Times 25904 – No, not the one from Winsbury….

Solving time: 43 minutes

Music: Shostakovich, Symphony #6, Boult/LPO

It may be just me, but it seems like the puzzles
are getting harder under the new editor – no more Easy Monday! I was off golfing twice for a few days after retiring, and each time I returned I found it difficult to catch up as I struggled with each puzzle. Usually, there is one doddle every week, but the last two weeks have been tough, and the weekends scarcely better.

Today’s puzzle is what used to be considered a medium-grade affair, but lately that’s been as easy as it gets. The clues are eminently fair, but you’ll need both the literal and the cryptic to fill in most of the answers; at least I did. It’s a good thing I started right at 7 PM, which is midnight to those of you in the UK.

Across
1	APOTHEOSIS, anagram of ISOTOPE HAS. At least we have a scientific surface here, as the atoms ascend to Heaven.
7	OOPS, O (zero) OPS.
9	COMMERCE, CO(MM)ERCE, surprisingly easy once you get the right end of the stick. Alas, I assumed ‘force’ was the literal for quite a while.
10	CREOLE, anagram of CORLE[on]E. A specific language or a type of language, take your pick.
11	BLIMEY, B + LIMEY.
13	BACKWARD, BACK WARD…to make ‘draw’.
14	TWILIGHT ZONE, TWI(LIGHT)(OZ backwards)NE. My last in; I had to pay careful attention to the cryptic. No doubt there are some solvers who just wrote in the answer.
17	DEUTSCHE MARK, anagram of HUCKSTER MADE. Definitely not a chestnut!
20	MOCCASIN, sounds like MOCK A SIN. I believe we have heard this one before.
21	GIDEON, DIG backwards + EON. For once, ‘old judge’ is not O + J.
22	NAPIER, N + A PIER. It’s in New Zealand, so definitely in the south.
23	EARL GREY, jocular cryptic definition.
25	WREN, double definition, the bird and a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service.
26	WYKEHAMIST, anagram of WHISKY + MEAT. I just wrote it in from the initial letter and the definition.
Down
2	POOR LAWS, double definition, one jocular. I did not help my cause by putting in ‘Poor Bill’, and then ‘Poor Acts’, even though I know enough English history to be familiar with both the Old Poor Law of Elizabeth I and the New Poor Law enacted shortly after the Reform Bill.
3	TUM, MUT[t] Upside down, my first in.
4	EARLY, [n]EARLY, where ‘executed’ indicates that a word is to be beheaded.
5	SHERBET, S(HERB)ET. A drink in the UK, a frozen dessert in the US, so you have to be bilingual to solve these puzzles.
6	SACKCLOTH, a cryptic definition alluding to ‘sackcloth and ashes’, I belive.
7	OVERWHELMED, OVERW(HELM)ED.
8	PALTRY, P(A LT)RY.
12	MALEDICTION, MALE DICTION. A bit of a chestnut; cleverer versions have appeared in the Guardian.
15	GRUB SCREW, GRUB’S CREW. I mistakenly believed the literal referred to a slang expression for a low salary, until I saw the obvious.
16	PRIORESS, P(RIO)RESS.
18	SUN DECK, SUN(DEC)K. Why December I have no idea, but the clue does get you there.
19	HOT AIR, double definition, a standard political joke.
21	GIRTH, anagram of RIGHT.
24	GUM, MUG up.