An enjoyable challenge from Everyman, which can be found here.
Pretty much all the standard Everyman features are on display, as shown in the grid. I have a couple of pretty minor quibbles, as discussed below, but overall this was a lot of fun. Ticks from me for COSTA BLANCA, EARED SEALS and INTRODUCES, but clue of the week for me is undoubtedly SCENERY. I thought I detected a Nina along the second row, but I assume ‘O no crap’ wasn’t actually intentional.
For some reason I found this a trickier solve than normal, hence moh’s cruciverbial hardness scale rating: Fluorite
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | TRIM |
Car’s upholstery and part of its wheel as described in Yorkshire (4)
|
| ‘The rim’ (part of a wheel) in a cod Yorkshire accent becomes t’ rim (sort of) | ||
| 3 | CHESS PIECE |
Musical number that may be promoted on the boards? (5,5)
|
| CHESS (musical by Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice) + PIECE (number), def referring to promotion of a pawn on a chessboard | ||
| 9 | BUTS |
Objections: proof of payment returned (4)
|
| Reversal (returned) of STUB | ||
| 10 | BLUEBOTTLE |
Fly down with Spirit (10)
|
| BLUE (down) + BOTTLE (spirit, courage) | ||
| 12 | GROUNDSWELL |
Shift in public opinion having sound basis at first (11)
|
| WELL (sound, as in good physical shape) after GROUNDS (basis). Or it could possibly be SWELL after GROUND, but on the whole I prefer the first interpretation | ||
| 15 | AMUSE ME |
An inspiration? Yours truly? I could do with a laugh (5,2)
|
| A MUSE (an inspiration) + ME (yours truly) | ||
| 16 | YEMENIS |
The old group of chaps is group of Arabians (7)
|
| YE (old written form of ‘the’) + MEN (group of chaps) + IS (from surface) | ||
| 17 | EYESORE |
Everyman regarded, in report, as one unpleasant to behold (7)
|
| Soundalike (in report) of ‘I saw’ (but only for those with non-rhotic accents) | ||
| 19 | OOH LA LA |
Primarily ostentatious outcry heaping liberal and lavish admiration? (3,2,2)
|
| First letters (primarily) of Ostentatious Outcry Heaping Liberal And Lavish Admiration | ||
| 20 | COSTA BLANCA |
Estimate price of a Chardonnay, peut-être, one in resort (5,6)
|
| COST (as a verb, to estimate the price of something) + A (from surface) + BLANC (French for white, so ‘Chardonnay peut-être’) + A (one) | ||
| 23 | OSCILLATOR |
Clip from radio’s Cilla, to remember one that’s Swinging (10)
|
| Hidden in (clip from) radiOS CILLA TO Remember | ||
| 24 | BRIO |
After change of heart, writer showing élan (4)
|
| BIRO (ballpoint pen, so writer) with its central letters reversed (after change of heart) | ||
| 25 | EARED SEALS |
Erased ‘sea lions’ at first – rewritten as: ___ (5,5)
|
| Anagram (rewritten) of ERASED SEA L[ions] – the sea lion is an eared seal, as distinct from true seals and walruses, according to Prof Wiki | ||
| 26 | RYES |
Grasses grow, you hear? (4)
|
| Soundalike (you hear) of ‘rise’ | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | TOBOGGANED |
Went rapidly downhill? (10)
|
| I think this is meant to be a cryptic definition, but it seems quite literal to me, unless there’s a usage of the verb ‘to toboggan’ akin to ‘barrel’ or some such? | ||
| 2 | INTRODUCES |
Launches risible reductions (10)
|
| Anagram (risible) of REDUCTIONS | ||
| 4 | HOLY SEE |
Just: that man, Rev Spooner says, in the Vatican (4,3)
|
| Spoonerism of ‘solely he’. Not sure this quite works, as to my ear ‘solely’ is pronounced with the second L audible, not so as to rhyme with ‘holy’. A very minor quibblet | ||
| 5 | SCENERY |
Stylised screen at back of play? (7)
|
| Anagram (stylised) of SCREEN and Y (back of plaY), clue as definition. Or is it an &lit? Either way, it’s a very fine clue | ||
| 6 | PROBLEM CHILD |
Truant perhaps having issue following bit of Maths (7,5)
|
| CHILD (issue) after PROBLEM (bit of maths) | ||
| 7 | EATS |
Scoff at tablets swallowed (4)
|
| Insertion (swallowed) of AT (from surface) inside ES (ecstasy tablets), ‘scoff’ and ‘eats’ here being nouns rather than verbs | ||
