Guardian 24,087 (Sat 26 May)/Paul – Capital punishment

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Solving time: 23:35

After five minutes I had solved four clues. Then 15ac helped me tumble to the theme: ‘S’ = ‘State capital’. Most of the puzzle then fell out quickly but I stubbornly resisted the urge to look up the last couple of capitals so took an age to finish off the top right and 8dn/13ac. The state numbers and ‘original’ references were no use to me, and initial errors in 6dn and 12ac didn’t help matters.

Explanations for 4ac and 7dn would be welcome.

States are given in brackets after capitals. * = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 ALBAN + Y (New York) – St Alban was a Christian martyr who was beheaded at what is now St Albans.
4 CONCORD (New Hampshire) – but the spelling of the aircraft is Concorde so unless this is a mistake, I don’t understand this clue. I also don’t understand 7dn which is an almost identical clue.
9 GRID (= ‘this pattern’) + IRONS – a gridiron is an American football field. A late spot for me.
10/23 BAT ON + ROUGE (Louisiana)
11 STEEP (double definition)
12 E + MA + NATIVE – I initially had ’emanation’ here which held me up. On reflection I don’t think ‘mother’ = ‘nation’ would have made sense.
13 ATLANTA (Georgia); ANT in ‘AT LA[st]’ – should have been much faster with this.
15 AUSTIN (Texas) – refers to the Austin Motor Company.
24 TA(S)TE – refers to Sir Henry Tate of Tate & Lyle fame.
26 HIND (= ‘back’) + U (= uranium)
27 STREAMLET; (LAST METRE)*
28 THE + REIN
Down
1 AUGUST + A (Maine)
2 BOISE (Idaho); “BOYS”- because ‘boys will be boys’, as in this poem by Allan Ahlberg.
4 C(ASS)AT + A – my last entry, and a guess, but it’s an Italian ice cream containing fruit and nuts.
5 NUBIA; rev. of A1 BUN
6 OBTAINING; (ON AIN’T BIG)* – I saw ‘Getting’ and the partial anagram fodder ‘ain’t’ and wrote in ‘attaining’ which was foolish.
7 DENVER (Colorado) – I can’t explain this wordplay (‘…tragically no longer flying’).
8 TOPEKA; rev. of KEPT around O, + A
14 L + ON + GRANGE
16 SAINT PAUL (Minnesota)
18 MAD IS ON (Wisconsin) – this was actually the first thematic wordplay I solved, but I didn’t understand the definition part at the time.
19 B + LEARY – refers to Timothy Leary.
20 TRENT + ON (New Jersey)
21 UP + SHOT (= ‘go’)
25 SALE + M

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