The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3844.
Mostly simple basic clue types this week, with 16A FRIAR TUCK being conspicuous as the only real exception. Have we come to expect the ‘primarily’ clue as an Everyman hallmark? The other hallmark is definitely the DD answers to 1A DANIEL DERONDA and 25A DANDIE DINMONT, neatly linked by 4D DOUBLE-BARRELLED.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DANIEL DERONDA | Dear Dandelion, unusual Victorian novel (6,7) |
| An anagram (‘unusual’) of ‘dear dandelion’, for George Eliot’s novel. | ||
| 8 | SO-SO | ‘Well … well …’; that’s indifferent (2-2) |
| Definition and literal interpretation: So for ‘well’ might be as a vague introduction (“so/well, are you not going to say anything?”) or as an adjective (“she was so/well suited for the job”). | ||
| 9 | GRUMPINESS | Irascibility shown by US solider eating steak on headland (10) |
| A charade of GRUMPI, an envelope (‘eating’) of RUMP (‘steak’) in GI (‘US soldier’) plus NESS (‘headland’). | ||
| 10 | ADHERE | Stick commercial in this place (6) |
| A charade of AD (‘commercial’) plus HERE (‘in this place’). | ||
| 11 | LINGUINE | Unveiling – not very excitedly – some pasta (8) |
| An anagram (‘excitedly’) of ‘un[v]eiling’ minus the V (‘not very’). Sometimes with a final I ( the ini foods)’ rather than E., but the latter is, I think, truer to the Italian. | ||
| 12 | REABSORBS | Sucks it up again, uneasily sore with barbs (9) |
| An anagram (‘uneasily’) of ‘sore’ plus ‘barbs’. | ||
| 14 | SKYE | Heaven’s, they say, a Scottish island (4) |
| Sounds like (‘they say’) SKY (‘heaven – or ‘heavens’ without the apostrophe’). | ||
| 15 | SACK | Fire axe (4) |
| The same meaning twice. | ||
| 16 | FRIAR TUCK | Fat … warrior at heart … criminal; a little celebrated in this country? (5,4) |
| A charade of FRIART, an anagram (‘criminal’) of ‘fat’ plus ‘[wa]rri[or’, using only the middle three letters (‘at heart’) plus UCK, an envelope (‘in’) of C (‘a little Celebrated’) in UK (‘this country’, with apologies to our NZ crowd, and others, but it is, I take it, where the clue was written). A standout as by far the most complex wordplay in the crossword. The definition is a fairly detailed &lit description of the character in the Robin Hood legends. | ||
| 20 | CRIBBAGE | Writer not beginning to describe capture in game (8) |
| An envelope (‘to describe’) of BAG (‘capture’) in [s]CRIBE (‘writer’) minus the first letter (‘not beginning’). | ||
| 21 | TO COME | Heartless orc in long book, not present-day (2,4) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of OC (‘heartless OrC‘) in TOME (‘long book’). | ||
| 23 | SPECTACLES | Exhibitions, ones that impart finer vision (10) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 24 | MOLE | Recalled Michelangelo mixing a little spot of pigment (4) |
| A hidden (‘a little’) reversed (‘recalled’) answer in ‘MichleangELO Mixing’ | ||
| 25 | DANDIE DINMONT | Small dog. Brown, perhaps. Conked out in French mountain (6,7) |
| A charade of DAN (‘Brown, perhaps’; Dan Brown is the author of The Da Vinci Code, among other books) plus DIED (‘conked out’) plus ‘in’ plus MONT (‘French mountain’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DO-OR-DIE | Risky opening with backgammon piece (2-2-3) |
| A charade of DOOR (‘opening’) plius DIE (singular of dice, ‘backgammon piece’). | ||
| 2 | NO ONE | Not a soul with energy after midday (2,3) |
| A charade of NOON (‘midday’) plus E (‘energy’). | ||
| 3 | EL GRECO | Artist‘s joy (mostly) rising about cobalt (2,5) |
| A charade of ELG, a reversal (‘rising’ in a down light) of GLE[e] (‘joy’) minus then last letter (‘mostly’); plus RE (‘about’) plus Co (chemical symbol, ‘cobalt’). | ||
| 4 | DOUBLE-BARRELLED | As a product of Smith and Wesson might be? (6-9) |
| Double/cryptic definition. | ||
| 5 | REPENT | Regret sports lesson, having torn around (6) |
| An envelope (‘having … around’) of PE (physical education, ‘sports lesson’) in RENT (‘torn’). | ||
