Guardian 23931/Quantum – easy top half

Solving time – approx 12 mins.

I got three of the four perimeter 15-letter entries straight away and had the top half finished in under 3 minutes, then lost a bit of momentum and struggled a bit with the bottom half.

Across
1 PAINT THE TOWN RED – anagram of “Parent to end with” – this jumped out at me immediately and I was off to a flier.
12 LONG LEG – nicely topical but another very easy clue
17 RE,TREAD – bit of a dubious definition, “One brought back to work”, unless there’s a meaning I’m not aware of.
19 E(uropean),SCUD,OS – is it too pedantic of me to complain that escudos are no longer money, and this should be indicated in the clue? 1 across in last week’s Azed committed the same offence, but more blatantly – the currency in question has been devalued so many times that the unit “What’s spent by Angolan” is only worth about a billionth of a penny and hasn’t been in circulation since the early 1990’s. Ah, apparently they still spend escudos in Cape Verde, so I’ll let him off this time…
22 CAPSTAN – nice cryptic definition
24 CUR(ios) – I initially put CAD in here while I was still rushing for a quick time – saw “Scoundrel” for C?? and didn’t even read the rest of the clue.
25 AMMO,NIA(=”in a” muddle)
26 ON,E,NESS – how unusual to see NESS clued as “Scottish loch”
28 I,R(is)KED – another nice cricket clue – if only the “one” was Ponting!

Down
1,2,3,4,5 – all very straightforward, especially having the first letters to hand
6 WHATNOT – double definition. My granny used to have a Victorian mahogany whatnot in the hall.
7 R.E.,COLLECT – note for beginners, COLLECT=”prayer” comes up a lot.
20 D(UNE)DIN – another one for beginners to watch out for – if you see something like “a French port”, take your mind off Calais and think of ports elsewhere in the world with “UN” or “UNE” in them.
22 CROESUS – anagram of COURSE + S(ociety) – I don’t like this. How can S be “on” (the anagram of) COURSE when it’s under it? This would be acceptable in an across clue, but not a down.
23 POE (Edgar Allan),TESS (of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy)
27 ERICA = I in ACRE reversed