A couple of unfamiliar words had me scurrying to the dictionary, e.g. PSITTACOSIS and I’m still not sure about a wordplay or two. Par for the course. Updated based on comments.
Across
| 1 | RA(MI,F[ive])Y – RAY’s our man and a slightly cheeky way to produce F via roman V=five’s first letter. No idea what I was thinking — must have mentally substituted V for 5 and then forgotten about it: it’s just 5=Five. |
| 4 | C(RIMIN[i])AL – CAL’s our state, RIMINI’s our Italian city. |
| 9 | RE(SI)ST – SI’s our abbreviation for Systeme Internationale (for standard units) — well, international other than the US and Britain. |
| 10 | S,PLATTER – which is our mess. |
| 11 | IN,AUS,PIC,IOU,SLY – AUS is ‘down under’, SLY’s our nickname for Sylvester Stallone. |
| 13 | PEC,CAD,ILL,O – I don’t see how PECCAD is produced by “muscleman of ill repute” though. PEC’s our muscle and man of ill repute is a CAD so another minor non-Ximenean infraction. |
| 14 | LAV,A – it flows and LAV’s our bog (toilet). |
| 18 | STRIP(TEAS)E – obviously, Shed goes to the sketchy part of town for his STRIPTEASEs. |
| 21 | CHILL,ICON,C,ARNE – I like defining CHILLI as “hot chow”. ARNE is our (perennial) English “composer”. |
| 24 | VESSEL – two meanings |
| 25 | REARM,OST – OST is “east” in German and if you need to get ready for the next war, you’d better REARM now. |
| 26 | TY,RANT – 20 is T[went]Y. |
Down
| 1 | RARE – def is ‘excellent’ but I don’t see the 2nd half; “Having just been shown the pan is excellent”. Speculation in comments that briefly cooked is “just been shown the pan…”? | |
| 2 | MA,SONIC | |
| 3 | FIST,U,LAR – new word for me: means tubular. U’s our turn and LAR is our household god. | |
| 5 | RAP,SC(ALL)ION | |
| 7 | NA=rev(an),TASH,A – TASH must be slang for mustache somewhere. And NATASHA’s our girl. | |
| 8 | L(ARDY C)AKE – (D’Arcy)* in LAKE. | |
| 12 | P(S)ITTA,COS,IS – I’ve seen this before but still needed a dictionary and I’m certainly not sure how to pronounce it. Cryptic lettuce is often conveniently COS. Oh, it’s a rather nasty bird disease. | |
| 13 | PUSH,CHAIR – it’s a buggy but I give up on the wordplay: “Reportedly pedal president’s buggy”. pedal=”PEDDLE”=push and CHAIR is president. | |
| 15 | STRA(TEG)Y – TEG is a useful cryptic (young) sheep | |
| 17 | CHIMER,A | |
| 19 | A(MNE)SIA – MEN* in ASIA (“incontinent”). The question-mark indicating the minor non-Ximenean infraction. | |
| 20 | A,LARUM=rev(mural) | |
| 22 | SLOT[h] – one of the seven deadly. |
13ac Pec (as in muscle) Cad (as in chap of ill repute)
13d Push (as in peddle drugs) chair ( president)
In 1 down I think the other definition is a reference to frying steak so that it’s rare: “just show it to the pan”… 🙂
I wouldn’t go picking at the “international” thread or we may have to bring up the “World Series”.
“Tash” has always been short for moustache in England at least.Bit old-fashioned now though.
I found out recently that the World Series is not so-called because the whole world (meaning the whole of the US) is invited to play, but rather because the original series way back when was sponsored by The World newspaper. And the name stuck. So we shouldn’t perhaps criticise our US chums for being inward-looking, on this evidence at least….
I’m afraid that’s an urban myth along with almost everything I’ve ever believed it would seem.
And was Audreus followed by Shed in The Guardian? Yes indeed, so two good puzzles in a row.
ilancaron:I’m still struggling to understand your comment on 1ac. but, since no-one else has commented, I think it must be me! What has ‘Roman V’ got to do with it? ‘Five’s first letter’ is ‘F’!
don’t know what I was thinking — I mentally substituted V for 5 when I saw it, and then forgot I’d done so!