Solving time: about 5 mins
A reasonable puzzle with a few quibbles here and there, mostly with regard to the cryptic ‘grammar’ of the clues, but no actual mistakes that I saw. There are a few possible nods to the election (‘Conservative’ at 13ac, ‘green’ at 17ac and 7dn, ‘red’ at 28ac, ‘blues’ at 25ac) but probably coincidence, I think.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across |
| 4 |
FIREWATER; FIRE + WA[i]TER |
| 8 |
ODDBALL; ODD (= ‘rum’) + BALL (= ‘dance’) |
| 9 |
BOLONEY; LONE in BOY – not a spelling I’ve encountered before, and I wrote in ‘baloney’ without properly checking the wordplay (actually that’s not quite true, I checked it, saw it didn’t work and assumed there was a mistake in the clue). |
| 10 |
SWINDLE; SWINE (= ‘pigs’) around D,L (initial letters) |
| 11 |
COLERIDGE; (EL GRECO + I’D)* – ’17’ indicating the answer at 17ac which then forms part of the anagram. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan amongst other poems. |
| 13 |
CHARADES; (ARCHDEA[con]S)* |
| 14 |
ICE TEA; I (= ‘one’) + C.E. (‘church’) + TEA (= ‘leaves’) – not sure what happened in the online version here but this clue started with what appears to be a rogue ‘and’ (uncapitalised). |
| 17 |
EL GRECO; ELG[a]R + ECO – ‘Spanish painter… (2,5)’ didn’t need too much thought. |
| 19 |
TIMBRE (hidden) |
| 23 |
CAKEHOLE – slang for the mouth. |
| 25 |
DOWNRIGHT – because ‘down’ (meaning ‘sad’) and ‘right’ (politically speaking) are both synonyms for ‘blue’. |
| 26 |
TALKIES (cryptic definition) – I rather liked this but might have preferred it without a question mark since it doesn’t seem necessary and gave the game away somewhat… |
| 27 |
DISHRAG; (IS + H[enry]) in DRAG – …whereas this clue does need a question mark because ‘dressed up as woman’ has to be interpreted as ‘in DRAG’, with ‘in’ forming part of the wordplay instructions. |
| 28 |
SCARLET; LET after S[mall] CAR |
| 29 |
TAKE HEART; (THE KARATE)* |
| Down |
| 1 |
TOP-SECRET; (PROTECTS + [mol]E)* – nice anagram but I’m not sure about ‘threatened’ as an anagram indicator. |
| 2 |
ADMIRAL; ADMIR[e] + AL[e] (= ‘respect’ + ‘beer’, both ‘endless’) |
| 3 |
SANDPAPER; SANDPIPER, changing I for A – this took me a good half-minute to see. It’s a nice idea but the definition (‘smoother item’) doesn’t work; it needs to be ‘smoothing item’ or just ‘smoother’ (i.e. something that smooths). |
| 4 |
FLEECE (2 defs) |
| 5 |
ESOTERIC; SOT (= ‘Drunk’) + ERIC (= ‘man’) after E (= ‘leading expert’) |
| 6 |
ACONITE; (NOTICE A)* – I’ve had trouble with this word before through confusion with ‘atropine’ and struggled again here (partly through trying ‘notice’ = AD), although at least I was certain it was this and not ‘acotine’ this time. The anagram indicator is an imperative ‘Police’ which I suppose is about ok in the sense of ‘police a crowd’, i.e. organise it. |
| 7 |
EPERGNE; E.P. + (GREEN)* |
| 12 |
OSTRICH; O,S,T (initial letters) + RICH – ‘with lots of bread’ meaning ‘with lots of money’. |
| 15 |
COME CLEAN (1 def, 1 literal description) – the literal description doesn’t really work; ‘how you hope your home delivery laundry will arrive’ indicates ‘clean’, not ‘come clean’ (‘arrive’ already does duty for ‘come’). The clue needed to read something like ‘Divulge what you hope your home delivered laundry will do’. |
| 16 |
ADVERSITY; (DIY AVERTS)* – decent clue. |
| 18 |
LEVITATE; (EVITA + T[enor]) in LE (= ‘the French’) |
| 20 |
IWO JIMA; JIM in IOWA with the centre letters swapped |
| 21 |
BANSHEE; (HAS BEEN)* |
| 23 |
GORILLA; RILL (= ‘stream’) in GOA |
| 24 |
AT TEST |
When one can’t trust accuracy of the clue, it’s a toss up between moonlight and downright.
If 13 across had “…” at the end, it would explain the uncapitalised “and” in 14.