An excellent puzzle from Dac, one of the top setters. Solving time: 21 mins
* = anagram
ACROSS
8 GNAR (L) ED This has to be right, I think, esp with the L in a crossing down clue, gnarled being defined as twisted. So it’s l in (danger)* if I’ve read it right. That gives l = live, which is not in either Concise OED or Chambers. I thought it might mean l = live from electricity but a quick look at Wikipedia yielded nothing.
9 E (tip of rose) YE (you) SPOT (find evidence of) Such a well-crafted surface.
14 SOR (BONN) E University in Paris. Bonn, capital of the Federal Republic of Germany up to reunification and indeed a city, not just “a small town in Germany”. American in clue as, Concise OED confirms, sore = angry is a mainly US usage, though it’s familiar as such to me.
19 POM-POM
26 I (CE = engineer BOA = stole) T It = Italian the anagram of stole initially tempted.
27 ST (E (WART) G) RANGER Alien = stranger. wart = skin blemish in eg = say
DOWN
1 HIGH-RISE FLATS IS = one’s in (a fresh light)* See 9 across.
2 WHATNOT (that now)* an unspecified item
3 YELLOW FIN(e) Always a pleasure to work out a new word from wordplay. Chicken = cowardly = yellow
4 (f)UND ONE (appearing as itself) ‘is’ is a link. Definition = ruined F = fellow
5 F (EEL-G) OOD This, I think, turns ‘glee’ upside down in ‘food’. I was not sure though if the ‘surge’ indicates this or the ‘tucking’. I suspect the former as tucking in looks like a straight containment indicator.
10 THE (a) TER MINATOR(y). Nmsindy weakness on films was no problem here. The separation of ‘short’ from ‘menacing’ by a comma did cause a pause for thought though. The letters removed are indicated by “bans” and “short” respectively.
15 BUONA SERA (Good evening in Italian) (on a bus are)* Was not sure of the spelling here at first and had to wait for across words to be solved.
16 B (EGg) ETTER
20 P(OP S)ONG Slightly uneasy surface suggesting hospital problems, so it was nice to move into the separate world of the wordplay. Definition is ‘charts number’ though I suppose every pop song does not get there.
21 AS (Martin-Luther) KING
8A – I wondered about L=Live too. Maybe it’s in Collins…?
10D – saw this immediately from the def but it wasn’t until the end of the puzzle that I finally got the wordplay. I think it was MINATOR[-y] that held me up.
I can confirm that L for live is in Collins, and on most plugs.
Well, not bath plugs obviously.
L = live. Thanks for that, I suspected it might be in Collins which I may have to add to my lunchbreak dict resources.