jetdoc, I surrender!

[there's indeed not much wrong with the crossword, very clever in many places, but I fear E's style (as shown here, that is) is not completely my cup of tea - it's just that touch of lightness I'm missing, it was like entering a dark forest all on my own with no-one around]

I thought I’d sleep on this one before commenting. My perception has not changed and I found this a mixture of the obscure, the trite and some very poor surfaces. It was as if someone had borrowed Enigmatist’s name and submitted their own crossword. I finished about half of this before throwing in the towel and the last one I got was 5,15 which was not a bad clue but BOOHOO (I’d be embarrassed to include this), ROLL-OUT (a vague answer to a poor surface), YAHOO (trying to be too clever I think) and EIGENVECTOR ( an obscure word that most people wouldn’t even want to add to their vocabulary). Also, I still don’t understand where the hoax comes into FIRST LIGHT. If light refers to a white square, then this is where the answer is written. A clue is not a hoax.

I normally respect Enigmatist as a difficult and fair setter but on this occasion something seems to have gone wrong. The idea of a crossword is to be entertaining and not impenetrable. I will reserve judgement until next time.

Chambers defines LADIFY as ‘to call My Lady or Your Ladyship’.

G is George in GR (George Rex), the king: maybe a bit UK-centric, but OK.

The anagrind in 5,15 is ‘following disturbance’.

‘arm?’ is the definition for FORELIMB; a leg, in a biped, would be a hindlimb.

Chambers defines rating as ‘the class of any member of a crew; a sailor of such a class’; and AB as ‘able-bodied seaman’. This is pretty standard stuff.

OOH = “I’m surprised!” is taken in by “Surprise!” = BOO (two things that might be cried out when surprising someone).

007, presumably, is one in a series of spies starting with 001.

G = George might not be in Chambers but it is standard when abbreviating kings and queens in Britain in the form GR. I’d treat Edward, Elizabeth and Henry in a similar light, though Henry does of course have a Chambers’ entry for other reasons.
OO for intro to spies: 007 was but one spy, hence the 7. Someone with more knowledge than me will be able to say who 001 and 002 are, So here a plral or singular would do if you accept that 00 = OO.
BOOHOO is Cry. “I’m surprised”is OOH, surprise is BOO.
I think Rating is enough to clue AB. Able Seaman (AB) is one rank within Naval Rating.

Colin

Agree with Martin H’s first lines in #8.
Looking back at this crossword (for which we needed you, Eileen, more than ever) one cannot say that there was that much wrong (even though I criticise a lot of the clues below).
But there was no lightness to add to the cleverness.

‘Call the mistress’ for LADIFY?
‘George’ = G? [Not for Mrs Chambers]
‘the First’ = A? [a capital F?]
(and the combination of the two doesn’t feel right – however, this was one of the clues we did find the answer to, so hurrah!)
Didn’t like the anagrind in 5,15 either. ‘Following’?
Just like Martin H we weren’t happy with ‘Question’ in 13d.
And what is ‘arm’ doing in 17d other than more or less making a contrast with the ‘leg’ in 1ac? Very unelegant.
‘Rating’ is enough to define AB?
19ac: BOO (‘Cry’) with OOH (“I’m surprised!”) to be taken in – and then ‘by surprise’ for BOOHOO? ‘By’?
Nobody seems to have any trouble with OO for ‘intro for spies’.
I can’t believe that this is the start of 007. ‘Spies’ is plural and 007 isn’t. Moreover, ‘intro’ suggests only the first character to be an O.

Ah well, Enigmatist is beyond any doubt a clever setter, who offered me a vintage wine that should be great according to what I read in the books, but it didn’t taste well today.
[I am sure, though, that he has some other bottles in store]