| 8 | EPEE |
Physical exercise – cutting: ‘en garde’ discharged? (4)
|
| PE (physical exercise) inside (cutting) En gardE (en garde discharged, ie without its central letters), with a sort of extended definition referring to the sport of fencing and one of the swords used in it | ||
| 11 | UNRECONCILED |
Iffy clue – ‘Cord (9)’ – not resolved (12)
|
| Anagram (iffy) of CLUE CORD NINE | ||
| 13 | UNMANNERLY |
Rude, curt male nunnery reformed (10)
|
| Anagram (reformed) of MAL[e] (curt male) NUNNERY | ||
| 14 | ESCALATORS |
Alas! Escort lost in flights (10)
|
| Anagram (lost) of ALAS ESCORT | ||
| 18 | ENSLAVE |
Bind some of Gwen’s lavender (7)
|
| Hidden (some of) in gwENS LAVEnder | ||
| 19 | ON A ROLL |
Where butter is put is repeatedly lucky (2,1,4)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 21 | POLE |
Rod’s European (4)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 22 | SCAR |
Athletic events set back with lack of energy – and evidence of injury (4)
|
| Reversal (set back) of RAC[e]S (with lack of energy) |
Many thanks for the blog.
I think SCENERY qualifies as an &Lit, very good clue.
EPEE I’m less convinced about as the word describes the sword itself rather than the activity of using it (in Chambers at least).
Not happy with the definition for 20, excellent as the clue otherwise was. Costa Blanca is not A resort, it’s a region that has MANY resorts. That’s an unusually egregious geographical error from Everyman and a shame as adding the word region to the end of the clue would not have affected it in any way. Maybe it fell out in Grauniad editing / proofreading?
That said I found this Everyman one of the better and more taxing of recent examples with ticks for LOI 5 & 25.
Thanks Everyman & moh.
Thanks for the blog , I agree with Jay@1 , SCENERY neat and excellent , EPEE lacks a definition .
UNRECONCILED earned a severe Paddington stare .
Alot of grumbles at work this week from Everyman regulars asking for help .
Thanks for the blog. I really enjoyed this Everyman and found it, contra others, much easier to solve than the previous week. The clues seemed much more precise apart from 1 down. I finished it but failed to parse 7 down. I did not make the ecstasy connection. Thank you, Everyman.
Was ok up to last week now I can’t get past a £1 trial. Anybody else?
Tony@5: still works for me. Have you registered an account? No payment required.
I didn’t know ‘scoff’ as a noun. Otherwise straightforward.
Thanks for the explanation of EATS as a noun, although hard to think of an example of this. I’m still mystified by 25A where ‘as:___’ is apparently a clue for EARED SEALS.
Tony @5: Try https://cdn.slowdownwiseup.co.uk/media/documents/obs.everyman.20260118.pdf
Yes, MrW @8, I was a bit perplexed about how best to indicate the definition for 25A. The def is ‘sea lions’, but that’s also part of the wordplay, so the only place to put the underlining was in the underscored part of the clue. I think the grammar of the clue suggests that you’re meant to find another term for sea lions.
Another pleasant offering from Everyman. I liked COSTA BLANCA, although I understand GIS @2’s reservations, the nicely hidden OSCILLATOR, and the &lit SCENERY. I also think that EPEE didn’t really have a suitable definition, although a good try.
Thanks Everyman and moh.
Has anyone found anything deeper to ‘tobogganed’? I put it in, but it looked a bit straightforward; ditto ‘epee’. And thanks for pointing out that ‘eats’ could be a noun – I thought the tense was wrong for a verb. Otherwise, this was just my level for an Everyman!
GiS @ 2
“Maybe it fell out in Grauniad editing / proofreading?”
Definitely not. The Guardian sold the Observer to Tortoise Media in December 2024.
Tony 5,
Go to your browser preferences and delete the O’s cookie, then try again.
I had the same problem and this worked for me.
I was wondering if ‘epee’ works in the sense of a category of the sport that uses the eponymous sword e.g. “he took gold in the epee”.
