Across
1 CHAIRPERSON – anag. of ‘parishioner, c’ after deleting one I from the anag. fodder
9 VACUA – CD – the very last answer for me – pl. of vacuum – ‘pump’ must be reference to a vacuum pump – anyway not a clue worth sweating over
10 MEANWHILE – anag. of ‘a new h’ in ‘mile’
11 RUDIMENTS – RU, d(I’m)ents – RU: Rugby Union – Good surface reading
13 NANNIES – The penultimate answer for me. Of course, the definition was clear from the beginning. And also the content in the c/c clue. But even now I am doubtful about the container.
20 UNEARTH – anag. of ‘run’ and ‘heat’
24 APPRAISAL – anag. of ‘paris’ in ‘a pal’ (note that here the indefinite article is part of the container but in 10 ac above it is to be overlooked)
26 TURNTABLE – anag. of ‘run battle’ – I have nostalgic memories of 78rpm records.
27 PRANG – (-s)prang – it’s a “vehicle crash” (airmen’s slang, acc. to Chambers)
28 RUT – rev. hidden in ‘lecTURer’, ‘contribution’ being the hidden signal
29 DERANGEMENT – anag. of ‘need garment’ – Woe unto you if you thought ‘garment torn’ was anag fodder, ‘in disturbance’ was the anag. signal and ‘need’ was the def.
Down
1, 21 COVERING LETTER – two def. – I put down the second word of the phrase first. It is by no means a difficult clue, yet I did not get the first word as quickly as I should have got. With C as the first letter, I had to banish ‘circular’ [letter] from my mind before, well, getting round to ‘covering’.
4 ERMINES – ‘min.’ in ‘eres’
5 SWANSEA – ‘sea’ (“the main”) being at the base of this Down entry is a supporter of ‘swan’ (“a bird”). Again the answer was slightly delayed because, with that final letter a in the answer word and the word ‘supporter’ in the clue, I was trying to fit in a bra (size 42 C).
7 APIARY – anag. of ‘pair’ in ‘ay’ (“yes”)
8, 17 SEEING THE LIGHT – two def. – Here I got the first and second words of the phrase quickly enough but not the third – The first def. is new to me.
16 DRESSAGE – dress, age
19 CHAMBER – MBE in ‘char’
20 UMPTEEN – nothing cryptic about this clue
22 CLARET – anag. of ‘article’ after deleting I
25 AMPLE – (-s)ample
The paper version has it as one of Quark’s puzzles.
Sorry. That was my mistake. I am making amends.
13a “But even now I am doubtful about the container”
I have this as ‘ANNIE’ (girl) in ‘NS’ (certain extremes, ie North and South).
Thanks, Geoff. I was looking for the extremes of a certain word!
Yes, on the first run though I started off with CN for ‘certain extremes’ but quickly had to discount it once 1d was in.
On reflection, the ‘certain extremes’ could refer to the first and last letters of ‘nurses’. I am now unsure as to Quark’s intention here.