Well-phrased wordplay and clues on the whole. I struggled with several, to my mind, esoteric refs (SQUEERS, OSBERT, TREVELYAN) but I’m sure someone better educated (in Britain!) than myself would not have been challenged.
Across
| 1 | SAPP[h]O,R,O – ref. the poetess Sappho. I would have expected “taking hour off” to have removed a trailing, rather than an interior, H though. |
| 9 | GUM ARABIC – I guess GUM also means “fool around”? Ref. sticky stuff. |
| 10 | N(IS)AN – ref. the month in the Hebrew calendar. Note that “entertained” indicates “contained by”. |
| 11 | TUN,A=rev(A, NUT=”fruitcake”) |
| 12 | C[lip],RY FRE=ferry*,EDOM=rev(mode) – Ref. the movie about Steve Biko. |
| 14 | CORNEL[l] – it’s a tree I guess. Ref. CORNELL University. |
| 15 | R,AFTER,S – a clue worthy of Paul/Araucaria. R comes AFTER S in SR… |
| 16 | SIT-UPON – SIT-UP is a kind of exercise. And our “bottom” is what we typically SIT UPON. Nice clue. |
| 18 | SHOD,D[irt]Y – “with shoes” is a nice way to define SHOD. |
| 20 | C,ORIOL[e],AN,US – it’s a bird, it’s a play… |
| 24 | NA,A,FI=rev(IF, A, AN) – I guess “counter” indicates reversal (as in, “against”) but is it really valid? |
| 25 | TR,EVELY(A)N – TR is Turkey and ref. John EVELYN who’s a diarist not a diaris which the online version would have you believe and ref. TREVELYAN who one assumes was a historian. |
| 26 | S,PENS,ER – Ref. Edmund our old poet and ER, the George Clooney medical drama. |
Down
| 1 | SIGHT – two meanings where the first “mess” as in: “waking up this morning after too many vodkas the previous night, I was a SIGHT to behold” |
| 2 | PI(M[or]E)NTO – I like “more or less” indicating ME. |
| 3 | OGRE – rev hidden in “undERGOing”. |
| 4 | OSBERT LANCASTER – (Rat’s nest – or cable)* – never heard of him (early 20th century artist). |
| 5 | WACKFORD SQUEERS – (acqu[i]re[s] r[o]w of desks)* nor him: Dickensian schoolmaster (needed looking up as well). Purists would argue that “so I” should be contiguous in the fodder. |
| 7 | RUSH,DIE – for some reason I found this amusingly clever: seems like Iran could have adopted this as its cry for a fatwa! (RUSH is “fly” as in to hurry). |
| 8 | DYNA=”Dinah”,MOS=”mows” – groan. |
| 13 | KNIPHOFIAS – (A[nthony], Hopkins, if)*: another reason to look something up. It’s a kind of flower, also known as “red-hot pokers”. |
| 19 | DE(COY)ED – ref. Andrew MARVELL’s COY mistress. |
| 22 | WIND=turn,Y[our] – not sure of the def though: “Turn your head yellow?” |
| 23 | LEDA – hidden in “SwaLEDAle” — see cryptics do teach you a thing or two about mythology after all. |
22dn – confused me too at first, but one of the defs in Chambers for WINDY is “frightened, nervous”.
9a – GUM is “fool around” because it’s MUG backwards (as in to make a mug of somebody)
NISAN was also in a recent Azed (1860 – blogged by linxit).
4d “Osbert Lancaster” was a cartoonist (rather than artist), in the Daily Express, so “drawer” is appropriate here.
24a I too had problems with NAAFI. I think it must be as you say but I was unhappy with the use of counter.
22d Again I agree, what is the definition?
I found this puzzle difficult with a few clues (like those noted above) a little uncertain, at least to my way of thinking.
22d: As linxit said, windy can mean ‘frightened’ (presumably related to ‘having the wind up,’) so the definition is ‘yellow’, meaning cowardly or scared.
I’ll stand up and be counter.
I like it, and that’s not merely a threat – I’ve used it too! ‘Original chicken counter in popular Indian’ I think it was. The usage is adverbial, as in: ‘in a contrary direction or manner’, or ‘in a wrong or reverse direction’.
I know you’ll be worried about the grammar at the cryptic level rather than at the surface, but I reckon Big O (a fine compiler) is on solid ground here.
Orlando’s definitely been getting trickier of late. Lots of obscure references here – definitely not one I could hope to do on the train.
Re 24 across, NAAFI stands for Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, which provided cafeteria food for British Forces during the war. A canteen is another word for a cafeteria, and the acronym became synonymous with the canteen itself.