One of these days I’m going to miss a theme in an Everyman. I’ve stared at this one but no joy. Though I always enjoy solving Everyman – which typically takes about 1/2h to 45’ for me.
Across
| 3 | WORDS+WORTH – having WORDS is a way to argue. |
| 10 | LA(N)TER+N – Not a bad clue: the juxtaposition of “light” and “northern Norway” had me thinking about the Aurora Borealis which slowed me down. N is abbrev once for “Norway” and once for “northern”. |
| 11 | OMNIBUS – double meaning: tough clue for me because PSV is a well-known Dutch soccer team (albeit with an unsavoury fan base) – in this case though it’s Public Service Vehicle! |
| 12 | S+HOCK – Last clue to solve: in my view quite nicely constructed and misleading: SHOCK is the verb to “jar” and HOCK is a kind of white wine, and “drop of sweet” gives us the S. |
| 13 | PE(S)T+O – Instead of a “drop of sweet” we have a “piece of savoury” for the S. Remember that duck means to score nothing in cricket. |
| 16 | DEMOLITION DERBY – what passes for entertainment in highly sophisticated western societies. |
| 18 | WISH YOU WERE HER+E – (why rewire house)*+E. The clue is clearly an anagram given the incongruous fodder. “Dilapidated” a perfectly good anagrind. I liked the “message on a pc” because of echoes of Sting’s message in a bottle and because pc had me thinking of the thing I’m writing this on and not a postcard. |
| 19 | QU(O)IT – Actually not really containment but take the O (“round”) from Quito (Ecuador’s capital – not E in this case!) and move it to the middle and end up with a word meaning ring: QUOIT. |
| 24 | A+VOCA(l)+DO – I wonder if people still get invited to DOs – I only ever get invited to parties. And even that’s rare. |
| 26 | SCAREDY-CAT – (cry as cadet)* — not sure about “condemned” as an anagrind: perhaps hinting at a building that is condemned to be demolished? |
| 27 | STIR – double meaning: I suppose the people who go to dos and make too much of a stir might end up in the stir. |
Down
| 1 | SPLASHDOWN – not a bad cryptic definition: though once I had the leading S, I kept looking for sea???????. |
| 2 | CONFORMIST – (scorn motif)* — good clue with great surface, fodder and anagrind. |
| 4 | O(W)N UP – So I’m going to make a giant leap and say, without checking, that in cricket (like soccer) there are two sides ON and off. |
| 5 | DROP S+C+ONE – British pancake. Had to look this up. |
| 6 | WINDOW DRESSING – One nounal meaning of “light” is WINDOW. |
| 7 | ROBE – Hidden in “CaiRO BEautician’s”. The possessive apostrophe is supposed to indicate this: I wonder if this isn’t just a little too pithy. |
| 8 | HASH – double meaning: if this was a 3-letter light, the same clue could also produce pot. |
| 9 | BERKELEY SQUARE – Busby BERKELEY was the canonic Hollywood musical choreographer. And someone “following tradition” is a SQUARE. At least was when I was boy. |
| 14 | GREEN BER(E)T – BERT’s our boy this time, short for Albert: interestingly if we parsed this as B(E)RET we’d end up with Bret as our boy but it’s not a diminutive so I vote for BERT. And GREEN BERETs are American “commandos” so “English” serves to mislead which is nice. |
| 15 | TYP(EWRI)TER – (pretty)* contains (wire)*. Nice choice of topical anagrinds: “faulty” and “loose” in the context of “wire”. |
| 22 | B(AS)S– Outskirts of BownesS contains AS (when). |