Everyman 4,176 – Fifteensquared

A good sound Everyman which I found a bit easier than usual. Often I get hung up on some answer, but not in this case. All the usual Everyman trademarks are there and are coloured in the diagram.

Definitions in crimson, underlined. Indicators (homophone, hidden, containment, anagram, juxtaposition, etc) in italics. Anagrams indicated *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green. Homophones indicated “like this” and deletions [like this].

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1	DASH	Run in Bermuda shorts (4)
		Hidden in BermuDA SHorts
3	STATEMENTS	Put another way, testaments? (10)
		*(testaments), &lit., so the whole clue is also the definition
9	CHAT	Rabbit and another pet in France (4)
		Chat is French for cat so pet in France = chat — rabbit in the sense of talk, yak
10	TEAM PLAYER	Eat lamprey, bananas: good sport! (4,6)
		(Eat lamprey)*
12	MACHIAVELLI	Bored by hotel, Camilla? I’ve arranged for intriguing fellow (11)
		h in (Camilla I’ve)* — Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a diplomat and writer, famed for his separating political analysis from advice about scheming and intriguing
15	RETRIAL	Another hearing about ﬂipping baddie’s HQ with Tesla (7)
		re (lair T)rev. — re = about (not in this clue an indicator), lair = baddie’s HQ, T = Tesla, the SI unit of magnetic flux density
16	GAGARIN	C20 icon in raging Niagara, largely overcoming force due to gravity (7)
		*(Niagar[a]) round g — g = force due to gravity — overcoming = surrounding — ref Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), the Soviet cosmonaut who was the first man in outer space
17	STOPGAP	Small shirt? Clothing chain‘s expedient (7)
		s top Gap — s = small, top = shirt, Gap is the clothing retailer
19	TITANIC	Simpleton: A Short Friendly Giant? (7)
		tit a nic[e] — tit = Simpleton, a = A, nice = Friendly
20	CLOCK TOWERS	Notice, perhaps, trucks taking away town-square ﬁxtures (5,6)
		clock towers — clock = “notice, perhaps”, towers = “trucks taking away” (rhymes with “mowers”)
23	NARCOLEPSY	Disorder keeping you up at night? Quite the reverse (10)
		I think this is just a CD, because narcolepsy, which causes sleepiness, is the opposite of something that will keep you up at night — but there may be more going on which I’ve missed
24	ORCA	Imaginary beast, a whale (4)
		orc a — orc = imaginary beast, a = a — an orca is a killer whale
25	BOTTLE BANK	Fearfully miss snooker shot – one for the green (6,4)
		~~Well I suppose this is the answer, simply because it’s the only thing that fits, but I’m surely missing something~~ — to bottle is to fearfully miss, and one for the green is perhaps the definition: in a bottle bank there is one place for green bottles, ~~but how bank = snooker shot goodness knows~~ — well I’ve Googled it and it is indeed a snooker shot and seems to be what I had always thought was called a “double”
26	MEEK	Everyman given the sack ﬁnally – or retiring? (4)
		me [th]e [sac]k — me = Everyman — our self-referential clue
DOWN
1	DECOMPRESS	Relax with reconstituted processed meat for starters (10)
		*(processed m[eat]) — meat for starters gives the first letter of meat — it uses the colloquial expression “for starters” to indicate the single start, not, as it suggests, the starting letters of “processed” and “meat”
2	STAYCATION	Budget holiday I – at any cost – organised (10)
		(I at any cost)*
4	THE OVAL	Silly to halve sport venue (3,4)
		*(to halve) — the cricket ground, still just known as The Oval despite sponsors over the years attaching their name to it.
5	TIME LAG	Spooner’s green label indicating ‘delay‘ (4,3)
		The crossword Spooner would say “lime tag” — lime = green, tag = label
6	MILKING STOOL	Bulk of Tamil king’s too lardy for seat (7,5)
		Hidden in TaMIL KING’S TOO Lardy — do milking stools exist nowadays? Not that it matters; they did.
7	NAYS	Refusals heard as stable utterances? (4)
		“neighs”, the sounds made by horses in their stables
8	SARI	Silk attire: rani’s investment, primarily? (4)
		Our first letters &lit. clue
11	RIDING SCHOOL	You must be up for being taught here (6,6)
		CD which plays on “up” — it suggests getting up in the morning, but it refers to being up in the saddle
13	ORANGE TREE	Nasty green tea or fruit found here … (6,4)
		*(green tea or)
14	KNOCKS BACK	… turns down drinks (6,4)
		2 defs, one of them in the sense reject or refuse — why this clue and the previous one are connected by an ellipsis I can’t see; I suppose they are vaguely related but if the ellipses hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have cried out for them
18	PROVERB	Saying ‘Mars explorer‘s in lead’ (7)
		P(Rover)b — the chemical symbol for lead is Pb and it refers to the Mars Rover
19	TAKES IN	Admits admission revenue wrong (5,2)
		take sin — take = admission revenue, sin = wrong
21	SNUB	Reject pâtisserie on the counter (4)
		(buns)rev. — on the counter means in reverse
22	TROT	In Yorkshire, the rubbish Communist (4)
		t’ rot — t’ = as “the” is (in crosswords, anyway) pronounced or said in Yorkshire, rot = rubbish — Communist = Trotskyist = Trot

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