The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/everyman/3852.
This week we have paired clues aplenty: 1A OFF-THE-WALL and 26A ON THE SHELF; the rhyming pair 4D WEBCAMS and 5D LOG JAMS; the assonant artists 18D HOLBEIN and 19D HOGARTH; 3D HIGH ON THE HOG and 11D LOW COUNTRIES, and the capitals 12A OUAGADOUGOU (a Frenchified version of the name) and 20A CITY OF LIGHT. For quite a while, I thought that the bottom part of 3D was Everyman easing out of the ‘Primarily’ clue, but, no, it is still alive and kicking at 21D. Everyman can generally be relied on to produce fine surfaces, but there are some real gems here. Altogether a very pleasant solve.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | OFF-THE-WALL | Where ineptly hung art may be found avant-garde (3-3-4) |
| Double (somewhat opinionated) definition. | ||
| 6 | PIER | Jetty‘s ripe for renovation (4) |
| An anagram (‘for renovation’) of ‘ripe’. | ||
| 9 | SPONGE BAGS | What you might see in bathroom: bum before trousers put on (6,4) |
| A charade of SPONGE (‘bum’ as in the crossword clue from quite a while back “Wipe bum (6)”) plus BAGS (‘trousers’). All very Pauline. | ||
| 10 | OVID | Poet‘s 40% of Providence (4) |
| A hidden answer (’40&% of’ – you can hardly get more precise than that) in ‘PrOVIDence’, for the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso. | ||
| 12 | OUAGADOUGOU | Endlessly taking our Aga’s dough out? Capital! (11) |
| Straight from the clue, minus the words’ last letters (‘endlessly taking’) ‘OUr AGA‘s DOUGh OUt’, for the capital of Burkina Faso | ||
| 15 | RELATES | Tells senior churchmen to cede power (7) |
| A subtraction: [p]RELATES (‘senior churchmen’) minus the P (‘to cede power’). | ||
| 16 | SECULAR | Earthly stench, ugly air’s regularly expelled (7) |
| Alternate letters (‘regularly expelled’) of ‘StEnCh UgLy AiR‘. | ||
| 17 | MACBETH | Bach met liberal King (7) |
| An anagram (‘liberal’) of ‘Bach net’. | ||
| 19 | HOUSTON | Train station with aspiration to become space station (7) |
| EUSTON would be the ‘train station’, and pronounced ‘with aspiration’ (giving the H and the sound alike), it gives the Texas city, home to the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center, the flight control – ground ‘station’ for the USA space missions, generally rendered as just Houston in transmissions, most notably in the misquote “Houston, we’ve got a problem”. | ||
| 20 | CITY OF LIGHT | Following release of PR, pliable Cypriot taking journey to Paris (4,2,5) |
| A charade of CITYO, an anagram (‘pliable’) of ‘Cy[pr]iot’ minus PR (‘following release of PR’) plus FLIGHT (‘journey’). | ||
| 23 | ROOT | Cricket captain, heartless automaton (4) |
| RO[b]OT (‘automaton’) minus the middle letter (‘heartless’), for Joe ROOT, the current English Test captain. | ||
| 24 | BEAR WITH ME | How Christopher Robin might describe himself? Hang on … (4,4,2) |
| Double definition, the first a reference to his companion Winnie-the-Pooh. | ||
| 25 | SANE | Lucid? Regularly wiped out. Slàinte! (4) |
| Alternate letters (‘regularly wiped out’) of ‘SlAiNtE’ | ||
| 26 | ON THE SHELF | Where some penguins are unlikely to marry (2,3,5) |
| Double definition; in the first, ‘shelf’ refers to a thick marine platform of ice, fed by glaciers, particularly around Antarctica. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | OUST | Get rid of creative Frenchman! Get rid of Pierre Renoir for starters! (4) |
| A subtraction: [Pr]OUST (Marcel, ‘creative Frenchman’ among many others) minus (‘Get rid of’, second time around) PR (‘Pierre Renoir for starters’). | ||
| 2 | FLOG | Some of logpile is deal (4) |
| A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘oF LOGpile’. | ||
| 3 | HIGH ON THE HOG | Luxuriously happy state, Ontario, on the face of it; however, everyone’s hammered on grass (4,2,3,3) |
| A charade of HIGH (‘happy state’) plus ONT (‘Ontario’) plus HEHOG, first letters (‘on the face of it’) of ‘However Everyone’s Hammered On Grass’. How ’bout that for a surface? | ||
| 4 | WEBCAMS | Setting up wireless Mac? Beware concealed peripherals (7) |
| A hidden (‘concealed’) reversed (‘setting up’ in a down light) answer in ‘wirelesS MAC BEWare’ | ||
| 5 | LOG JAMS | Record improvisations with bottlenecks (3,4) |
| A charade of LOG (‘record’) plus JAMS (jazz ‘improvisations’). | ||
| 7 | INVIGILATE | Oversee Everyman cooking veal with gin and it (10) |
