A fairly benign workout – I even managed to solve this on-screen without too much difficulty (my printer having thrown another late night tantrum). A few of the clues (e.g. 26A, 19D) struck me as good examples that a simple clue to a pedestrian word need not necessarily be an inelegant one.
Across
1 POS(I)T,IVE
5 RUSSIA – Prussia -P
9 REMEDIAL – medi[cine] in real
10 ID CARD – car in (did)*
12 TALL,Y – “Unlikely” in the sense of a tall story.
13 U,P(PERM)OST –
14 AFFECT – double def’n
16 C,LIMBER – Does the spelling (Sherpa) Tensing still hold sway? I was under the impression that the alternative Tenzing was better form these days.
18 SICK PAY – (yap)rev. The most amusing and best clue of the puzzle, in my book.
20 LIGHTS – Slights -s
22 H(IT)AND,RUN
23 SAL(V)E
24 MAOR,IS – roam(rev) + Is
25 DECIPHER – (hard piece)* – a
26 AB,SENT
27 ST(R)EAMER
Down
1 P,IRATE – A meaning that’s fast becoming replaced, in the digital era, by “ripped”>
2 SIMPLIFICATIONS – (Politician’s MS if)*
3 T(ODD)Y
4 VIADUCT – (Audit CV)*. Bizarro surface.
6 UNDER,LIN,G – Funder -f + nil(rev) + g. The abbreviation “g” for gov’t is one of those that seems to exist purely in the realms of dictionaries and crosswords.
7 STAR OF BETHLEHEM – double def’n.
8 AUDI,TORY
11 EPIC – From [d]epic[t]
15 EX,PANSION – (No 1 + snap)rev. I’d be hard pushed to cite an example of Snap = “certainty”. Although the exclamation “It’s a snap!” sounds vaguely familiar in a Jennings & Darbyshire kind of way.
179 IS,CHE,MIA – Revolutionary = Che (Guevara); or as one of my peers at school once mondegreened him, “Sheikh Al Fara”!
19 YAR,D – (ray)rev.
20 LENI(E)N,T- …..you wait all day then two Communists come along at once.
21 T,ERROR
23 S(M)ITE – Re: “M” from James Bond (spymaster)
In India we speak of GoI orders, where g is for Government.
I enjoyed this, a little easier than usual from Viking, I thought. Favourites, HIT-AND-RUN and DECIPHER. Top half easier than bottom half. Did wonder about ‘nap’ as ‘certainty’ but looked in dicts after and they confirm it. I think it’s NAP not SNAP with the S coming from “number one’s”
You’re right about NAP – my skew-whiff parsing was a result of my smart-arse attempts to solve without a pen. I know it’s a term used by newspaper tipsters for their “sure fire” bet of the day, so I think that qualifies it as a (racing) certainty.
HIT-AND-RUN was my runner up in clue of day.