Yet another puzzle in Everyman’s distinctive style.
The standard Everyman features are all here: a related pair of long entries (when I got the solution to 11a, I had a pretty good idea what the first word of 20a would be), the easy-way-in “primarily” clue at 19a, and a bit of European language (it’s been French in previous puzzles but this time it’s Spanish, in 16a and 21d).
There are a couple of odd repetitions, which may be deliberate but I can’t really see why: the same rather rare word used twice in clues close to each other (23a and 25a), and the same vague geographical “definition” in two consecutive clues (8d and 12d). I also have some doubts about 25a and 18d – see comments below. However, these are minor niggles and overall I found this an enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Everyman as always.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | E-CIGARETTE | Eat rice, get convoluted modern device (1-9) |
| Anagram (convoluted) of EAT RICE GET. | ||
| 6 | SPAM | Revolutionary plans to send annoying messages (4) |
| MAPS (plans), reversed (revolutionary). | ||
| 9 | PRECOCIOUS | Advanced highly rated holding company (10) |
| PRECIOUS (highly rated), containing CO (company). | ||
| 10 | YARD | Measure that’s used to exercise prisoners (4) |
| Double definition; the second is an outdoor space in a prison where inmates get some exercise. | ||
| 11 | BLACK PUDDING | Dish, bland, pig and duck purée (5,7) |
| Anagram (puree) of BLAND PIG + DUCK. Dish = something served as food: a type of sausage, which contains bits of pig (though probably not duck). |
||
| 15 | PINCHED | Thin stole (7) |
| Double definition: (of a face) thin and unhealthy-looking, or slang for the past tense of the verb “steal”. The surface suggests the noun use of “stole” to mean a shawl or scarf. | ||
| 16 | TOREROS | Restroom mostly refreshed for Spanish performers (7) |
| Anagram (refreshed) of RESTROO[m] (mostly = last letter removed). Plural of torero, a bullfighter. |
||
| 17 | RESCUES | Saves, regrets holding keyboard key (7) |
| RUES (regrets, as a verb) containing ESC (the Escape key on a computer keyboard). | ||
| 19 | ROSS SEA | Primarily, remote oceanic section, some skirting East Antarctica? (4,3) |
| Everyman’s standard easy starter: first letters (primarily) of the remaining words in the clue, and clue-as-definition. | ||
| 20 | WHITE RUSSIAN | Nicholas II‘s preferred way to serve vodka? (5,7) |
| Double definition, or perhaps cryptic definition. One on the anti-Communist side in the Russian Civil War, or a cocktail based on vodka and coffee liqueur (White or Black Russian depending on whether it includes cream). | ||
| 23 | ALTO | Voice in maëlstrom regularly lost (4) |
| [m]A[e]L[s]T[r]O[m] with alternate letters dropped (regularly lost). | ||
| 24 | ITALIANATE | Styled á la Titian etc, for starters? (10) |
| Anagram (styled) of A LA TITIAN + the first letter (for starters) of E[tc]. Clue-as-definition: in an Italian style, for example in the style of the painter Titian (Tiziano Vecelli). |
||
| 25 | EDDY | Maëlstrom‘s exciting in East End (4) |
| Exciting = HEADY, which in the East End of London might be pronounced ‘EADY (with the H dropped). However, the spelling isn’t the same so there should be a homophone indicator somewhere, and there isn’t. Maelstrom = whirlpool = eddy. |
||
| 26 | HENRY MOORE | Sculptor‘s King And His Victim Eating Duck (5,5) |
| HENRY (King, in this case Henry VIII) and MORE (Thomas More, who was executed by the said Henry), containing (eating) O (zero = duck in cricket scoring). 20th-century British artist, known for large-scale sculptures. |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ESPY | Observe onset of flipping apocalypse (4) |
| The beginning (onset) of what you get if you flip (reverse) APOCALYPSE: ESPY[lacopa]. | ||
| 2 | IKEA | Part of bike, aluminium chain (4) |
| Hidden answer (part of) in [b]IKE A[luminium]. Chain of retail superstores probably best known for self-assembly furniture. |
||
| 3 | A DOLL’S HOUSE | Play with plaything? (1,5,5) |
| Double definition: a play by Ibsen, or a miniature house as a toy. | ||
| 4 | EVINCED | Shown European, persuaded Tory to leave (7) |
| E (European), then [con]VINCED with CON (short for Conservative = Tory) removed (persuaded to leave). | ||
| 5 | TRUMPET | Take trick before east voided and boast (7) |
| TRUMP (no, not him: in playing cards, to win/take a trick by playing a trump card), then E[as]T (voided = emptied = middle letters removed). | ||
| 7 | PLAGIARISM | Quiet deceiver concealing silver: is master revealing theft? (10) |
| P (p = piano = musical notation for quiet) + LIAR (deceiver) containing AG (ag = chemical symbol for silver), then IS + M (master). Specifically the theft of someone’s work (passing it off as your own). |
||
| 8 | MADAGASCAR | Hot old oven on cliff somewhere in Africa (10) |
| MAD (hot = angry, or perhaps exciting) + AGA (oven) + SCAR (cliff or rock-face). I’m not sure whether “old” is supposed to go with “hot”, suggesting this is an old usage of “mad”? I don’t think it goes with “oven” because Aga cookers are still in production as far as I can tell. African island nation. |