| A charade of I (‘Everyman’) plus NVIGILATE, an anagram (‘cooking’) of ‘veal’ plus ‘gin’ plus ‘it’. | ||
| 8 | RED CURRANT | Part of summer pudding studied, they say, declared ‘in season’ (10) |
| Two sound-alikes, individually indicated (‘they say’ and ‘declared’) of RED for READ (‘studied’) and CURRANT for CURRENT (‘in season’). The ‘summer pudding‘ seems to be getting a bit of an airing at the moment; it appeared in a clue in last week’s Everyman. | ||
| 11 | LOW COUNTRIES | Benelux unhappy with ‘cretinous’ representation (3,9) |
| A charade of LOW (‘unhappy’) plus COUNTRIES, an anagram (‘re-presentation’) of ‘cretinous’. | ||
| 13 | TRUMP CARDS | President, comical figure finally sans advantages (5,5) |
| When I first came to solve this clue, it was missing the two last words. With the crossers, the answer was obvious, but it is not part of my normal brief to guess words missing in clues. The corrected version appeared some time Sunday 9 August (the pdf version got it right from the start). Anyway, the amended clue is a charade of TRUMP (‘President’, in name at least) plus CARD (‘comical figure’) plus S (‘finally sanS‘). | ||
| 14 | BLACKTHORN | Bush‘s grimly humorous letter from long ago (10) |
| A charade of BLACK (‘grimly humorous’) plus THORN (‘letter from long ago’; the character Þ which results in “the” being rendered in fake antique as “ye”). The bush BLACKTHORN (which can grow into a small tree, with wood stout enough to make walking sticks and shillelagh) is also known as the sloe. | ||
| 18 | HOLBEIN | Warhol being, to some extent, portraitist (7) |
| A hidden answer (‘to some extent’) in ‘WarHOL BEINg’, for a family of painters, most notably Hans HOLBEIN the Younger, perhaps best known for his portraits of Henry VIII (and The Ambassadors with its anamorphic skull). | ||
| 19 | HOGARTH | Artist displayed headless earth-hog (7) |
| An anagram (just about, ‘displayed’) of ‘[e]arth-hog’ minus the first letter (‘headless’). | ||
| 21 | WHEE | Primarily, word hollered exhibiting exuberance? (4) |
| It had to be here somewhere: Everyman’s ‘primarily’ clue . First letters of ‘Word Hollered Exhibiting Exuberance’, with an &lit definition. | ||
| 22 | SELF | Novelist‘s ego (4) |
| Double definition, the novelist being Will Self. | ||
I found this tougher than usual. On Sunday, I had pretty much everything south and east of the major diagonal, and virtually nothing above and west. OUAGADOUGOU did venture into that territory, and was an interesting clue – at first, I was thinking ‘anagram here – what’s that long O… capital somewhere in Africa – how does it go?’ until I saw the very clever way “endlessly” works, giving the spelling. The avant-garde phrase and the decapitated writer got me a further foothold there, but I have to say that TRUMP CARDS (can’t see a definition there), BLACKTHORN (bush, yes; grim humour, yes – but where does the thorn come in?) and LOI HIGH ON THE HOG (a phrase I have never heard – thanks, DuckDuckGo) had me totally bamboozled. I type this before seeing the solutions, so any of these could be wrong! Aha – added after seeing the blog (thanks, PeterO, for that and for explaining the other two) – there wasn’t a definition for 13d in the version I worked on. Thank you to Everyman.
Thanks, PeterO.
For 26a, I was thinking of Penguins on a bookshelf. Your reading makes more sense, and eliminates quibbles about uncapping proper nouns.
[BTW, the online version of this puzzle (I don’t know whether the print version is the same) spells sláinte wrong. The Irish fada is the same mark as the French acute accent, not a grave.]
I found this challenging – it took most of the week, in fits and starts and involved heavy use of the trusty Chambers crossword dictionary – but very enjoyable. I love it when, however impenetrable a clue may seem, it makes perfect sense once you get it and the parsing just falls into place. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Strangely, given the preceding comments, this was the first Everyman I have ever solved without cheating! And I got there by about Monday, I think. I was so proud of myself.
Thanks PeterO
OUAGADOUGOU push pineapple, shake the tree.
Thanks Everyman and PeterO
I was doing this from the printout, so was very confused by 13d – easy enough to guess the answer, harder to justify it!
I disliked HOUSTON. It’s a ground station, not a space station, and the homophone doesn’t work (particularly as the locals would call it “Hooston”).
