I must say I enjoyed it a lot in the parsing – maybe I’m in a good mood this morning but there are a lot of playful touches that made me think the setter was having fun, and that’s always good. At least two viable candidates for WOD in OFFICIALESE and AREOPAGITE; curious grid, though the double unches weren’t a cause for any frustration and despair in my case at least; LOI 20ac whose sense needed to be picked apart very carefully before I was confident in my answer.
Much enjoyed overall then, thanks setter! Oh, as a last point, can anyone tell me why we never bat an eyelid at “the French” or “good Scottish” or “rhino Swahili” in crossword clues? The device is clearly an important part of any setter’s arsenal and I am very glad that it exists, but if some said “what is LE” and you answered “the French”, without even a comma or dash, I think you’d get a funny look… but have I been missing a simple explanation of the practice, all these years?
ACROSS
1 Bird sank into water in America (4)
DOVE – a homograph of the quaint American word for “dived”.
4 Scoundrel to attest against old American, without much substance (10)
CADAVEROUS – CAD AVER against O US, [scoundrel | attest ; old | American].
9 Like a picture being restored that’s unorthodox (3-3-4)
OFF-THE-WALL – you generally don’t leave a picture hanging while you’re restoring it.
10 Stand at funeral? It’s very cold, not dry (4)
BIER – BI{tt}ER [very cold, minus TT for teetotal]. “Stand” is not a verb here, but a noun for the coffin to rest on.
11 Son, bothered and panicky (6)
SCARED – S CARED [son | bothered]
12 Good Scottish church in which there’s a new leadership (8)
GUIDANCE – GUID [Good Scottish] + CE [church], in where there’s A N [a | new]
14 Soldier‘s contribution to newspaper article? (4)
PARA – a newspaper article is made up of multiple para(graph)s.
15 Most senior worker, I sit alongside the dealer (6,4)
ELDEST HAND – [most senior | worker]. I’ve played a lot of cards in my time but DNK this; but apparently it’s a term for the person to dealer’s left who gets dealt the first card.
17 Dogged act secures period of office now (10)
DETERMINED – DEED [act] secures TERM IN [period office | now]. “Now” as in “fashionable”.
20 Honest attempt to make the grade after setback (4)
GOOD – GO [attempt] + reversed DO [make the grade, after “setback”]
21 One liquid drops into another, yours truly imagines (8)
METHINKS – INK drops into METHS [(two) liquid(s)]
23 Room in vehicle lined with length of material? (6)
CELLAR – CAR [vehicle] lined with ELL [length of material?]. An ell, like a cubit, is about the length of an arm from elbow to tip of middle finger, and so was very convenient for use in the textiles industry.
24 Sister admits nothing? That could be proper (4)
NOUN – NUN [sister] “admits” O [nothing], with a grammartastic definition part.
25 Old Greek councillor in new opera housed in a holiday home (10)
AREOPAGITE – (OPERA*) [“new”], housed in A GITE [a | holiday home]. The Areopagus, or Crag of Ares, was an outcrop in Athens where they held a court “for trying deliberate homicide, wounding and religious matters, as well as cases involving arson or olive trees” – all the most serious felonies, in other words. That’s all I needed, but you slick youngsters with your hipster “paperbacks” jammed into the pockets of your newfangled Nehru jackets may have been led to the answer via John Milton’s “Areopagitica”, which I understand to be a recent bestseller on the subject of the Leveson Inquiry.
26 Roughed-up motorway said to need engineers brought in (10)
MISTREATED – M1 STATED to need RE brought in [motorway | said ; engineers]
27 Register for work (4)
TILL – double def, where TILL is work as in “work the soil”.
DOWN
2 If I lose face going wrong, out comes the gobbledegook (11)
OFFICIALESE – (IF I LOSE FACE*) [“going wrong”]
3 Get rid of old lover, bore, embracing boy (9)
EXTIRPATE – EX + TIRE embracing PAT [old lover ; bore ; boy]
4 Conservative leader starts to look enthusiastic in constituency (7)
CHEADLE – C HEAD [conservative | leader] + L{ook} E{nthusiastic}. Cheadle is a UK parliamentary constituency up Manchester way, lost by those haphazard Lib Dems to the Tories since the 2015 general election.
5 Defenders got bad with age and didn’t move quickly enough (7,4,4)
DRAGGED ONE’S FEET – (DEFENDERS GOT + AGE*) [“bad”]
6 Wicked no end, group of students hanging round one capital city (7)
VILNIUS – VIL{e} + NUS hanging around I [wicked; group of students ; one]. My new Lithuanian colleague comes in handy again.
7 Stars at leaving speech (5)
ORION – AT leaving OR{at}ION [speech]
8 Material coming out shortly, revolutionary (5)
SERGE – EGRES{s} is coming out “shortly”, then revolve it.
13 I cannot be described as such (11)
CONSONANTAL – cryptic definition. I is not consonantal but, of course, vocalic.
16 Most outstanding feature on land is school (9)
HIGHLIGHT – on LIGHT [land] is HIGH [school]
18 Wise man wrapping old set of holy books in something artistic (7)
MONTAGE – MAGE [wise man] “wrapping” O NT [old | set of holy books]. There is almost nothing more artistic than e.g. the training scenes in The Karate Kid (1984).
19 Creature with several legs as before walked up (7)
DECAPOD – DO [= ditto = as before] + PACED [walked], the whole “up” or reversed.
21 Drop of liquid: you may get this in bar (5)
MINIM – double def, more or less, as a minim is both 1/60 of a fluid drachm and also a half-note in a musical bar.
22 First character to go under in river trips (5)
TOURS – take the river STOUR, then sink its first letter all the way to the bottom.
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