This was quite tough for a Monday, with some obscure words mixed in with references to Shakespeare, mythology, ancient alphabets and poetry. All in all, it was enjoyable to solve, and took me about 12 minutes.
ACROSS
1 RUMOUR HAS IT – (amour hurts I)*
10 NUNNERY – referring to Hamlet’s exhortation to Ophelia (“get thee to a nunnery”)
11 GO(L-DEN-R)OD – A North American flowering plant
12 SYBIL – hidden in “fantaSY BILingual” – I’m not sure if this is meant to be an &lit. I know that there were several prophetesses known as Sibyls in ancient mythology, but I don’t know if any of them were bilingual
14 TONGUE-TIED – (due get it no)* – have now seen “falling” used as an anagrind on a couple of occasions, but I’m not sure about it.
16 FAR(SIGH)TED – one from the Paul school of crossword compiling, I fancy.
19 (<=M.A.-GO) – Ogam (or Ogham) is an old Irish alphabet based on notches and lines.
22 TWENTY-ONE – one of the many names for blackjack, pontoon, vingt-et-un etc. And 21 used to be considered the age of majority.
26 T(H.E.)A-(<=GERT)-O-E.R.
DOWN
1 ROY-AL TOUR-NAME-N.T. – a military show which ran from 1880 to 1999 (except in wartime) and which involved bands and demonstrations by members of the Armed Forces.
4 HANG-DOG
5 SIN-IS-TER(n)
6 TREMBLING POPLAR – (mr big planter lop)* – a willow tree
7 SP(<=G.I.)OT
15 E(xperience)-NILE-D(umbhead)-IS
16 F(A ST.)EN
18 EPE(R.G.N.)E – a large decorative table centrepiece – RGN stands for Registered General Nurse
20 MAENAD – (named a)* – in Greek mythology, a female taking part in a Dionysian orgy
23 T(erritorial)-O.R.-(<=O/S) – OR being “other ranks” and O/S outsize(d)
Agree rather hard for a Monday. I got THEATREGOER (btw, nicely cryptically defined as “a member of the house). But I don’t see how GERT means women? I know it’s a diminutive of Gertrude but surely it should be singular woman then? What else?
I think women must have been a typo for woman. One of the weaker clues in a good puzzle, I thought, despite the definition. I’d also take issue with ‘game of chance’ for twenty-one/pontoon – surely there’s a measure of skill involved.
Yes, there is a measure of skill involved in pontoon but essentially it is, as Chambers defines it, “a game of chance”. Setters have to provide provenance to back any clue and I assume Audreus is relying on the dictionary definition.
Interesting to discover that “pontoon” is thought to be a corruption of “vingt-et-un”.