Times 27469 – Not stuff you’d find Marvin, Borgnine and Bronson countenancing, methinks

With its weird exercise routine (‘a household phrase’ in the 1920s, as Pinter puts it) and its Irish lake isle, this is by no mean your average Monday offering, taking me in excess of 40 minutes. With its mixture of write-ins and clues needing thinking-out, not to mention its use of the odd non-mainstream definition, I thought this was an interesting puzzle. But what do the rest of you think? I shall read your opinions with interest and come back to award a prize to what I consider to be the outstanding contribution.

ACROSS

1 Took a risk — failed to catch cold (5)
DICED – C in DIED
4 Here no minister is found to support judges (9)
BACKBENCH – BACK BENCH; because the backbenches are filled with newbies, ne’er-do-wells, wannabes, those who threaten the PM through their egregious (archaic sense – just wanted to get the word in) intelligence, and those who refuse to take a three-line whip. I tip my cap to the last named.
9 Island where drink is on the house? (9)
INNISFREE – An isle in County Sligo memorialised by Yeats in a poem from his early period, when he was still relatively sane
10 Strength of over 50 per cent of oscillation (5)
SINEW – I am pretty darn proud to have worked this out, not being a sciency type; five eighths of SINE WAVE is SINEW. I’ll let the boffins argue over whether SINE WAVE can be one word and whether it matters at all to the clue whether it can be or not.
11 Broken son may receive sterling aid (6,7)
YEOMAN SERVICE – anagram* of SON MAY RECEIVE; not a phrase you hear every day, as Pinter might put it, but it has certainly worn better than DAILY DOZEN
14 Eggs left in the ground (4)
OVAL – OVA L
15 Be endlessly agitated by scratchy sort of blouse (3-7)
SEE-THROUGH – SEETH[e] (agitated) ROUGH (scratchy)
18 The school for chemists? (10)
ELEMENTARY – a whimsical cryptic definition, which boffins may chortle into their beards over
19 Wake up in prison (4)
STIR – double definition (DD)
21 Burn coal: aren’t changing to become this? (6-7)
CARBON-NEUTRAL – BURN COAL ARENT*
24 Dye used within borders of Indian city (5)
HENNA – [c]HENNA[i]; frankly, I can’t see the point of going to all the trouble of changing the name when the best known and arguably most widespread use of the word has been retained in Chicken Madras. One for the linguistic hygienists and hand-wringers to work on…
25 One cultivating wickedness speaking a tiny bit (9)
SCINTILLA – if you were a farmer who was also a bit of a wag, you might joke over the fence to your neighbouring landowner – as a change from moaning about this and that – that if you decided to grow vices instead of turnips and rape, you might by styled a ‘sin tiller’
27 Observes discussions producing capital projections (9)
EYESTALKS – EYES TALKS; the things that stick out of the front part (‘capital’ – geddit?) of slugs and snails, in pairs, with the bottom ones doing the sniffing and the upper ones doing the looking
28 Politicians on vacation leave such time for music (5)
DUPLE – DUP (from Nor’n Ir’n) L[eav]E; rhythm based on two beats to the bar

DOWN

1 Regular exercise, newspaper, then nap before noon (5,5)
DAILY DOZEN – DAILY DOZE N; ancient callisthenics
2 Holy figure I left in study (3)
CON – [i]CON
3 Period in which doctrine is cast down (6)
DISMAY – ISM in DAY
4 Basis for soup that may include eggs (5,4)
BIRDS NEST – another bit of whimsy from the setter
5 Red Queen’s disposition (5)
CHEER – CHE (red, as in Guevara) ER; as in ‘Be of good cheer, O fellow callisthenic practitioner!’
6 Finest engagement book, not the first one featuring animals (8)
BESTIARY – BEST [d]IARY; it seems to me that you need to perform a spot of callisthenics to get this to work, to allow ‘book’ to do a bit of double duty; alternatively, as pointed out below, one just extends the definition back one word to include ‘one’
7 Hurry up fielding strange question, giving illogical answer (3,8)
NON SEQUITUR – RUN reversed around QUESTION*
8 With solemn person, hard to cry (4)
HOWL – H OWL [solemn person]
12 Old knowledge I lost about gentle play of colours (11)
OPALESCENCE – PALE (gentle; ‘pale morning light’ perhaps?) in O (old) SC[i]ENCE
13 Sailor perhaps on this horse failing to get away (5,5)
SHORE LEAVE – HORSE* LEAVE
16 Drastic rules from receivers inhibiting Yankee (9)
TYRANNIES – Y in TRANNIES (transistors)
17 Abandon belief, holding religious teaching to be cowardly (8)
RECREANT – RE in RECANT
20 In luxurious hotel room, died in formal clothes (6)
SUITED – SUITE D
22 No-good lake bird (5)
OUSEL – O USE (‘good’, as in ‘You’re no use!’) L
23 Socks son pulled up, put into this? (4)
SHOE – S raised in HOSE (footwear worn by callisthenic pratictioners?)
26 Drink: get one round ahead (3)
LAP – DD; if you lap someone, you get one round of the circuit ahead of them; the sort of thing that might be said by a callisthenic practitioner