Incidentally, I was pleased to note that the mobile theme for the site works rather nicely, as I dialled in from the Prince Regent to see whether I’d got FELL – the last one in – right.

I think this puzzle deserves full credit.
At a first glance, the clues were almost unusually short for a Tees. And after making a quick start helped by no less than 8 anagrams, I thought this would be plain sailing.
It was not, but certainly not at the hard end of the Indy’s spectrum either.

As for others, 17d needed an explanation, but it had to be TOOTHACHE [almost looks like TOO THATCHER, but that would give me another kind of ACHE ].

The hiddens solution of 21d (HASTE) was one my last. The surface of this clue is so natural that one doesn’t think of this device in the first place. A very well written clue.
Another highlight for me was LYING (12ac) in which ‘flat’ and ‘ fish’ had to be separated.
And I liked Mahler’s Third too. The H was clear enough, but I wanted it to be pasted into something else (which wasn’t there).

Many thanks, John, for your blog, and even more to Tees for an inspiring puzzle.

sidey @7: You need to take account of the subtleties of rhyming slang. The rhyme is indeed “Hampstead Heath = teeth”, but in abbreviated slang, “teeth” would be called “Hampsteads”, to acknowledge the plural. On this logic “Hampstead” is actually slang for “tooth”.

6D: well spotted (phew).
7D: as Thomas observes, ‘readiness’ and ‘being prepared’ can be synonymous. Try ‘in a state of readiness/ being prepared’.
8D: yes, you are, as MikeC advises, missing something. Siege Perilous etc.
15D: N/ EAR THING* per dialrib, ‘cut’ is the ind.
17D: rhyming slang (per dialrib).
19D: yes there is one in Vermont, but I prefer this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Markham

Are we there yet? Well, looks like it.

Re ‘inelegant’ link words, I am intrigued: why is ‘with’ seen as wrong and bad (I presume this to be a generally-held view, and not something that Wil has decided upon for himself)? It can’t be because such usage may appear to change the tense of the definition, can it? If so, then, ‘in’, ‘getting’, ‘for’ and several others would seem to qualify by the same reasoning. Whatever, it seems to me an interesting conversation waiting to happen, so I think I’ll plonk it up at CC (where the Big Bad Grammarians live).

Thanks Wil, thanks all.

Sorry for terseness above – suddenly got through on the phone after waiting a long time so kept it brief. Thanks for the blog and to Tees for the puzzle of course.