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. |
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