Neither too easy nor too hard, this puzzle has neat clues. I must admit that I had an unusually slow start but I completed it in much less than 30 minutes. The bottom left quad was filled in first while the bottom right was delayed.
Across
1 CHANGE – c(hang)e
4 ISABELLA – (libels AA)*
9 MURAL – M.,Ural
10 APOLOGIST – a,polo,gist
11 DETRACT – D,E,tract – D is from Deutschland and E is from Espana.
12 TRIDENT – Tr(id)ent
13 APEX – ape,X – No monkey business here!
14 MEANNESS – me(Anne)ess
17 MASSACRE – mass, acre – I am not sure if ‘acre’ can mean ‘area’ or ‘land’. Chambers has “(in pl) a very large area”. Similarly, ‘extensive’ doesn’t yield ‘mass’ so readily for me.
19 LATE – (et. al.)<
22 EXCRETE – ex,Crete
24 NO SWEAT – (saw note)*
25 TRANSPIRE – T,ran,spire
26 RHONE – RH,one – The last to go in. I solved it from wordplay. I have to google to find out who the banker is.
27 DERANGED – de(rang)ed – “out to lunch” is US slang for ‘slightly crazy’.
28 BRUTUS – b(rut)us
Down
1 COMEDIAN – co(media)n – For me, the plural of ‘medium’ in the sense ‘psychics’ is ‘mediums’.
2 AIRSTREAM – (Is rare mat)*
3 GALWAY – gal(lag<),way – Solved from wordplay – Galway, I learn, is Ireland’s cultural heart.
5 SHOOTING RANGE – I solved it from the definition and the enumeration but did not see the wordplay until now. – shoot, in, grange – ‘sucker’ is ‘a new shoot’ (looked up just now).
6 BROMIDE – br(OM)ide – Bromides are used as sedatives; a ‘dull, platitudinous person’ may be called a bromide.
7 LOIRE – lo,ire
8 ASTUTE – hidden in ‘breakfAST UTEnsil’ – I suppose that it was the designer who put that ‘clever part’ on the utensil – Anyway, glad that ‘statue’ is left untouched.
10 AT THE SAME TIME – (Meat emits heat)*
15 SCAPEGOAT – S,cape,goat – Among the last two to go in – ‘Patsy’ is slang for a sucker – It is not a proper name here – Cape as in Cape of Good Hope – I haven’t come across ‘goat (v.) = to assault’. Comments welcome. (On edit) It is actually S,cape,go at. See comment below.
16 HEATHENS – heat, hens
18 STEPSON – read: ‘steps on’ – the most abused relative in crosswords.
20 HEATED – h(E)ated* – E in anag. of ‘death’ – Very nice surface reading.
21 USURER – usur(-p)er – Maybe he took the dollars or the pounds.
23 CHAIR – C, hair? – Solved from def. ‘office’ as in the University chair – For lay = hair, I need to – just a minute, I got it now – it’s Ch. (chief), air (‘lay’ as in ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’)
A satisfying conclusion to my blog today.
I think it is ‘go at’, not ‘goat’,Rikisesh!
Sorry – Rishikesh! In 15d of course.
Thank you! It seems I didn’t go at it!
BTW, there is a holy city by name Rishikesh (one of the names attributed to Vishnu and which means Lord of the Senses) in the foothills of the Himalayas. My short name is Rishi and you can call me thus!
Thank you Rishi – what an illustrious name!
26a ‘banker’ = river = Rhone
15d Just in case anyone is wondering about the initial ‘S’, ‘Bob’ = shilling (old UK coin) = S
Thanks, Geoff! That ‘banker’ is something like ‘flower’ didn’t occur to me at that time!
From the odd coincidence department: We’ve seen “meanness” clued twice, similarly, in two days: 14a above (“Parsimony of old queen in a pickle”) and yesterday’s Guardian, by Rufus (“Ill temper shown by girl in a muddle”).