Across
1 FASHIONABLE – let’s start with my COD; the definition is ‘in’ and the wordplay FABLE around SH + IONA.
7 FOG – GOLF reversed minus the L[abrador].
9 DEBUTANTE – TUBE reversed in DANTE (who vies with Donne for the five-letter poetical slot in Crosswordland).
10 CLEAR – double definition; for the second, think of fences in showjumping or steeplechasing.
11 HIRSUTE – well it’s how I at any rate pronounce ‘her suit’; the literal is ‘rough and shaggy’.
12 TWITCHY – definition ‘in a stew’, wordplay last letter of [marro]W in TITCHY.
13 RIFLE – double definition: ‘security provider with stock’ = rifle + ‘plunder’ (as in rifling someone’s drawers – if they’ll let you…)
15 SHANGRI-LA – anagram* of HIS GAL RAN; easy for me as the hotel chain is a big presence out east.
17 BRITANNIA – am I the only Briton who tries to spell this with two Ts? IN A BARN IT* for the legendary Amazon.
19 DRYAD – naturally, a DRYad doesn’t live in a river, so a NAIAD must. That’s how I remember them, anyway. DRY + AD, of course.
20 APPAREL – PARE (‘crop’ as in cut) in PAL*.
22 ALL-STAR – L[eft] + S[on] in ALTAR; ‘celebrity’ and ‘all-star’ being used adjectivally as modifiers.
24 NINJA – I panicked, as I know about as much about Eastern fisticuffs as I do about obscure scientists, and nearly put in Uwani. It’s hidden a little later in the string.
25 RECUMBENT – RE (‘about’) followed by U[niversity] + MB (an abbreviated Latin ‘doctor’) in CENT (‘petty cash’) – the definition is ‘lying’.
27 DAY – a clue that strives for crypticity without, I think, ever quite attaining its objective; every other letter in DiArY.
28 LOOSE CANNON – ‘say’ because a dissolute member of the Cathedral staff would in reality be called a ‘loose canon’; the literal is ‘a cause of indsicriminate damage’.
Down
1 FED – I struggled with this, I must confess; it’s a double definition: ‘provided courses for’ (fed) and ‘US agent’ (Fed).
2 SOBER – struggled even more with this, my last in: literal ‘grave’; wordplay SOB (‘cry’) followed by ER (‘re’ reversed – indicated by ‘raised’, ‘up’ etc. in a Down clue).
3 INTRUDE – IN (Crossword setters are always giving ‘at homes’, tweedy lot that they are with their debutantes and other gels) + [gues]T + RUDE .
4 NON-PERSON – the literal is ‘insignificant type’, derived from N[ew} + ON + (S[tage] in PERON).
5 BLEAT – I’m not sure if this is a kind of &lit or merely a write-in; the literal is the whole thing and the wordplay B[lack] and [goa]T surrounding LEA (Crosswordland’s major type of pastoral grassland).
6 ETCHING – quite cunning this one: the literal is ‘art work’, obtained by taking FETCHING (‘attractive’) and removing the F[emale].
7 FRENCHIFY – is this a cryptic definition? I reckon it just might be, non? If someone wants to act like (AKA ‘make like’) a French person (especially one from Nice on the Cote d’Azur – geddit?), he or she would be FRENCHIFYing.
8 GERRYMANDER – nothing to do with Jerry of the Club Monthly; this is the gubernatorial equivalent of football players diving to gain an advantage – mucking about with electoral boundaries so you can win two seats instead of losing them. GERMANDER is your plant, which has twined itself around RY.
11 HARE-BRAINED – ‘scatty’ is the literal; the wordplay a charade of HARE (‘fast runner’) + B[aton] + RAINED (‘threw it down’ as in ‘chucked it down’, as in ‘inundated Dorset Jimbo’).
14 FLIPPANCY – literal ‘frivolity’; FANCY (‘inclination’ as in partiality) around most of LIPP[i], some painter.
16 AVALANCHE – another in the write-in category; ‘landslide’, represented by V[ictory] in A + ALAN + our old friend, the Argentinian medico turned bandito (CHE).
18 AIRMAIL – the way your mail goes missing, you wonder just how ‘qualified’ these blokes (and blokesses) are; I’m not really sure why ‘pilots’ is qualified by ‘qualified’, but I think we all get the idea. I reckon this clue could be the final nail in Macca’s coffin after the Reds were mugged by Mourinho yesterday…
19 DILEMMA – is it just me, or is this puzzle running out of crypticity? If one is on the horns of a dilemma, he or she is faced with a tough decision.
21 LARGO – LAGO[s] with R[epublican] inserted; the definition is [musical] ‘movement’.
23 THEGN – a variation on ‘thane’ (also look out or ‘thayn’) for the landed aristo in times of yore; [cashin]G in THEN (‘at that time’).
26 TAN – literal is ‘beat’; wordplay is (A + T[rail] reversed) + [Helvelly]N. Ascen/descend via Striding and Swirral Edges and repair to the pub.
For a start, the “son” in 22ac came out of the printer with a mark on the page and it looked like “sop”. Then I tried to write BRITANNIA into 28ac. No excuses though. (Bit like Steve Gerrard? Though I don’t understand what 18dn has to do with that particular disaster.)
Hopefully someone will come up with a better explanation for FRENCHIFY, but it won’t be me.
My biggest dilemma was the spelling of DILEMMA. Cruel to leave that second M unchecked.
Answer: The Australian Rugby League Board of Control.
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Rugby_League#History)
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: modern representation of Old English theg(e)n, adopted to distinguish the Old English use of thane from the Scots use made familiar by Shakespeare.
I would see a rifle more as a source of insecurity, especially if someone else was holding it
I have occasionally been subjected to jokes about gerrymandering, Ulaca. Not keen on geriatric, either.. 🙂
It’s still persistently raining in Dorset – just not quite as hard as it was
BRITANNIA is my second favourite steam locomotive (she just looks so right) so there’s not the slightest chance I would misspell it/her.
Germander is added to my list of flowers I might randomly “recognise” at the roadside to impress my travelling companions, with a fair degree of certainty that it wouldn’t be gainsaid. I checked via google images. Any one of hundreds. I also thought it would pass similar muster as a breed of duck.
I don’t pronounce HIRSUTE like ‘her suit’ but many people do, which is good enough for me.
Agree with ulaca that FASHIONABLE qualifies for COD – quite a crop recently of the seemingly insignificant word in the clue being the definition. Good trend – keeps us on our toes!
I like GERRYMANDER purely for being a great word. Always puts me in mind of carpetbagging and filibustering as well.
Re one T and two NNs there are rather a lot of words like that, I find, put there just to annoy me.
Thanks to all,
Chris.
THEGN was a new one on me – I knew “thane”, but agonized over this alternate form.
COD .. the dissolute priest.
I thought 7 dn was FRENCH = from Nice and IFY = perhaps? IFFY with alternative spelling?
A pleasant straightforward start to the week.