||
| 12 | DAR ES SALAAM | Somewhere in Africa, challenges Everyman to leave meat containing hint of aniseed (3,2,6) |
| DARES (challenges), then SALAM[i] (meat) with I (Everyman = the crossword setter) leaving it, containing the first letter (just a hint) of A[niseed]. Largest city and former capital of Tanzania. |
||
| 13 | SPERM WHALE | Large creature and small creature’s whitish, says Spooner (5,5) |
| S (small), then how Spooner might say WORM PALE (small creature whitish). As usual, whether or not the Spoonerism works depends on your pronunciation, specifically whether you pronounce the H in WH, but I think it’s close enough. | ||
| 14 | UNASSISTED | Tailored dean’s suits by yourself (10) |
| Anagram (tailored) of DEANS SUITS. | ||
| 18 | SHUTTLE | Dash hurriedly with temperature dropping, dash to and fro (7) |
| SHUTTLE = dash to and fro (like the shuttle = moving part on a loom); and if you drop the temperature by changing H (hot) to C (cold) you get SCUTTLE (dash hurriedly). However, I don’t think the clue makes it clear which of these two words is supposed to be the definition; the ordering of the phrases in the clue is a little clumsy either way. The difference is in an unchecked letter, of course, so there’s really no way to be sure. |
||
| 19 | RUSTLER | One standing on leaf? Tea leaf? (7) |
| Double definition, though the first is somewhat cryptic: rustling is the sound dead leaves make when you stand on them. The second definition is Cockney rhyming slang, tea leaf = thief: a rustler is specifically one who steals livestock. | ||
| 21 | MAYO | A month in Spain (and part of Ireland) (4) |
| Double definition: the first is the Spanish name of the month of May, and the second is a county in Ireland. | ||
| 22 | GENE | Kelly‘s inheritance? (4) |
| Double definition: the actor / dancer Gene Kelly, or inheritance in the biological sense. | ||
Having failed a recent crossie because I did the substitution of a letter the wrong way around, I looked especially carefully at 18d, and decided that the answer had to be SCUTTLE, as the temperature has to drop – H[ot] to C[old]. But I agree it is ambiguous. I liked DAR ES SALAAM and HENRY MOORE (having just finished the Hilary Mantel Cromwell trilogy definitely a help here). Most of the rest were quite pleasant too. Thanks, Everyman and Quirister.
Did not parse 19d RUSTLER as I did not think of the possibility of rhyming slang (which I did not know anyway).
Liked: HENRY MOORE, SPERM WHALE (small, pale worm!), PLAGIARISM.
I had entered SCUTTLE at 18d but was unable to parse it. I agree that the clue is a tad confusing – plus I never thought of shuttle as ‘dash’.
Thanks, Everyman and Quirister.
Thanks Quirister and Everyman
I agree about the SCUTTLE/SHUTTLE ambiguity. My take on the Spooner was slightly different – WORM’S PALE (“worm is pale”), and, for once, I quite liked it. Overall a nice puzzle.
To be pedantic, trumping doesn’t necessarily win a trick – an overtrump might occur.
Ref 18dn, I\’d go beyond \’confusing\’ and say the clue is actually wrong for the given answer, SHUTTLE, which is a pity, as it would have been a nice clue if the temperature had been rising.
I also don\’t think much of the RUSTLER clue. If you stand on a dead dried-up leaf it crunches and the sound is over too quickly to be described as a \’rustle\’. All far too tenuous a scenario anyway imho.
Ref my posting above, why has the system inserted back-slashes that were not in my original?
I think EAST END is implicitly a homophone indicator as it describes how a word is said rather than written? Thanks Q for the blog and Everyman for the workout
Like Muffin@3 I parsed “small creature’s” (with the possessive) with WORM’S
Have waited all week for the judgment on SH/CUTTLE only to discover you’re as confused as I am.
Thanks as always
“Reveal all” on last week’s puzzle gives SHUTTLE – I expect that Quirister knew this.
Yes muffin I wondered about that too. I think I was just relieved to see TRUMP clued without reference to the Donald 🙂
ps – comment @9 meant to say muffin @3
jackkt @5: I don’t know why this is happening but I’ll try to look into it. Seems to be something to do with how the apostrophe characters are represented. Could you tell me what web browser you’re using, and whether you’re using the web or mobile version of the site?
muffin @8: yes, I had to wait until the Guardian website showed the answers from last week’s puzzle before finishing off the blog. I originally went with SCUTTLE and I still can’t see a reason to pick one or the other. Everyman occasionally drops in here to comment, so might have more to say.
jackkt @5
For a reason I have been unable to determine, your comments were intercepted by Akismet, the spam filter used on this site. I don’t know why but Akismet inserts a slash before each apostrophe. This doesn’t matter if the comment is spam, and therefore not posted, but you obviously completed the Captcha to prove you are a human and not a spambot.
