13:11, so not outlandishly difficult based on that criterion (not to mention someone from these parts already solving considerably quicker); and a smooth solve with everything safely worked out before submitting. As always, your mileage may vary, depending on your personal knowledge of Aristotle, the language of Robert Burns, and card games; though I don't think the vocabulary was especially tricky. Whether I'm right or not will soon become clear.
| Across |
|---|
| 1 | KINSWOMAN - IN(=at home) in (MONKWAS)*. |
| 6 | BASIS - 1 in the BASS voice. |
| 9 | DOWAGER - WAG(=shake) in DOER(=active type). |
| 10 | SHOWN UP - double def. |
| 11 | SWOON - W{ife} in SOON. |
| 12 | LANDOWNER - where LAN stands for Local Area Network; so if you did terminal mischief to one, you'd be a "LAN DOWNER", geddit? |
| 13 | FORTIETH - (TOFITHER)*, with ruby being another way to express a 40th anniversary. |
| 14 | DRAB - (BARD)rev. |
| 17 | LATE - {e}LATE{d}. |
| 18 | BADINAGE - IN{n} inside [B{ritish} ADAGE]. At first I feared this was going to feature the dread word "banter". |
| 21 | HALF TRUTH - veracity = truth, so our Vera is only half of that. |
| 22 | SO FAR - F{eminine} in SOAR. |
| 24 | UNITIES - UNI{versity) TIES(=associations); the unities are the dramatic rules laid down in Aristotle's Poetics. |
| 25 | GO ROUND - double def. "Last out" as in "I hope there's enough wine to go round". |
| 26 | EAGLE - E{nglish}; AGLE{y}, a word I know (as does probably everyone else who happens to know it) from Burns' words To a Mouse i.e. "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley". |
| 27 | SINGLETON - double def., "one in a suit" being in the card-playing sense, where it means a single card of a particular suit in a hand. |
| |
|---|
| Down |
|---|
| 1 | KUDOS - (SUDOKU)*. |
| 2 | NOW YOU'RE TALKING - a double definition with the cryptic element not being very cryptic. |
| 3 | WAGON-LIT - (ALONG)* in WIT. The train sleeping-car sounds even more exotic when rendered in French. |
| 4 | MORALITY - lift and separate to get the definition "Good conduct", and it's M{ark}, O{ver}, R{E}ALITY minus the E. |
| 5 | NOSING - 27ac is SINGLETON; if you want to turn that into "admitted", i.e. LET ON, you take off the first bit, so there's NO SING. |
| 6 | BOO-BOO - BOO{k} x2. |
| 7 | SAN ANDREAS FAULT - (LAASUNDERFASTA{california}N)* &lit. Very clever. |
| 8 | SEPARABLE - StEeP, ARABLE. |
| 13 | FULL HOUSE - double def. More cards, where a full house is three of one rank and two of another in poker; and the theatrical sense. |
| 15 | PATHOGEN - THO'(=but) in PAGE N, i.e. an unspecified page. |
| 16 | MINSTREL - MINSTER (=church) with the tail turned to become MINSTRE + L{eft}. |
| 19 | STRIKE - S{on} + TRIKE. |
| 20 | CURSES - the curé is the French parish priest; put {pray}S in CURES to get the swearing. |
| 23 | RADON - R.A.(=Royal Academy) DON(=lecturer) gives the radioactive gas. |