Black Country and Birmingham accents but between the different Black Country accents. I can assure you that Nod would not pronounce cup as kip.
New for me: OTHELLO=game.
Favourite: NORMANS.
I couldn’t parse 11ac – does it somehow refer to Raisin, Shane? If so, the setter obviously does not know enough about Australian accents. Speaking as an Australian, this clue does not work.
Thanks, both.
Typical Everyman.
We seem to have had a bit of welcome respite from homophone discussions of late, until today. To this Brit, an Australian offering a raisin to Mr Warne might sound close enough to ‘RISE AND SHINE’ for the clue to work. At least we have (so far) been spared complaints that some GK is needed to solve the clue, and it was one of my favourites.
Thanks both.
michelle@13, it refers exactly to ‘Raisin, Shane?’, as I explained clearly in the blog.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre
Monkey @5 is right about OTHELLO and REVERSi being essentially the same game, but this one is played with black and white counters, not cards. I don’t know if there is an actual card game called Othello.
I put RISE AND SHINE in as had the crossers. I know who Shane Warne was but I have great difficulty parsing clues related to accents or dialects, so thanks for the explanation.
Completely stumped on STEPPENWOLF and never heard of the phrase DIE ON THE VINE.
Rise and shine referring to Shane Warne seemed like the successor to Emma Radacanu’s call to the Emerald Isle a couple of weeks ago where I also struggled to make them soundalike! Needed the blog to parse Steppenwolf
Muffin@16. There is also a counter-based game called reversi. I suspect it may come down to who owns the copyright to use the name Othello as to what it’s called by different people. I could Google (other search engines are available) to find out more, but life’s too short.
Dave F @12 – agree with you over parsing of 26. For 7d, GRANIVORES fit the definition more precisely but is ruled out by 6ac.
11ac made me smile although I wasn’t entirely convinced by the dodgy Strine accent.
Thankfully a lot easier than last week.
Like others I feel that 11ac was stretching the boundaries somwhat. It reminded me of EMERALD ISLE a couple of weeks earlier, which used a similar device i.e. a homophone in the relevant accent. The difference is that the homophone was signalled in tht case, whereas in this case it wasn’t. As some Australians have pointed out, the pronunciation is a rather inaccurate stereotype.
My first attempt at resolving the anagram in 20ac produced a very unfortunate alternative solution. However it didn’t allow solutions to 12dn and 19dn so I had to think again.
Otherwise a good puzzle!
Entertaining Sunday solve.
RISE AND SHINE is a bit Paulian, and if it had been written by him would no doubt have been applauded. I liked ROPIEST, IMPREGNATE and STEPPENWOLF.
Thanks Everyman and Pierre.
No idea what 11a was about and bunged it in from the crossers. I also don’t understand the explanation as the clue has no indication of a homophone.
Also disliked ‘returning a coat’ meaning REPAINTING (1a). ‘I’d like you to repaint that wall’. ‘Certainly sir, we’ll the return the coat right away’. Seriously?
@poc, there were quote marks around the whole clue, which was the homophone indicator. Easily missed I think
Well the other Australians have said what I would have regarding the dried fruit thing
. It’s like when ‘Cockerneys’ were used as Australians in 1950s films – it grated then and it irritated me to write the presumed answer in now!
I’m probably alone in this, but I took Rise and Shine to be a reference to the dehydrated fruit juice drink sold in the 70s, and which was a favourite to take on hikes in the Boy Scouts because it was nice and light. No idea how the rest of the clue works with that, but as you may have guessed I had no idea how to parse it at all.
Agree with Pierre, and with many other comments, this is not Everyman’s best. And when his best is what it is, well indeed.
I really struggled to find a highlight here, but the bananas one will have to do.
Just had to say that I loved 11a, as I also loved the previous Emerald Isle. Remember, this has to be fun and not too serious.
Please continue
In agreement with AdrianW@21; I spent ages with just the IVORES bit in for HERBIVORES because I was sure there would be a technical term for seed and nut eaters and was equally sure that that’s what we were probably being asked for.
