Lorraine: Good morning to you all.
This weeks offering was rather difficult I felt, so once again I had to enlist Nick’s help. I hope you all faired better than me.
Thank you to Everyman as always, it’s nice to be kept on one’s toes now and again.
| Across | |||
| 1. | Iron starts to go on the blink, then radio (10) | ||
| TRANSISTOR | (IRON STARTS)* | ||
| 6. | Iceberg in local fjord (4) | ||
| CALF | hidden: loCAL Fjord | ||
| 9. | Refurbished an hotel in a town on the Shannon (7) | ||
| ATHLONE | (AN HOTEL)* | ||
| 10. | This may be used by a recovery vehicle in poor wet ground (7) | ||
| TOWROPE | (POOR WET)* | ||
| 12. | PM is to touch down in a place in the Arctic Ocean (7,6) | ||
| CAMERON ISLAND | CAMERON+IS+LAND | ||
| 14. | Casseroles, say, old and new, Vera smashed (8) | ||
| OVENWARE | (O+NEW VERA)* | ||
| 15. | Mad with nag at Kelso’s last (6) | ||
| WHACKO | W+HACK+O | ||
| 18. | Good chap, engaging alternative comedian (6) | ||
| GORMAN | (G[ood] MAN) around OR | ||
| 19. | Rings about artist having wild dreams (8) | ||
| CHIMERAS | CHIMES around RA | ||
| 21. | More than one good bloke lacking social graces appears in sharp suit (5,8) | ||
| ROUGH DIAMONDS | ROUGH+DIAMONDS | ||
| 24. | International to manage trial (4,3) | ||
| TEST RUN | TEST+RUN | ||
| 25. | Weave intricate net before getting to port? (7) | ||
| ENTWINE | (NET*)+WINE | ||
| 26. | Harshly rebuke class (4) | ||
| RATE | dd | ||
| 27. | What the footballer did is co-operated (6,4) | ||
| PLAYED BALL | cd | ||
| Down | |||
| 1. | Leave, going uphill in carriage (4) | ||
| TRAP | PART reversed | ||
| 2. | Punishment given by a belt set about bumpkin? (1,5,3) | ||
| A THICK EAR | (A TEAR) around HICK belt=tear, as in tear-along, belt-along |
||
| 3. | Mates worry unduly about the song (6,7) | ||
| STORMY WEATHER | (MATES WORRY*) around THE | ||
| 4. | They fleece judge on board ship (8) | ||
| SHEARERS | HEARER in SS | ||
| 5. | Excursion abroad in front of galley (6) | ||
| OUTING | OUT+IN+G[alley] | ||
| 7. | A gypsy with a distinctive smell (5) | ||
| AROMA | A+ROMA | ||
| 8. | Rodent filmed out by river (10) | ||
| FIELDMOUSE | (FILMED*)+OUSE | ||
| 11. | The new stadium built for a London football club (4,3,6) | ||
| WEST HAM UNITED | (THE NEW STADIUM)* | ||
| 13. | Restoring development around West Berlin, perhaps (10) | ||
| SONGWRITER | (RESTORING*) around W | ||
| 16. | Girl causing unexpected stir in Communist country (9) | ||
| CHRISTINA | (STIR*) in CHINA | ||
| 17. | Room overlooking yard in a French skiing centre (8) | ||
| CHAMBERY | CHAMBER+Y | ||
| 20. | Outstanding gesture (6) | ||
| SIGNAL | dd? | ||
| 22. | Disrupt cheerful group (5) | ||
| UPSET | UP+SET | ||
| 23. | So fortunate (4) | ||
| WELL | dd | ||
| … | |||
Definitely a hard Everyman and had to go for aids early on.
6a While I was fairly sure that the answer must be the hidden word calf, it took a bity of googling to confirm.
18a I would never have got this -I assume that the comedian is someone called Dave Gorman who I have never ever heard of. I’d be interested to know how many have.
19a I didn’t know this meaning of chimera.
2d In my opinion this is just too hard for Everyman
8d Without crossing letters, getting Ouse out of the hundreds of rivers is hard.
17d Not totally convinced that Chambery is a skiing centre. I’d accept Chamonix as a skiing centre but I wouldn’t accept Geneva as one. Chambery to me is closer to Geneva in nature than Chamonix.
20d Not very convincing.
Thanks for the blog
Bamberger,
Dave Gorman is a well-known face on the TV and has even had his own shows although the names escape me.
Thanks, Lorraine.
Agree, definitely tricky for an Everyman, but I’d say it was all fair apart from GORMAN, who as Bamberger says is hardly a household name.
I stuck in RATE without really understanding it. BERATE for ‘rebuke’, fine; but I see it’s in dictionaries so fair enough. SIGNAL I think is perfectly okay: as an adjective it means ‘distinguished or conspicuous’ and it’s in reasonably common usage, in newspapers certainly.
I liked SONGWRITER in particular.
One man’s well-known is the next man’s obscurity …
I saw Dave Gorman’s live show Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure a few years ago. Part of the story of this involved his (genuinely) winning one of the Everyman prizes, so I wondered if his inclusion in this puzzle was a deliberate tribute, or just coincidence. Although his name is very familiar to me (ever since Are you Dave Gorman?, which I’m shocked to see was broadcast 11 years ago), I think he’s perhaps a rather obscure reference for an Everyman.
I have no problem with 20d. ‘Signal’ to mean ‘outstanding’ is often used in expressions such as ‘signal victory’. When we ‘signal’ to someone, we gesture to them. Sometimes the gesture could be casual or tentative; sometimes ‘outstanding’.
Dave Gorman is a DJ on the digital radio station ‘absolute radio’, and they are always talking about his comedy shows – this is the only reason I got this clue.
It must have been deliberate, as the more normal ‘word’ (as opposed to a fairly obscure proper noun), ‘german’ e.g. would fit here.
Lorraine
The inclusion of ‘Gorman’ in the crossword was deliberate on my part. Dave kindly wrote the Foreword to the ‘Chambers Everyman crosswords’ book published in 2007.
The boy is a crossword fan, and I’ll retract my remark about him hardly being a household name, because he was the guy who interrupted the Boat Race.
See here: http://gormano.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/odd-words-and-crosswords.html
Thanks for the blog. I got about half of them
I think 11d is absolutely brilliant.
because he was the guy who interrupted the Boat Race.
Um no, no he wasn’t.
One of my problems with your comments, sidey, is that I never know when to take you seriously …