Not my favourite one ever. Far too many anagrams (just under half of all the clues contained anagrams) and some obscure knowledge – I don’t think I have ever used the phrase at 9/10dn nor has anyone ever said it to me, and I only got the composer at 16dn due to the fact it was a “hidden in” type clue so the word was in the clue. But a couple of nice misdirections too, 15ac and 25ac being my favourites. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Nothing to taxing this week, I got Milwaukee (15d) but needed Nick to work it out for me, also loved 25a it made me chuckle. Thanks Everyman for another enjoyable puzzle.

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A slightly odd mixture of nice neat and pretty easy cluing with rather a few obscurer pieces of general knowledge meaning that there may have been the odd place where you could see what the answer should be but weren’t quite sure what it was (I’m thinking 19ac, 21ac, 22ac, 25ac, 2dn, 4dn, 6dn and 8dn in particular). Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Nice easy puzzle this week, thank you Mr. Everyman.   I have a small query in 17dn. Please note the spelling mistake in 1dn. as published in the electronic versions; sorry to be picky but I hate spelling mistakes!

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A lot of double definitions this week and one clue that I’m not completely sure about although looks as though it might be a dd (any help much appreciated). Otherwise not the easiest week, but plenty that were very nice. Perhaps slightly too reliant on the double definition type of cluing though… Read the rest of this entry »

The Trafites:  Due to a sad week, the blog was a bit rushed today;  this in memory of my dear wife’s brother, Polly, who died on Friday.

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Goodness me! This one was a toughie by Everyman standards with some less common abbreviations creeping in (RR for Bishop rather than B for example), and some less common knowledge required (including in one of the all-important long clues; 10dn). Hopefully some of you found this easier than me, as I did take a rather long time. Having said all of that, once the answers were there, the clues revealed themselves to be generally very precise. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  I got straight into this weeks puzzle, a couple had me beat for a while, 10 and 20 across were the last two I solved.  Always nice to see my old favourite ‘redrum’ pop-up.  Many thanks to Everyman.

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I have to say I didn’t really enjoy this one. Compared to the tight cluing of the best Everymans (Everymen?) this seemed to be quite sloppy in places. For example, 5dn is a clue that fits the answer, but there is no way you could be sure that it was the correct answer until you had plenty of other letters -  so not a great clue in the sense that you couldn’t get the answer from it alone. I don’t completely ‘get’ everything that’s going on in 21ac either… Any help much appreciated! Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Nothing to taxing this week, made sure I read the clues properly (which helps).  I was held up for a while this week as I hadn’t realised that I had spelt Altantic wrong!.

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A few slightly more obscure answers and a little fiendish wordplay here and there (8dn in particular) made this one a bit tricky, but hopefully pretty fair. Some lovely surfaces dotted about too. I particularly liked 25ac and 3dn. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  No real problems this week really so long as you read the clues properly!;  6 across being a fine example, I put ‘free association’ which then messed me up  for 6 down, and took me ages to realise where I’d gone wrong.  Moral of the story always read the clues properly.  Apart from that another lovely crossword, thank you Everyman.

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Nothing much objectionable here, but certainly not an easy one with some slightly more obscure words/phrases and once or twice I ended up knowing that it must be this set of letters, but just not knowing the word so having to have a bit of a guess followed by a verification (1 across is a perfect example of this). However there were a couple of lovely clues such as 16ac or 22dn with clever misdirection in the word “stud”. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Nice easy plod along this week, had to look up 1 down and 7 down to confirm my guesses. Can’t say any one clue was particularly outstanding as I always enjoy all the clues; thanks again Everyman

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True vintage Everyman this week, in my opinion. Not a single word in the solution that required me to check its definition or an obscure place name to stop me in my tracks. That’s not to say it was particularly straightforward with some beautifully well hidden definitions and subtle cluing all over the shop. Basically, if I was trying to find a crossword to show people exactly how cryptic crosswords and cryptic clues work, I wouldn’t hesitate to use this one. Great stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Another nice Everyman – unusual as RETSINA appeared two weeks ago.

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Some lovely surfaces and subtleties this week, and a clue type in 12/13 ac which I’m not sure I’ve seen in Everyman before (which is by no means to say that it hasn’t appeared in the crossword at some point, just that I’ve not personally come across it here as far as I remember). I’m particularly fond of 1dn and 14dn as well as 12/13ac. All in all a good week. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Nice easy jog along this week, 20 across had me going for a while as I didn’t think of loaded as having lots of money, when I eventually twigged I did laugh to myself. Thanks once again Everyman.

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Pretty nice this week. 10ac I am not sure of the exact correct parsing (I have 2 options which both seem equally likely) but I’m sure someone will clarify. Also I think 6dn is pretty mean as the answer is a town which (according to Wikipedia) has a population of fewer than 2000 people and so not somewhere that everyone would necessarily have heard of (I know I hadn’t). It is clued as an anagram which is easy to spot but does mean that you can never work out the answer for sure from the wordplay and I must admit that I ended up googling a few possibilities until hitting on the right one. However, 17/20ac is lovely and there’s a pleasant triple definition in there too at 19dn. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Thank you Everyman, quite a breeze this week, nothing to taxing, perhaps having a week off helped and gave my poor brain a rest. I hope everyone else found this weeks as pleasant to solve as I did.

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I generally find Everyman puzzles to be on the easy side and this was no exception, though it did provide a gentle warm up in preparation for the Azed and EV. So far as I can see, there were only two answers that may be unfamiliar to some, 6dn which was clued in such a way that the solver needed a knowledge of French and science fiction in order to parse the wordplay, which was perhaps a little unfair, and 25ac where the wordplay was quite straightforward.

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Lorraine:  Sorry everyone have to admit Nick done the crossword for me this week due to distressing news on Saturday, so it is down to Nick to comment.

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This was nice and pretty gentle. The main features worth noting are three 15-letter anagrams and a rather nice long even-letters clue. If I was in a complaining mood I would say that it would have been more impressive if all four long clues were anagrams, but as it is, this passed the time very pleasantly. 15dn, I am still not wholly sure on part of it, but I’m sure I’ll be put right nice and quickly on here. Read the rest of this entry »

Lorraine:  Straight forward Everyman this week, as always very enjoyable.

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Well, I for one think this one was a bit more challenging than the last few that I’ve blogged. A couple of nice cryptic definitions, and some slightly more obscure words both as solutions and part-solutions. My only complaint would be the level of geographic knowledge required with various place names and a currency (and even a baseball team) which, as much as you can use the wordplay and go “it really must be this”, if you don’t know, the only thing to do is look it up. But generally this was very nicely put together. Read the rest of this entry »