I loved BEAR WITH ME, though.
I also found this challenging but very satisfying. It was one of those where the grammar of the cluing was beautiful once the answer was in, except that there was no definition in the TRUMP CARDS clue when I was doing it (as PeterO says, I see there is now). Many thanks to Everyman and to PeterO.
19A Coincidentally? “Heuston” is the name of one of Dublin’s main railway stations.
Really enjoyed this and got all but three of the answers with some help from the crossword dictionaries – and when I looked at the answers this morning could have kicked myself for not getting 12ac. As said above there were some lovely clues. Thanks to Everyman and PeterO
Thanks to Everyman and PeterO. I too struggled to see 13d because of the missing words, but it was the only phrase which fitted in the end. I was not convinced that ‘aspiration’ suggested adding an ‘h’ and being ‘sounds like’ at the same time. Miche – I checked on slàinte/sláinte, and it appears to depend on whether it is Scottish or Irish Gaelic. Learning new things is always one of the joys of cryptic crosswords for me.
I spent a long time trying to parse 9ac into shower rings. Rather slowed me down on that corner. Thanks Everyman
Everyman seems to be doing pairings in time as well as in individual crosswords. PeterO already noted 8D red currant in successive weeks. And we had AESOP in the previous two weeks, the clues re-engineered to reflect one being A and one D. Will look for similar this week to see if the theory can be eliminated at a stroke. Thanks PeterO. Like others in this blog I had to do some cheating to complete this one but once the answers were in place, some of the clues were very satisfying.
There were some lovely clues here. 24a BEAR WITH ME and 11d LOW COUNTRIES brought huge smiles.
For 13d I guessed the answer from the crossers, but wrote “Part of clue missing?” next to it, and saw the full clue a couple of days later.
Like Miche @2 I was thinking of Penguin books at 26a, but I can see the argument that this might require a capital P.
Many thanks Everyman and PeterO.
BEAR WITH ME is a lovely clue. Definitely a Everyman with a bit of bite, this one.
MACBETH took me an embarrassingly long time.
I’m another who was thinking of penguins as being paperbacks on a bookshelf – but unlike Lord Jim and Miche, I simply assumed the absence of a capital letter was a careful misdirection. I agree, though, that the Antarctic shelf is an equally valid interpretation. I adored HIGH ON THE HOG and BLACKTHORN and giggled at HOUSTON (as a small child, I always felt “aspirates” ought to be spelled with an H at the front). Yes I know it’s not technically “in” space, but surely it merits a sort of honorary “space” status…. thanks to PeterO and Everyman
Norbrewer @10 – thanks. I hadn’t considered (didn’t know) that the fada is different in Scottish Gaelic. As you say, learning something new is part of the pleasure of crosswords.
muffin @6 – I like the misdirection of “space station” for mission control. I did wonder about the pronunciation of Houston, but I looked at video clips of Apollo 13 (both the actual mission and the film), and they all say “Hyooston.”
Did not really get on the setter’s wavelength for this puzzle.
I had the same problem with the clue for TRUMP CARDS being incomplete at first.
Liked: BEAR WITH ME
Did not parse the HEHOG bit of HIGH ON THE HOG
New: thorn = Runic letter
Many thanks Everyman and PeterO.
I think “bum” and “sponge” in 9 across mean “beg” or “leech” – more American than British, but politer than referring to someone’s bottom!
Or did I miss the point of the reference to “wipe bum”?
I thought penguins “on the shelf” would be referring to the chocolate bar, which might sit on a supermarket shelf, but your reading works too.
(Long time reader, first time poster, thanks for these blogs by the way!)
Pretty easy today.
Took 2 coffees at The Cove Cafe in Waipu Cove.
Liked 12a, 13d, and 26a.
I think that many others like me, who used to do the Everyman puzzle every week, have given up as we are not on the Setter’s wavelength. I only got a few of these before I gave up.
I’m with Ethan @18 on “sponge” as on scrounge and with Michelle @17 on parsing. The capital in 12a was very clever but I missed the subtlety and cheated on my LOI.
I struggle with this setter but I liked this one for some reason. Perhaps it was the lovely sun we had today.I always need a bit of help…looking up novelists etc, but particularly liked Bear With Me, Off the Wall, Oust, Logjams and On the Shelf
Being from down here, live penguins came to mind immediately but thought the other thought process with books on the shelf fantastic, and it worked.
Did not understand the Thorn tho like a few others.
Pleasant time spent all round
I would never have parsed 3 down in a million years. (Thanks to Pierre for the explanation.)
Overall found this one very tough; had to use wild card dictionaries and web search quite a lot.
Apropos of nothing: Use duckduckgo for web searching and *NOT* the evil Google. No learning curve and no ads!!!