| 6 | NANTUCKET | Granny gets food, eating trout for starters somewhere in Massachusetts (9) |
| A charade of NAN (‘granny’) plus TUCK (‘food’) plus E T (‘Eating Trout for starters’). | ||
| 7 | ABSENCE | Cab seen, unusually: it’s a scarcity (7) |
| An anagram (‘unusually’) of ‘cab seen’. | ||
| 13 | BACK BACON | Invest in figurative painter that might come from Tamworth (4,5) |
A charade of BACK (‘invest in’) plus BACON (Francis, ‘figurative painter’, just about), ‘Tamworth’ here is a breed of pigs originating in the Staffordshire town (or, presumably, in farms thereabouts). Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) by Francis Bacon |
||
| 15 | STRIPED | Struggled with piano replacing Latin quintet in bands (7) |
| STRIVED (‘struggled’) with P (‘piano’) replacing V (‘Latin quintet’). | ||
| 17 | ARTISAN | Scratching head, prejudiced craftsman (7) |
| A subtraction: [p]ARTISAN (‘prejudiced’) minus the first letter (‘scratching head’). Virtually the same clue appeared in the Philistine that I blogged for last Friday. | ||
| 18 | CAMELOT | On location for filming, ‘attended’ fictional court (7) |
| A charade of CAME (‘attended’) plus LOT (‘location for filming’). ‘On’ in a down light suggests the order of the particles. | ||
| 19 | SAFARI | Primarily, something African fauna adjudge ‘really irritating’? (6) |
| First letters (‘primarily’) of ‘Something African Fauna Adjudge Really Irritating’, with an &lit definition. | ||
| 22 | CAMEO | Oddly claim ‘Hero’s a small role‘ (5) |
| Alternate letters (‘oddly’) of ‘ClAiM hErO‘ | ||
Thanks PeterO.
Some nice clues, but ‘at heart’ for an arbitrary selection of letters around the centre is too wooly for my liking – not for the first time. Thanks Everyman all the same.
Whoops! I had SCRAPED for my LOI at 15d. And I knew I was looking for a word where P replaced V (or possibly PP replaced IV). I was almost sure my answer was wrong, but just couldn’t make the right mental connection. Ah well… In this part of the world, Tamworth conjures up country music, so I had to do some checking there was a pig connection. I needed research on the dog too. Otherwise quite pleasant, without being outstanding. Thanks Everyman and PeterO.
New: Dandie Dinmont
Failed 16a – and would not have been able to parse it.
Thanks, Peter and Everyman
Thanks Everyman and PeterO
I can think of compilers who would have linked 6d to (the ridiculously complex) 16a.
Fairly straightforward Sunday solve. I agree that SACK seemed to have the same definition twice. It took me a little while to see the parsing of Friar Tuck and I also liked STRIPED.
Thanks Everyman and PeterO.
Thanks both. Looking at the blog on my iPad, there seems to be a word-wrapping issue. Ends of sentences are missing. I remember the same thing from quite a while back
4D was a delightful double barrelled clue and answer. I was held up in the SW having put in 15A as CHOP until eventually crossers forced me to SACK. Still seems to me this double definition has a legitimate double answer. Thanks for decoding PeterO
Found this mostly very do-able (unlike today’s) but was held up by having CHOP instead of SACK, which I still think as good an answer if not better! Thanks to PeterO for the explanations and to Everyman as well of course.
I agree about CHOP being better than SACK, but I had BACK BACON, so wasn’t tempted.
Can anyone shed any light on how DOUBLE-BARRELLED relates thematically to DANIEL DERONDA and DANDIE DINMONT? I can’t yet see any thematic link myself, and I therefore wonder why the physical arrangement of these particular solutions is “neat”. Presumably I’m missing something?
13A – I hadnt thought of CHOP as a potential answer but I agree it would have been a better fit for the clue (providing a genuine double definition rather than SACK’s synonym). Good suggestion.
16A – I bunged FRIAR TUCK in based on crossers, I agree that the wordplay was overly convoluted, and out of place given the level of complexity of the rest of the crossword.