Reply to Quirister at #11 and Gaufrid at #12 with thanks to both.
I\’m using Chrome on the web via a desktop PC. Yes, I had to go through the Akismet test requiring me to type in characters which has never happened here before as on previous occasions I just had to click the \’I am not a robot button\’. Does everybody posting have to go though this? If not, how do I avoid it? I have been signed up with a valid id and password for years, not that I post here very often as I\’m too busy with my activities at TfTT.
I was another SCUTTLE. Like Muffin @3, I parsed the Spoonerism as ‘worm’s pale’.
Pleasant Sunday solve. I didn’t like the use of ‘starters’ for one letter; obviously used to improve the surface but rather misleading.
Thanks Everyman and Quirister.
@Guafrid and @jackkt: Those backslashes immediately made me think of UNIX/Linux escape characters, used to indicate that the character immediately following is not “special”, but I’ve no idea why they are happening in this case. Could it be that @jackkt is using a non-standard keyboard setting, or that an accent mark has been used instead of the usual apostrophe?
I’m another who thinks 18dn should be scuttle, with the temperature dropping, as noted by jackkt
I vaguely remember having a different parsing for SCUTTLE/SHUTTLE, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Such is the problem with having the weekend answers a week later.
Pretty workmanlike by Everyman standards; only DAR ES SALAAM managed to evince the satisfaction of a clue well solved. But I was outside glugging Pimms and eating steak sandwiches, so it wasn’t all bad. 🙂
Hi, I solved 18d in another way? I took ‘hurriedly’ to be an anagram indicator for hustle as a synonym of ‘dash.’ Temperature (the letter T) is then dropped in as an additional letter to enable the solution as referring to ‘dash to and fro.’ In a million years I wouldn’t have thought of interchanging H and C.
jackkt @13
This site uses two WordPress plugins to control spam. The primary one is Akismet. The secondary one presents a Captcha to anyone posting a comment for the first time and to anyone whose comment has been intercepted by Akismet so that false positives can be rectified.
I cannot determine why your recent comments are being considered as spam by Akismet. My best guess is that you have a dynamic IP address that has previously been allotted to someone who was distributing spam. In the last couple of years or so, only a very few people (from memory 3 or 4) have experienced this false positive issue. Unfortunately I cannot do anything about it as I am not able to create a whitelist to override Akismet’s blacklist.
I thought there used to be a form on the Akismet website which enabled an individual to request removal from the blacklist but I cannot find it now so either my memory is wrong (quite possible these days!), the form has been removed or I missed something due to my currently poor eyesight after a cataract removal three days ago.
Nick @18: that would work, but it would be an indirect anagram (a two-stage process where you have to find a synonym and then anagram that, rather than taking the anagram fodder directly from the clue). This is generally considered to be outside the rules of crossword setting. The H > C trick is a little sneaky but I’ve seen similar things before – though there may yet be a better explanation that none of us has seen.
Gaufrid@ #19 Thanks for looking into this. For the amount I post here I\’m not overly bothered about the security check but I do resent having my text interfered with.
Thanks, Quirister.
I had SCUTTLE, as others did. Not at all convinced that that clue has a unique answer.
Like muffin @3, I read 13d as a mangling of WORM’S PALE. But that isn’t a spoonerism, as one of the sounds transposed is at the end of a word. It’s a metathesis. (All spoonerisms are metatheses, but not all metatheses are spoonerisms.)
Gaufrid @19 – best wishes for your recovery from surgery.
Pretty sure it is a Spoonerism, as if the Rev tried to say ‘sperm whale’ it might come out ‘ werm spale’ – all Spoonerisms are homophones after all.
Definitely SCUTTLE – it doesn’t say ‘if the temperature drops, it could be scuttle, it says ‘with temperature dropping’.
Gonzo @23 – yes, good point re SPERM WHALE. I was looking at it the wrong way round.
Got this in one sitting during what is hopefully our last weekend of lockdown here in Auckland. Overall it was not too challenging, but a couple threw us eg 9ac plus 18dn. Just slow thinking on our part. Thanks all.
Failed on Rustler, couldn’t parse Shuttle or Eddy.
I thought this looser than Everyman has been of late. He’s been good the last few weeks, but this felt like one of his earlier efforts.
This seemed all too easy until I came to a grinding halt and struggled over the final few. My take on 18d is it was just clued incorrectly and should have read “with temperature rising”. Otherwise great clue. Agree worm’s pale works fine. Thanks Everyman Quirister et al.
Mostly rushed through this. Got eddy but is a bit of a obscure clue for antipodeans.
At 13d I was distracted by “small” as S so then had the Spoonerism as worm pale. All good in the end. Thanks especially to Everyman and Quinster.
I achieved this week almost a full house! I could only think of Ned for 22d,should have remembered Gene. And 24a eluded me but enjoyed the tussle.
Agree that the answer to 18 down should be “scuttle”. Couldn’t parse 19 down (“rustler”), and wasn’t too sure about 22 down (“Gene”). Did not like 25 across; East End implies dropping an “h” but there should be a homphone indicator as well. Like others I parsed the Spoonerism as “worm’s pale”.