Not a cross-reference in sight nor a long anagram. Was this really Araucaria? I can’t even detect a theme of sorts.
Now that I’ve said this, will someone prove me wrong?
Across
| 1 | LAID-BACK – def is “relaxed” but not sure about “thinking about England?” though it seems like a good candidate for “wordplay in the answer” which would produce DIAL. |
| 10 | HELL,AS – not a bad clue albeit my last: “Dis”=HELL, “like”=AS. |
| 12 | TRA(NSIT CA)MP – (cast in)* in TRAMP for “walk” and “about” indicates the containment. |
| 17 | BIL(AT,ERA)L – AT, ERA in BILL (Brit slang for the heat, i.e. CONSTABULARY which is 4D). OK, so there was one cross-ref here after all. |
| 19 | AM,I,GO – I is the “setter” here. The question-mark in the clue is necessary because the answer is a question! |
| 20 | W(IRE,T)APPING – guess-hazard time: I suspect that there are printing presses in WAPPING (?). |
| 24 | AL,LIED – yeah, that’s how they got AL Capone finally – for tax evasion. |
| 26 | JINGLE BELLS=”belles” – Goodness, is it that time of year already? Anyway, ref Alfred JINGLE (“Pickwick Papers”). |
| 27 | STIMU=(I must)*,L,US |
Down
| 1 | LEG,I[n]TIMACY |
| 2 | INST,A[i]LMENT |
| 4 | CONSTABULARY – two slang terms for the coppers: “nick” is a Brit term for a police station. |
| 6 | CLEOPATRA – (parcel to a)*. Cryptic def of the empress as a “needlewoman” ref. Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment (didn’t know this but she has two sisters in Paris and NYC). |
| 7 | IDLENESS –ref. MSND: turns out that Puck is sent by Oberon to find a flower called “love-in-IDLENESS”. |
| 11 | HA(R,LEY S)TREET – R, LEYS in theatre* – ref. HARLEY STREET which is where all the rich consultants are but I’m not sure how LEYS is produced by “lines” in: “Medical centre on right lines having operating theatre outside”. |
| 16 | CART(W,HE)EL |
| 21 | PRO(E)M – I’ve always thought of a PROEM as a hybrid of a poem with prose but it is in fact an introduction (or overture). |
| 22 | HAD,J |
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