And just as confused as David about “Double-Barrelled”, only in this instance what does it have to do with Smith and Wesson? If they were Smith-Wesson, it’d be a delightful and clever clue. Instead it doesn’t even start to work.
I also had “chop” not believing this was the quick crossword. “friar tuck” aside, this was not up to Everyman’s recent standards, even putting those two awful clues aside.
Shirl @6
I have reduced the size of the image at 13D, which lessens the problem. However, on my iPad I could view the blog correctly with the original version, by viewing it in landscape mode rather than portrait.
David @10
I am not sure where your block lies, but 1A and 25A are both two word (DOUBLE-BARRELED) answers with each words beginning with D. DOUBLE-BARRELED starts with one of the Ds in 1A, and ends with one of the Ds in 25A.
cosmic @7
I agree that CHOP would be a better answer to 15A – except, of course, that it does not fit. I can see the attraction of the clue, in that a fire axe is a real item.
PeterO @12 All very well re the “double-barrelled” answers but they aren’t. They are two word answers. “Double-barrelled” means two words joined by a hyphen, especially of a surname. Daniel Deronda is two words, not a double-barrelled word. Ditto Dandie Dinmont. Hence the confusion I suspect, and hence my complaint about “Smith and Wesson”…
I hadn’t heard of a DANDIE DINMONT, so had to use a word search for that. Otherwise I enjoyed this. I liked 21a for its clever misdirection – the surface seems to refer to The Lord of the Rings or similar so that “not present-day” makes you think of a distant mythical past rather than TO COME.
I thought 4d DOUBLE BARRELLED was quite good. A “product” or combination of the names Smith and Wesson “might be” Smith-Wesson.
Re 15d, I thought the past tense of “strive” was “strove” (“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife”, Walter Savage Landor). Is “strived” a possible alternative?
The parsing of 16a FRIAR TUCK was indeed a bit convoluted and it could maybe have been clued in a different way (although a Spoonerism might not have been advisable…)
Thanks Everyman and PeterO.
@ TheZed, thank you, you’ve antipicated the core point I would have made in reply to PeterO (though double-barrelled surnames don’t have to include a hyphen – see British Prime Minister Lloyd George, whose adoption of that surname is a story in itself).
Going slightly further, DANIEL DERONDA and DANIEL DINMONT are not merely two-word answers, they are proper names consisting of forename and single-barrelled surname.
That said, I don’t have a problem with 4D. The clue doesn’t suggest or turn on Smith & Wesson being a double-barrelled name (which, as you point out, it is not). It turns on the company of that name producing (among other things) DOUBLE-BARRELLED shotguns. So I would classify that clue as a cryptic definition, not a double-definition.
(DANDIE DINMONT of course)
Thanks PeterO @ 12, that’s done the trick
Although, on reflection, and having seen Lord Jim’s post I think the clue in 4D might be more creative than I previously allowed. Not only can Smith & Wesson’s (firearms) products be DOUBLE-BARRELLED. The offspring (product) of two people called, say, Sam Smith and Wendy Wesson might adopt a DOUBLE-BARRELLED surname (Smith-Wesson or Smith Wesson).
Even so, I’m not sure that even makes it a double definition. Rather a cryptic definition that, in its entirety, can be read two different ways to indicate the same answer.
Lord Jim @14. Loved your suggestion to avoid a Spoonered Friar Tuck.
Shirl @17: I had the same issue even in landscape – solved by switching to the Desktop site (which handily has bold etc).
Quite often with an Everyman puzzle we find that there is one answer we are left unsure about. This week it was FRIAR TUCK. Thanks you PeterO for explaining it.
Thank you Everyman for the puzzle.
David @18
My interpretation of 4D DOUBLE-BARRELLLED coincides with yours. Vulcan, and before him, Rufus occasionally have come up with clues of this kind, and the difficulty is to find a suitable label for them. I think that calling one “cryptic” does not hit the mark, since, with the literal meaning, the definition is not cryptic; it is the hint of a double use, in this case metaphorical, which gives some justification for its presence in a cryptic crossword. I have seen “double/cryptic” used to describe such clues, and have followed.
Lord Jim @14
Various online dictionaries list strived ans strove as variant past tenses (wictionary even suggests that the former is British, the latter US). Chambers gives strived as Shakespearean.
