A fairly typical Cinephile though overall perhaps slightly easier than some (at least for me).
Nothing particularly held me up (studying chemistry at school helped with 19ac) but 26,27,23,24 was the last to go in because I needed all the checked letters to confirm the long anagram.
Across
1 LEGLESS dd – ‘tight’ as in ‘drunk’
5 PAPACY CAP (limitation) reversed in PAY (money)
8 MEANWHILE *(WE HAIL MEN)
9 RANCH RAN (managed) CH (companion) – ‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch’ was a phrase frequently used by narrators of American cowboy movies and TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s.
11 ASPEN AS (like) PEN (writer)
12 ACCRETION CRE (anti-racist body) in ACTION (performance) – CRE is the abbreviation for the Commission for Racial Equality. This has now been replaced by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights so perhaps the clue should have read ‘former anti-racist body’. One of the definitions of ‘accretion’ is “an extraneous addition”.
13 DEED POLL DEED (performance) POLL (voting) – ‘calling’ as in ‘name’.
15 BUREAU UR (old town) in BEAU (dandy)
17 TALENT ALE (beer) in TNT (explosive)
19 NOBLE GAS NOBLE (posh) GAS (talk) – the second element in the periodic table is helium, one of the noble gases.
22 ENTER INTO ENTERI[c] (intestinal cut) *(NOT) – defn. ‘form part of’.
25 BARRISTER RIS[k] in BARTER (exchange)
26,27,23,24 CHANCE WOULD BE A FINE THING *(CHILD OF THE NEW AGE IN CUBAN)
Down
1 LOMBARD STREET LOMBARD (Milanese) STREET (way) – the chief centre of the banking interest in London. Milan is the capital of the Lombardy district in Italy.
2 GRAPPLE GR (King George) APPLE (pupil) – one meaning of ‘apple’ is the pupil of an eye.
3 EDWIN hidden in ‘rED WINe’ – Edwin of Northumbria.
4 SPIRACLE *(REPLICAS) – a breathing hole (zoology).
5 PREACH R (take) in PEACH (fruit) – ‘R’ is the abbreviation for ‘recipe’, the Latin for ‘take’.
6 PERPETUAL *(PETER) in *(PAUL) – ‘the like with’ indicates the second anagram.
7 CONFINE CON (with) FINE (penalty)
10 HONOURS DEGREE NO (number) in HOURS (lots of minutes) DEGREE (a lot of them {minutes})
14 PENDRAGON PEND (wait) RAG ON (minimally dressed) – Uther Pendragon.
16 TOMORROW TOM (cat) OR (alternative) ROW (line)
18 LETTISH *(THISTLE) – from Lett?land (now Latvia).
20 GRITTED dd
21 ENABLE NAB (take) in ELE[ments]
23 ADIEU A DIE (something straight) U (bend) – from the saying ‘straight as a die’ (ie a gaming dice) meaning ‘completely honest’.
Thanks for mentioning the convention R meaning take
Thanks v much for the thorough blog. Just one comment re11 across. There is a “Trembler” species of Aspen tree.
Hi Gnome
Thanks for your input. I don’t know your source for ‘Trembler’ being a species of Aspen but Chambers gives ‘aspen’ as “the trembling poplar”
COED goes further and defines ‘aspen’ as “a poplar tree with small rounded long-stalked leaves noted for trembling in the breeze [Populus tremula (Europe) P. tremuloides (N. America), and other species]”. Collins has something similar.
Thanks Gaufrid.
As you say,one of Cinephile’s easier puzzles and also,judging from the lack of comment here,one of his least controversial.
Nothing anyone could really quibble with,but none of those trademark Cinephile ‘moments’ when you suddenly click on to his meaning.
A good,if somewhat workmanlike puzzle.
Apologies Gaufrid. I was quoting somewhat loosely from Wikipedia, accessed via my mobile. The operative word against populus tremula is, indeed, “trembling”. (Although the species tremuloides apparently goes one further, to include a “quaking” variant.)
And now that I’m home, I can confirm that my Chambers agrees with yours!