Everyman No. 3357 (30th January)

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Nick:  It’s me doing the blog this week, as Lorraine is a bit busy, but reading her notes, this weeks was pretty tough.

As usual, thanks to Mr Everyman for a great crossword.

Across
1. A doctor tucked into mother’s curry (6)
MADRAS A DR in MA’S
no after effects with this clue at all 🙂
4. Worry beads, article held inside chapel (8)
BETHESDA THE in (BEADS*)
see here, and make yer mind up what B?
9. Parish priest, the old cartoon character (6)
POPEYE POPE+YE(ye old way to say ‘the’)
10. A bishop’s treatise, hard to understand (8)
ABSTRACT A+B’S+TRACT
11. Second lecture’s about old SE Canadian city (5,3)
MOOSE JAW MO(second, as in ‘be there in a mo’)+JAW(lecture, i.e. talk) around O+SE
13. Gloomy king embraced by loved one (5)
DREAR R in DEAR
surely ‘gloomy’ should lead to ‘dreary’ here?
14. Phone foreign singer about British drug (14)
PHENOBARBITONE (PHONE*)+(BARITONE around B)
18. Trooper understanding who’s paying for treatment? (7,7)
PRIVATE PATIENT PRIVATE(trooper)+PATIENT(understanding)
19. Circles vowel in error (5)
LAPSE LAPS(circles)+E(a vowel)
a lapse is an error, sure. But can ‘e’ be defined by ‘vowel’?
21. Small bill sent to one by food company (8)
WEETABIX WEE+TAB+I+X(by = x, as in 6 by 2 piece of wood)
is weetabix a ‘food company’?
24. Really popular result (2,6)
IN EFFECT IN+EFFECT; sort of dd
25. Against one girl having to travel west for capital (6)
VIENNA V(against, versus)+I+(anne<)
26. Common central spot in fish (8)
GREENEYE GREEN(common)+EYE(spot)
can’t work out what ‘central’ does in this clue?
27. Trainspotter, a girl, close to track (6)
ANORAK A+NORA+(trac)K
I guess people that do crosswords in todays ‘Internet’ age are anoraks too 🙂
Down
1. Daughter falling off bike makes one be miserable (4)
MOPE MOPE(d)
in my day, a moped had to have pedals, like the ‘raleigh runabout’, but now these seem to have disappeared, and the law that defines a ‘moped’
2. An alcoholic declines nothing (5)
DIPSO (DIPS=declines)+O
a dipsomanic, like me 🙂
3. Country once hell in one area (9)
ABYSSINIA ABYSS+IN+I+A
5. Joint requiring oil and hard rubbing (5,6)
ELBOW GREASE ELBOW+GREASE and a sort of cd
6. Loathed bowler, say, on journalist (5)
HATED HAT(bowler hat)+ED
7. Shiver, unhappy in makeshift bed (9)
SHAKEDOWN SHAKE+DOWN
8. Ratty, one criminal lawyer (8)
ATTORNEY (RATTY ONE)*
12. BBC wary – joke misguided in nonsense verse (11)
JABBERWOCKY (BBC WARY JOKE)*
I liked (and only knew of, at the the time) the film
15. Brutus, for example, portrayed in a musical, work of art (9)
HAIRPIECE HAIR(a musical, lots of naked actors et al)+PIECE(a work of art)
a brutus is a type of wig
16. Check, having lost top copy (9)
IMITATION (l)IMITATION
17. Orthography, it’s what witch is good at? (8)
SPELLING sort of cd
20. Petite female caught by rising river (5)
ELFIN F in (NILE<)
22. Private meal lacking starter (5)
INNER (d)INNER
23. Highly disagreeable row (4)
RANK three definitions of RANK

15 comments on “Everyman No. 3357 (30th January)”

  1. Thanks Nick. A few unusual references in the clues and answers this week, but still a straightforward and enjoyable solve. I would like to see Mr. Everyman act as mentor to whoever is setting the Quiptic tomorrow.

    Re your comment on 13ac, I doubt if any Australian solvers would have had a problem with this. In the immortal words of Slim Dusty – “But there’s nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer.”

    But the antipodeans would have probably been unsettled by 21ac. I grew up eating Weetbix (sic) and was convinced for a while there was an error somewhere. When I finally googled “weetabix” I was directed to “The Weetabix Food Company”. So Mr. Everyman was spot on.

    And fortunately I have run across that bizarre alternate meaning of “anorak” before. What is with that?

  2. Many thanks, Nick, this was reasonably good.

    However, today’s is more challenging: it contains a couple of errors but my lips are sealed.

  3. There is definitely a toughening up of ‘Everyman’ going on. Since the new year, I’ve not solved one totally unaided. Some of the Times puzzles have been easier lately. Still, always entertaining. In ‘GREENEYE’, central spot is ‘EYE, as in ‘Eye of a Hurricane’ I think.

  5. I was led to believe that Everyman was a good introduction to cryptics -but I’m getting nowhere with todays. Solved yesterdays FT in less than an hour so it is either me (certainly possible) or it is genuinely tough.

  6. Thanks, Nick.

    I agree with AJK – this year there have been some tougher Everyman puzzles. Some more intricate wordplay, perhaps, or some particularly unusual words or definitions. I too had to flirt online to finish this one.

    MOOSE JAW, for example, is fair, but it’s not exactly as well known as Quebec, and JAW is a pretty distant synonym for ‘lecture’, I think. So even with crossing letters I was struggling. I thought DREAR was fine and was also okay with E for ‘vowel’.

    I was quite surprised to see WEETABIX as an answer, since it’s a company and a trade mark and I wasn’t sure what the house rules were on that. Can’t recall seeing anything similar before.

    I’m not sure trainspotters would welcome being called anoraks! (Not that I personally am one, of course). It’s defined as ‘a socially inept or obsessive person with unfashionable and largely solitary interests’. As Nick says, that’s us lot then …

    Colin @ no 1: I don’t know where it comes from, but I do remember that trainspotters used to wear anoraks a lot …

    Thanks as always to Everyman for the Sunday morning solve.

  7. Nice puzzle, and the only valid reason I can think of to give WEETABIX a place in it, is that W?E?A?I? nor W?E?A??? leads to anything sensible.

    Having said that, I don’t like it.
    It seems to be a trend nowadays to use brand names in solutions, at least in the Guardian (and now in the related Observer).
    What’s next? NESCAFE, DANONE, FAMOUS GROUSE, McCAIN’S …..

  8. Thanks Everyman for this and today’s correction – before I start it!

    Thanks Nick for the good blog. 🙂 I thought this was a well-balanced and well-clued puzzle, although I had to look up SHAKEDOWN and MOOSE JAW. I didn’t know that POPE could be used for parish priest (in the Greek Orthodox Church) and, like you, was a bit stumped by the ‘central’ in 26, but I think AJK @3 has probably nailed it. Didn’t know the BRUTUS wig either.

    Re. 19, I don’t see why E cannot be clued as ‘vowel,’ after all nobody seems to object to ‘key’ being used for A,B,C,D,E,F,G (and H, apparently.)

  9. Well I wouldn’t usually comment on today’s puzzle but since Everyman kindly dropped in to respond to Bryan, it seems fair game.

    The online version I solved had (8,8,8,8). I appreciate the correction. Like Bryan I think there is one more error but I am happy to wait until next Sunday to make sure.

  15. Glad I looked on here and spotted the error – would have caused much headscratching otherwise!
    We too have found the last few crosswords far more difficult than previously (always enjoyable though)

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