Completely mea culpa - I was not able to get to this last night and forgot to put up a placeholder. Blog coming soon, really. Fortunately I don't think there'll be too much controversial here.
Solving time: 8 minutes, and it really should have been a little quicker, I was not seeing many obvious across answers, but with only one checking letter in most case these came to light. I was left in the end with the top right corner, where there is a long anagram of a word which I think I've only run across once in a crossword (possibly a Mephisto) leaving a name, fortunately the name that came to mind was correct even though I didn't know the wordplay.
Away we go...
Solving time: 8 minutes, and it really should have been a little quicker, I was not seeing many obvious across answers, but with only one checking letter in most case these came to light. I was left in the end with the top right corner, where there is a long anagram of a word which I think I've only run across once in a crossword (possibly a Mephisto) leaving a name, fortunately the name that came to mind was correct even though I didn't know the wordplay.
Away we go...
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | HIT(badly affected), THE SACK(dismissal) |
| 6 | S |
| 9 | SAFE-BLOWER: A,FEB in SLOWER |
| 10 | I,RMA: I didn't know Sandhurst was the Royal Military Academy, hence RMA |
| 12 | MAID,ENVOY,AGE: nice charade |
| 15 | RING(call),CYCLE(round): Wagner's very long opera of four operas (themselves usually performed in parts) |
| 17 | AVAST: or A VAST |
| 18 | SUPER: P in SUER |
| 19 | OB,SESSION: OB for obiit is popping up fairly regularly |
| 20 | our across omission |
| 24 | TOG,A: a TOG is a unit of thermal insulation - got this from definition |
| 25 | EVISCERATE: (TEA,SERVICE)* |
| 26 | RUNE: take the first letter from PRUNE |
| 27 | BRANDY SNAP: BRAND is the wood on fire, then PANSY reversed |
| Down | |
| 1 | HASP: hidden ins whicH A SPindle |
| 2 | T |
| 3 | HABEAS CORPUS: ABE(Lincoln) in HAS, then CORPUS (Christi College) |
| 4 | SNOOD: Lorna DOONE'S reversed then the E removed |
| 5 | CLEANNESS: (CAN,LESSEN)* |
| 7 | MORGANATIC: anagram of G, A, ROMANTIC |
| 8 | GRAVESTONE: (VETERANS,GO) - they aren't crossing each other, but it's a little strange to see three anagrams in a row |
| 11 | ROYAL SOCIETY: double def |
| 13 | PROSECUTOR: cryptic def |
| 14 | SNAPDRAGON: NAP(sleep),DRAG(bore) in SON |
| 16 | CROSSOVER: the thane of ROSS (Macbeth) in COVER(shield) |
| 21 | our down omission |
| 22 | FAIN: 1 in FAN |
| 23 | HEM,P |