We also entertained some rather wild fantasies that Tobogganed was alluding to “to bog gained” i.e we have gained the lower ground (bog) by going downhill. But I accept this isn’t really supported by the clue.
Many thanks to MoH & Everyman
EYESORE just came up yesterday in a Quick Cryptic in the Guardian; as I commented there, I think there can be an r sound in “I saw” in rhotic accents, as in “I saw a man”…
A great puzzle. I’m glad that rhyming pairs are back on the agenda. Thanks Everyman and MOH!
Layman @ 16
No it can’t – at least in my rhotic accent there is no r in saw and I doubt any Scottish person would say differently
I continue to be disappointed in the Everyman crosswords. They are not of the level they used to be and which I enjoyed.
They are more difficult and not for Everyman
Lloyd@12 on toboggan – not the best clue perhaps but there is misdirection – I thought immediately of the metaphorical sense of someone going downhill – you have to separate ‘down’ and ‘hill’ to make sense of tobogganed.
Etu@14 – yes that works for me. They give you a number of free weeks (4?) but then count your access in the cookie and when it ticks over you are into a firewall. Changing browsers also works but is more temporary, obviously.
I found this one a bit harder than usual, especially the NE corner, but it was a good level of challenge and I got there in the end. A very nice and much needed ‘a-ha’ moment when I finally got CHESS PIECE, which then unlocked that corner for me. Great spoonerism – one of my favourite clue types, and which Everyman does very well. Like others, EARED SEALS was a bit odd, especially with the underscore (and it didn’t help that the word underscore is also ten letters, so at one point it had me thinking that I might be looking for an anagram of the word underscore). And EPEE felt like the clue was a tad incomplete. TOBOGGANED seemed like a non-cryptic clue, although one does not necessarily have to go downhill on a toboggan, as they can be pulled on the flat by people or by dogs. Chambers does allow toboggan as a verb meaning to slide or coast as if on a toboggan, although what difference that makes to the clue I’m not sure. Maybe ‘went’ = ‘tobogganed’, as in ‘they went across the ice’, ‘they tobogganed across the ice’. As usual I had to negotiate the paywall to get the crossword – this was a young person at the Waitrose checkout who kindly but firmly assured me that it was definitely not possible to pay pro-rata for only p.38 of the New Review section and that I would be required to buy the whole of the Observer. 😀
There’s nothing I like more than settling down on a Sunday afternoon with the Everyman crossword. Occasionally I have to put it to one side for later on but usually I make my way through it in one go. This one I struggled with. TOBOGGANED?? Really? Just one of a few I failed to enter. Maybe I’m suffering from post new year malaise…
Long-time lurker, first time poster here. I have previously not had any of the access difficulties many commenters have experienced in trying to do the Everyman crossword; it did stop working for me in Firefox (it simply wouldn’t load the crossword at all, I just had a blank page with the crossword number at the top) but I switched to Chrome which was fine, but now I’m coming up against the dreaded paywall there too. Can someone please add a link where you use the date of the crossword (as opposed to the crossword number) as part of the URL for me? That was a decent work-around before. I can get a PDF to open but it’s not interactive for me so I can’t fill in the grid. Thanks all and thank you for all your comments and this blog in general!
Hi Sarah, and welcome to the comments section! I’m not sure that the various workarounds that have been suggested before will work now, though evidently different people have had varying experience with them.
The pdf link posted by MrWomble @9 above (to the most recent Everyman puzzle) works for me, but of course it’s not the interactive version. Some people have reported success after clearing cookies from their browser cache, but I can’t vouch for that. I hope it won’t put you off!
MOH @22 Thank you. Unfortunately clearing the cache still has not helped, sad times. I will stick with the non-interactive PDF and try to keep all my answers in my head instead of writing them down! (I don’t care quite enough to print it out) Not an ideal way to do a crossword but might keep my brain slightly active…
It’s mostly all been said. I found this hard and agree with those who found many clues unsatisfactory, 25A in particular.
Also you do not describe sets on stage as ‘scenery’.
Hmm is anyone else having problems with the
images on this blog loading? I’m trying to determine if its
a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
hfr@24, rhere aren’t actually any images in the blog, aside from the completed grid and commenters’ avatars, both of which are loading fine for me.
Yes and no. EATS was a no and EPEE did not really congeal in oho.