TheZed @13
I judged, and still judge, that Everyman placed 4D DOUBLE-BARRELLED deliberately, for the reason that I laid out in excruciating detail @12, and I thought it worth awarding him an extra mark for cleverness. If you feel that I am wrong, or that Everyman is (or both), then by all means ignore the highlighting of 4D.
@PeterO
Thanks for explaining what you meant by “double/cryptic”. I still consider myself pretty new to crosswords and am not up to speed with all the terminology. So I misunderstood the import of the phrase. But I see that it encapsulates what I was aiming at. Thanks.
That said, we shall have to disagree about the thematic relevance of DOUBLE-BARRELLED to DANIEL DERONDA and DANDIE DINMONT 🙂
Thanks for the parsings, especially the v difficult FRIAR TUCK.
@Lord Jim, top marks for bringing up the Spoonerism. I’ve been trying to think how it might have been clued. The least bad of my poor suggestions so far is:
“Spooner’s proposition to spoon, perhaps?”
David @23
Nice try, but you need a definition too
How about starting with “Mendicant Spooner…”?
I wondered about “strived” (as opposed to “strove”) too, but I assumed that it was a permissible variant, and others less lazy than I looked it up to confirm the fact. I’d never heard of a dandie dinmont, but I managed to work it out (eventually) from the wordplay.
I thought that 16ac (FRIAR TUCK) was an outstanding clue, although I acknowledge that it’s difficult for an Everyman puzzle. It must be very diffcult to construct an &lit / cad where the definition works so well. My other favorite was 24ac (MOLE) which took me a long time to spot but seems obvious in retrospect.
My embarrassment for the day was 21ac. I immediately thought “Well, the heartless orc must be OC, and the long book must be a TOME,” and then I still somehow failed to solve the clue until much later, when I had all of the crossers! Somehow I’d got stuck in my head the notion that “not present-day” meant “past” rather than “future” and couldn’t manage to dislodge it.
muffin @25
How about simply “Reverend Spooner… ?
phitonelly @27
Unfortunately, I don’t think Friars were addressed as “Reverend”.
I was defeated by the dog. Pretty standard everyman fayre theses days. I don’t like “a little” being used to mean “first letter of”. It seems lazy clueing to me.
LordJim@14 et al
I don’t see the problem with FIRE TRUCK as fodder for 16 across. Could you explain please (or not).
PS The Urban Dictionary has FRUCK as a word, but I’m not going to work on a TRIER FRUCK clue.
Thanks Everyman and PeterO for the puzzle and parsings, especially for 16a, and thanks LordJim for the chuckle.
Cellomaniac @30
Woudn’t it have to be “TIER FRUCK”?
Yes, Muffin@31, that’s what I intended (my typo), but I’m not going to try to imagine what tying a woman’s fruck might mean.
All very entertaining. The crossword was ok too. Had to google the dog, and in these parts Tamworth is the home of C & W music over the ditch, so the pig farm had to be googled as well.
According to Wikipedia Friar Tuck was originally partnered with Maid Marion, so assuming he may have had his wicked way with her before Robin did, then a Spoonerism for 16A would definitely be on the cards:
Maid Marion’s offer to one before Robin, according to Spooner?
Yes Barrie the Tamworth one had us confused as well. Done now, off to try my fruck! Thanks everyone for the entertainment and Everyperson for the puzzle.
Apologies to Spooner. …tie my fruck was my correct task.
A good crossword. Cath had to convince me it was a dandies dinmont as I wanted tandie based on brown being tan not dan. I should have taken note of the capitalization of Brown. You can learn something everyday if you arent careful.
As usual lately, I found this very entertaining especially the comments. Great sense of humour amongst the readers. I did like the Kiwi approach Barrie and Cathy – direct and to the point. Been watching too much Ricky Gervais in the lockdown!
I seem to get about three quarters through and then come to a complete standstill. I liked Adhere, Spectacles, El Greco, Nantucket, Skye and Artisan which are about my level. Needed elec help for all the DD ones. I don’t know how anyone could have solved 16ac – I thought it was general etiquette to have adjectives or nouns agree with the answer – how can fat a noun or an adjective = Friar Tuck, a proper noun: shouldn’t it be ‘ Fat character ‘ , or does Friar Tuck have adjectival properties I obviously don’t know about? There must be something i am missing about that clue otherwise someone else would have mentioned it. I just thought it was too weird.