A good puzzle. There may be a couple of old chestnuts (e.g., 26ac) but many clues for even familiar and often-encountered words (e.g., EXPRESS) have been given a new twist. The surface reading of many clues is absolutely smooth and so very plausible: solvers deal with the components and the result of the action is something more than mechanical: they get a pleasurable sensation, a sense of satisfaction.
I must confess that at the moment of writing I have three to go – 12 and 20ac and 21dn (all short words!) – but my blog cannot wait.
Across
1 MARMALADE – container/contained – mar(ma,lad)e – jam in the sense of road block
6 SMART – charade – SM, art
9 MOTET – reversal – moT ET < Lawrence Thomas are two individuals
10 PUPPETEER – c/c – p(up,pet)eer – you solve the clue upon seeing the words ‘up’ and ‘lapdog’ and with the def. “performer”. Only later you discern the actual wordplay and the beautiful coalescing of the components.
11 DETERMINED – charade – deter, mine, d – “colliery director”, like “Lawrence Thomas”, needs to be looked at as separate words
12 (Not solved)
14 HABITAT – anagram – (Tabitha)*
15 SALIENT – c/c – sa(lien)t
17 ACETONE – cha. – ace, tone
19 PITCHER – two defintions
20 (Not solved)
22 DISPLEASED – c/c – dis(pl.)eased – As in 10 ac, the answer comes first and the justification (and aha!) later
25 EXTRACTOR – cha. – extra, (-a)ctor – Hope it was the tooth that the dentist pulled.
26 AGAIN – cha. – a, gain
27 STERN – cha. – s,tern
28 DISPENSER – cha. – Di, Spenser (of The Faerie Queene fame)
Down
1 MIMED – hidden – from hippopatiMI MEDitating – In ‘of’ we probably have a weak hidden indicator, but the surface reading is so smooth that you don’t immediately realise that this is a hidden clue.
2 ROTATABLE – cha. – rota, table
3 ALTERATION – deletion – alter(-c)ation
4 APPOINT – cha. with rev. – ap<, point
5 EXPRESS – cha. – ex, press
6 STEW – rev. – stew <
7 ARENA – cha. with rev. – are na< – if you are not happy about substituting ‘an’ for ‘a’, read “a time” as “an era” and then do the reversal operation
8 TORMENTOR – c/c – tor(men)tor
13 ALL THE RAGE – anag. – (large lathe)*
14 HEARTLESS – cha. – H.E., artless (from Frank, ignoring the fake capitalisation)
16 EPHESIANS – anag. (Ian’s sheep) – “A New Testament book containing the epistle from Saint Paul to the Ephesians which explains the divine plan for the world and the consummation of this in Christ” (WordWeb)
18 EVICTED – c/c with anag. – evic(t)ed* – Good wordplay – Surface reading might probably be better with “that” between “out” and “strange” or even between “device” and “keeps”
19 PAPYRUS – anag. – (Ray’s pup)*
21 (Not solved)
23 DONOR – c/c – do(N)or – Chess notation for knight is N
24 VAIN – homophone – “vein”
12Ac was the last to go in for me too, though I think it is simply FATE – cha. – f,ate.
20Ac – TAMP – c/c- ta(m)p
21Dn – MITRE – c/c – mit(r)e
Rishi, why ‘traffic jam’ for 1a and not the orange conserve which
we eat for breakfast? ‘Tamp’ and ‘mitre’ were my last two also!!
Funny how the short words are often the most troublesome.
Octofem,
‘Jam’ as def. for word required is the fruit spread, of course. But in the surface reading ‘jam’ can only be in the sense of traffic congestion.