Just like Eileen I had ‘logarithm’ for a while, asking myself why on earth Cinephile clued it as ‘Procedure’ – only to find out that 20d wouldn’t work, so saved by the bell.

In 4ac (HIBISCUS) we have HIB again for an ‘Edinburgh footballer’, being short for Hibernian. I clearly remember some people object to this when Araucaria used it (not that very long ago): a Hib is apparently a Hibernian supporter. That said, here the first part of the solution cán be read as “short for Hibernian [ie the footballer?]“.

Finally, in the blog Gaufrid mentions one of last week’s hot topics: the fact that in 28ac’s clue the word ‘goalbreak’ has to be split, giving us fodder and indicator.
Without restarting the discussion [well, hardly anyone will read this anyway, I guess], it is a good example of what I meant when I said (in Paul’s blog) that for me personally some breakdowns are more “acceptable” [mind the quotation marks!] than others: the split in goal/break is much more natural than in ref/used. Moreover here ‘goal’ is the full anagram fodder, which wasn’t the case for ‘ref[used]‘.

No need to apologise. I have very occasionally posted in the Grauniad and Indie parts

I should perhaps have said in my preamble that I found this to be an easier puzzle, rather than it being an easy puzzle, because the apparent degree of difficulty varies from solver to solver depending on experience, background etc. I perhaps had an easier time of things because, for example, as soon as I saw ‘author Philip’ I immediately thought ‘Roth’ which led to ‘troth’ (as in ‘I plight thee my troth’) and then the rest of the answer.

But welcome to 15², anyway. I don’t remember having seen your name before yesterday but, if I’m wrong again, more apologies.

I’ve been doing the Private Eye crossword for about 5 years -at first I was lucky to get more than a handful but over the years I have found that I can usually solve it in about 45 minutes. I have flirted, on different days, with the Telegraph, Indie, Guardian & Times for about a year. I have usually have about 30 mins a day about 3 days a week but I have decided to give the FT a real go. Must say today’s attempt was my worst by far for quite some time.

It’s all relative – Cinephile [Araucaria in the Guardian] is known as being one of the trickier setters.

From your comment yesterday, it wasn’t completely clear whether it’s just the FT puzzle that you’re new to or cryptics in general. If it’s the latter, may I suggest that you download last Monday’s Quiptic puzzle [targeted at newer cryptic solvers] from the Guardian website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/quiptic/567

for which, when you’ve had a go, there is an excellent blog on this site:

http://fifteensquared.net/2010/09/27/guardian-quiptic-567-don-putnam/

[Curiously, I almost always find the FT's prize puzzles more straightforward than the Tuesday to Friday ones! ]

27,18 Convinced myself this was an anagram of “but more likely. Having failed to get anything that fitted,, I thought what a blimp was and the answer was obviously something-in-the-sky.
12a Clay=lute I knew not
21a I did have t for model t but didn’t know that shogun was a Japanese dictator.
28a I had never seen this “trick” before.
2d I imagine that with the numerous authors with first or second name of Philip that you needed checkers to get this. In any case, the clue was way beyond me.
7d Sadly a cubit is not something I recall encountering before.
17d I knew Ulan Bator and played around with U, R and U,N,B,R but it never occured to me that I needed more than the end letters
26a And ditto aral.

I wish I had got 9d -very good.

Ah well -tomorrow is another day and with a two hour train journey in store, I’ll give it another whirl.

Yes, all very straightforward – apart from my having confidently [and quite smugly, not being a mathematician] entered ‘logarithm’ for 28ac!

I hadn’t quite got the ‘of body’ in 17dn, thinking that it should lead to ‘regulatory’, so thanks for that – great clue!