Times 27,635: Be Careful What You Wish For

The funny thing about this “hard puzzle” is that the cluing itself is actually rather straight-down-the-line, nothing particularly fancy to report beyond the hard vocab. In fact my favourite clues turned out to be some of the least hippopotomonstrovocabularian: the splendid anagram at 26ac, the very good specimen of the hidden genre at 17ac, and I’ll give COD to 23dn for its neat construction. Thanks to the setter for leaving me quite literally out on a LIMB for longer than the quarter hour I’m comfortable a puzzle taking me. Consider “uncle” well and truly cried!

ACROSS
1 Mainly leading role around Thursday (3,3,4,4)
FOR THE MOST PART – FOREMOST PART around TH

9 Praise cast for acquiring favourite snack (9)
APPETISER – (PRAISE*) “acquiring” PET

10 Best expose cheat (5)
OUTDO – OUT DO [expose | cheat]

11 American sectarians hard on English novelist (5)
AMISH – H on AMIS (Kingsley or Martin)

12 “Great goal” is all you’ll hear a girl raving (4,5)
HOLY GRAIL – homophone of WHOLLY + (A GIRL*)

13 Theft regularly involving farm tool yonks ago (8)
TRANCHET – T{h}E{f}T “involving” RANCH [farm].
A tranchet is a neolithic or mesolithic flint with a chisel-like end, or possibly “a shoemaker’s paring knife”, but that would be less yonks ago.

15 Killer’s headless chickens? (6)
LAYERS – {s}LAYER’S “headless”. LOI: spent way too long wondering if there might have been a murderous individual called RAVENS at any point.

17 US city making contribution to help a soldier (2,4)
EL PASO – hidden in {h}ELP A SO{ldier}

19 Cheat finally producing nothing for drug supplier? (8)
FOXGLOVE – FOX {producin}G LOVE. A foxglove is the source of the drug digitalis.

22 Note glut concerning children (9)
OVERISSUE – OVER ISSUE [concerning | children]. If a bank has overissued currency, this would constitute a note glut.

23 Mount collage, initially with border (5)
CLIMB – C{ollage} + LIMB. I put this in straight away then took it out because I thought “border” was LIMN not LIMB. But apparently a “limb” can be the border of e.g. the sun or a sextant. Who, he asked somewhat rhetorically, knew?

24 Fool European singer (5)
TWITE – TWIT + E. The twite is a mountain linnet, I discovered.

25 Opera‘s wordplay about girl in islands (1,8)
I PURITANI – PUN about RITA in I and I. A work by Bellini, which I’m pretty sure has come up at least once before.

26 Peers interfere improperly in economic system (4,10)
FREE ENTERPRISE – (PEERS INTERFERE*)

DOWN
1 Flip gospeller almost into the sea by public hotel (4,2,3,5)
FOAM AT THE MOUTH – MATTHE{W} “into” FOAM [the sea] by OUT H

2 Copy page in souvenir article (7)
REPLICA – P in RELIC A

3 Strike central heating snag (5)
HITCH – HIT C.H.

4 Mike leads playful disruption (8)
MISCHIEF – M IS CHIEF

5 Keen husband dipped into small brook (6)
SHRILL – H “dipped” into S RILL

6 Capital that is accepted by both sides in promoting Chinese principle (9)
PYONGYANG – YON [that] “is accepted” by P{romotin}G + YANG [Chinese (male) principle]

7 Scramble to get on with artist above suspicion (3,4)
RAT RACE – R.A. above TRACE

8 Duty of the superior toff, being above inferior English press (8,6)
NOBLESSE OBLIGE – NOB, being above LESS E OBLIGE

14 Wrapping a card, crease fancy cloth (9)
CASSIMERE – (CREASE*) “wrapping” SIM [a Subscriber Identity Module card for your phone]

16 Certainly true, cunningly hiding medals (2,2,4)
TO BE SURE – (TRUE*) “hiding” O.B.E.S

18 Voyeur embracing this setter over cardinal (7)
PREMIER – PRIER “embracing” reversed ME

20 In which paperwork is sorted by folders (7)
ORIGAMI – cryptic def, folders as in “people folding”

21 Legendary figure, very large one, in hospital (6)
OSSIAN – OS [very large] + I in SAN

23 Perhaps lag behind on jeep, arriving at bend (5)
CRIMP – CRIM [perhaps lag, as in felon] + {jee}P