ACROSS
1 FREIGHT– FR + EIGHT.
5 SICK PAY – cryptic definition.
9. TOP BANANA TOP (‘pot’ reversed – ‘going west’) + BANANA (hand = bunch) .
10. RUMBA – R + U + MBA.
11. MAORI – MAI[n] around OR (Ordinary Ranks).
12. CORPOREAL – E[nergy] in CORPORAL.
14. BEAT GENERATION – never read a word by these three ‘50s’ authors (Jack, Allen and William not Edgar Rice) but they crop up in Gore Vidal’s essays, which I have read.
17. INTERMITTENTLY – the letter I appears intermittently in bIkInI and rImInI. My last in.
21. TROUSSEAU – T[his] + ROUSSEAU for the bride-to-be’s goodies.
23. TITAN – TIT[i]AN; Titian is currently jostling with Matisse for ‘top drawer’.
24. EXTOL – EX + T[ime] + OL (LO[rd] reversed, where ‘rd’ becomes ‘dr’).
25. TOLERATED – literal ‘okay’; TO + DART EEL* (anagram) .
26. SURGEON – URGE in SON; if ‘egg on’ = ‘urge on’, I suppose ‘egg’ can equal ‘urge’.
27. RELEASE – a double definition that has been in the Top 40 for some time now.
DOWN
1. FATIMA – FAT (think ‘profit’) + IMA[m]; better than my original (highly original) ‘Hotemi’.
2. EXPLODE – PLOD (slang for policeman in Britain) in EXE; the ‘blood vessel’ is needed for the grammar, without which we would be needing past tense ‘exploded’. [on edit: thanks to evanimonx and Anon, who point out that the idiom burst a blood vessel means explode; my excuse is that I’m more familiar with that well known character Buster Bloodvessel]
3. GLADIATOR – (LAD + I) in GATOR.
4. THATCHERITE – HERETIC* after (‘supporting’) THAT (‘some particular’, for which I’m sure someone can find a good example that passes the substitution test).
5. SEA – if I’m right, ‘spot’ here just means place. I am only partially right – thanks to galspray for the parsing: literal ‘fish in this’; wordplay a homophone of spot (see), with ‘caught’ the homophonicator.
6. CARGO – C[olchis] + ARGO; Colchis is in Greece, and Jason was from those parts, so I’m putting two and two together and assuming that the ‘relevant’ points us to the home port of the Argo.
7. POMPEII – O + M[ass] in (PIPE + I)* (on edit: ‘lit’ meaning ‘drunk’ is the anagram indicator) for Frankie Howard’s part of the Med.
8. YEARLING – a nice anagram of IN + ARGYLE.
13. RHETT BUTLER – the outside letters of R[as]H + (BUT in LETTER*).
15. AU NATUREL – NATURE (‘disposition’) in [p]AUL (from TARSUS to keep the Med theme); literal ‘plain’.
16. DISTRESS – D + IS + TRESS; ‘trouble’.
18. TROTTER – R[uns] in TOTTER; they may not run fast, but a lot of dough is wagered on them in Australasia and elsewhere.
19. LETITIA – yes, I had to check this – a TITI is a small monkey with a long tail, living in S America; inside the crossword meadow LEA he, or she, gives us LETITIA (‘female’).
20. ON EDGE – a double definition.
22. SALVE – V[ery] in SALE; can ‘market’ mean ‘sale’, I wondered?
25. TEN – think about it…
24ac was topical in the light of recent TV excitement. The episode screened here at 2:50am and die-hards set their alarms. Probably not worth it in retrospect.
No idea about TITIs (19dn) and had to reach for Chambers. And thought a “here” might be missing from 20dn.
Edited at 2014-08-25 01:53 am (UTC)
If only it was at 2.50am we could have pretended it never happened.
This may have been intended as a Bank Holiday Monday puzzle.
Not too many unknowns, other than TITI. Needed the wordplay to spell AU NATUREL correctly. Enjoyed INTERMITTENTLY and SEA for the clever devices.
Thanks setter and blogger.
So not such a clever device. Not such a clever solver either.
At 2dn I assume the anagrind is “lit” and I couldn’t understand how that worked so I checked to see if it’s in the Chambers’ list of anagram indicators. It isn’t but they have “light” and now I’m in the dark about that one too.
Edited at 2014-08-25 04:54 am (UTC)
To clarify, what I meant was that, since we need only one policeman (the target word being EXPLODE rather than EXPLODSE), the setter needs either the past tense or the imperative. Discounting the latter, the setter needs to use ‘burst’ transitively (discounting the intransitive, as that would suggest an inflatable toy, say, or a policeman pumped full of helium a la Clouseau), and that by definition means s/he needs a nominal phrase in object position. That’s how I see it, anyway.
Burst blood vessel = become very angry. (Explode).
Didn’t see FAT for handsome, and dnk the monkey at 19dn.
Like others, I thought SEA was from the homophone C(aught), and like others I finished with INTERMITTENTLY. Liked that one once I’d seen how it worked.
Am I missing something at 25dn? Ok, we have TEN fingers and thumbs, but is that it? (and yes, Ulaca, I have thought about it…)
25 slightly dreary minutes to solve
And, joy of joys, we have a Bank Holiday Jumbo as well! I’ll just have to get on and finish Saturday’s first.
In light of which I don’t feel qualified to comment on the rest of the puzzle this morning.
Edit: and a typo in the jumbo too! Perhaps I should just go back to bed.
Edited at 2014-08-25 09:44 am (UTC)
ALTERNATINGLY looked like a write-in at 17ac, but is too short, so needed a few checkers to get actual (less precise) answer.
I also worked back from 6dn to 1ac, eventually seeing that ‘ON’ wasn’t to be found inside anything, with the “boxes” being actual shipping containers.
Didn’t CORPOREAL come up very recently in another cryptic, indicted by a similarly worded clue, or is my memory playing me false?
The Times is an English newspaper. Sorry!
Blogs and comments very helpful, so thanks to all.
Edited at 2014-08-25 12:45 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2014-08-25 01:32 pm (UTC)
I hope that everyone who has had a Bank Holiday today has enjoyed it.
A delightful start to the week nonetheless.
Why is 25D ‘rubbish’? It’s a funny CD as I see it, and the SEA clue is also nice, among many inventive clues.
Thanks setter, thanks all.