Nothing whatever to say about the cricket, apart from a) I wish England would play some and b) does Jacques Kallis have an English grandmother?
Across
1 TULIP TREE – anagram* of TITLE PURE; also known as the yellow poplar, this magnolia has bright green leaves that resemble tulip flowers, especially when they turn golden in the autumn.
6 VELDT – nice clue: LD in VET for Jacques Kallis country.
9 AMBER – [c]AMBER (it’s the about = circa = c which must exit the camber); ‘Danger! Adverse Camber’ was always one of my favourite road signs as a nipper.
10 MAINLINER – MAN as in the verb ‘to crew’ + LINER around I[sland].
11 SEA LION – NOISE* around A + L[ake].
12 TIE+POLO
13 PHARMACOLOGIST – a write-in; for the record, the wordplay is PHARMA (sounds like ‘farmer’) + [e]COLOGIST; nothing to do with caulies or 1st.
17 BRING UP THE REAR – the sort of thing you expect to hear from Stephen Fry (who I spotted in the Hobbit II when I was awake); it’s RING UP THE RE (Royal Engineers) in BAR.
21 ONGOING – slightly unusual wordplay: it’s LONGING without its first letter (that’s the force of ‘after start’) around ’round’ (= O) with the literal being ‘currently in progress’.
23 MONSOON – as in Edina from Ab Fab (we had this the other day); just a charade: MON (‘one day’) + SOON (‘in the near future’).
25 CONSONANT – double definition
26 AISLE – sounds like ‘I’ll’. More of a chestnut than a tulip tree, but having tried to write one clue recently, I’m in no position to cast stones. However, throwing stones is fun so on we go…
27 ENEMY – a virtual &lit: E + MEN reversed + Y.
28 EARNESTLY – NEST (verb) in EARLY.
Down
1 TRANSEPT – T[hat] + RAN + SEPT (an Irish clan).
2 LIBRA – ‘lines once’ as so often refers to dear old British Rail (BR), which here forms the soggy lettuce in the curled-up sandwich provided by AIL reversed.
3 PERSIMMON – I have to confess I was looking for a disciple rather than a fruit; it’s M[atthew} in PER (‘each’) + SIMON (as in Peter or indeed the Zealot).
4 ROMANIC – ODO tells me that this is a less (or as McT would say ‘fewer’) common term for Romance, as in languages; a bit tricky if the first letter had been unchecked – the wordplay is rather crafty: OMAN (‘state’) preceded by (‘with’ – although the ordering is left vague) R (‘Republican’) + IC (‘in charge’), the literal being ‘like Spanish’.
5 EDICTAL – like ROMANIC, not a word I use every day, but easier to get than ROMANIC: LATE reversed containing CID reversed.
6 VALVE – hidden but pops up easily enough.
7 LANGOUSTE – I was working around ‘porpoise’, having failed to see it was simply an anagram of A LUTE SONG.
8 TORPOR – TOO + R around RP.
14 ARROGANCE – ‘side’ as in the Arthur Daley sense: ‘That Lucozade’s got no side, Terence’. Yes, I’m watching this gloriously slice-of-life series on YouTube currently. Oh, the wordplay? It’s GO reversed in ARRAN + CE.
15 GREENGAGE – G + REENGAGE.
16 ORANGERY – O + RANGER + Y.
18 UPGRADE – PA URGED*; when companies replace human beings with recorded messages, not excluding the one that tells you that this conversaton is being recorded to waste even more of your time.
19 TEMPTER – cunning wordplay once more: it’s MP (‘member’) replacing the third letter in TEETER (‘rock’).
20 LOUCHE – CH for IS in LOUISE.
22 IRONY – IRON-Y. Baldric made a joke about this…
24 ONSET – [N+S (the ‘poles’) + E] in OT.
I found both ‘edictal’ and ‘Romanic’ unnecessarily ugly and obscure, although easy enough to get from the cryptics.
Last in LOUCHE, which I believe some dictionaries define by printing a picture of Terry-Thomas.
Edited at 2013-12-30 02:44 am (UTC)
Thanks to Ulaca for fewer insults than usual.
BTW: you have two 20s, one of which should be a 19.
Edited at 2013-12-30 05:48 am (UTC)
DKOHF: TULIP TREE and SEPT.
I put a question on the 28/12 Jumbo blog about the experience of non-UK solvers with Times subscriptions to replace the Crossword Club.
Any comments by LJ message would be appreciated.
Feeling your Ashes pain Ulaca. Geez it’s got to the stage where it’s not even fun to gloat any more.
Hope you’re joking about hanging up your blogging boots, you’re one of my favourite bloggers and posters. Sounds like you (and Alistair Cook) just need a hug!
I was tempted by TEMPTOR, probably because I was looking to replace C in a word meaning rock, rather than the generic third letter. Tector (something to do with continental drift?) looked a possibility in a grid which already had the two newcomers above. Must learn to spell.
ENEMY makes it as my CoD – very tidy. With England’s proud history, I wasn’t tempted to look for a particular foe – we’ve upset everyone in our time.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html
I gather some of the claims are contentious, but even with a margin of error it suggests we’re better at invading than we are at cricket.
Like others the tree and the sect were unknown to me. I’ve no idea whether or not I’ve come across edictal and Romanic before but they were easy enough to piece together and are clearly real words.
At 19 “my” rock was “tester”, a term from the diamond trade that I was “pleased” to have remembered from previous puzzles. Except it’s summat to do with tapestry or embroidery, innit?
* While eating bowl of granola.
Some reasonable clues here in a light 20 minute jog whilst the wind whistles and the rain hammers down.
PERSIMMON used to be used to make golf clubs (woods not irons) before metal woods took over
Thanks for the blog ulaca.
Am enjoying solving the Sunday Times puzzles. Have done cryptic 4570, jumbo cryptic and just now finished jumbo concise. Now looking at the 11 Dec 1988 cryptic.