ST 4395 (Sun 22 Aug) – Clueless

By the time I’d solved this I’d already seen a comment on last week’s puzzle pointing out a mistake at 26ac (‘Remainder left inside – one of 28 here’), which I therefore ignored until the end. This knowledge probably actually hindered rather than helped me, because I assumed that the misprint was the ’28’ which should have been a clue number, whereas in fact ‘Remainder’ should have read ‘Reminder’ (‘one of 28 here’ was the definition, to give the answer CLUE).

That aside, this was an odd puzzle in that some of it was very good, e.g. the anagrams at 12dn and 14ac, while other bits were amateurish, e.g. three words starting ‘RE’ (RESORT, REFRESHMENTS and REPORTER) all clued using the same initial breakdown and two of them with ‘about’ indicating those letters.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
Across
1 CLOVE HITCH – ‘to hitch’ meaning ‘to thumb (a lift)’.
7 BAR + D
9 S(AU)TERNE – with the ‘R’ in place I pencilled in ‘OR’ for ‘gold’ which held me up.
10 P + RAISE – ‘raise’ = ‘institute’ as a verb, which I missed until I spotted the answer from the definition and checking letters.
11 OFF ICE – clever.
13 TACITURN; TURN after (I ACT)* – also nice.
14 COMPOS MENTIS; (COMMON PEST IS)* – good anagram.
17 REFRESHMENTS; RE (= ‘Note’) + FRESHMEN + T[asteles]S
20 RE + PORTER
21 SUPERB; SUP (= ‘Drink’) + E.R. (= ‘The Queen’) + B[inge]
22 STRAIN; RAIN (= ‘natural water’) after ST[one] (i.e. ‘small stone’)
23 HOMEBREW (cryptic definition)
25 CLUE; CUE (= ‘Reminder’) around L
Down
2 LEAPFROG; (ROPE + FLAG)* – I missed the anagram here and was looking for a two-part answer made up of (word for) ‘Rope’ and (word for) ‘flag’.
3 VET (2 defs)
4 HORSE (3 defs) – slang for ‘heroin’, an animal and a piece of gymnastics equipment on which Daniel Keatings became Britain’s first ever European gymnastics champion earlier this year.
5 THEATRE (hidden) – a reasonable &lit.
6 HOPSCOTCH; H[our] + OP[us] (= ‘work’) + SCOTCH (= ‘put an end to’)
7 BEAUTY SLEEP (cryptic definition) – I liked this one.
8 RE + SORT
12 IMPERSONATE; (NO SPARE TIME)* – excellent.
15 SAFETY NET (cryptic definition) – a pun on ‘top’ meaning ‘big top’, i.e. a circus.
16 STURGEON; ST (= ‘Way’) + URGE ON (= ‘encourage’)
18 EARSHOT; (HORSE + A + T[emperature])*
19 LENT + I + L
21 [con]SOMME
24 BOO[r]