Times 25,997: Undercover Cops

At the risk of turning into a stuck record: I thought this was yet another unimpeachable Friday puzzle. Pitched at just the right level of challenge (easy entry points, but not without a few real stinkers to pose problems later on), rigorous fairness, and lovely craftsmanship, with multiple fully sensical surfaces that are often actually beautiful.

I really like a good surface, had you noticed? A great one hides in plain sight, and you may not realise how hard they are to turn until you’ve spent months and years as part of a community of Facebook compilerasters, rolling your eyes at all the square pegs being hammered into round holes. Look at all the good ones in this grid! Topical items (8A, 18D, and then 24A to maintain some political neutrality), ingenious concealments of what’s really going on (14A, 2D), models of simplicity and elegance (6A), and then clues that just tell a superficially funny story, like the Asians who have finally forgiven us for perceived racism in The King & I, or what was possibly my COTD this time, the insane rambling resignation letter written in bright red ink. Either this is crosswords aspiring to the level of art, or else I stayed up till 1am doing the puzzle, my beloved daughters woke me up before 7am, and this was not nearly enough sleep. Or both?

Alright, on to the stats. I clocked out at just under 18 minutes this time, though that did include going on a hunt for a laptop charging cable halfway through to avert possible disaster. My FOI was 10A, except that even despite parsing “wings” properly immediately, I still managed to put in TZAR. So glad that the first letter was checked there. So my real FOI was 14A, and I was able to make some real headway in the southeastern corner from there.

In pleasing symmetry, the same corner was where I found myself struggling a little at the end. Not being a big cognac drinker I found myself struggling with 16D, and perhaps shamefully did a quick Google search for cognac brands before the penny dropped. (Other tricky things I had to double-check later were galley proofs, and the unknown-to-me “salep”.) 25A was the next to fall: I have a real blind spot when Asian means anything west of India, and even though K____I_I doesn’t admit many things I’d become fixated on something Japanese, after KIRIBATI failed to pass muster on two fronts. Which left my actual LOI, probably unjustifiably as 22A. As this was obviously an anagram of either IMP SURE CAN or URE CAN HELP, I feel like I might have got this much quicker if I’d been doing the puzzle with old-fashioned pen and paper, affording the opportunity to play with the letters in the margins. Technology is killing crosswords! (But not really.)

Across
1	MUTE BUTTON – microphone switch: NOT TUBE TUM [something other than | TV | corporation] “flipping”
6	SPAN – bridge: AN [article] on SP [odds, i.e. Starting Price]
8	STERLING – banking standard: STEALING [larceny] has R [right] for A
9	GALLEY – proof: G ALLEY [grand | passage]
10	CZAR – ruler: “wings of” C{hint}Z A{rmchai}R
11	UP THE SPOUT – ruined: THESP OUT [actor | openly gay] after U P [universal | pressure]
12	ADDICTION – habit: AD DICTION = “word use in commercials”
14	RIFLE – root: L [{cana}L “finally”] “stops” RIFE [teeming]
17	LIBEL – false report: L [large] + {dec}IBEL [degree of noise “obscuring” Dec(ember)]
19	VEHEMENCE – vigour: HE-MEN C [macho types | caught] in VEE [flying formation, “say”]
22	LEPRECHAUN – mischievous imp: ({s}URE CAN HELP*) [“out”, scrapping “sons” i.e. minus the S]
23	JILT – dump: J{a}IL [PRISON “has no answer” i.e. minus an A] with T [time]
24	ORWELL – socialist author: OR WELL [otherwise | sensible]
25	KASHMIRI – Asian: IRK [anger slightly] “turned around” AS HM I [since | The King | (and) I]
26	WEFT – “strands (carried across by shuttle)”: WEF [with effect from] + T [start of T{hursday}]
27	DIRTY HARRY – cop film: HARRY [trouble] follows DIRTY [lewd]

Down
1	MUSIC HALL – a place for variety: MUCH [often] “involving” “upright” IS [lives] + ALL [everything]
2	THE YARD – Met base: THEY [people generally] on A RD [a thoroughfare]
3	UBIQUITY – being all over the place: I QUIT [resignation speech] “written in” {r}UBY [red “without intro”]
4	TIGHTROPE WALKER – cryptic def
5	NUGGET – valuable fragment: GUN [piece] “lifted” + GET [to obtain]
6	SALE PRICE – “one’s discounted”: SALEP [starchy tubers] + RICE [starchy grass]
7	ASEXUAL – “spurning congress”: AS USUAL [customarily] when EX [former partner] “stands for” US [American]
13	IN EARNEST – with determination: I NEAR NEST = I get close to home
15	ELECTRIFY – thrill: (FIERY CELT*) [“excited”]
16	HENNESSY – brand of cognac: {heat}HENNESS [spiritless state, maybe “gets heat taken off”] + Y [unknown]
18	ICE-FREE – “warming Arctic may become so”: (FIERCE*) [“spoiling”] + E [“one of” E{arth}’s “extremes”]
20	NOISIER – “perhaps more disturbing”: V [volume] “excluded from” “upcoming” RE{v}ISION [exam preparation]
21	PC PLOD – police officer: CPL [corporal] entering POD [school]