R&S was fine for me; the single quotes are the soundalike indicators, and nobody gets soundalikes directly but always through back-parsing, so the accuracy is really not important. I’ll get my hard hat (or my box) on. (A week later In still no clearer about why people have a problem with EMERALD ISLE.)
There was a fair bit of looseness as others have said, including INSEMINATE though I rather liked it.
Thanks both
Louella@24 et al.: quote marks as a homophone indicator is something I don’t recall ever seeing before.
I loved Rise and Shine, unlike some others; a real brainteaser, rather than just a follow-the-rules solve! For 26ac, I parsed as A, F (loud), FAIR (exhibition)
Pierre@15 – sorry, yes, I get that you explained 11ac. I write my notes on the day I do the puzzle, so my comment was out of date to post today. I do realise you tried to explain it but I think the clue is dodgy. I should have adjusted the notes that I made last week to react to what you wrote in the blog. Please accept my apologies but I still think the clue does not work.
I think with the Shane homophone, Everyman is thinking about how someone English might hear an Australian accent. We are not typically going to notice any subtleties, and perhaps Australians have to think “what would a bad English take off of ‘Raisin, Shane’ sound like?”
Obviously this could be quite an imaginative leap for someone in Alice Springs.
I admit to having quite enjoyed teasing out RISE AND SHINE.
I think people fuss too much about homophones. They’re not meant to be precise. Relax! The RISE AND SHINE homophone was I thought excellent. Monkey@33 has it right.
I don’t mind homophones. I do mind inaccurate stereotypes. Not once, in several lengthy times living in England and Wales, has any Pom (or Welsh for that matter) ever taken me to have been saying something like ‘shine’ when I said a word with the vowel sound of ‘Shane’. Monkey@33, I call upon this empirical research of my own to say that the Poms I knew (in Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Brum, Merseyside, central and north Wales and elsewhere) just don’t hear Aussie accents in that way.
I’m perfectly fine with the dodgy homophone and Australian accent in 11ac, but I do think it needed a homophone indicator. The quotation marks don’t suffice, as far as I’m concerned. And like poc @23, I don’t get the definition in 1ac (REPAINTING). But otherwise an enjoyable Everyman.
I worked RISE AND SHINE out and then thought it needed a soundalike indicator, which I’m not sure the quote marks are sufficient for. That said it made me laugh and was one of the highlights in what otherwise felt like a bit of a tough grind… Still, I learned that the band STEPPENWOLF were named after a novel, so maybe it’s 1-1… Thanks Pierre
I too liked 13a RISE AND SHINE. Once I googled to find Shane Warne as an Australian cricketer, the aural wordplay jumped out at me. “Strine” for Australian provides the punning example. Too many comments use the word “homophone”, which was used by neither Everyman in the clue nor Pierre in his excellent blog. Puns are fun, and the less precise the funnier.
I agree with Pierre’s comment on the ellipses at 18 and 19. The clues stand on their own, and the ellipses render the otherwise grammatically correct clues non-sensical.
To a Kiwi ear (and no we don’t speak like Aussies) the Warne clue worked fine. Also quite liked ‘Ropiest’. The rest were so so with the definition for Repainting completely wrong as has been pointed out. You apply a fresh coat, you can’t return the old one.
I distinctly remember a character from a late-80s Australian sketch show, called Colin Carpenter (played by Kym Gingell) who mangled and strangled his vowels in exactly the way that works for Raisin Shane. Of course not all Australians sound like that, just as not all Brits sound like a Cockney or Brummie. To take offence, as some have, seems a little thin-skinned.
I (Australian) was not offended by Rise & Shine, I just didn’t get it. Of course I knew Shane Warne, and I got Raisin, but then I couldn’t see where in the clue it told you to change the vowel sound to “I” from “A”!
Pretty tough but got there in the end. From Shane to rise and shine wasn’t difficult – took while to parse it. Wither on the vine jumped out : just had to twist it a bit. Othello was tricky as I kept thinking of calcio. My last one was Thai – just couldn’t see it.
Looking at other responses I can’t relate to the Aussie accent factor.
Yeah. Rise and Shine. Sunday morning here and the puzzle.was a good start to the day.
I had PEEP for 2d, which I think works at least as well as PEEK. The word PEEP stays when up (in reverse), being a palindrome.